March 30, 2007

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Finding Appreciation

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by MistaBx13 @ 7:49 pm

The ups and downs of teaching have lost most of their momentum and edge since last year, my first year as a special-needs high school teacher in the Bronx. I have learned to prioritize demands, ignore my AP’s often blunt critiques, and gain confidence in my practice.

I tend to be on top of my game with regards to planning, grading, department meetings, IEP meetings, completing paperwork and my master’s coursework. But the ups and downs of my students’ complex lives are what keep me up at night, and I am afraid this will never change.In the last few months, my students’ pregnancies, abortions, assaults on others, being assaulted, failures in their classes, emotional breakdowns and outbursts, violent threats, and drug and alcohol addictions have become the problems of my dreams.

I reflect on new information and do my best to fulfill my role as a caring, problem-solving educator. Sometimes my students show appreciation and even change for the better after we try to deal with the issues. Other times, things get worse, and I refer the problem to someone more capable than I am and hope for the best. I have recently identified one of the variables that keep me going, keep me coming to school day after day.

One day this past week, a student I had last year interrupted my 9th period class and when I asked him to leave, he sucked his teeth, told me to shut up and left. To my surprise, after the door closed a few of my students in the class got extremely agitated and upset about his comment towards me and began to plot their assault if he were to return. After I explained that violence would not solve the problem but only get them into trouble, I smiled inside knowing that they cared about me in the way I cared about them. Their anger at the offending student meant that they realized how much I cared about and did for them. Their vocal thoughts of retaliation were their way of giving back to me. Knowing my kids care about me and would fight for me is one of the variables that keep me coming into work and facing my daily trials.

So even if my students’ problems never cease to keep me up some nights, as long as appreciation is demonstrated in some capacity, I know that I can come into work day after day and educate and help my students as best I can.

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The “Collateral Damage” of the Klein Initiatives.

Filed under: NYC DOE by Peter Goodman @ 7:26 pm

Once upon a time SURR was the mark of Cain and the Scarlet Letter rolled into one. At a high profile press conference the State Ed Department (SED) and the Board of Ed (BOE) would announce the “latest” list of SURR schools and services poured into the schools.

Under the reign of Klein schools are closed before the SURR announcement to keep the list short. The announcement is made, and, nothing happens.

Many of the newly identified SURR schools are repeats, they were previously identified and “closed,” and the school was given another number, and now, re-identified as a SURR school.

The SED sends a review team to visit a newly identified SURR school. The team is composed of a SED regional superintendent (formerly known as BOCES superintendents), members of their staff, a CSA and a UFT rep appointed by their unions, a DOE rep and a parent rep. The team arrives on a Monday, observes classes, reviews school data and interviews just about everyone. On Thursday they make a public report to the school community, followed by the written report. The report is based on “findings,” observations gleaned by the school data, observations and interviews and each “finding” generates a “recommendation.”
The SURR team report is a path to get off the list and clearly requires the “buy-in” of the entire school community.

One of the newly identified schools is a middle school in Manhattan with a Leadership Academy graduate principal who had limited teaching experience. The school is a mess - the principal is at war with the staff, the staff is sharply divided, the kids are all over the building … The principal is overwhelmed and the kids suffer. What will the DOE do? Nothing! All their energies are being expended on the “new” initiatives … Will Weighted School Funding help these kids? the new SSO management structure?

Another of the new SURR schools is an elementary in the Bronx - the principal is a long time teacher and this is his fourth year as a principal. The principal is committed to a collaborative approach and the SED review team recommended that the principal continue doing what he is doing ….

The 90-90-90 Study looked at schools made up of at least 90% ethnic minorities, 90% high poverty and 90% meeting state standards. The Study found common practices in the schools and on top of the list was collaboration: the principal collaborating with the staff and the staff collaborating among themselves.

Unfortunately the Tweed bunch flounder in autocracy.

As the chancellor looks at his image in a mirror and sees greatness, the rest of us bemoan policies that will takes years, maybe decades to undo … Who is supporting Klein? Not teachers, not parents, not elected officials, only the Mayor, an undeclared presidential candidate and the free market for everything folk.

The kids in that chaotic SURR school? Just collateral damage.

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An Early April First

Filed under: NYC DOE by Leo Casey @ 5:09 pm

It seems that not only Daylight Savings Time was moved up this year, but also April 1.

How else to explain this document?

If a principal needs to be reminded by a computer prompt that his teachers are coming up for tenure — an event which happens automatically at the end of their third year on appointment — exactly what degree of care and depth of thought do you think he is giving to their evaluation?

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UFT ELECTION RESULTS

Filed under: UFT News by Leo Casey @ 3:30 pm

Certified election results [Winners in Boldface]:

PRESIDENT:
Kit Wainer [ICE/TJC] 6070
Randi Weingarten [UNITY/New Action] 40,665

SECRETARY:
Camille Johnston [ICE/TJC] 5904
Paul Millstein [New Action] 4092
Michael Mendel [UNITY] 36,493

ASSISTANT SECRETARY:
Ellen Schweitzer [ICE/TJC] 5924
Robert Astrowsky [UNITY] 36,553
Jonathan Halabi [New Action] 4024

TREASURER:
William Speith [New Action] 3976
Mel Aaronson [UNITY] 36,694
Marilyn Beckford [ICE/TJC] 5860

ASSISTANT TREASURER:
Anna Maria Thomas [New Action] 4193
Mona Romain [UNITY] 36,519
Yelena Siwinski [ICE/TJC] 5764

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE:
Aminda Gentile [UNITY] 36,455
Ellen Fox [ICE/TJC] 5927
Gregory DiStefano [New Action] 4118

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS:
Michelle Bodden [UNITY] 36,583
Lisa North [ICE/TJC] 5851
Peggy McQuade-Kaplan [New Action] 4041

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE FROM INTEREMEDIATE, MIDDLE & JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS:
Joshua Kahn [ICE/TJC] 5962
Dale Herman [New Action] 4042
Richard Farkas [UNITY] 36,441

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE FROM ACADEMIC HIGH SCHOOLS:
Arthur Colen [ICE/TJC] 5843
John McCabe III [New Action] 4050
Frank Volpicella [UNITY] 36,559

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE FROM CAREER TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS:
Gerard Frohnhoeffer [ICE/TJC] 5799
Michael Mulgrew [UNITY] 36,734

VICE PRESIDENT AT LARGE FROM SPECIAL EDUCATION
Joseph Wisniewski [ICE/TJC] 5799
Judith Rosenstein [New Action] 4100
Carmen Alvarez [UNITY] 36,585

The UNITY slate swept all positions on the UFT Executive Board, winning all divisions of the union. The eight New Action candidates for the Executive Board cross-endorsed by UNITY were elected.

March 29, 2007

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A Dead Horse Named Frozen Assets

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 10:39 pm

Over at the Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey is madly beating a dead horse named Frozen Assets in an effort to bring it back to life as a Kentucky Derby contender. [Check out the blows, here, here and here.] He’s so anxious to place his bets on Frozen Assets that he can’t even wait 24 hours to get a response to his inquiry about why teacher unions might support a salary differential for a Masters degree.

Carey starts by a cherry picking an isolated conclusion out of a valuable research paper, “How and why do teacher credentials matter for student achievement?,” authored by Duke University’s Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor [CLV]. [Here at Edwize, our links send our readers to the free version, so you can actually read the paper for yourself.] The cherry picking is worth pointing out because the general argument of CLV runs quite contrary to the positions that Carey, Ed Sector, and the dead horse Frozen Assets take — that teaching experience and teaching credentials are unimportant to the quality of teaching and to student achievement. To the contrary, CLV conclude “that a teacher’s experience, test scores and regular licensure all have positive effects on student achievement, with larger effects for math than for reading.”

Carey focuses in on this particular line in the paper:

The estimates indicate that the teachers who received their [Master's] degree prior to entering teaching or any time during the first five years of teachers were no less or no more effective than other teachers in raising student achievement.

Why, he then asks, would teacher unions support a salary differential for a Masters degree that does not create more effective teachers, measured in terms of student achievement?

A meaningful examination of this issue would start from the rather basic understanding that different states have quite different contexts: some states require a Masters degree for permanent teaching licenses; other states do not. CLV’s study is of North Carolina, a state that has a teaching license which requires only a Bachelors degree. By contrast, New York has required a Masters degrees for all permanent teaching certification since 1978. [Update: the historical mavens here at the UFT tell me that in New York City, a Masters degree was a requirement for high school teachers before collective bargaining even began in the early 1960s.] A Masters degree means one thing for a licensed teacher in North Carolina, and something quite different for a licensed teacher in New York.

According to the 2005 Digest of Educational Statistics, the most recent available, in 2000, only 3 in 10 North Carolina teachers had a Masters or other advanced degree — well below the national median. By contrast, 3 in 4 New York teachers possessed a Masters or other advanced degree — well above the national median. The only New York teachers who do not have a Masters degree are those who are at the start of their careers; if a teacher does not obtain their Masters in the years immediately after appointment under their license, they lose that license. If CLV did the same study in New York that they did in North Carolina, they would be looking at quite different realities and would have some very different results.

[According to the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, New York is one of a group of seven states -- Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon and Virginia being the others -- which require a Masters degree. Aficionados of the educational blogosphere may recall that Eduwonk's Andy Rotherham, co-founder and co-director of Ed Sector, sits on the state Board of Education for Virgina. Could it be that Rotherham shares responsibility for freezing an asset? As Casablanca's Captain Renault would say: "I'm shocked, shocked..." Perhaps this is why Rotherham thinks that Carey is on a suicide mission.]

Now the Frozen Assets dead horse argued that it was teacher collective bargaining agreements that froze all of these assets. But as it so happens, North Carolina is a so-called “right to work” state that prohibits collective bargaining by public school teachers. It appears that some frozen minds missed that little detail. Insofar as North Carolina school districts have salary differentials for a Masters degree — good, bad or indifferent — it would obviously be the work of elected and appointed officials.

In New York [and in Virginia], a teachers union would negotiate a differential for a Masters degree first because it is a state requirement for permanent licensure. If state certification regulations compel teachers to invest the time and the expense required for a Masters degree, it seems only fitting to organize teacher compensation in ways that provide an appropriate return for that investment. If there really was a case to be made against the efficacy of a Masters degree, then the fair and reasonable thing to do would not to penalize teachers retrospectively, but to first change the state requirement and then reorganize teacher compensation prospectively. But that is NOT what is being proposed. The whole point of “unfreezing” assets is to take away salary differentials from teachers who have followed the rules and done what the state demanded of them.

There is, morever, an important educational reason for teacher unions to support the retention of the Masters degree requirement, beyond the concerns of fairness and reasonableness. Teacher unions are avid supporters of the full professionalization of teaching, and we understand that every profession needs a rigorous induction process, including a full foundational education. All of the significant and powerful professions in American life, such as law and medicine, require a graduate education as an entry gate-keeper into the profession. Our problem is that far too many undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs in schools of education fall far short of professional teaching standards, and do precious little to prepare novices for the challenges of teaching. If teaching is to advance as a profession, and if the quality of American education is to be improved significantly, the quality of teacher preparation programs must also be dramatically improved. Rather than eliminating the Masters degree requirement for teaching licensure, we must make it a more meaningful and useful part of an essential teacher education.

That option may not be a prohibitive favorite at the races, but it certainly beats a bet on a dead horse.

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Weingarten, UNITY Sweep UFT Elections

Filed under: UFT News by Leo Casey @ 8:08 pm

In a powerful vote of confidence in her leadership, Randi Weingarten won an overwhelming victory in UFT elections today, taking close to 90% of the total vote. Weingarten’s UNITY slate swept all the offices in the election, winning every division of the union and every seat on the Executive Board. The eight members of the New Action caucus who were cross-endorsed on the UNITY slate were also victorious.

Weingarten’s and UNITY’s sweeping victory sends a clear message to Tweed that they are facing a union strongly united in defense of public education and educational professionalism.

“I am honored that our members decided overwhelmingly to allow me to serve another term in office. Our members are the most incredible people I know — be they teachers, paraprofessionals, guidance counselors, therapists, nurses or others — and it is an honor and privilege to champion their needs and aspirations,” Weingarten said.

“In the next three years we will be working with parents and others to help all children succeed,” she said. “When we fight to enable educators to do their jobs effectively — and get the respect and conditions and professionalism they need — we are doing nothing more than fighting to give our students the opportunities they so richly deserve.”

Edwize will report all of the results of the election once they are certified by the American Arbitration Association.

March 26, 2007

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The Net Benefits of Educational Investment

Filed under: Class Size by Leo Casey @ 2:27 pm

Economic models of education are all the rage these days, especially among proponents of remaking public schooling into one large laissez-faire market. But for the most part, these models are incredibly one-sided, focusing on the costs of schooling and on reforms such as lowering class size or introducing universal pre-Kindergarten without examining their benefits. In a day and age when 22% of African-American men in their thirties have prison records, while only 12% hold college degrees, one needs to compare the costs of not investing in education and proven reforms against the costs of making such an investment. An informative economic model would examine both costs and benefits of various educational programs.

In this vein, the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College has just published a study by four leading educational scholars on The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children. Columbia University’s Hank Levin and Peter Muennig, CUNY’s Clive Belfield and Princeton’s Cecilia Rouse look at the potential benefits of a number of proven educational reforms, and conclude that with investments in these areas, the United States could save as much $45 billion annually in increased tax revenues and in reduced public health and criminal justice costs if we reduced the drop out rate by 0ne-half, a feasible target. “Educational investments to raise the high school graduation rate appear to be doubly beneficial,” the study’s authors write. “The quest for greater equity for all young adults would also produce greater efficiency in the use of public resources.”

Among the investments which could improve high school graduation rates are:

* Universal Pre-Kindergarten along the lines of the Perry Pre-School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Perry provides children with 1.8 years of a center-based program for 2.5 hours per weekday, offering a child-to-teacher ratio of 5:1; home visits; and group meetings of parents. The researchers estimate that, implemented on a broad scale, Perry’s benefit-to-cost ratio would be 2.31 to 1, and that it would create an additional 19 new high school graduates per 100 students.

* Parenting Programs such as the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program, a preschool program with parental involvement, outreach and health/nutrition services, based in public schools. This approach would achieve an estimated benefit-to-cost ratio of 3.09 to 1 and create an additional 11 high school graduates per 100 students.

* Comprehensive school reform centered on small learning communities, such as First Things First, a program that includes dedicated teachers, family advocates and instructional improvement. FTF would achieve an estimated benefit-to-cost ratio of 3.54 to 1 and create an additional 16 high school graduates per 100 students.

* Class-size reduction. This approach – based on the parameters of Project Star, a four-year, randomized field trial in Tennessee – would include four years of schooling (from kindergarten through third grade) with class size reduced from 25 to 15. The researchers estimate that, implemented on a broad scale, class-size reduction along these lines would achieve a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.46 to 1, and that it would create an additional 11 new high school graduates per 100 students.

* Teacher salary increase of 10 percent for all years K-12. This approach would achieve an estimated benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.55 to 1 and create an additional five high school graduates per 100 students.

March 22, 2007

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Update On Firing Of Los Angeles Charter School Teachers

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 9:20 pm

More on the charter school story you won’t read about here or here, but you did read about on Edwize.

Today’s Los Angeles Times:

The award-winning author of “A Wreath for Emmett Till,” a poetic memorial to the teenage civil rights icon murdered in Mississippi, said Wednesday it was “unconscionable” that a planned presentation of the work by students at a Los Angeles charter school sparked the firing of two teachers.

Marilyn Nelson, a former poet laureate of Connecticut and National Book Award finalist, wrote to the school, Celerity Nascent, and said that she was “troubled” and “shocked” at the events and urged that teachers Marisol Alba and Sean Strauss be reinstated.

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Field trips

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by MsB @ 3:05 pm

MsB is the pseudonym for a second-year high school English teacher in Brooklyn.

Some of my students have never left Brooklyn. This scares me. Does this mean they never will?

Isn’t it our job as educators to expand minds? We teach culture and art and life skills. I want to take my kids out of Brooklyn. There is a whole world out there for them and they don’t know anything past their block.

Looking at them, I see myself. I was just like them growing up in Brooklyn, not aware that life existed past New York until someone showed me. I welcomed the opportunity to show my students in return, until I started the paperwork.

Planning trips is not easy. If it were easy, more teachers would go on them. There is paperwork after paperwork, and then more paperwork. I need letters to parents, detailed itineraries filled with the various points along the way as to where and when I will take attendance. I need transportation forms, and lunch forms, and more attendance forms, and coverage forms, and more permission slips than I have ever seen in all my life. It takes weeks to get all the appropriate signatures and to make all the copies.

Why is something that is so important to a student’s development so difficult to do? There is so much to experience in New York City. Often, I have tons of ideas for trips that never materialize just because it’s too much work.

This month alone I am taking my students on two trips. First, we are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has everything that links up to whatever you are teaching. There is literally something for everyone. I enjoy working with that museum since they have plenty of education materials for the kids. They have class trips everyday and are very organized and helpful.

However, because museums have a tendency to be, dare I say, “boring,” I made up a scavenger hunt for the kids. They walk around the museum looking for the answers to their clues, and I find they appreciate the autonomy. The first one I made was for the Greek and Roman art galleries. Since everything is confined to a few rooms, it makes keeping an eye on them easy. Through the scavenger hunt, they had to use their knowledge of the Greek gods/goddesses to know what to look for in the galleries. It was a great assessment tool for me. Not to mention, they enjoy playing detective and racing around the museum to finish the hunt. Afterwards, we reconvened and talked about what they saw.

Also, because the museum is so close to Central Park, it would be a crime not to visit there. We had a nice picnic lunch and sketched things from nature and wrote haiku poems. This time we are going back to look at the medieval armor and again, there are fun assignments attached to it. There will be another scavenger hunt, and other creative writing assignments. What better way is there to learn than by having fun?

The next trip I am planning is for The Canterbury Tales. We are going on a pilgrimage to live the tales. Is not the point of literature to experience it? We have written our own tales in class and will be going on a nature walk through Brooklyn’s own Salt Marshes sharing our stories. Hopefully, the reflection we do along the way will lead to some self-knowledge. We will be journaling and sketching and writing and sharing. Again, there will be a picnic and time to sit and think and find nature in our bustling city. We will all be Chaucer for a day and through literature we will find ourselves.

March 21, 2007

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Do Charter School Teachers Need Unions? The Continuing Saga

Filed under: Charter School by Leo Casey @ 11:02 am

Two teachers from the Celerity Nascent Charter School in southwest Los Angeles, Marisol Alba and Seth Strauss, were fired for signing a letter of protest written by their students, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Celerity Nascent Principal Grace Canada had banned the recitation of a poem on the lynching of fourteen year old Emmett Till during the school’s celebration of Black History Month. When discussing her decision with the seventh grade class which had included the poem and a wreath laying ceremony in memory of Till in their planned presentation, Canada defended her action by referring a number of times to the alleged reason for lynching Till — his whistling at a white woman — as an act of “sexual harassment.” [The school denies that Canada made such comments, but the Times verified her statements from a number of parents of children in the class.]

Someone had provided the seventh grade students of Celerity Nascent with a good history and civics education, one that highlighted models of petitioning for a redress of grievances and peaceful dissent — such as the Civil Rights movement’s response to the lynching of Till. They wrote several letters protesting the decision and Canada’s characterization of Till, and Alba and Strauss signed one of them. The teachers were then fired.

“I never thought it would come to this,” Alba told the Times. “I thought the most that would happen to me [after the event was canceled] is that I’d get talked to and it would be turned into a learning and teaching experience.” Alba did learn something — the hard truth of the meaning of “at will” employment, which anti-teacher union forces and bloggers in the charter school movement defend as essential to charter school management.

Marcia Alston, the mother of one Celerity Nascent seventh grader, told the Times that she called the school to say she was appalled at its interpretation of history and the treatment of the teachers. She said that in the conversation, the principal used the term “rude” to describe Till’s actions. “Mr. Strauss and Ms. Alba were excellent teachers,” said Alston. “The fact that they and the students had signed a letter, I thought, was good; it was something they were passionate about and it could be used as a learning tool.”

In a defense of the schools’ actions, Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane told the Times that “our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician. We don’t want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we’ve made.”

Why not eliminate history and civics altogether, given that it is a record, among other things, of the “bad things” that happen to people, including children? The great moments of redemption in history have no meaning without reference to the evils that they are overcoming: the historical power of the American civil rights movement lies precisely in the change it brought to a social order that allowed the lynchings of 14 year old boys.

But history has always posed a problem for those who want to exercise unchallenged power.

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