A Few Modest Proposals For New York City Public Schools.

1 Consolidate small schools to reduce administrative overhead and assure that all students have access to a full array of athletic teams, arts programs and counseling services.
2. Expand community schools initiatives and keep schools in high needs communities open into the evening hours for students, parents and community residents
.3. Expand the number of consortium or portfolio schools exempt from state tests and have them expand into middle schools as well as high schools
.4. Expand school based agriculture programs which use food growing and food preparation to help teach science as well as promote healthy eating among students, staff and community residents.
5. Revive and expand the great vocational and technical programs which were once the pride of New York City public schools

With a big shout outs to Aixa Rodriguez, David Garcia-Rosen, David and Lisette Ritz and Francesco Portelos for inspiring me and/or encouraging me to do this.

Resisting the Attack on Teachers and Teaching: Speech to the Old Tappan School District

 I am honored to stand before some of the most dedicated, idealistic, compassionate and creative public servants in the nation. Would you please rise and give yourselves a standing ovation

  It is the shame of a nation that  public school teachers have become the targets of a campaign of defamation. Politicians of both parties, cheered on by the press, try to out do one another in attacking you. No one epitomizes this more than the Governor of this state, Chris Christie, who during a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, actually compared k-12 teachers with ISIS. But please don’t think I am being partisan. The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who is a Democrat, is probably kicking himself that he didn’t say it first, as he and Christie are virtually indistinguishable in both their education policies and their public pronouncements about teachers and teaching

Why is this happening? Why are people who have devoted their lives to working with children become targets? Why have the nation’s largest and wealthiest foundations spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prove that you are failures and trying to find short cuts to the painstaking teaching and mentoring of students that you do every day?

Some of this stems from pure greed. There are huge profits to be made in new technologies designed to take the place of what teachers traditionally have done. Test manufacturers and software companies stand to make tens of billions of dollars by institutionalizing testing from Pre-K on up and evaluating teachers, schools and entire districts on the basis of that data. And even more money can be made from developing consulting firms to be brought in when the inevitable failures are documented, or when entire school districts, such as Newark, Camden or Patterson can be put into receivership and taken over by the state. And that doesn’t count the investment opportunities in charter schools, where investors can get a 39% tax credit which allows them to recoup their initial outlet in 7 years.

 But there is something else happening here that makes the attack on teachers and teaching even more insidious. And that is the arrogant conviction, held by those who have accumulated great wealth in the private sector, that anyone can become a teacher, that most teachers are incompetent, and that if private sector methods of evaluation, based on performance data, are brought to education, that test scores will magically improve,low performing schools will be brought up to standard, and the US rise to the top in international rankings. These individuals, who think of themselves as Masters of the Universe because of their own financial success, really believe this. They think that if you give teachers material incentives to succeed through merit pay and fire teachers when they fail after undermining their job security, that the education system will instantaneously become as productive as the companies they lead

However, there is one big problem with this approach. There is a big difference between selling houses or cars, investing in real estate, speculating in pork bellies, or packaging mortgages into bonds and teaching children. Children are not products- they are individuals in the making with vulnerabilities as well as strengths. They need love, support, compassion and humor, space to dream and opportunities to play, and adults who will work with them to get the best outof their unique individual abilities not just have them reach for an abstract standard.

  And what happens when you erase children’s individuality. Tell them that the only thing that matters is how they performon tests. Tell them that their teachers jobs and families’ future depend ontheir test scores.

      They start hating school. Start doubting themselves. Start losing the joy of discovery and the excitement of learning.

        Make no mistake about it. The attack on the nation’s teachers is crushing the nation’s children. It is filling even high performing students with stress and creating huge disciplinary problems in high poverty districts where gym and recess and the arts have been decimated or used for test prep.

          So how do we fight back? How do we get the public to stop supporting politicians who demonize teachers?

            First of all, we have to realize that most people don’t empathize with teachers as workers. If you tell themy our jobs are being made into a nightmare by over scripting, micromanagement and absurd and inaccurate data based evaluation, they will tell you “Welcome to the club.” This kind of approach to management is extraordinarily common in the private sector and is spreading like wildfire to the public sector. So you will not necessarily get much of a hearing if you tell people your jobs are beingruined

        However, you will get a hearing if youtell people that the tests being introduced into schools, largely to evaluate your performance, are destroying their children’s educations and putting intolerable stress on their families. Ask them—Do their children cry when test time is near? Does your family go into crisis mode when your children are given homework? Do you have to deal with tantrums where a child says they don’t want to go school, or are furious that school trips have been cancelled?

      This is the common ground teachers must find with families.

      And that common ground is emerging. One important sign of it is the meteoric growth of the Opt Out Movement. In New Jersey, more than 45,000 children refused to take the PARCC tests; in New York, more than 250,000 children refused to take Common Core aligned ELA and Math tests.

      This revolt is one important hope for a return to sanity in testing, teacher evaluation, and pedagogy

      But teachers cannot afford to be silentor let parents lead this movement without their support. They have to explain to everyone who will listen that great teaching involves relationship building,an understanding of each child’s individual talents and aptitudes, and love and caring, things that can’t be easily measured or quantified. And that great teachers need great administrators who support and nurture teachers who display those traits, who must in turn be supported by strong school boards and superintendents

    I know this first hand because my wife is one of those principals who nurture great teachers- who makes sure they are given every opportunity to improve their best practices, but who also defends them with passion and intelligence against attacks from elected officials and the press.

 The teachers in this district are also very lucky they have administrators and a superintendent who understand what theirjobs entail but you cannot afford to be complacent., The attack from above is so relentless that no district is safe. You have to talk to everyone who will listen about how destructive current testing policies are and explain what itwill take to bring out the best in our children. You cannot just close the door and teach. It will take an heroic battle on the part of all of us to challenge the Gates and the Waltons, the Christies and the Cuomo’s and get elected officials to support policies that support theteaching you were trained to do

    The sad truth is that we are in a war forour children and our jobs  Everyone of us must step up to the place and become an advocate for sound policies as well as an excellent teacher

    Since I work in the Bronx, I want to close with a line from the most famous hip hop song to come out of the borough, Grand Master Flash’s “The Message”

“Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge, I’m trying not to lose my head. Uh huh huh huh huh .Sometimes I wonder how I keep from going under”

So I ask you Old Tappan Teachers are you going under?

Chant with me now “HELL NO!”

     

Ol

Civil Rights Lawyers and Testing

Civil rights lawyers cling desperately to testing because they think it is the only way they can document discrimination in education. However, data gathering through testing is very different than gathering date in employment because the instrument chosen corrupts the very experience you are assessing. Testing, whether to evaluate student, teacher, school or even district performance, changes what goes on in classrooms. It excludes certain kind of experiences, and privileges others. And in high poverty districts, where resources are scarce, it has the effect of promoting rote learning at the expense of creative thinking, and crowding out arts, sports, play, and subjects which are not easily standardized or quantified. The result, is that policies designed to promote equity undermine it and lead to massive demoralization of students who the policies are presumed to help. Using high stakes testing for data gathering takes schools down a dangerous path. Other, less damaging, methods of assessment must be found lest we freeze current inequalities for generations

Let Em Play by Bronx Principal Jamaal Bowman

What an amazing day and honor to join Dr. Jesse Turner on his walk to Washington D.C. for true education reform. When I arrived at Crotona Park in the legendary South Bronx to meet Jesse and longtime Bronx activist Dr. Mark Naison, I was immediately struck by the emptiness in this beautiful park. There were about 12 tennis courts totally available for anyone to use, acres and acres of fresh cut gorgeous green grass, a baseball diamond, swings, and a sprinkler system, all being used by no one.

 I asked myself, "where in the world are the kids!?" I guess the answer was obvious, the kids were in school. But should the answer be that obvious? This is the last week for public schools. Testing is over and based on my fifteen years of experience, not much "teaching" takes place this time of year. So why aren't the kids outside, with their teachers, playing, and having a great time? This is the perfect time of year to do it. The last week of school, no tests, test prep, quality reviews, or mandates. Get the kids outside and let them play.

 The desolate park was scary to me as I think it communicates a psychological subjugation that has become pervasive in public education. Studies have shown that once people have been in "bondage" for a certain period of time, it's difficult to break free even if a proverbial "door" is left wide open. The empty park today felt like a metaphor for the oppressive state of public education. Teachers, students and families are oppressed by unreliable and invalid standardized exams. They're oppressed by mandates obsessed with accountability and compliance. And finally, they're oppressed by a fascist autocratic system within a so called democratic country. The freedom of no testing and the last week of school still couldn't get teachers and students outside to play.

 Have we forgotten how play facilitates joy and how joy drives a love of life? The more we play, the less we are stressed, the less anxiety we feel, the more anger dissipates, the less crimes are committed. Imagine a school system is which play and sports were at the center? Or at the very least a part of a holistic approach to public education? Special Ed referrals would go down as would diagnoses for ADHD and depression. I argue that the school to prison pipeline, and the disproportionate number of boys placed in Special Ed and diagnosed with ADHD would cease to exist if movement and play were a pillar of our curriculum. As Dan Pink states, play passion and purpose will drive the 21st century economy. Why should public school students be left behind?

 Thank you Jesse Turner for modeling the way. Thank you for walking over 400 miles at the tender age of 60 years young to properly reform public education. Thank you for fighting to end high stakes testing and bringing play, the arts, and the multiple intelligences back into our schools. Thank you for making C.A.S.A. Middle School a part of your amazing journey. You have affirmed for me that we will win this fight. Nothing can stop us now.

Gus Morales Firing Epitomizes Everything Wrong with "School Reform"

You are leading a high poverty school district in Massachusetts with a majority Latino population. You have a teacher who grew up in the district. He is male, Latino, brilliant, and charismatic. He always dreamed of teaching in the community he grew up in. But he is also a veteran who is proud and outspoken. When he sees something wrong, he says so. Evern though he is a new teacher, his colleagues, who are mostly white, look to him for leadership, especially when he speaks out against excessive testing and the way tests and data walls are used to humiliate students. They elect him, as an untenured teacher, president of the local teachers unions.

So what do you do? Do you focus on what this teacher- Gus Morales- brings to his students, to the families in the district, to the entire community. Or do you decide to get rid of him to crush the opposition to the new testing policies and have a teaching staff that accepts the new "reforms" passively?
You decide to do the latter. You fire him once, and then in the face of national protest, hire him back. And then, after a year, you decide to fire him again.

This shows something we see happening all over the country. For all the comments that Arne Duncan makes about diversifying the nation's teaching force, there is nothing more threatening to the current generation of school reformers- Duncan included- than people with real roots in the communities they teach in who can connect with the students and parents in those districts. That is why they fire people like Gus Morales and try to bring in Teach for American temps who will be in those classrooms for only a few years and then leave.

And that is why we- the people who really care about children and schools and teaching- have to fight to get Gus Morales back in the classroom.
He represents exactly what we need in our high poverty schools and indeed all our public schools- teachers for life who live in the communities they teach in and love the children they work with.

 
Note: The School District is Holyoke, Massachusetts.Wi

Reformers Unleash Vile Personal Attacks on Montclair Education Activists

In Montclair NJ, a strong coalition of parents and educators has resisted, and pushed back corporate reform.  This in the very town where so many of the national ed deformers live.

After a two year struggle, the Broad Academy Superintendent resigned, leaving behind an $11.5 million dollar deficit. Within a week, the mayor, the President of the Montclair Teachers Association and the Board of School Estimate resolved the budget crisis with little loss to staff positions.  And by the end of the year, we enjoyed a 48% opt out rate on the PARCC, a new pro-public education interim Superintendent and Board of Education.  Education may be back in the hands of educators.

But in this town where national reform luminaries live, they have not swallowed defeat gracefully.

With substantial funding, they formed Montclair Kids First and hired Shavar Jeffries, who ran for mayor in Newark and lost on a pro-charter platform, as their lawyer.  Jeffries went to work bringing ethics charges against a progressive town councilman, relying upon the Open Records Act to extract emails of key progressive board members, principals and the President of the teachers union and FOILed more than 1000 of Michelle Fine’s emails over two years.

Watch out, hide the kids. MCAS and CUNY are coming after Montclair Schools!

MKF (and the MSW laundered emails on their blog) came looking for the union(s); external funding; a national game-plan; a proxy relationship to Diane Ravitch. They found no money or funding, just parents and a community organizing to save public schools from the tentacles of reforms. These are the tired tactics education reformers use: They live in a world of opposition files created for their critics.  They throw money to fund their reforms; they throw money to silence their opponents. But when they find nothing, they resort to tactics like this—their latest propaganda piece, a movie version of private emails.
But propaganda can be a tricky thing. MSW posts are no more accurate now than they were before they had access to private emails, full of misattributions and ideas out of context. Expensive glossy MKF mailers bring on the tired reform narrative of failing schools only to be corrected by parents and school officials; and their recent propaganda film has popped up, like a jack in the box clown, above Michelle Fine’s many wonderful talks on race, justice, and privatization of education—an unintended counterpoint to their silly video. And if MCAS weren’t enough, they now claim CUNY is after Montclair Schools!  Cue up the eerie music and dial up your paranoia. Enjoy the sounds and images of desperate reformers looking for your support.

Video
https://youtu.be/Q7uBr7TnCQM

Stan Karp article
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/29_03/29-3_karp.shtml

Defend Gus Morales!!!

Gus Morales, head of the Holyoke Teachers Union, is the antithesis of the Teach for America temp who is the teacher of choice for a growing number of school districts. He grew up in Holyoke, went to school there, returned to Holyoke after service in the military, and became an elementary school teacher in that heavily Latino school district. Gus is brilliant, passionate, and loves children. But he is also an outspoken critic of the overemphasis on testing that is a hall mark of current education policy and the use of "data walls" to humiliate children. So for the second year in the row, the Holyoke School District has refused to renew his contract. What is happening to Gus is a symbol of everything that is wrong in current education policy. He is EXACTLY the kind of teacher we need in our schools, especially high poverty schools-someone who grew up in the same community as he is teaching in whose goal is to be a "teacher for life." It is time to rally in his defense, not only because Gus is a great teacher, but because he represents exactly the kind of person we should be encouraging to enter the teaching profession!