Published in The Wave Friday, April 15 - www.rockawave.com
Phee-Asko
by Norm Scott
If you don't know what the title of this column refers to you have not been a regular reader. Just consider it your phonics lesson of the day. But all is not lost for Cathie Black. I have decided to hire Black as the publisher of my blog Education Notes, thus giving her an opportunity to combine her vast experience in publishing with all she learned in her three months in the world of education. Cathie and I have a lot in common – we're both 66. She asked, “If I were a guy, would I have had the pounding that I did?” I assured her she would be treated just like a guy. And when she complained about all those unflattering shots of her that appeared in the press, I was careful to tell her she could pick any photos she wanted to use. When she compared the experience as Chancellor to trying to learn Russian in a weekend, I jumped at the opportunity and put Black in charge of translating Ed Notes for the Russian market.
The same people who praised Bloomberg for appointing Black are giving him credit for acting quickly once he realized he made a teeny-weeny mistake by dropping an atom bomb on over one million school children – Bloomie, our own Dr. Strangelove. Want to see a list of people who jumped on board? Check out this link on my blog: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-oppose-walcott-waiverlist-in.html. We haven't heard from Opra or Whoopie since Black left.
Rather than get into the details of the Black/Walcott switch, here is a selection of headlines from Gotham Schools with the publishing source in parentheses.
· Once tightly organized, the city Department of Education after Cathie Black’s tenure is in disarray. (Times)
· Black’s downfall highlights the reality that the education reform debate is deadlocked. (Times)
· City government employees had bets placed on when Bloomberg would fire Black. (Post)
· Dennis Walcott was part of all of Bloomberg’s education decisions except the one to hire Black. (Post)
· Walcott fielded the City Council’s questions but didn’t impress the UFT’s Michael Mulgrew. (Times)
· The city is positioning Walcott as Black’s opposite, but their policies are no different. (Daily News)
· Walcott spent part of his first day fielding questions on teacher layoffs. (Wall Street Journal)
· Congregants at a Brooklyn church backed Walcott, but worried about their local schools. (Times, Post)
· Having to reprint diplomas twice this year because of the chancellor switches is costly for the city. (Post)
· Michael Goodwin: Bloomberg is dismissive of public opinion, so Black’s firing was a good step. (Post)
· Andrew Wolf: Walcott represents just a continuation of Klein’s and Black’s policies. (Daily News)
. A city education reporter says schools chancellors aren’t relevant under mayoral control. (City Room)
· Mike Lupica: Black’s hire was like when George Steinbrenner hired a football coach. (Daily News)
I particularly recommend the Lupica piece where he reminds us, "It's easy to forget that before [Bloomberg] spent a fortune buying his job in City Hall, people thought of him as a kind of a jerk. Rich and successful, but a wise guy with a big ego who thought he was the smartest guy he ever met."
That about sums up the entire Black'nBloom Phee-Asko.
Co-locos go on and on
I go to many co-location hearings where the DOE attempts to shoehorn a favored charter school into a public school building. Then a month later, the Panel for Educational Policy meeting ignores public school voices and rubber stamps whatever Tweed wants them to do. These hearings and meetings all run together — sort of like being stuck in the Tweed version of the movie "Groundhog Day." (At least Bill Murray gets the girl in the end.) The advocates for the charter school are often bused in, given scripts and sometimes food and signs that claim they are public schools even though profit-making corporations often manage them. And they all wear the same tee shirts. And of course, the entire neighborhood has been inundated with posters, doorknob hangers, fliers and direct mailings promoting the charter school so they can claim there is so much demand. You just have to watch the charter school overseers (I've heard the term "plantation" used in conjunction) scurry around with their Blackberries in hand - funny how they and the Tweedies all look alike - but then again....
The defenders of the public school try to rally their troops. In some neighborhoods they are severely outgunned. But once in a while I go to a hearing where there is serious pushback. On April 4 I attended a hearing at Lincoln HS where the parents and teachers of the 3 current schools occupying the IS 303 building (IS 303, Rachel Carson HS and a District 75 Special Ed school) came out in force to fight the DOE attempt to add Coney Island Prep Charter as a 4th school in the building. They marched with a big crowd to Lincoln, where of course they found that the charter school people were already on line to get first dibs as speakers. I taped much of the meeting and have put videos up on my blog. It really is like being in a science fiction movie.
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman
Speaking of movies, we are reaching the final stage of our response to the anti-teacher, anti-union film, "Waiting for Superman", directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim of "The Inconvenient Truth". Our premiere will be at Riverside Church on May 19 and we are proud to have Diane Ravitch on our panel. (Diane was gracious enough to grant us an exclusive interview for the film.)
We are still editing the most recent interviews we did with former charter school parents who have left their schools with harrowing accounts of how they and their children were treated. Our no-budget movie has been created solely by teachers and parents and we are offering copies for people to use in house and school parties as a way to counter the propaganda juggernaut of WFS, which was funded by Gates, Broad and other corporate ed deformers. Both movies were shown in Harlem at the Maysles Cinema a few weekends ago and I finally got to see WFS and thought it was a poorly made film beyond just the content and misleading information – millions of dollars that could have gone into school classrooms instead of being used for propaganda purposes.
So far our one-hour film has had a very positive response. It cost us time and energy but no one wants to make a dime off it. Basically, we are saying, "Steal our film and go forth and propagate it."
Norm blogs at http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/
Showing posts with label The Wave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Wave. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Black and Bloom: Norm in The Wave, Dec. 10, 2010
by Norm Scott
I can fill an entire edition of The Wave with new chancellor Cathie Black related stories and in fact my blog has been overflowing, along with the blogs of NYC teachers. So the process of choosing what to share for my twice monthly column is almost painful. I've been attending rallies and meetings of parent and teacher groups. A Brooklyn parent has filed a lawsuit over State Ed commissioner David Steinberg's granting her a waiver – no one in the know is buying "Black's deputy is an educator line." As we hit deadline we have an exclusive report that activist lawyer Norman Siegel will file another lawsuit. I will be covering the press conference for The Wave and should have a report next week.
Cathie Black's placement on the board of Harlem Village Academy as a way to get her ed creds- despite the fact that she didn't attend any meetings, has focused attention on this scandalous school and its relation to the BloomKlein corrupt running of the NYCDOE. This school has been lauded nationally. So naturally school founder Deborah Kenney takes home $450,000 for managing 450 students. HVA loses 32% of their students between 6th and 8th grades and there is vast teacher turnover. Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $5 million. The charter school scam in full flower.
The average class size at Kent boarding school, the school Black sent her own kids to is 12. It is ironic that Bill Gates and other ed deformers attack teacher longevity and credentials and among Black's first statements in public she complains about LIFO - Last in first out for teachers who might be laid off. Yet Kent advertizes: "Many of our faculty have advanced degrees and our average tenure is more than a dozen years."
My pal NYC Educator manages to say in a few words what takes me a book:
Well, Cathie Black's been let out of her cage after a good two weeks of Sarah Palinizing and what insights has she gleaned in the hour or two she spent in public schools? Looks like she's fixing to fire teachers. There's no better way, apparently, to help city children than by firing their teachers. Arne Duncan and Bill Gates have determined larger class sizes are the way to go, and Cathie is gonna help them get their wish....she wants to get rid of last in first out. Since she's already determined to fire people, why not go after the older and higher-paid teachers? That would put a bigger dent in the bottom line. And then she wouldn't have to bother with any of that nasty due process in that inconvenient tenure law. Oh, she wants to get rid of that, too. Perish forbid any American worker should have job security. Cathie Black agrees with everything Joel Klein did. That's fine with me. Let her go after teachers for nonsense. There's a reason teachers need tenure, and that's to protect us from demagogues like Cathie Black, who get into education for two weeks and have the audacity to behave as though they're experts. I wouldn't want her teaching my kid. Fortunately, she isn't licensed to teach, and they aren't yet handing out waivers for that.
I'll leave the Black story for this edition of School Scope but I hope you get a chance to read my "exclusive" interview with Black in the Nov. 19th edition of my blog.
Beach Channel and other schools are on the closing block again
Howie Schwach has been on this story so all I'll add is this Dec. 6 report from parent activist and class size reduction activist Leonie Haimson:
Today, in justifying the eleven school closings, with more to come, Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg made the following statement: “Year after year, even as we provided extra help and support, these schools simply have not gotten the job done for children." Did they ever try systematically reducing class size? No. Most of these students at these schools continue to suffer from overly large classes that far exceed the state average of twenty students per class, as well as the goals in the city’s mandated class size reduction plan. In fact, class sizes have risen sharply in most of the schools slated for closure. For example, check out the increases in class size [INCLUDE GRAPH] at Beach Channel High school, one of the schools on today’s list of closures, which have occurred despite a promise from the DOE to make specific reductions at this school in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in Contract For Excellence funds. As Sternberg said, “…we cannot afford to let schools continue to fail students when we know we can do better.” Most parents and teachers would agree. The Department of Education’s stubborn refusal to follow the law and to allow the students at these schools to have their best chance to succeed is unconscionable, and set up these schools for failure.
Let's remind everyone that the UFT helped sell Beach Channel down the river through its deal with Klein to allow a new school to open and help drain the freshman class.
Survival, Rockaway Style: Debuting in The Odd Couple
I've got an idea for a new reality TV show. Throw 8 people onto an island- or a peninsula - and they must survive by putting on a performance of Neal Simon's "The Odd Couple." Even better, toss in one 65 year old guy who has never performed before amidst a sea of veteran actors and see how long he can go before you have to call 911. Well, I did survive my acting debut playing Vinnie the card player, the whining, hen-pecked husband – true typecasting other than the part that Vinnie always wins at poker – last Friday night at the Rockaway Theatre Company production of "The Odd Couple". Lucky for me that in this version of Survival an actor doesn't get voted off the island after each performance. "You mean I have to come back tomorrow and do it again," I asked? Well, three performances down and six to go. Would I do it again? Ask me after the closing performance on Dec. 19.
I could do an entire column - and may just do so when the run of the play is over - on this experience, one of the most challenging I have undertaken. "Norm, you were a teacher/performer for so many years and you have spoken in public so often," people tell me. "So what's the big deal?" Appearing on stage and being responsible to the other actors to know your lines and respond on cue is one awesome responsibility. The fact that I have watched in wonder while video taping every show at the RTC over the last 4 years and have seen production after production worthy of Broadway was more than intimidating. I have watched my fellow actors on stage in various roles over the years and despite being a newbie they made me feel right at home. The directors Michael Wotypra (who I've known for years as a fellow teacher activist) and Peggy Page have been fabulous to work with, as have all the other behind the scenes people like the wonderful stage manager Nora Coughlin and her assistant Jodee Timpone ((both NYC teachers in real life). Wasn't it just a few months ago that I saw Jodee do an amazing job as the lead actress in "Cactus Flower?" Now she is serving me coffee back stage. The theater world can certainly turn reality upside down.
When Norm is not being Odd, he blogs at http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com
Friday, October 15, 2010
The WAVE: NY Times Gets Louis Renault "Shocked, Shocked" Award
Oct. 15, 2010
by Norm Scott
The October 11 NY Times front page story on the testing score fiasco in NY City and State led me to take a look at the famous Claude Rains clip in Casablanca where his character, Louis Renault, is "shocked, shocked" to find there's gambling going on at Rick's place – while collecting his winnings just as Bloomberg collected his winnings - a third term as Mayor - based on phony test results.
"Anyone who was paying attention knew at least as far back as 2007 that there was rampant test score inflation...The article also offers a rather irrelevant story, relating how Joel Klein earnestly tried to convince the state to change its scoring system to use a value-added method instead, as though that would have addressed any of the problems regarding the score inflation...The Times itself had plenty of reason to know about concerns about the state test score inflation throughout this period but not only failed to report on it, but generally toed the company line."
For those not familiar with the term "value-added", that is the method being pushed like a magic drug to cure all educational ills by trying to measure how "effective" individual teachers are based on the test scores of students over time. VA has been attacked as a faulty system due to the number of variations that creep into the testing process – the background of the students, the nature of the particular class, etc. And then there is all that cheating on so many levels, especially at the top where they play with the cut scores – one year 5 out of 10 correct passes, the next 3 out of 10.
State Regent head Merryl Tisch - whose educational expertise is based on having taught pre-k Hebrew school briefly - certainly was shocked, shocked. Leonie wasn't buying any of it: The article also gives Regent Merryl Tisch a pass, letting her have the last word, saying "We came in here saying we have to stop lying to our kids," without mentioning that throughout the test score inflation period, she was Deputy Chancellor of the Regents, and yet reliably supported Bloomberg and Klein's claims of great improvement.
Our own former Region 5 Superintendent Kathleen Cashin was also shocked, shocked and is quoted in the Times article.
As a superintendent in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Kathleen Cashin had seen several schools improve throughout the early part of the decade. But when she saw the sudden jump, she said, she was shocked. “I said to my intimate circle of staff, this cannot be possible,” Ms. Cashin recalled. “I knew how much effort and how much planning any little improvement would take, and not all of these schools had done any of it.” But Ms. Cashin, who retired in February, held her tongue at the time. Asked why she did not take up her concerns with Mr. Klein or his deputies, she said, “I didn’t have their ear.”
I know, I know, all you Region 5ers out there - and former District 23ers from pre-Klein days - are shocked, shocked at Renault's – er – Cashin's being shocked, shocked. She also collected her winnings based on test scores in rising almost to the top of the BloomKlein phony ed house of cards. There were even rumors that she might one day replace Klein. Then she was cast aside because she had a semblance of ed credentials, which when it happened just shocked, shocked me.
Rhee in DC Resigns
Teachers all over the nation weren't shocked, shocked but were cheering the resignation of Michelle Rhee, Superintendent of schools in Washington DC. Rhee came out of the Joel Klein School of running public school systems into oblivion, but with an even more vicious snarl. Everyone understands she was the cause of Mayor Fenty's loss in the DC primary. Her famous Time magazine cover photo holding a broom now has true meaning as she flies out of town on Halloween. One blog commented:
The recent defeat of DC mayor Adrian Fenty spells the end to the damaging career of dilettante school reformer, Michele Rhee, originally recommended to Fenty by Joel Klein, a close friend of Bill Gates and Eli Broad and described by people experienced in the teaching profession as edubusiness entrepreneurs’ attack dog. Lacking any discernible qualifications, her shocking appointment, can be understood only when you realize that Rhee was brought in to inflict maximum damage on the district’s public schools. And as a cultist (Teach For America, New Teacher Project) and true believer she came at a bargain basement salary. Real superintendents were courted (Fenty visited Miami with several members of the D.C. commission to interview Dr. Rudolph Crew) but those candidates could not be counted on to mindlessly take a club to D.C.’s public schools. The havoc and disruption that Rhee has caused was no accident. It was the plan! ---http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/73608
Well, I'm off on my own broom – to see the Rockaway Cafe at the Rockaway Theatre Company's Halloween extravaganza this weekend and the following two weekends. Then off to rehearsals for the December production of The Odd Couple in which I'll be making my acting debut. I was shocked, shocked that such a professionally operated theater company with access to immense talent would give a role to a rank amateur.
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