September 29, 2008

The DoE is a One-Eyed Hedgehog

Filed under: Education NYC DOE by Ron Isaac @ 6:22 pm

My daughter, noting that her one-eyed hedgehog Peter Prickles was suffering from severe energy depletion and a growth over his single eye (a birth defect), panicked and so we took him forthwith to a veterinarian who had worked with rescue dogs after 9/11. We thought Peter was a goner but wanted to do everything possible to avoid being haunted by a guilt trip later if we had failed to act and Peter was no more. (more…)

September 27, 2008

Is Anyone Listening? An Open Letter From An Excessed E.L.A. Teacher Who Is Now An ATR

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 4:35 pm

What follows is an open letter from Michael Thyfault, an excessed English Language Arts teacher who had taught at Canarsie High School, a school which is being phased out. We reproduce it here because Thyfault’s eloquent statement is a powerful illustration of why the Department of Education needs to let the ATRs teach.

I am a third generation educator who entered the teaching profession at age 37.  I have been teaching at Canarsie High School for the last four years.  I am now working under my 4th principal and third assistant principal of English. Last June I was excessed as the school was beginning the process of being phased out.  This year I am an ATR, Active Teacher in Reserve.  I teach one class a day and work as a substitute when needed.  Regardless of my assignment I work five periods a day, tutoring in the library when I am not covering classes. I run a chess club and have been teaching Regents and SAT preparation classes after school. I am deeply disturbed when ATR teachers are labeled as burden on the system.  I am making a difference in many young lives, regardless of my label. That is why I teach. My passion runs deeper than politics or the mismanagement of our schools. (more…)

September 26, 2008

Guidance For Guided Reading

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 6:17 pm

[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school teacher in Queens. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]

Yesterday was like a black hole of a day. I was so busy every second and so discombobulated that at the end of the day I realized I couldn’t remember a single thing I had taught. So is it any wonder the kids can’t either?

Today I learned that I am doing a lot of things wrong. And it’s not because I’m a bad teacher or an unintelligent person; it’s because the procedures for teaching reading at my school are so arcane and so intricate that I feel like I need a second master’s degree in how to fill out all the paperwork I’m expected to maintain. (more…)

A Topic For Action Research

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 5:44 pm

And you thought educational research did not focus on important issues.

September 24, 2008

A Call for Common Sense

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 9:00 pm

The following text is a public statement on the proposed bailout of Wall Street issued today by a group of labor and progressive leaders, including AFT President Randi Weingarten. The signatories are listed at the end of the statement.

Every man, woman, and child in America is now being told to ante up $2,000 — an estimated $700 billion in all — to bail out Wall Street’s recklessness, or the very people who created this crisis are telling us that they will bring down our entire economy. The Treasury Department’s proposal that the Secretary be given essentially unlimited authority to spend $700 billion to bail out any financial institution across the world is irresponsible and unacceptable. We urge the Congress to insist on some basic conditions for any bailout. (more…)

September 23, 2008

Arsonist Yells “Fire, Fire”: The New Teacher Project On ATRs

Filed under: Education NYC DOE by Leo Casey @ 6:58 pm

Three developments have fueled the growing numbers of New York City public school ATR educators without regular assignments. First, as a result of the NYC Department of Education’s policy of school closings, there has been the massive displacement of hundreds of educators through no fault of their own. Second, as a consequence of the DoE’s changes to the school budget process, there has been the introduction of budgetary disincentives for the hiring and placement of experienced, senior teachers, a category into which many ATRs fall. And third, there has been the DoE’s gross mismanagement of its educational human resources, which has gone from bad to worse this last year. An intellectually honest account of the swelling ranks of the ATRs would address in a forthright manner each of these three developments. The Mutual Benefits report of The New Teacher Project [TNTP], republished this week, manages to discuss the ATR situation and offer one-sided policy recommendations without discussing even one of the developments. (more…)

Litter and Lit(t)eracy

Filed under: Education by Ron Isaac @ 11:38 am

“Litter gets on the tracks and catches fire and that causes train delays that make you late aside from making trains and stations untidy because a little litter goes a long way.”

That startling quotations, replete with errors that I devoutly wish were typos, is a complete, unedited and unsanitized public service announcement that was not long ago plastered pillar to post throughout the New York City transit system. (more…)

September 22, 2008

Why Educators Should Support Barack Obama

Filed under: Education Guest Bloggers Politics by Linda Darling-Hammond @ 12:34 pm

[Editor's note: Linda Darling-Hammond, formerly a public high school teacher, is currently a professor of education at Stanford University and an advisor to the Obama campaign.]

I was shocked recently to read an editorial pronouncing Barack Obama and John McCain nearly alike in their views on education — a statement that could hardly be further from the truth. I realize it might be possible to believe this if your major source of information is television news, which obsesses over personalities and pigs in lipstick rather than covering serious issues. Ever wonder what 24-hour news shows could do with all that time if they actually spent it evaluating what the candidates plan to do about the issues that affect our lives? But that’s a topic for another blog.

Although we hear little about education from the press, Obama announced a detailed plan a year ago and talks about education regularly. He has pledged over $30 billion annually in new investments in education — from early childhood to support for college tuition — because he believes education is the key to our nation’s future and to each child’s success. Not only is this commitment 30 times greater than anything John McCain has discussed, it is focused on supporting public schools and teachers, rather than punishing them. And, it is based on what we know makes a difference for success. (more…)

Parents — The Coming Conflagration

Filed under: Education Testing by Maisie @ 8:42 am

A little brush fire (verbal, not real) in front of P.S. 205 in Bayside, Queens, this morning may hint at a much bigger conflagration to come this year over test prep and excessive testing in the schools.

About 30 parents gathered in front of the school and cheered as speakers denounced the Dept. of Education plan to test kindergarten through 2nd grade students. DOE floated this plan in late August and was bombarded by criticism from testing experts and educators. They actually intend to give paper-and-pencil standardized tests up to 90 minutes long to kindergarteners. Is the chancellor kidding? “Has he ever spent time with any five-year-olds?” parent Martha Foote wondered.

For the last few years teachers have criticized the emphasis on test prep. Now the parents are getting vocal, and they are just getting started. (more…)

September 19, 2008

Measuring School Performance

Filed under: Education NYC DOE by Leo Casey @ 8:53 am

One of the realities that teachers and others who work in schools know from practical experience is that there is considerable variance in the academic aptitude of classes, year after year. For the statistician, there are technical terms to explain why, even with exactly the same inputs from teacher and school, student outputs will vary. In layperson’s term, the crux of the matter is this: even if students were randomly assigned to classes and schools [and Jesse Rothstein's study has demonstrated that they are not], the classes can be quite skewed academically, especially in small schools since they have smallest samples. (more…)

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