Saturday, June 28, 2014

On the Intolerable Conditions of Many NYC Public School Buildings- A Teacher Comments


I had gotten into the habit of wearing  polyester, or heavy, cotton blouses by mid May, fabric that should spare me the embarrassment of unsightly sweat stains left by pools of perspiration being seen by my students.  It was ninety two degrees and my classroom, was not an oasis of learning as it should be but rather, a prison.  Kids were forced to stay against their will, as we teachers were told to do everything in our power to ensure the students stayed the entire three hours to complete their exams.  It was Regents week, and instead of students using all of their allotted time, several attempted to leave within the hour, only a third of the time provided to answer several multiple choice questions, constructed response questions, and in the case of English and History, two essays.  The day before, I had proctored the Earth Science Regents and could not help but think of the water cycle as my skin baked: my sweat being the precipitation, my back, a mountain with a high gradient experiencing surface run off, and my shirt, the earth in which the precipitation that becomes ground water absorbs.

It was the third time that Karina attempted to hand me her exam, but I refused the exchange, as we were instructed to do; once an exam was handed in, a teacher could not give it back to the child.  Nor could I speak directly to one student about the exam, so I generalized and began the usual reminder to “Make sure you’ve completed the entire test before handing it in” to the whole class while looking directly at Karina, signaling her to sit back down, though she did so reluctantly.  After about fifteen more minutes in the sweltering heat, she couldn’t take it anymore and stormed to my desk, throwing down her exam.

“I’m done.” 

I checked her exam and realized she had not completed an entire essay.  “Karina, you didn’t even write the DBQ!” 

“I don’t care.  I’m irritable.  I’m hot.  I just want to leave now and take a freakin’ shower.  I’ll take it again in August.  At least summer school will be somewhere else.”

She was right. Schools that weren’t air conditioned always held summer school at a different location, which seemed to be the humane thing to do.  Unfortunately, the powers that be failed to consider the days that reached July temperatures in late Spring and late Summer, when schools reopened for business; our students have experienced many a miserable day in when temperatures had reached ninety degrees or felt like it with high humidity.  In my eleven years of teaching, I had seen my share of nose bleeds and fainting spells in the classroom due to lack of ventilation and air conditioning.  We were told to tell students to “rise to the occasion,” despite the fact that the heat often made them want to put their heads down.  When we would complain, we’d always be told that schools built in the fifties were not equipped to sustain the level of electricity required for air conditioning.  The next common sense move would then be to rewire the school; however, individual schools were expected to fork out the thousands of dollars that would fund such a project.  School principals complain they don’t even have enough money for books and supplies, forcing teachers to spend thousands of their own dollars to create a classroom environment that would be deemed effective according to Charlotte Danielson.  Expecting school administrators to use their budget to rewire their school buildings so that their students can learn in comfort was as ridiculous as expecting for teachers to be supported rather than torn apart by the government and the media.  We were all expected to grin and bear it.

But in recent years teachers are choosing not to stay but instead to leave, leave to places that are easier to teach in because ultimately, we are evaluated for more than just our performance these days, but by the performance of our students more than ever.  With forty percent of our rating being based on student exam scores, exams that are developmentally inappropriate, deliberately tricky and exceedingly lengthy, teachers who teach in the inner city already have enough on their plates to have to deal with failing, old infrastructure; trying to get students who are several grade levels below and often cannot or will not put more effort into their studies to be present, both physically and mentally, in a building that is uncomfortable to be in for more than twenty minutes is a headache that is sure to have many teachers sprinting toward the exit door.

Old school buildings lack appropriate cooling systems, sometimes lack heat on frigidly cold winter days and have hideous cracks in the walls that are often in serious need of paint jobs.  Plain and simple, they are ugly.  My students look at the building in disgust, labeling it a “bum ass school” because of its glossy cement walls and prehistoric chalk boards.  When we do get heat, it’s heat that we call, “project heat,” that cranks up the pipes with loud banging noises that disturb learning and warm the rooms beyond the point of relief from the cold, getting so hot that we attempt to open our windows to average the temperature out.  Mice and cockroaches seem to lurk inside the walls that have so many more nooks and crannies to reside in than newer buildings would.  The job of beautifying the learning environment is always bestowed upon the teacher, who spends tons of money on pretty bulletin board paper and borders, and time crafting beautiful artsy “stuff” to hang and stick all over the place, but it’s no more of a disguise than a silk hat on a pig. 

Charter schools have managed to make our school “living arrangements” even more uncomfortable by taking many of our classrooms and offices, forcing students and teachers into tight spaces to teach and learn.   Our students have to share communal spaces like the cafeteria and gym with them, adding insult to injury because the space was already shared with two other schools at our site.  Many students ask teachers if they can eat with them in their classrooms because there is no room to sit down in the cafeteria since our school has been assigned to 6th period lunch while 4th and 5th periods are the designated lunch times for the other schools in the building.  Teachers, though in dire need of a break away from the kids, consent because they empathize with their students.  Because the charter school is taking our office space as well, I will be moved to a new location to complete my IEPs and other special education coordination duties, a room that just so happens to be next to the cafeteria.  With all these lunch periods, the loud noise will surely distract me from doing my work, as will the students who  receive extended time on exams which I will proctor.  Still, I will be expected to complete all of my IEPs on time and my students will be expected to pass their exams and not be frustrated at the loud screams from the cafeteria, or the sweat trickling down their backs from lack of air conditioning or excessive heat, or the potential vermin that may scurry across their feet. 

The temptation to teach somewhere else that is new, clean, beautiful and comfortable is strong.  However, when I think of the students who can’t leave, it makes me stick around.  Still, sharing in their misery just doesn’t seem like a sufficient form of action.  I feel like I should be doing more, finding a way to lead my students to a more promising land, a new school that they can ooh and ahh over as they walk through the halls; a school that will allow them to escape from the scorching heat on hot spring and summer days instead of the other way around; a school that makes them feel not only safe, but comfortable; a school they can feel content to call their own.  Surely I am not the only teacher who thinks of leaving in this way, that is, leaving together as a school community, thinking of not only herself but the best interest of her students.  If it was possible, to move one’s students to a new school, it would have been done already, wouldn’t it have?  Or are all teachers so used to shit that no one’s even tried?  

Friday, June 27, 2014

The Challenges Facing the NEA and the AFT at Their National Conventions

 
As teachers unions prepare to meet this summer, they face three great challenges, which are also opportunities:
The rapidly growing grass roots movement against the Common Core Standards, which has already led several states to withdraw from CCSS, and has probably doomed its creators vision of CCSS as a national curriculum
A broad based legal challenge and public relations campaign against teacher tenure and due process spurred by the Vergara decision, resulting in lawsuits against them being filed in New York and other states with strong teachers unions.
An emerging Charter School scandal which will soon make it much more difficult to give  carte blanche and unlimited funding to charter schools as if they were a panacea for the challenges facing public schools in high poverty areas.
Teachers unions cannot address only one or even two of these challenges and hope to defend the rights of their members and the future of public education- they have to move forward on all three. To do that, they will have to start reaching out to parents and backing off their position of support for the Common Core Standards. calling instead for a national dialogue about how to revitalize public education from the ground up rather than transforming it from the top down. They also need to start openly attacking the entire Obama Administration's Race to the Top policy and stop reflexively supporting Democratic Party candidates who work to undermine public education.
Will this happen? Probably not to the degree I am calling for. But unless the major teachers unions stop being cheerleaders for Common Core, they are not likely to get much support from parents in defending their members from legal and legislative challenges to due process rights for teachers.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The Staggering Amounts of Money Spent to Show Teachers and Teachers Unions are to Blame for Inequality


As the wave of anti-tenure lawsuits are about to move from California to NY and other states where teachers unions are strong, it would be instructive to think about the staggering amounts of money very wealthy people have spent to demonize teachers unions, teachers and public schools. In addition to the tens of millions poured into campaigns for local school boards, and into mayoralty races to make sure the "reform" strategies of charter school favoritism and test based school and teacher evaluations are to prevail, millions have also been poured into a documentary "Waiting for Superman" and a full length Hollywood Film "Won't Back Down."  And that was followed by a multi-million dollar billboard campaign against teachers unions featuring a twenty foot high picture of AFT President Randi Weingarten mounted in Times Square!

If anyone bothered to compute the amount of funding that has gone into these campaigns and these films, I am sure the amounts would go into the hundreds of millions of dollar, perhaps into the billions.  Which begs the questions Wouldn't this money have been better spent on funding arts programs  and after school centers in schools in  high poverty areas?  Or reducing class size? Or increasing the number of librarians and school counselors? But no, it has all gone into what is basically a giant propaganda campaign against teachers unions

Now with these lawsuits, millions more are going to be spend on this campaign, even if some of the legal expertise is going to be donated pro bono. Doesn't anyone here have a sense of proportion? A sense of irony?

This is a huge, even criminal waste of money at a time when so many public school budgets are being reduced, and when class size is rising, and vital services are being cut.

Something to think about as the witch hunt against teachers unions moves into a new phase

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Getting Rid of The Bad Teachers: Discrimination in Berkeley, CA A Guest Post by Masha Albrecht and Brian Crowell




Throughout the country school districts have instituted different methods of weakening teacher tenure. In California, as in some other states this policy is called Peer Assistance and Review.

What is Peer Assistance and Review?
Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) is a remedial program for teachers who receive an unsatisfactory performance review. The teacher participates in the program from 1-2 years. If the teacher has shown satisfactory improvement the teacher is exited out of the program. However, if the teacher hasnt shown enough improvement as measured by the PAR Panel, they are recommended for termination.

Even the most progressive educators argue that PAR is a vital program for teacher quality and remediation. PAR is beloved among union leaders and progressive educators alike.

One reform for improving teacher quality Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) offers an alternative approach to these cursory evaluation systems. PAR focuses not only on supporting and assessing individual teachers, but also on expanding the capacity of the school and district to improve teaching and learning. Recently, many educational observers and policymakers, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, have pointed to PAR as an approach with great potential for improving professional evaluation and teacher quality (Obama, 2009; Duncan, 2009; Dillon, 2008; Toch & Rothman, 2008; Goldstein, 2007; Koppich, 2005; Goldstein, 2004).  Reference: (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~ngt/PAR%20Costs%20and%20Benefits%20-%20January%202011.pdf)

Historian Diane Ravitch writes about PAR in her blog:
There have been few litigation challenges to the discharges. The overwhelming majority of teachers think the system is fair. There is no high-stakes-testing, with all its adverse side effects. Briefly, principals identify teachers as possibly poor-performers; senior consulting teachers (who do not report to the principal) intensively monitor/evaluate the identified teachers; a consulting-teachers/principals committee makes the final discharge decision. Its unclear why PAR has received so little public attention. The NY Times wrote a column praising PAR. But, the media and ed bloggers have otherwise largely ignored it. Opponents of high-stakes-testing should study and publicize PAR or something like it as an inexpensive, productive alternative to the destructive high-stakes-testing as a way to identify/remove ineffective teachers. (Reference: DianeRavitch.net April 24, 2012)
Who are the Bad Teachers?: Strong Evidence of Discrimination
Although PAR has been praised publicly, there has been little publicity about the teachers who are placed in this program. Who are these bad teachers? What does the PAR process look like in action?
We outline here our experience with PAR in Berkeley, California, the city known internationally as a bastion of progressive ideas with a history of defending freedom of expression. We begin by describing the demographics of the 41 teachers selected for PAR since the beginning of the program in 2002. This data was obtained through a California public records request by author Brian Crowell (at that point Brian was a union rep at Berkeley High.) The district did not share the data until school board president Josh Daniels intervened. Although we expected the data to show bias, we were shocked at the extent of the disparity.
·     In a district that is composed of about 6.5% African American teachers, a startling 10 out of 41 teachers (or 24%) were referred to PAR.


·     Thirty-five of the 41 teachers placed in PAR were in column 6 or 7 representing the most highly educated teachers on the salary schedule.
·     The average step placement of all teachers in PAR was 15 years of experience.

·     Of the 22 women placed in PAR, 20 the women were 55 years of age or older. The women teachers also had more years of experience (were at higher steps on the salary schedule.)


Math teachers at Berkeley High School analyzed this data more. Specifically we wondered how likely it was that data like this would happen by accident, or randomly.
First we looked at the African American teacher statistics. How likely is it that 10 out of 41 teachers would be African American if chosen randomly from a pool of 6.5%? Using some advanced high school math we found this probability to be a tiny 0.022%. Legally speaking, this would fall in the category of disparate impact discrimination.
Next we looked at the numbers for women age 55 and older. What is the probability that 19 of 21 women teachers in the district would be over the 55 and older if chosen randomly? This probability turned out to be even more dramatic. In our estimate of the California state demographic for teachers, roughly 21.5% of teachers are over the age of 55. Again using some advanced high school math, the chances that 19 of 21 female teachers would be 55 and over if chosen randomly is an astonishing 0.000000013%. This small probability would fall under the legal definition of disparate treatment discrimination.
Who are the Bad Teachers?: Two Case Studies
This year 3 additional teachers have been referred to the PAR program. Two of them are teachers of color; one of them is a woman over 55. We describe two of these teachers below.
Bad Teacher #1: The Black Teacher
Brian Crowell is a 36-year old African American history teacher at Berkeley High. Brian served as a union representative for 4 years. Immediately after disclosure of the statistics described above Brian received a failing evaluation and was immediately referred to PAR. He was then threatened by the Berkeley Unified central administration with immediate termination. Previous to his disclosure of the PAR data Brians teaching had been praised by administration. Here is a quote about Brian Crowells teaching from Berkeley High principal Pasquale Scuderi written a few months earlier:
Really was reminded of early observations of you back in 06. You are such a good storyteller and while I am sometimes cautious about teacher talk/lecture, you really had a big chunk of the class engaged and seemed, if Im right, to be connecting early European trade/explorations with how those arrangements look today.
Feedback: Widespread engagement several students were really dialed into your presentation. very pleased to see multiple African-American students actively engaged in the discussion; we need this type of involvement to be more commonplace in all classrooms for students of color.
Principal Pasquale Scuderi email to Brian Crowell, Sept. 18, 2012
Students responded loudly when they heard of their history teachers job being threatened. Here is a quote from a junior written directly to the school board.
Hello Board Members,
..... I am a junior at Berkeley High School in Academic Choice. Upon hearing of Brian Crowell being put on BPAR, I felt compelled to write to you. I had Mr. Crowell for both Freshman and Sophomore year and can tell you he has been one of the best, most supportive teachers I have ever had. Mr. Crowell was amazing in the way he connected the past to the present and the way in which he prepared us for AP classes, STAR testing and the future. He taught us to use our own thoughts to make important arguments through our research papers, and also gave us all a strong understanding of our government (3/28/13)
Bad Teacher #2: The Experienced Woman
Lucinda Daly is a 61-year-old experienced photography teacher at Berkeley High. She had been teaching for 25 years with strong evaluations and positive experiences with students. She maintains two darkrooms, brings students on annual field trips to Yosemite, and has regular photo exhibits popular among parents and other community members. She had never heard of PAR and was amazed to find herself referred.
 Students describe Dalys teaching in glowing terms. Here is a letter to the school board from a graduate:
 “After taking two years of photo with Ms Daly, I have grown in unexpected and lasting ways as an artist and as a person.  She is exceptional at teaching the fundamental techniques while allowing enough flexibility for students to work however they need to.

I understand that she was given an "unsatisfactory" evaluation by Mr. Melgoza, perhaps because of the loose structure of the class.  But that productive chaos is actually crucial for allowing the artistic process to take place.  In my opinion, the quality of work coming out of her classes would not be at nearly the same level if the class were quiet and orderly, and more aspects of the work process were stringently regulated.  

The way to judge the quality of Ms. Daly's teaching should be in the evaluation of the work her students produce, not how orderly her class may appear to be.  Her encouragement to push the boundaries of what the assignments ask for and openness to experimentation with techniques (which can sometimes be messy and disorganized) has taken me to artistic places I never thought I would reach when I first enrolled in her class.  

Furthermore, in an academic environment where students are constantly pressured to take increasingly rigorous classes, it is easy to become over-stressed.  The positive effect of having a space in which to set aside traditional measures of success and achievement, and simply spend time creating in a low-pressure environment, cannot be overstated.

Teachers Health and Future after PAR
One observation shared by every teacher put in PAR was a significant negative impact on their health.  Teachers report anxiety, depression, insomnia, panic disorder, lack of appetite, paranoia, disorientation and confusion. These illnesses were documented repeatedly by doctors. In a profession that is already increasingly challenging, the experience of having ones job scrutinized and job security threatened pushes teachers to the edge. Indeed, what jobs are available to an experienced teacher who has been dismissed? Where are the education ads for a teacher with 10+ years of experience?
Our experience with PAR in Berkeley raises these questions for all of us.

Silencing Our Voices and Threatening Academic Freedom
We have outlined the way the PAR has unfairly targeted subgroups of teachers. We conclude with an observation about what this means to our students and classrooms.

These kinds of programs diminish teacher power, and attempt to silence the voices of teachers. Teachers who speak or teach differently can be especially popular targets. Teachers of color and experienced women are often the most expressive, creative, and pedagogically divergent teachers. We worry that through racial profiling and age and gender discrimination, these voices will be silenced.

In a time when our students and world need rich, thoughtful and courageous classroom experiences, programs like PAR are especially destructive to public education. Californias per pupil funding is down 13.8% since The Great Recession. Do other states and districts have similar demographics when in comes to PAR participants? This is just the beginning of a long discussion about education, labor, civil rights and the future of public education at large.

Masha Albrecht is a Math Teacher at Berkeley High School
Brian Crowell is a Social Science Teacher at Berkeley High School


Footnotes:


1A. Disparate Impact and Disparate Treatment http://www.biddle.com/documents/disparatetrilogy.htm




5.Per Pupil Funding Education: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011


Monday, June 23, 2014

An American Tragedy: The Humiliation and Displacement of Veteran Teachers

Every day, i get an email or Facebook message from a teacher somewhere in the United States who has been driven our of their job by a school administrator after more than 20 years of loyal service to the profession, often with great distinction. These teachers have worked in all kinds of schools; have taught a wide variety of subjects, have sometimes been coaches, librarians and school counselors. The one thing they seem to have in common is that they loved their jobs, had developed their own effective methods of teaching, and were at the high end of the salary scale.

The number of people we are talking about here is very large- probably tens of thousands of teachers pushed out, maybe more than that. Each one of these forced departures is an individual tragedy- a life deprived of meaning and purpose, often in the context of a very public personal humiliation in front of the entire school community, sometimes plunging the individual into depression and their families into hardship

 But it is also a collective tragedy. At a time when the average teaching career is less than five years, when young people pour in and out of the profession at a staggering rate, the forcing out of skilled and veteran teachers deprives schools of mentoring, of continuity, and also of resistance to methods of administration and pedagogy which are poorly thought through fads rather than carefully researched strategies.

And perhaps the latter reason, along with purely budgetary concerns, is why these teachers have been targeted. In the last ten years, our public schools have been deluged with initiatives which have transformed the way teaching is conducted and teachers are evaluated- ranging from VAM ( rating of teachers on the basis of test driven measures of student achievement), to the Common Core Standards, to high orchestrated methods of conducting teacher observations ( Danielson and Marzano protocols being the best known) accompanied by an unremitting wave of standardized tests.  Young teachers are shell shocked by all of these policies because they have known nothing else and desperately try to conform, often leaving the profession in frustration when they can't adapt. Veteran teachers, who have seen education fads come and go, speak out and call for skepticism.  This is threatening to the new managerial ethos in education which relies more on intimidation than cooperation and is determined to script teachers rather than inspire them

As a result, the brightest and most talented veteran teachers in each school, the natural leaders recognized among their colleagues, their students and their students families, are the ones targeted for being removed from their position, a process made easier by the new evaluation systems created to weaken teacher tenure and allegedly get rid of bad teachers.

But what has happened has turned the alleged intention of such policies on their head- leading to  the systematic elimination of the best  and most experienced teachers.

This has left young teachers unprotected. It has also left students without their most effective advocates

Someone needs to call out everyone responsible for this tragedy from the US Department of Education, to the Halls of Congress, to State Legislatures  and individual schools

That might as well be me

Enough is enough.

Time to use our best veteran teachers to help keep great young teachers in the profession- not to humiliate them, shame them and turn their example into a warning to young teachers to avoid speaking out, and above all avoid loving your profession so much that you fight for it'

3 Reasons Why the Deal Between Gov Cuomo, the Legislature and NYSUT is Unacceptable

1. There is entirely too much testing in New York State. The fact that 3rd graders have to sit through six days of testing in ELA and Math is unconscionable. That is more testing than people endure to get into Law School, Medical School, Business School and even to pass the Bar. You don't change that you are sanctioning child abuse.
2. The absurd test security provisions regarding testing in New York State remain in place. What use is a test if teachers, students and parents don't get the tests back? Tests that are never returned to those who take them serve no educational purpose whatsoever. They represent a government subsidy to test companies and a sword to hold over the head of teachers, administrators schools and school district.
3, Nothing has been done to stop field testing in the public schools of New York State which use the unpaid labor of students to subsidize a private company- Pearson.
This cynical deal leaves students and families in the state unprotected from test abuse. It must be exposed and challenged in every available forum

Friday, June 20, 2014

Public School Failure- “The Big Lie” on Which Current Education Policy Rests



As someone who has worked in the Bronx for the last 45 years, it drives me crazy to hear business leaders and politicians denounce public schools as the one failed institution in an otherwise thriving society. Hello! During the 1970′s, when factories in the Bronx closed, business districts shuttered, banks refused to make loans and landlords abandoned and burned buildings that once held nearly half a million people, leaving the southern portion of the borough looking as though it suffered aerial bombardment, the public schools remained open, serving traumatized students with a shrinking array of resources. And these same schools were there ten years later when a crack epidemic hit the Bronx, providing a refuge from flying bullets and war torn streets. 

“That the academic performance of these schools suffered as a result of serving battered communities with limited resources is hardly surprising, but let us not forget they were there, on the ground, when private businesses ran away because they could not operate in such conditions. 

And the teachers!! The Bronx teachers who went to work among burned out cars and vacant lots and crack vials and flying bullets were the Bronx’s unsung heroes, valiantly serving children living in a war zone, helping young people abandoned by the rest of the country achieve a measure of self confidence and success at a time when few cared what happened to them

And now, the Arne Duncans and Wendy Kopps and Bill Gates of the world have the nerve to blame these same schools and teachers for the so-called “achievement gap” and the persistence of poverty and inequality in the United States. In a time when our biggest corporations have downsized and outsourced, exported jobs, and driven down wages, the public schools have actually done a better job upholding the living standards of Americans and defending its best traditions, than their private sector counterparts.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Protest Targeting of Holyoke ( Mass) Teacher Union Leader Gus Morales

For Immediate Release
June 19, 2014

HOLYOKE TEACHERS, PARENTS, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS PROTEST TARGETING OF UNION PRESIDENT-ELECT AND PRO-STUDENT ACTIVIST

Holyoke, MA – Holyoke teachers, parents, and community members are protesting the School Department’s decision to not renew the teaching contract of Gus Morales, president-elect of the teacher’s union and a leading activist speaking out for students and the schools they deserve.  Teachers and parents will make their views known at the School Committee meeting at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, June 23 at Dean High School, 1045 Main Street, Holyoke, MA.

For two years, Gus Morales was a highly rated teacher. Then on February 3 he spoke out to the School Committee about data walls, many of which listed students by name along with their scores on standardized tests and many of which were posted in areas accessible to the public (illegal under FERPA). Since then, and especially since he was overwhelmingly elected president of the union local, Gus has been targeted.  He was given highly dubious negative evaluations and has now been told his contract will not be renewed.  

Teachers are outraged by the non-renewal of Gus’s contract, as are many parents. Gus grew up in Holyoke and graduated from Holyoke High.  He is a veteran, bilingual, and a teacher who has the support of students and parents.  He is one of the few Puerto Rican teachers in Holyoke even though the student body is over 75 percent Hispanic. Gus is a male role model for many students.  In May, Gus was elected president of the Holyoke Teachers Association with overwhelming support from his fellow teachers.

Chris Butler, President of I.A.F.F. Local #1693, says, “The Holyoke Firefighters Local #1693 stand in solidarity with the Holyoke teachers and we fully support Mr. Morales in this travesty against organized labor.”

A meeting was held Thursday, June 19th, with Gus Morales and MTA’s General Counsel at the request of the Holyoke Teachers Association to prepare for legal action should the district stand firm in its decision to non-renew Gus Morales. Barbara Madeloni, the president-elect of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said, “Of course the union will fight this, and fight it hard. A union can’t allow someone to be targeted for his leadership in the union and the community.”

“Teachers know that Gus builds warm relationships with his students and has their respect,” said Nick Zyla, a teacher at the Donahue School. Jose Bou was concerned that the School Department would get rid of one of the few Puerto Rican teachers in town: “This is the wrong way to go.  The School Department should be making every effort to keep strong and effective Puerto Rican teachers.”

As of the time of this press release there are over 1,100 signatures on the petition to have Mr. Morales reinstated.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/teachers-voices-must-1.fb48?source=s.icn.fb&r_by=9841933
Contact:  
Cheri Cluff 413.335.7568, clcluff@yahoo.com
Jose Bou jbou@acad.umass.edu
Erin DuFresne erin.dufresne@gmail.com
Angela Thatcher thatcherangela@yahoo.com 413-519-4238
Kiely Rigali kielyrigali@gmail.com 413-575-9263

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

If the Problem Is Child Poverty- Union Busting and Common Core Aligned Tests are the Wrong Response

As someone who has spent the last 45 years working with Bronx schools and community organizations, it utterly astonishes me that Hedge fund managers, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and Hollywood celebrities seem to think that undermining teachers unions, funding charter schools and deluging schools with Common Core aligned tests are the answer to rising child poverty:

Especially since I have yet to hear them say a peep about

1. The children in Bronx schools who start crying Friday afternoon because they are afraid they won't eat over the weekend

2. The tens ( and possibly hundreds) of thousands of children in the Bronx sleeping on couches or doubled up in beds because many families in the borough can't afford their own apartments.

3. The rampant child obesity problems in the Bronx because there are few places to shop for healthy food and because recess, physical education and after school programs have been transformed into test prep.

4, The fear that Bronx teenagers, especially young men, have of being "stopped and frisked" whenever they are walking the streets.

Forgive me for being cynical. but their version of School Reform seems much more like a diversion than a realistic confrontation with the problem of Child Poverty.

Monday, June 16, 2014

For those who say Strong Unions are A Problem for the Nation



In the mid 1950's:

35 percent of the US Labor Force was unionized
The top 1 percent of earners made 9 percent of the income
The US was the most equal advanced nation in the world in terms of income distribution
Millions of American families were moving out of crowded apartments into
private homes

In 2014

11 percent of the US Labor force is unionized
The top 1 percent of earners makes 23 percent of the income
The US is one of the most unequal advanced nation in terms of income distribution
Tens of millions of American families share or rent out space in what were once private homes while 13 million homes and apartments remain empty.

And you say that strong unions threaten the American way of life and are undermining our education system?