September 30, 2006

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Washington Is At It Again

Filed under: NCLB Testing by Maria Neira @ 3:35 pm

They’re going to have to change “NCLB” to “NCLBE,” as in “No Child Left Behind except…”

The latest groups of children to be thrown into that “except” category are English Language Learners and special ed students. Nearly three years ago, the federal government approved New York state’s accountability plan. New York’s plan recognized that it would be unfair and inappropriate for students with special needs and students who are newly arrived English language learners (ELL) to take the same English language exams as the rest of the student population. Until now, students who had attended school in the U.S. for less than three years were not required to take the ELA exam. Instead, they were given an annual English proficiency test to help measure their progress toward English fluency.

But this summer, the Bush administration changed its mind once again. The U.S. Department of Education reversed its policy for ELL and special education students. Now, students with special needs and students who are newly arrived ELL students will be forced to take the same ELA exams as the rest of the student population. This change in policy means that more of our students and our schools will be labeled as “in need of improvement.”

The U.S. Education Department is dead wrong. As a bilingual teacher at Bilingual Bicultural Mini-School in Manhattan. I know first hand how misguided this change in policy is. It’s based on punishment, not progress. It’s not sound education policy and it’s not fair. Our focus should be on meeting students’ needs, not on finding new ways to label students and schools as “failures.”

All of us support high academic standards and high standards of accountability, and we support testing as a tool to help measure and improve student progress. But this change is educationally unsound. It undermines the gains we’ve made in closing the performance gap for English language learners and students with disabilities. Forcing a child recently arrived in the U.S. who speaks little or no English to take the eighth-grade ELA is ridiculous.

There’s a great piece by Juan Gonzalez in the September 27 Daily News that lays out how ridiculous and hurtful it will be. Just thinking about what this will mean in the classroom should make every UFT member want to get on a bus to Washington and ask the President exactly what he’s trying to do. And while we’re down there, we should be asking every member of Congress to stand up to the president and demand he change this policy.

No Child Left Behind is a good idea gone wrong, and President Bush and his supporters in Congress keep making things worse. It’s the same tactics bullies always use: If they don’t do something the right way, then they’ll try to shift attention away from their failings by picking on those less able to defend themselves.

NYSUT has been pushing the New York State Education Department to stand up to Washington, but so far, State Ed doesn’t seem interested in taking on this fight. It looks like, once again, we will have to stop the bullying ourselves.

Maria Neira is the First Vice-President of NYSUT and long time UFT member.

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Two Nations, And The Rights of Teachers

Filed under: Education Labor by Leo Casey @ 10:59 am

Can you imagine a world in which a popular art teacher is fired for taking her students on a school approved trip to a museum of art?

It is hard to conceive, but that is exactly what is happening to Sydney McGee, a veteran of 28 years of teaching. Last April, she took her fifth grade students to the Dallas Museum of Art. At the museum, a student saw a statue depicting a nude human body, and the parent complained.

For subjecting her students to the depravity of art, McGee is now losing her job. And the students of Wilma Fisher Elementary School in the Dallas suburb of Frisco are losing an excellent teacher of art.

Texas is a “right to work” state. Collective bargaining for teachers is prohibited by law. The contractual protections that public school teachers possess in states like New York are lacking in Texas. There are teacher unions — the Texas state affiliate of the NEA is defending McGee — but these unions are limited by the law in what they can accomplish.

And so a twenty-first century version of ‘Know Nothing’ politics rules the school district of Frisco, with no checks and no balances.

Two nations, one red, one blue — and two different realities for teachers.

September 28, 2006

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Phonicsgate

Filed under: Education Privatization by Leo Casey @ 9:51 pm

If you are looking for the sort of essay you give to your students to identify 25 different species of logical error, look no further than this doozy, “Reading Last,” published in Checker Finn’s Fordham Institute Gadfly. It is a full-throated defense of the role of Bush’s Department of Education in Phonicsgate — at least up until the point Margaret Spellings had the designated fall guy, former Reading First czar Chris Doherty, walk the plank.

According to the author, Fordham Vice-President Michael J. Petrilli, there was nothing wrong with “stacking” the DOE review panels of the reading programs, because there are “thirty years of rigorous studies [that] all reach the same conclusion: children must be taught to read systematically.” Doherty should be rewarded for his actions, Petrilli claims, not sent in exile.

Just consider a couple of the intrinsic self-contradictions of such a proposition.

1. If the evidence is even half as conclusive as Petrilli says, why would Doherty and the DOE need to stack a panel? Wouldn’t a fair-minded panel, prepared to examine the evidence with an open mind, quickly reach that conclusion? It would seem that either the evidence is not what Petrilli makes it out to be, or the panels were being stacked for some other reason.

2. Is it not the case that the complaint which initiated this investigation came not from a ‘whole language’ partisan or sponsor, but from the founder of a rather prominent phonics based program, Success for All? Does Petrilli really think that his readers are so gullible as to miss the fact that the Bush DOE was promoting one particular phonics based program over all other programs, be they whole language OR phonics based?

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The Luckiest New Teacher

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by cmitchell @ 4:32 pm

I am working in the best school in all the regions and for the best principal in the system. I’m not one to throw around superlatives but I really believe it’s true. When I first arrived at this school, I was told by some of the other math teachers that our principal is one of the best managers they have ever met. They are both career changers who worked for major corporations. I listened, not yet fully comprehending what that meant, but the more I work with my principal, the more I see what they were saying. Here is a person that actively involves himself with his teachers, staff, and students. During recess, you will see him playing games with the kids. At lunch, he is monitoring the cafeteria. Every other week he conducts a staff meeting and every week he meets with teachers individually, also observing their classes once a week. Here is a person who cares on a micro-level about the people in his school. Every one matters. Every one is important. He conveys a deep understanding of human nature, behavior and psychology.

I have an elective to teach and it was the principal that suggested that I start a City Harvest program at the school (it was on my resume). I agreed and got it together. He was totally open-minded about bringing community service to the school. Then it was evident to me that here is an exceptional principal. He was able to see one of my skills and apply it in a different context. Not only did he analyze the situation well, but he had the foresight to see something larger than ourselves. What a powerful combination - getting kids to volunteer, to feed the hungry, to help the homeless. He is a visionary. He could see the big picture, how this would be a great program for the student population (he knows his students.) Sure enough, we had more than enough kids sign up for City Harvest, we had to turn some away from the program. This would be a tremendous pilot program for other schools to adopt.

This week we kicked off the program with peanut butter, jelly, Wonder bread. The kids got themselves good and messy. We projected that we would be able to make eighty sandwiches during the sixth period. Forty minutes into the period, forty eight middle-schoolers made over one hundred sandwiches for the hungry and homeless of New York City. Somehow in all the noise and chaos, we made sandwiches, cleaned up the classroom, and packed the PB&Js for delivery. We did what we set out to accoumplish with time to spare.

We walked our first group of eight children to the local shelter, which was about five blocks away from the school. The kids insisted on carrying the bags of thirty one pounds of PB&Js all the way to the shelter. We arrived at the shelter and unpacked the bags at the kitchen. We dropped off twenty two containers of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Each container held eight sandwiches and the kids did the math — one hundred and seventy six sandwiches! We hit double our target for the week.

It feels good doing good.

September 26, 2006

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ELA Test Scores Ask: Is Anything Working?

Filed under: Testing by Peter Goodman @ 4:20 pm

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires testing in Grades 3-8 and the recent release of scores is enlightening. Schools are “evaluated” by the percentage of students “at or above standards,” on Levels Three plus Four. In virtually every school the percentage of student “at or above standard” declines in each successive grade, and, the decline is especially evident from Grades Five to Six and throughout Middle School.

NYC is doing much better than other urban centers in the state and much worse than suburbs. No surprises.

It is easy to point to large class sizes in NYC and to quote from CFE decision: substantial lower funding of schools in NYC. This is a significant element impacting effective instruction.

On the other hand we can point to waves of school reforms. Whether at the national level or the state level or the local level: the reforms have one thing in common, they have had little impact.

Larry Cuban, a historian of education has written extensively about the school reform initiatives and finds them unsuccessful. The most recent, No Child Left Behind, is basically punitive. If schools fail to reach goals there are negative consequences for the school. Other “reforms” aver a particular approach to teaching and learning. “Progressive” or “transformative” or “basic,” or whatever, philosophies that drive particular programs.

The SED “reform,” called “Destination Diploma” tries to share “successful practices” with high schools throughout the State.

The DOE Children First initiative that has evolved into Empowerment Schools is a governance model, initially with centrally imposed “programs.”

At the school level teachers continue to “put their toe in the water,” and leave. Teacher turnover rates are distressing, both in NYC and throughout the nation. Reform initiatives rarely deal with the core issue : teacher recruitment and retention.

Can we point to any particular NYC initiative that clearly impacts positively on pupil performance?

Do schools with Leadership Academy principals show greater student achievement and higher teacher retention rates? No.

Do schools using “packaged” programs, America First, etc., show greater gains in pupil achievement and higher teacher retention rates? No.

Can we point to any program in the City that appears to be “working”?

The answer is yes: The UFT Teacher Centers.

For the third successive year Region 5, the only region that utilizes the UFT Teacher Centers as the prime provider of professional development has shown the greatest gains on standardized tests.

Teachers flock to teacher centers and flee the regionally based mega programs. Why?

Teacher Center staff are the product of a rigorous selection process, and the school principal has the final vote. Schools “chose” to pay for a Teacher center.

Each Teacher Center crafts their services to the needs of teachers in individual schools. In Region 5, and throughout the city Teacher Centers are networked, expertise is shared.

The essence of professionalism is a collegial spirit, teachers, new and experienced, engaged, sharing and learning form each other in a skillfully facilitated environment.

It’s never those top down reforms with the catchy names, it’s always those guys and gals talking together about, you guessed it, kids.

September 25, 2006

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The Chalkboard Does A Humpty Dumpty Jig

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 10:50 pm

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “who is to be master - that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

In our last collective bargaining agreement, New York City public school teachers agreed to add ten minutes to our work day. When combined with the additional twenty minutes from the previous agreement, and reconfigured across 4 days [Monday through Thursday], this additional time created an 37.5 minute at the end of the school day. The agreement to create this time period involved a rather clear and unambiguous definition of its purpose: it was to be dedicated to providing students at risk for academic failure small group, tutoring and test preparation assistance. This is the only time of the school day expressly used for such support.

In order to protect this purpose, explicit language was written into the agreement which limited the size of the groups [no more than ten general education, or five special education students], and which defined the activities that would take place on it as “tutorials, test preparation and/or small group instruction.”

There are those who question the need for such explicit language in our agreements, but they have obviously never attempted to work with school management such as that at Tweed. No sooner had the contract been ratified then the supervisors of Teachers of Speech decided that they should not provide those services, but should teach an additional, sixth class. [The Teachers of Speech cited here are not educators who teach public speaking and debate in a regular educator classroom, but special education providers who supply a combination of therapeutic and educational services.]

The UFT grieved this rather flagrant violation of the agreement. Not surprisingly, the arbitrator upheld the plain , unambiguous meaning of the agreement, and ruled against the Department of Education. Teachers of speech will now use the 37.5 minute periods for exactly what they were intended to provide — critical tutoring and test preparation assistance to students in need of such help.

All of this provides an occasion for The Chalkboard, the blog of the New York Charter School Association, to launch into a tirade of how this decision is a “charade” which justifies “vouchers.”

In the Alice in Wonderland world of Chalkboard’s Joe Williams, agreements between New York City public school teachers and our employer should mean whatever management wants it to mean. Who cares if supervisors decide that there is no need to provide at risk students with an important service, in open defiance of the agreement? Teachers should just do what the master tells them to do.

Not these teachers. We are professional educators who work in schools. We entered into an agreement with specific language designed to protect the integrity of our work with our students, language which we have read and understood, and we will not stand idly by while that agreement is violated.

If that justifies vouchers, maybe it is because the Chalkboard’s question really is “who is to be master?”

September 23, 2006

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Private Interests First [Updated]

Filed under: Education Privatization by Leo Casey @ 12:04 pm

This morning’s newspapers bring news of a searing Inspector General report on the most unseemly and corrupt conduct by officials at the US Department of Education, who used the NCLB law and DOE oversight power to promote one particular reading program, SRA/McGraw Hill’s Direct Instruction [DI], at the expense of others. The New York Times account is here.

While Bush DOE officials connected to its Reading First initiative were publicly proclaiming that they were acting in the best interests of America’s school children by promoting only scientifically proven reading programs, they were overstepping the mandates of NCLB and stacking review panels, ensuring that only DI would pass muster. Interestingly, the report was undertaken not in response to objections of ‘whole language’ advocates, but from a complaint from the founder of a phonics based reading program, Success for All.

When a Baltimore school district complained to the DOE that their review panel was stacked with DI partisans, the following e-mail exchange took place among DOE officials, including the director of Reading First.

“Funny that [the Baltimore City Public Schools official] calls *me* to inform that there may be some pro-DI folks on *my* panel!!! Too rich!”

The panelist then asked, “Does he know who you are? Past and present?”

The Reading First Director replied, “That’s the funniest part – yes! You know the line from Casablanca, ‘I am SHOCKED that there is gambling going on in this establishment!’ Well, ‘I am SHOCKED that there are pro-DI people on this panel!’”

A media inquiry set off another e-mail exchange . A DOE employee inquired of the Reading First director:

“The question is…are we going to ‘stack the panel’ so programs like Reading Recovery don’t get a fair shake[?]”

The Reading First Director responded, “‘Stack the panel?’…I have never *heard* of such a thing… (harumph, harumph).[.]”

The e-mails are quite revealing, as Bush DOE officials carry on like they were a street gang defending their turf. In a e-mail to DOE staff, the Reading First director writes:

Beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in a way that will stand up to any level of legal and [whole language] apologist scrutiny. Hit them over and over with definitive evidence that they are not SBRR, never have been and never will be. They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.

The Reading First Director forwarded the above e-mail to Reid Lyon, the chief arcitect of Reading First and a prominent advocate of phonics based instruction. Lyon responded that he would obtain the information the DOE wanted, and added, “I like your style.”

“Oh man, I’m mortified,” Lyon told the New York Times after the report was made public. “To see the facts that were presented today was very disappointing, because it’s an outstanding program.”

In a pathetic effort at damage control, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings washed her hands of the mess, and wrote it off as individual mistakes. “Some of the actions taken by department officials and described in the inspector general’s report reflect individual mistakes,” Spellings statement read. “Although these events occurred before I became secretary of education, I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them.”

And the report was issued on a Friday, although some remember Spellings promising never to do that again, after the US DOE was embarassed by its attempts this summer to bury another report by issuing it on a Friday. [That was the report that showed public school students outperforming private school students, once one controlled for demographics.]

The DOE also announced that the director of the Reading First initiative, Chris Doherty, is “returning” to the “private sector.”

But in truth Doherty never left the private sector. The problem with the Bush DOE, in both its Paige and its Spellings incarnations, is that it treats the distinction between the public and private sectors as an inconvenience, an obstacle that one has to overcome in the pursuit of private interests. It does not know the meaning of holding the public trust.

And that is why they can not leave public office soon enough.

UPDATE:

“They should fire everyone who was involved in this,” said Rep. George Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee. “This was not an accident, this was not an oversight. This was an intentional effort to corrupt the process.”

September 22, 2006

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Smaller Classes

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by Bimsmile @ 3:12 pm

Less money, less teachers but not less students! This is an equation with a bad ending. It means our students will receive less of our time and thus less of an education.

When the year first began I wasn’t really worried about the issue of class size. I knew it was an important issue, one that certainly needed to be tackled, but it was not one of the many issues I was concerning myself with when it came time to thinking about my own teaching. I wasn’t even considering the possibility that I’d have 36 students in two of my double period classes.

When I received my class rosters my stomach dropped. I was truly shocked to find that I had been given such a large number of students. Especially in a course that is designed for instruction with 20-25 students. When I looked at the next roster I was doubly shocked. Again, I had 36 students listed.

Not only is this illegal, but it seems nearly impossible that I can teach all of these students at once. How can I devote even a minute of my time to assist one student when I have nearly 33 other students floating around my room engaged yes, but in probably anything but learning!

I was so excited about all the projects and lessons that I had planned for the upcoming year. Now, I am worried that all I am going to be doing is constantly trying to quiet, control and baby sit my students. When I came home and complained to my boyfriend about this, his response was complacent. He asked, “Is that a lot?”

To the general public, to those not in a classroom, but in charge of our schools, does a 34 to 1 ratio not seem wrong? Apparently not.

I spoke with my AP regarding this matter and found that she could be of no assistance. Her initial response was to inform me that one or two of these students would be dropped and that some others would surely “test out.” I find it odd that a school would even put so many students on a roster when it is known to be against our contract. It all seems so logical in my mind – create another course to alleviate the numbers. That would necessitate another teacher however, and that, I guess is something we are in need of, but have no money to hire. My AP explained, that “it’s what the city does.”

Is it the city? Is it the Chancellor? Who is ultimately to blame for this problem that occurs in nearly every city school? Why is there just not even space for our students?

It’s an awful thing to say as a teacher, but for my own sanity and for the benefit of my students I almost hope that half my students don’t show. 34, 35, or 36, regardless of the exact number, it is way to absurd for any teacher, whether veteran or not, to be expected to educate all of these students at once.

Well now, four weeks into the year, I have gotten to know the 36 names on my roster. I can put a face to nearly all those names- and I can almost pronounce them all too! It hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The classes are very large and I have already become inundated with papers, but it doesn’t feel out of control when we’re all in the classroom together, as I thought it would. I’m overly tired at the end of the day and rarely left with time to read the stack of essays, double entry diaries and homework’s that I want to.

What’s sad is that I really want to read almost every one, especially at this point in the year. I need to assess in order to help at all. For more purposes then just assessing however, I want to learn about my students. It’s amazing the insights you get as a teacher, into the lives of your students. Large class sizes don’t allow for teachers to get to know their students; they don’t allow for teachers to instruct any individuals independently, as many students would truly benefit from.

The sizes have been lowered to 33 and 32, but it’s still a lot. I’m feeling highly encouraged however. This year been nothing but great thus far and I intend to do the best I can with what I’ve got.

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Honeymoon phase

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by cmitchell @ 3:12 pm

Not all New York City public schools are breeding grounds for drugs, guns and violence. Somewhere out there in this vast city of ours are decent public schools where the students are well-behaved and civilized. I ought to know. I work in such a school. This middle school is a rare gem in the system, but I know it’s not the only one. In region 8, Williamsburg, students are playing in a marching band, competing in chess, and making movies in a public middle school. Unfortunately, journalists and writers have sensationalized public schools in the Post and the Daily News. An appetite has grown for such tabloidization. Knives and guns in the Bronx feeds the stereotype that the system stinks. Yet, the system is not the students. It’s unfair to the studying, polite and smart New York City public school children to be depicted as juvenile delinquents. They are guilty before being proven guilty and they are criminalized in their own classrooms. Yes, many of these stories are true, but there’s another story, and it’s time that it’s heard.

The children at my middle school are civilized human beings. There is virtually no cursing in the hallways and there are very few behavioral problems. Rampant detentions, suspensions and phone calls home don’t exist. The school nurtures an environment of collegiality, cooperation, academic rigor, and accountability - a testament to the leadership of the principal and a supporting administration.

September 21, 2006

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UPDATED: New test scores

Filed under: Testing by Maisie @ 11:26 am

The State Ed Department released its first-ever results for grades 3-8 ELA exams this morning. This is tricky. These are new tests, so results cannot fairly be compared with last year’s 4th and 8th grade scores or with last year’s 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th grade results on the city tests. On the other hand, everyone is doing just that (see chart), even Commissioner Mills to some extent. If you want his complete powerpoint presentation follow this link.
The results will be in newspapers tomorrow but here is an interesting take on them, thanks to our state affiliate, New York State United Teachers, which calculated the NYC and then “rest of state” (everyone except NYC) scores.
1. 58.9% of NYC 4th graders met or exceeded ELA standards, just about the same as last year. By comparison, 72.8 percent of the rest of the state’s 4th graders met standards, down 3.3 points from last year.

2. 36.3% of NYC 8th graders met ELA standards, a jump of 3.8 points from last year. By contrast, in the rest of the state 55.7% met standards, down fractionally from 56% last year.

So NYC 4th and 8th graders continue to perform some 14-18 points below their peers in the rest of the state, but also appear to be closing the city-state gap a little. Our students did relatively well.
(For the record, performance in other big cities in the state, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, was abysmal, as much as 20 points below NYC. However Yonkers continues to match or exceed NYC’s ELA performance.)

As to the new state tests in 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th grades, it’s a mixed bag against last year’s city ELA tests. Third grade is up substantially, 5th grade down substantially, 6th grade about flat with last year, 7th grade down some. But these comparisons are not quite fair. Think of them more as a baseline against future years than a scorecard.

What is most striking is the decline in performance as kids move through the grades. Sixty-one percent of third graders met standards, but just 59% of fourth graders, 57% of fifth graders, 49% of sixth graders, 44% of 7th graders and 37% of 8th graders. Notice a pattern here? This should give a lot of pause, and it occupied a lot of Mills’ time in his press conference.

Finally, as Erin Einhorn noted in her embargo-busting Daily News story this morning, there is a very disturbing increase in Level 1s in both 4th and 8th grade, not just in NYC but across the state. At the same time, Level 4s, the highest performers, were cut in half or even one-third. This should give more pause. Lot of pauses here.

UPDATE: Chancellor Klein held a press conference to announce the city results this afternoon. Predictably, he spun it all super positively for the city. UFT President Randi Weingarten met briefly with reporters later in the day, mostly to caution that we shouldn’t make too much of these first-year-of-a-new-test results. She also commented that one obvious remedy to the decline in scores as students up the grades would be to lower class sizes in the upper grades as well as in K-3. Um, hello? Tweed? Anyone home?

Here is her brief statement:

Statement From UFT President Randi Weingarten On Reading Scores
“We should not make too much of these scores. There’s a huge amount of new data here that will be useful over time, but mostly it’s a baseline because the test was new – except for grades 4 and 8 — and all the results came in too late to help plan for this year.

“The news is mixed. Some grades improved; some declined. But the bottom line is that last year, 51.8% of kids in grades 3 through 8 met standards; this year it’s 50.7. So, overall, we managed to hold most of last year’s gains. It’s great that 3rd graders did well. That’s probably a testament to the smaller classes in grades K through 2.

“The system has gone through many changes and reorganizations – and in the short term that takes its toll. But schools always work when teachers are supported in their teaching; when they have small classes, rigorous and consistent curriculum, good leadership, and are allowed to grow professionally and exercise their judgment.”

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