August 31, 2005

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Sometimes Money IS the solution

Filed under: Uncategorized by Michael Hirsch @ 6:35 pm

If it is true that liberals can be guilty of wanting to solve problems by larding taxpayer money on them—a typical right-wing complaint– then conservatives are guilty of simplistic thinking, too. Shrinking every government function except for the police and the military won’t make problems go away, either. The issue is to figure out, paraphrasing Robert Lynd, “money for what?”

In New York schools, inadequate funding goes a long way in explaining high teacher turnover. It plays its fair share in low test scores and graduation rates, in inadequately prepared teachers and administrators. Overcrowded, unsafe schools and crammed-to bursting classrooms can’t be explained any other way. Given their needs, our schools are starved of cash.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity made this point in thousands of pages of testimony starting in 1993. An entire age cohort of students has passed through the city schools since that lawsuit was first filed.  

The original trial judge, Justice Leland DeGrasse, spelled out the spending priorities with disarming clarity: qualified teachers, appropriate class sizes, decent buildings, enough books and supplies, suitable curricula, adequate resources for special needs students and a safe environment. Absent these, public school kids were not getting a “sound, basic education,” –a requirement of the state Constitution.

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Making “Teacher Caring” Efficacious

Filed under: Teaching by Leo Casey @ 4:57 pm

Last week I had the occasion to discuss the question of teacher quality with a small group of  intelligent, well-spoken New York City high school students, assembled as part of the Urban Youth Collective program of NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy. The students were all members of community based organizations, participating in a summer seminar to learn how to organize around improving their education. In the course of our dialogue, the students responded to a question of how they would identify a quality teacher by highlighting the importance of a teacher "really caring" about them and their academic success. After our conversation, I had some time to reflect on what was said, and still remained to be said, on the subject of "caring teachers." Those reflections are, I think, worth sharing.

In focusing upon the importance of a teacher "caring," the students’ expressed not only their own sentiments, but a significant finding in the educational research. From a number of different perspectives, educational practitioners and researchers from Deborah Meier and Nel Noddings to Anthony Byrk and Andy Hargreaves have affirmed the importance of a strong caring and mentoring relationship, based on respect and trust, between teacher and student. "Caring" is not, of course, a substitute for teacher command of pedagogy or teacher knowledge of subject material, but it is central to building sustained motivation and commitment to hard work in students.  A "caring teacher" and a "caring school community" are especially important, it seems, for students who are struggling in school and for students of color and students living in poverty working to overcome the achievement gap.

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AFT members affected by Katrina

Filed under: Uncategorized by Edwize Admin @ 4:40 pm

The devastation caused by Katrina in the Gulf Coast states reminds me of the suffering of New Yorkers at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9-11.

It also reminds me of those who came to our assistance during those difficult days.

In that spirit, I would like all of you to think about how we can help our AFT brothers and sisters living in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who may have sustained almost unbearable losses.

If you would like to help, you can send a check to the UFT Disaster Relief Fund/Katrina, 52 Broadway, New York, NY 10004.

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Carnival of Education

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kombiz Lavasany @ 3:56 pm

This weeks Carnival of Education, a compilation of posts from the Education quadrant of the blogosphere had been posted.

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“We need the UFT”

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kombiz Lavasany @ 3:04 pm

The NY Post printed an op-ed today by a teacher, in response to Sager’s column from last week. We’ve gotten letters from several teachers with different refutations of Sager’s piece, but credit to the NY Post for publishing a letter from a classroom teacher.

Have you cried in frustration because when you decided to be a teacher, you thought you would be teaching students who understood that education is a way to get ahead in life, not something to be fought kicking and screaming?

Do you think that suburban teachers have to teach a classroom of 34 students — or to worry about their safety in their school? I don’t think so.

To top it all off, city teachers have been without a raise or a contract for over two years. Have you filled up your gas tank lately? It costs more to live today than it did two years ago.

Maybe if the city worried less about test scores and more about improving all aspects of the school system, conditions would improve. Maybe teachers aren’t writing on that Web site about how to improve schools or help children because we have tried everything we can think of and nothing has worked.

We are decent, educated, hardworking people who simply are frustrated and exhausted by what we have to put up with day after day in order to educate the minority of students in this city who want to learn and succeed.

UFT President Randi Weingarten recently said, "The sad truth is this: The city won’t be able to keep good teachers if it refuses to pay them what they’re worth." How true.

Update: Read this speech from Diane Ravitch that makes a similar point about the importance of the UFT.

August 30, 2005

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Summer School–no flies, Mayor says

Filed under: Uncategorized by Maisie @ 4:57 pm

Summer school was a fabulous success, the Mayor and Chancellor said yesterday. Sounds like it was, but then so is everything they do.

But you have to take their word for it. Last year, the DOE released a set of charts with the summer school press release, showing exactly how many students attended, passed or were retained compared to the previous year. They even explained, very nicely, exactly how they cooked the books, ostensibly to make the comparison with the previous year more accurate after a change in testing policy.

This year, no charts. And, in fact, it appears they revised some numbers, because the percentage of kids recorded as scoring at Level 2 in last year’s chart doesn’t match the number in this year’s press release. But there’s no way of getting an explanation. The New York Times, the Advance and all the tabs did the story and the numbers. Basically, 55 percent of third graders who attended the "Summer Success Academy" got to Level 2 versus what the DOE said was 49 percent last year. (Last year’s charts put that number at 51 percent.)

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Around the Blogs

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kombiz Lavasany @ 2:27 pm

No need to hit refresh waiting for the next post. There are some good education related posts around the blogosphere.

Shut up and Teach has a series of links to recent education posts from around the education portion of the blogosphere. School of Blog has a post on a USA Today article on Bilingual education. Scroll down after reading that post as there are a series of great education posts from over the weekend.

A Principal’s message for the beginning of the new school year from NYC Educator.

Learning Curves has a story about calculators in public schools which reminds me of my high school days writing complicated programs on my TI-81 calculator to solve basic calculus problems.

Cartoons: No Teacher Left Behind posts some editorial cartoons on Intelligent Design. Our friend Redhog has two NYC Centric cartoons on his site. Second cartoon is here.

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Opening the Schools

Filed under: Uncategorized by Maisie @ 11:54 am

School opens today, and I know the kids are excited and scared and full of anticipation. I wish I felt the same. Instead, I feel like I’m in one of those bad dreams where you show up someplace and you know you don’t belong there. There’s a feeling of confusion, of everything being veiled in shadow.
Chancellor Klein told an orientation session for new Teach for America recruits Aug. 15 that he felt one of his “failures” as Chancellor was “not to get the city more involved, more on board.”
Well, yes. I couldn’t feel less “on board.”
I’m a public school parent, a School Leadership Team member, an education writer. Half my friends are educators. But I don’t see the sense of involvement, of ownership in the schools that I used to. What’s the real agenda for this year? Does anyone know outside Klein’s bullpen at Tweed?
David Herszenhorn’s school curtain-raiser in the Times yesterday led with a description of the schools in “freeze-frame,” awaiting the outcome of the mayoral election. Is this an education vision?
I attended one of Klein’s “listening sessions” at Edward R. Murrow High School, at the very start of his tenure. It was clear after the first few minutes that he wasn’t listening. He was curt, dismissive, and seemed agitated. He had his plan, which he didn’t care to share, and it was like he just wanted to get through the silly talk and leave.
The sham Panel on Education Policy, the toothless Community Education Councils, his wooden press releases, all point to the truth that he himself identified. He has failed to involve the citizenry, or even most school system veterans, in his plans.
Reading the blog today, it sounds like a lot of teachers are really angry, and a couple suggested a fresh teacher exodus was in the making. What they say is driving them out is salary and dissatisfaction with school bureaucracy.
Will he take notice? Klein likes to posture as the anti-bureaucrat, but really, he’s more like the ultimate bureaucrat. Very top down and petty. Read Sol Stern if you think this is just a UFT gripe.
What’s important this year? What kind of education vision would I suggest if he’d listen to me? OK, here’s a start:
1. I’d like to see Tweed involve the city–the real estate developers, the community organizations, pro bono lawyers, sharky (but smart) investment bankers and others–in a multi-year project to create new school buildings that have a real 21st century look and feel, that have sufficient space and good light and labs and athletic facilities and interesting space with some green in them, so that kids could finally believe they are the most important thing in our lives.
2. I’d like to Tweed reach out to negotiate a contract with teachers and school staff that told them, in dollars and sense (sic), that they are valued for their skills and knowledge and commitment to kids. Even if there wasn’t a lot of money on the table initially, I’d like to see that contract be a first step in a planned effort to really professionalize the teaching force. I think Randi has pieces of this vision in her heart and she’d have other unionists in her corner. Instead of carping at each other over ridiculous work rules, union and management would develop a learning environment where teachers want to stay (and kids want to come).
3. I’d like to see Tweed, with Bloomberg’s legendary financial and negotiating skills behind it, just absolutely force the state to finance lower class sizes in the city–right now. There are a lot of legislators who’d be our friends on this. It’s way past time to say we can’t. Yes, space will be a real obstacle, but there are ways to solve the problem temporarily before (see number 1) we build new schools.
4. I’d like to see Tweed reach out to the Health Dept., HRA, ACS and other city agencies to create a network of health and other social supports for children in the schools–health and dental clinics, mental health services, after-school care, and full-day pre-K for three and four year olds, and recreation. The Community Service Society had an excellent model at I.S. 218 years back. Somewhere in this city lurks a consummate bureaucrat with the insider knowledge of the city to make this kind of coordination work–and be a model for the urban nation.
5. I’d like to Tweed support an effort to develop high-quality, complex, multilayered curriculum in every subject, starting with reading and writing. That’s different from buying into crash test-prep programs or dim-witted history textbooks. I’d like to feel that the kids in the city are getting the benefit of the worldliness and knowledge that exists in their city.
6. ArtsConnection, New Visions, the old BOE, later with Annenberg funding, put together the seeds of real partnerships between the arts organizations and the schools. It feels like that’s slipping as Tweed pulls its neck farther and farther into its shell. Think about the teacher/orchestra conductor who was fired and humiliated for calling in sick so she could conduct a symphony. Think about “Mad Hot Ballroom.” Don’t let the arts partnerships go down.
Opening up the schools should mean opening them also to parents, to the community, and to the city politic. It should be Klein’s main agenda, a driving vision. But it ain’t.

August 29, 2005

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Three-Fifths Of An Employee?: The Right of Grad Assistants and Adjuncts to Organize

Filed under: Labor by Leo Casey @ 11:35 am

This Wednesday, August 31, at 12 Noon, there will be a demonstration outside of the New York University Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South [corner of West Fourth Street and LaGuardia Place] to support the right of NYU graduate teaching assistants to collective bargaining and unionization. The rally is sponsored by the NYC Central Labor Council and the New York State AFL-CIO, as well as the graduate union at NYU.

In 2000, New York University graduate teaching assistants made history when the National Relations Board compelled the university to recognize their union and begin negotiations. Since 1975, the numbers of tenured faculty at NYU have declined, despite significant increases in the student body. To fill this gap, NYU employed thousands of graduate students as teachers of undergraduate courses, since the minimal pay [without health coverage] it provided to them was a fraction of what a tenure track faculty member would earn. In short, the cheap labor provided by graduate students provided the university with extraordinary profits. By the time graduate students at NYU began to organize, it was estimated that they taught close to one half of all undergraduate courses at NYU. NYU’s story is not unique: across the United States, universities have come to depend, more and more, on cheap graduate student teaching labor. [This has led, among other things, to the decline of universities as serious centers of academic research, as the numbers of tenure track faculty which do such research has declined; the role of corporate sponsorship of research, with all of the academic freedom issues such an arrangement poses, has increased in importance.] 

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August 26, 2005

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The week in Review

Filed under: Uncategorized by Kombiz Lavasany @ 7:20 pm

It’s been an interesting week in the life of this blog. This blog has gotten a write-up in the NY Daily News, an editorial condemning our disclaimer in the NYPost, another snarkly written op-ed by Sager in the Post that makes me wonder if Post Editorialists read more than just the headline on our blog posts, and a wonderful review by Nathan Newman at the labor blog at TPM Cafe. All this in less than one week since EdWize went live; it almost makes me think that we may be jumping the shark.

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