NY Mets Were Set to Choose Black as General Manager

Ed Notes has learned that the NY Mets were set to appoint Cathie Black as their new general manager instead of Sandy Alderson a few weeks ago but Mike Bloomberg, having already decided to kick Joel Klein to the Rupert Murdoch curb (where Klein is predicted to last about a year before claiming he wants to go back into education destruction), intervened.

A spokesperson for the Wilpon family would not speak on the record but endorsed Bloomberg's vision of corporate manager not needing to know anything about the area they are managing.

"Look at our results over the past few years," he said. "Worse than the results of the school system. And with people supposedly having baseball knowledge. So we decided to hire Cathie Black to reverse the fortunes of the Mets but Bloomberg said she knew even less about public schools and education than baseball and he needed someone to chop the school system down into little morsels and that could best be accomplished by someone who knew nothing about what she was chopping. Too bad. We could really use a 50% cut in the Mets payroll."

In other news, Rupert Murdoch has announced that for the brief time Joel Klein will spend at the News Corp, he expects Klein to reorganize whatever division he heads at least once a month with the goal of breaking the Guiness Book of World Records for reorganizations, a record currently held by Klein himself.

PEP POO

Parent activist Lisa Donlan leads Real Reformers at the mic at the PEP

The first of a bunch of reports - check Gotham for more links
 
How am I going to be able to manage the wealth of information related to the Cathie Black nomination for chancellor and last night's PEP meeting? The best thing about last night were the wonderful Real Reformers with their red RR capes. There was lots of press around to tape them but let's see if any of it gets on the air. Of course we have footage - lots of it.

There's a Delegate Assembly today, followed by the Gotham Schools fund raising party - they were trying to get Black to make an appearance, which I doubt. But if she was as smart as they say she is and had any clue at all she would get her ass in there and try to charm the pants off everyone. But I bet she has no clue as to what Gotham is or the importance it occupies in the local and national ed world. Which is why I sent in my hundred bucks but intend to eat at least double that amount. But if by some miracle Black were to show without paying, I'm going to take home a doggie bag.

But first I have to stop by the UFT for the DA. YAWN! I didn't even waste time and money putting together an Ed Notes. I'm only going for social reasons. I could stop by Evan and Sydney's E4E party (which conflicts with the Gotham event) with DOE officials coming to talk about how value added ratings for teachers will add 20 years to their life expectancy but you have to sign a loyalty oath swearing allegiance to merit pay and bowing down to the VA gods before you can get in. I was going to write more but I turned that story over to my pals at Gotham, who have been way too solicitous towards Evan and Sydney, who are clearly backed by the Tilson/Murdoch types of the world as they try to undermine the teachers union, which has been doing a great job of undermining itself.

Here's a report from Harold, a teacher at John Dewey HS -with the photo above -  about last night's meeting: See more photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=250042&id=560743400&l=7744c2afa8 

The Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) is the school board arm of the Dept of Education (DOE). Some would say a puppet school board, they serve under the Chancellor. PEP holds these public meetings throughout the year in all the 5 boroughs. Tonight was Brooklyn's turn. The meeting was held in the magnificent auditorium of Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Green.

Tonight's meeting had a lot of controversy surrounding it. They had to deal with a resolution that dealt with Mayor Bloomberg's pick for Chancellor, Catherine Black. 

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/cathleen_p_black/index.html?inline=nyt-per 

Since Ms Black has no background or experience in Public Education, she must receive a waiver before she can take the job. 

There was a resolution on the table to allow the PEP be the sole entity that can issue such a waiver. Otherwise the mayor alone could issue the waiver. 

It was put to a vote and rather then stand up to the mayor and demand someone who is an educator to run the DOE, the PEP folded like a cheap suit and voted the resolution down giving away their power to the billionaire mayor. 

The public was invited to speak and most speakers objected to the choice of Ms. Black and complained about the state of public education under outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein.

There was a lot of frustration in the air because all the public attendees who were advocating for better schools knew their words would be forgotten by members of the PEP board as soon as they step back into their limos. 

City government in action once again. Ha!

Harold also shot a video of last week's Fight Back Friday rally at Dewey:
Fight Back Fridays Video from Nov 12th. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdfIRmRpbEM


Sol Stern has a great piece running at The City Journal. Oh what fun to see Sol, who used to support all the ed deform crap in a previous life - along with his pal Diane Ravitch - use one of the bastions of right wing NYC journalism to take down Bloomberg and the Black appointment - though Sol, can you write one piece without hocking us with your phonics?

To give the mayor his due, this description of qualifications for the chancellor’s job is consistent with everything he has said since taking over the schools in 2002. Bloomberg always insisted that the managerial and entrepreneurial skills needed to run a successful private-sector company were perfectly applicable to the task of improving the schools. And that renders moot the question of whether Black needs to know anything about education and instruction. The national adulation that Bloomberg has received (some of it self-generated) for his “breakthrough” school reforms has obviously confirmed him in this fundamental belief.
Though significant doubts have now surfaced about the extent of academic gains made by the city’s students during the Bloomberg era, there is little question that Gotham has become the nation’s most visible example of what I have previously called the “incentivist” approach to education reform. For education incentivists, what matters most is efficient management, backed by a series of internal market interventions to maximize the productivity of the workforce (that is, teachers and principals), which will produce better results (higher test scores). The issues related to instruction don’t factor in the equation. Since Bloomberg clearly remains convinced that Klein, a chancellor without a background in education, oversaw eight years of achievement gains simply by creating the proper incentives, there’s no reason for him to believe that Black ought to know, say, the difference between phonics and whole language.

And you may have hears rumors of a very public hug between Joel Klein and myself - I'm still way behind Randi in the number Klein hugs. Julie Cavanagh ran over to take over the camera and made sure to get the video. I was going to burn it but it is being processed now. More later on the reaction of my pals, who sent over hand cleaner, told me they wouldn't go near me until I took a shower and generally shunned me for the rest of the night. They're just haters.

At Randi's last Executive Board meeting in July 2009, she also spoke about how she would miss me and we shared a big hug, which George Schmidt, in town for the week, tried to capture on his camera but was a second too late. The point I tried to make to both Randi and Klein is that my opposition to them is political, not personal - though Randi always tried to paint it that way.

Assessing Joel Klein: What Influenced Him in the Late 60's? What If He Had Remained a Teacher?

Randi and Klein operating on the school system, neither qualified

Randi and Klein "fixing" the schools. I should have included this cartoon yesterday a teacher did for me for the Spring 2003 edition of Ed Notes. Very apt in line with the Black story. Click on it to enlarge.


I'm writing this as a follow-up to my piece yesterday (Separated at Birth: Joel and Norm - I Miss Him Already) on some of the similarities in my background with Joel Klein.

I wondered what would have happened if Klein had not left teaching after only 6 months. And also about how the climate of the times and how his brief experience as a teacher may have shaped his views, particularly about the union. I want to point out right up front that I have not had the time to do any research on anything Klein may have said about those years and the political influences on him, so all this is just speculation. But I find it interesting that he seems to have said so little or anything at all.

First let's think about the climate of the times in the late 60's. Just to give you a flavor, I extracted this fragment from Democracy Now's 40 year retrospective of 1968.

May 14, 2008: 1968, 40 Years Later: Student, Worker Protests Sweep France, Leaving Indelible Mark on the Country and the World
May 1968 was a watershed month for France, when a wave of student and worker protests swept the country and changed French society forever. We speak to George Katsiaficas, author of numerous books, including The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968.

April 25, 2008: Forty Years After Historic Columbia Strike, Four Leaders of 1968 Student Uprising Reflect
Forty years ago this week, hundreds of students at Columbia University started a revolt on campus. Students went on strike. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low

Klein graduated from Columbia in 1967 and I assume was at Harvard Law School in April '68, so he missed the action. (I had completed one year as a full-time grad student in June 1967 and with the threat of grad student deferments ending I went into teaching in Sept. '67. Ironically, I was in the Columbia library on that day even though I was a grad student at Brooklyn College - anyone could just walk in. It was my first year of teaching and I took the day off because I was doing a heavy duty research paper and the resource I needed was only available up there.)

What was Klein's reactions to the events at his alma mater in the spring of '68?

Just a few months later in the fall of 1968 the UFT went on the most contentious strike in history, splitting apart the historic connection between civil rights and unionism, with many liberals and radicals lining up against the UFT. What is not commonly known is that the UFT had all the teachers in the demonstration district in Ocean Hill- Brownsville go on strike in May 1968, some of the aspects of which may have been drowned out in the incredible events of those months along with the assassinations of King and Kennedy, the elections, the war, etc. Really the most incredible time. Assume Klein was busy with law school and maybe didn't follow these events in the NYC schools.

Where did Joel Klein stand on the events going on in the NYC schools? Assuming he was a liberal, was the strike a basis of his anti-unionism, or at least his antagonism to the UFT? (Remember the Woody Allen line in Sleeper about Al Shanker blowing up the world.)

I was basically unconscious at that time and joined the '68 strike because teaching still scared me and I would take any opportunity not to go into school.

Later on when I became an activist, most of the people I met were very pro-union and very pro-community - faced with the choice they broke the strike. I always maintained that they were wrong- they should have joined the strike and fought things out within the union.

The earliest opposition caucus to Unity was Teachers Action Caucus - almost everyone in TAC broke the '68 strike. (Ironically, TAC merged with another caucus in 1990 to become the current New Action and many Unity stalwarts were still outraged over the '68 strike issue when Randi brought them into the fold in 2003.)

I remember the teacher whose class I took over on Feb. 1, 1969 was a law student at Columbia (he told me he got a good draft lottery number). He had broken the '68 strike- he told me because he was afraid that by striking and breaking the law he feared it would affect his law career - I just remembered his name - I think - Clifford Aron. In retrospect, he sort of reminds me of what Klein may have been like at that time.

Klein teaches
Now jump ahead a short time. As I pointed out, with deferments being challenged, Klein may have -  as I did - jumped into the Intensive Teacher Training Program (ITTP) a little known precursor to Teach for America, where people who had no education degree were given a 6 week summer training program and sent into the schools. I got 10 NYU credits followed by 2 more in the fall of 1967 at a follow-up support course. I parlayed those free NYU credits (imagine, $75 a credit while Brooklyn College was still free) into a Reading MA a few years later.

Klein could have done the middle school math program or elementary program at NYU in the summer of 1969 - his bio states he studied education at NYU - a slight exaggeration as it was probably that same 2 credit course I took 2 years before. But it was thrown into his bio to give him some ed creds. He spent 6 months teaching 6th grade math in Queens - I'm not sure if it was middle school or elementary- and I'm not sure if it was in the spring or fall '69.

So, he came into the system a year after the strike, but the aftermath was still intense. What experiences did he have in those 6 months? I have never heard anything. Did he see teachers who he felt were incompetent and shouldn't be there? If so, did he form a permanent view of NYC teachers? Did anyone help him? What kind of administration? What about the UFT in the school? The chapter leader? A standard Unity hack? Was the union strong in the school?

[I raise this because I entered the school system with a severe anti-ed major prejudice- disdain for people who would study education - no content I figured. But while I struggled, I saw how amazing so many of these people were as teachers - they used me as an ATR- sub in one school for a year and a half so I got to see everyone teach. The guys running from the draft were the worst, I among them. But I emerged with a tremendous respect for teachers before I even decided to stay- and maybe that respect had an impact on my choice to remain.]

All these issues may have shaped a world view in just a few months (he must have gotten a good draft number and must have left in either June 1969 or Feb. 1970.)

So what if Klein never left teaching?
Would he have become active in the union? With his leadership skills, he would have been expected to become a chapter leader at some point. Maybe join Unity? Drink the Kool-aid and become a hack? We certainly know he can drink Kool-aid. Maybe rise in the union hierarchy? Maybe even become President instead of Randi? Can you imagine Klein and Randi contending for power?

Or was he outraged at the '68 strike and would he ignore the union? Maybe aim right away to become a supervisor?

Or maybe join the opposition to Unity, so dominated by the left? In other words, could Joel Klein and I have ended up in the same opposition groups in the early 70's? Nahhhh. That is as far-fetched as a media queen to replacing him as chancellor.

DEPARTMENT OF ED STARVES JAMAICA AND THEN SENDS REVIEWERS TO CRITICIZE US FOR BEING MALNOURISHED: Eterno Slams Klein and DOE Over Jamaica HS

I compare our plight to being in a prison where the warden cuts our food ration by 30% and then complains that we are too skinny. - James Eterno

NOTE: COME TO THE Panel for Educational Policy AT BROOKLYN TECH ON TUESDAY, NOV. 16 to tell Joel Klein to his face what you think of his closing schools policies

 - JOIN THE REAL REFORMERS AT 5:30- (Rehearsal at 4:30) - LOOK FOR MORE DETAILS AT ED NOTES AND GEM BLOGS.

James hits the bullseye in this excerpt from his chapter newsletter posted on the ICE blog.
http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/

TAKE THE JAMAICA CHALLENGE

by James Eterno, Jamaica HS chapter leader

This post is extracted from Jamaica's weekly Chapter Newsletter and it is strictly my opinion. The story concerns Jamaica but is applicable to any school that is struggling and is reviewed by the DOE and State in the process.

DEPARTMENT OF ED STARVES JAMAICA AND THEN SENDS REVIEWERS TO CRITICIZE US FOR BEING MALNOURISHED

 

Jamaica High School has been denied resources by the Department of Education over the last few years since we started downsizing but that does not stop DOE officials from coming to our school to tell us how we need to improve.

 

I ask any school in the world to take the Jamaica challenge: Cut 30% of the teaching staff (student enrollment drop is less than half of that) and take away roughly half of the school’s space, raise class sizes beyond what the union contract calls for in scores of classes, replace an excellent Programmer and Guidance Coordinator with assistant principals who are untrained in these areas and must still also do their previous jobs, while continuing to permit unlicensed non-secretaries to perform secretarial duties. 

 

Then, place new schools in the corners of the building and equip those schools with up to date technology and provide their teachers with lower class sizes and a beautiful makeover for their parts of the building while students and staff of the old school that includes many at risk pupils are shoved into the middle of the building in obsolete rooms. Do all of this to the old school and then ask it to raise the graduation rate and promotion rate. Even set up the lunch schedule to favor the new schools. Their kids eat lunch during normal lunch hours between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. while the old school’s kids are eating lunch starting at 10:00 a.m. or after 1:00 p.m.

We at Jamaica challenge any school to thrive under these teaching and learning conditions. A Quality Review or Joint Intervention Team visit under these circumstances is a setup for failure. Separate and unequal schools are unfair and it is time for the DOE to be held accountable for mismanaging the education of our kids.

Last week Jamaica had a Quality Review-Joint Intervention Team (city-state) visit and it was a farce on a major scale. (I do not know the score we received on the QR.) I will say that the state people were quite professional in their review. From all reports they were very personable and listened to what we had to say. They did not call in the Chapter Leader for a formal discussion but we did exchange some pleasantries. It was the two quality reviewers from the city that interviewed me in one of the most bizarre interactions I have ever experienced.

I was trying to explain to these officials what we do in the Advanced Placement United States History class and how we have revived the program in the last three years and now have pupils scoring the top grades of 5 and 4 on the rigorous examination. We built up the program without the supports other schools have. The male quality reviewer cut me off in mid sentence and told me how we have an English Advanced Placement class that has 34 students in it and this is educationally unsound. He seemed to be criticizing me for this situation. I told him that I couldn’t agree more that it was unwise to have 34 in a college level class in a high school but that in actuality the class had 37 and as Chapter Leader I grieved it and 82 other oversize classes at Jamaica this fall. He would not even admit that we have oversize classes. I said the principal and DOE lawyer used the half class exception to justify them. 

 

At this point, the two reviewers looked at me like I was from Mars and would not talk about the half class size exception.

What stunned me was that they seemed to be trying to put me on the spot for the oversize classes. Were they kidding? We were truly coming from two different worlds. I mentioned the Quality Review from two years back that said we need new technology but we have lost so much funding that we can barely afford a piece of chalk in this school while the new schools in the building have modern equipment and lower class sizes. I said the education in this building is separate and unequal and our kids deserve an equal education.

I compare our plight to being in a prison where the warden cuts our food ration by 30% and then complains that we are too skinny.

THE DIFFICULT ROAD AHEAD FOR JAMAICA

There is no way around the conclusion that we believe strong forces from outside would like to destroy Jamaica High School. We clearly are being set up to fail by the Department of Education and our union’s response has not exactly been tough.

I read yesterday’s NY Post article about Jamaica High School giving away credits very closely. Even by adding over 1,000 credits to student transcripts, we still couldn’t get enough points on the DOE Progress Report for this year to get a C grade. That is hard to believe. Of course when administration took those credits away our grade became a lower D but I am still forced to conclude that they would have found a way to give us a D even if all of our students graduated in a week. 

 

Isn’t it strange how Jamaica for at least two years in a row didn’t receive any credit on our progress report in a category called Additional Points even though our internal review shows that we have moved along English Language Learners who are obtaining Regents Diplomas? Where are our points? If DOE reviewed us fairly, they would have to admit we are performing miracles on a daily basis even with all of the obstacles they have placed in our way.

 

It looks like the DOE also undercounted our graduation rate just like they did last year. Therefore, it’s déjà vu or Ground Hog Day as we repeat the same scenario as last year. We must admit that many of us are tired of fighting with an employer that in my opinion does not play fair. However, we learned from last year’s experience and now is the time to wage another battle to keep going by exposing the truth. Hopefully, this blog piece will get the ball rolling.

 

As for the extra credit probe of jamaica High School for adding questionable credits to student transcripts that the NY Post is reporting on, I agree with Leonie Haimson that principals are cutting corners all over because of pressure to boost promotion and graduation rates.

 

High stakes decisions based on student progress are ridiculous when the school plays only a small part in determing student performance. Outside factors are far more important according to scholarly research and common sense. Hopefully, there will be a time when sanity returns to our schools.

-------------------------------

Another Queens chapter leader with another brilliant piece.

(How come all these smart people have been opposed to the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership? Please show me anything comparable to these posts by the geniuses who run our union.)

Arthur Goldstein at HufPo: No Leeches Left Behind

If I were a doctor, and Bill Gates suggested the use of bloodletting to improve medicine, I'd be skeptical. Still, Gates has all that money, so he must know something. He gives it away freely, and asks only that everyone follow the programs he starts (and pay to sustain them in perpetuity once his seed money runs out). Oh, and that institutions that don't meet his expectations be closed and replaced by others that more closely follow his methods.
Bloodletting is of no medical value, so it's understandably unpopular with modern medical practitioners. On the other hand, "value-added" evaluations, or judging teachers by scores of their students, is also highly questionable. Day by day, it appears as dubious as bloodletting.

MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-goldstein/no-leeches-left-behind_b_780026.html