May 30, 2006

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Good Reading

Filed under: Labor by Kombiz Lavasany @ 5:16 pm

The AFL-CIO blog has a weekly digest from their collective bargaining department every week. It’s a gathering of some of the best articles dealing with the labor movement from coast-to-coast. It’s certainly an important resource.

Mike Klonsky has more on the Meier and Ravitch covnersation from EdWeek with excerpts for the many readers who do not have an EdWeek subscription.

John at the NCLBlog has more on the great graduation rate debate.

May 26, 2006

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She’s Baaaaack

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 2:04 am

The summer beach season is about to open, and the anti-teacher, anti-union “Jaws” of New York City, Eva Moskowitz, is prowling the shores again.

Eva hasn’t quite figured out that her lack of knowledge on how to run a school, her lack of administrative imagination, does not necessarily translate into fatal flaws for teacher unions and collective bargaining in education.

So she is putting it all on display, telling us about the wisdom that has come with running the Harlem Success Charter School [which has yet to open]. You can read a selection of it here, as it appears in the conservative educational journal Education Next.

According to Eva, the collective bargaining agreement excludes the possibility of running an extended day for students who need the extra time, all because of the contractual limits on the length of the mandatory teacher work day. To demonstrate just how little she knows, she manages to get the actual time of the current teacher work day wrong, but that is only a bonus.

The main difficulty with Eva’s attempt to take another bite out of the hide of NYC teachers is that if what she says were actually true, then the UFT Secondary Charter School could only run from 8 AM in the morning to 2:40 PM in the afternoon. [We are working within the terms of the existing contract, to demonstrate that it is no impediment to creating quality schools serving high need students.] But, in fact, we will run from 8 AM in the morning until 5 PM in the afternoon, giving students an extended day, tutorial sessions for those who need them and quality extra-curricular programs. The entire academic program will be taught by our experienced, accomplished high quality staff [we have had literally hundreds of applications for our twelve opening year positions], and teachers will be paid per session for extra-curricular work. [None of Eva’s skinflint outsourcing to operations who are cheaper than teachers at our school.]

And it’s all as simple as putting the teachers of the school on two different, overlapping time schedules. We know that teachers spend a lot more time than their contractual minimum working in schools, but we do not want to overload our teachers and burn them out. We want them at their best when they are teaching our students.

We could go on, but now that the beaches are cleared, we have better things to do than spear fishes in a barrel.

May 25, 2006

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Not Cirque Du Soleil

Filed under: Other Topics by Kombiz Lavasany @ 2:24 pm

I’ve been to Central Park. NASCAR is supposedly coming to my borough. I’ve seen Coney Island, and I’ve been to the north Bronx and Yankee Stadium. Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t look like it did in the movies, and yes, I’m a new New Yorker, but I imagine this is a distinctly New York Carnival of Education, (what with its sex, drugs and rock & roll and even the sarcasm is meant to cut a little deep.)

In my opinion, this is a better read.

Quesque Se? - I’m aware that several educrats at Tweed read EdWize and with all the craziness over implementing a draconian cell phone policy in schools (zero consultations with parents or teachers *yet again*), I hope no one shares the article about social networking websites with J.K. On a more serious note, I’m curious what EdWize readers think about the proliferation of online social networking websites like Myspace and their effects on education?

The AFL-CIO blog has recently been doing outstanding posts on a variety of issues, including mine safety and Congress’ unwillingness to regulate mine safety. It is also following the Senate’s Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form a union through card check recognition.

You can find more fun SES coverage on the AFT’s NCLBlog and read about how the Washington Post is helping empower the next generation of Armstrong Williams’ wannabes.

May 24, 2006

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The campaign on the ground

Filed under: Class Size by Maisie @ 5:33 pm

We’ve heard from the pundits and the judges and the critics. What they have to say is pretty much what they always have to say: “you can’t do that,” “it won’t work,” “let us handle this,” “we’re scared.” Well, they’re on hold for now.

Lowering class size is a campaign we are waging on the streets. Last week, parents and teachers all over the city handed out flyers and talked one on one about the need for smaller classes. Tomorrow (Thursday) New Yorkers for Smaller Classes and its supporters will be handing out the flyers at transportation hubs in every borough. We’re saying class size reduction works–it helps kids, it improves achievement, it solves problems and enhances teaching. It’s amazing how quickly everyday New Yorkers understand this and how long they’ve waited for their leaders to catch on. When we had our petition drives in 2003 and last year, people were signing for class size reduction faster than we could hand them a pen–over 100,000 of them.

Here’s a list of the hubs we’re covering tomorrow. We’ll have flyers in English and Spanish. Come and join about 5:00 p.m. at any location you’d like. It’s going to be a beautiful day to be on the ground.

Brooklyn
Jay St/Boro Hall
Willoughby/Jay Street
Atlantic/Flatbush Avenues
4th Avenue/9th Street
7th Avenue/9th Street
Church Avenue (F train)
Fulton St/Malcolm X Blvd
Fulton St/Ralph Avenue
Grand Army Plaza
Nostrand Avenue/Eastern parkway
Utica Avenue/Church Avenue
Ralph Avenue/Tilde towards Flatlands
Starrett City Shopping Center
Van Sicklen Avenue (IRT station and IND station)
Atlantic Avenue/Linwood Street
Church Avenue/McDonald
Bay Ridge Avenue/4th Avenue

Staten Island
Ferry Terminal - Staten Island

Manhattan
Brooklyn Bridge/Chambers Street
Union Square
135 Street/Lenox Avenue
125th Street/Lenox Avenue
168th Street/Broadway

Queens
Flushing - Main and Roosevelt
Jackson Heights - Roosevelt Avenue

Bronx
161st
Fordham/Grand Concourse

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Bridging Differences: The Ravitch-Meier Conversations

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 11:54 am

Two good friends of the UFT who do not always agree on matters educational — Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier — sat down for a series of conversations, and discovered that they agreed on a whole lot more than they originally thought. For their account of their conversation, and for some very interesting agreements on the state of education in New York City’s public schools, take a look at their account of their conversations, published in the latest Education Week.

In our humble opinion, what is important in these conversations is the respectful way these two distinguished eductaors engage each other, as much as it is what they have to say. Some prominent educational bloggers might learn a thing or two from them.

May 23, 2006

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“Ice Floes” and the New Principal Selection Process

Filed under: NYC DOE by Peter Goodman @ 4:49 pm

In some Inuit cultures aged members of tribes who are no longer productive are placed on ice floes and drift out to sea. If I were a senior principal in New York City I’d be especially wary during winter months.

I’ve worked with younger principals who were extremely competent and older principals who were bastards. Age doesn’t guarantee competence nor does youth assure success.

The Leadership Academy seems to advocate a carrot/stick approach to supervision with the mantra “you have to be feared before you are loved.” I believe you have to be a great teacher before you can gain the respect of teachers and some day soon we’re going to locate the “leadership” gene. Leadership is sort of like the Supreme Court definition of pornography, “you can’t define it but you know it when you see it.”

Years ago the successful football coach went on to become the high school principal. Now the graduates of elite colleges skip the intermediate steps and run schools and school systems.

Does this work? The jury is still out and we’re experimenting on other people’s children.

Driving out “institutional memory” and “role models” does not seem to be a productive path.

In this age “principal” is an exceptionally difficult job. Enormous expectations, equally enormous pressures: endless critics inside and outside the school system, and, a management that refuses to negotiate a labor contract.

A decade ago the UFT created a Task Force on the Supervisory Selection Process (C-30). Once school boards were removed from the process the number of applicants dropped precipitously. The supervisory certification programs pump out endless numbers of potential principals and not-for-profits create alternative certification programs. The Eli Broad Foundation sponsors an internship program whereby lawyers and MBAs with a minimum of four years of work experience are placed in “leadership” positions in school systems.

Education appears to be the only profession were we allow neophytes to “practice” before they move on to “real world” careers.

A combination of experience and youth, knowledge and energy, modern technology and wisdom can be a wonderful mix.

I fear that the mandarins at Tweed are more interested in pushing ice floes out to sea than creating networks that combine the wisdom and maturity with energy and innovation.

May 18, 2006

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An Education System Built on Fear, Distrust and Lack of Job Ownership…

Filed under: NYC DOE by Leo Casey @ 1:52 pm

The current issue of the ASCD’s Educational Leadership features an article by Barbara Bartholomew,  Transforming New York City’s Public Schools. [$] It provides a telling account, from an insider’s perspective, of the Bloomberg-Klein remaking of New York City’s public schools. Bartholomew is now an Assistant Professor in the California State University’s Bakersfield School of Education, but in the past she served as a Regional Director of School Improvement here in New York City.

Bartholomew’s conclusion:

Bloomberg applied the most extreme measures in disbanding an operable system that required thoughtful reform, not dissolution. His actions may have brought him the immediate results he sought—namely, strict compliance and silence from those working in his schools and districts. But these came at a heavy price. An education system built on fear, distrust, and lack of job ownership is an unlikely candidate for success. 

Whatever the original intent, it seems clear that the plan to challenge New York City’s education status quo has resulted in a human resources quandary. Bloomberg may have found that in education, it is easier to change practices than to change minds.

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Class Size Gets Political

Filed under: Class Size by Maisie @ 11:21 am

While we were out in schools talking to parents and giving out educational flyers today, Columbia Teacher College’s outgoing president, Arthur Levine, used the morning to assail the UFT and Randi for its class size campaign in a mean-sprited op-ed in the Daily News.

Our motives are political, Levine says. Writing this kind of op-ed is not? We are trying to get some of the CFE money, he says. Is that something nice unions shouldn’t do? Class size is only one of several things that a comprehensive education plan should address, he says. Umm, yes, but what’s his point exactly?

It seems Levine’s point is that we should just let the mayor and, I guess, Levine, decide how to spend the CFE money. He holds up the recommendations of the City Council Commission on CFE, which he co-chaired. Those recommendations include (his words) “universal preschool, lengthening the school day and year, improving teacher quality, ensuring that the best teachers teach in the neediest schools, establishing accountability and, yes, reducing class size.”

The UFT supports those goals and UFT Special Assistant to the President Amina Rachman was one of the commissioners who developed them. These are long-standing aims of the UFT. We just negotiated a longer day and year. Randi Weingarten and VP Michelle Bodden have testified several times [-ed. those are three links] that universal pre-K is essential for raising student achievment. The UFT Teacher Centers are the model for raising teacher quality in the neediest schools.

But, yes, Arthur, class size reduction is one reform that almost undergirds all the others. Even excellent teachers cannot teach five classes of 34 kids to conduct serious scientific experiements or write publishable op-eds. And the Mayor has said he wants to spend just 2% of the CFE money on class size reduction. That wouldn’t even cover a reduction of one student per class.

The UFT, in partnership with parents and community leaders in a coalition, New Yorkers for Smaller Classes , have concluded that we have to mount a campaign for class size reduction precisely because the Mayor and Chancellor don’t get this. They don’t see class size reduction as a priority (except for their own kids who attended private schools where the main selling point is usually small classes).

The coalition has said we should spend 25% of CFE funds on class size, if the voters agree in a referendum. (How does Levine conclude that we only want CFE money for class size reduction when our campaign clearly calls for 25 percent?)

Accountability is one of Levine’s commission’s recommendations. What accountability does the mayor demonstrate to parents and school communities when he ignores one of their top issues: class size. Not only can the UFT push for smaller classes–it has an obligation to.

* Pictures of teachers and parents courtesy of UFT Chapter Leader, Norka Garcia PS 51M

May 17, 2006

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The Problems With NCLB

Filed under: NCLB Testing by Kombiz Lavasany @ 2:45 pm

Michele at the AFT’s NCLBlog has been traveling the country with AFT president Ed McElroy discussing the effects of the NCLB on classroom teachers. Yesterday they held a town-hall meeting with educators in Cleveland. The NCLB response was unenthuastic to say the least:

All attempts at levity aside, it’s always a bit sobering to get outside the beltway and talk to teachers about the impact of NCLB on the classroom. Simply put–teachers are not happy. When a teacher says that NCLB “makes us question why we went into the profession”–and everyone in the audience claps–you know there is something seriously wrong.

These ongoing discussions have been a nice little feature of the NCLBlog, and while the Cleveland post doesn’t delve into specifics a previous post about a town hall in Minneapolis provides some tangible issues with NCLB.

I am sitting in my hotel room looking over the notes I took on butcher block paper (we union people love to use flip charts), musing over what we heard today. Looks like what the CEP found holds true for Minneapolis–teachers feel there is too much emphasis on testing and that the curriculum is being narrowed. One teacher reported having a 2 hour and 15 minute reading block (yikes) at her school.

Another common lament was the lack of appropriate tests for students with disabilities and English language learners (ELL’s). One special ed teacher who works in an autism program said no tests were available for students who needed something in between the regular state assessment and the alternate assessment. A teacher who works with ELLs said that the district only makes the state test available in Somali in 3rd grade, but not in 4th or 5th grade.

There’s a serious effort by the AFT to strike up a discussion on the changes needed in NCLB as reauthorization rolls around next year (-ed. I’ve been infromed that there’s no guarentee reauthorization will *acually* start next spring.)

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Carnival of Education

Filed under: Other Topics by Kombiz Lavasany @ 2:35 pm

There are great teacher bloggers writing about education at this weeks Carnival of Education.

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