A Bronx Teacher Comments on the Humiliation of Her Students

From a high school teacher in the Bronx. This is infuriating on so many levels. Another example of how "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies are spreading from charter schools to public schools
.. I noticed that some of my ADHD kids were coming back from lunch with a ton of energy when that used to be when they got rid of some of it. Turns out they're not allowed to go outside any more on our field during lunch. They're also not allowed to talk above a whisper, they can't go from table to table to talk with friends. No phones. No hats. Upper and lower classmen are separated. So now because of our extended day some kids are going from 8-4 without an opportunity to release some energy. It's disgusting

Collateral Damage of Obama/Duncan Education Policies

1. Linking teacher evaluation to student test scores by federal mandate produces lowest teacher morale in recorded history.
2. Overemphasis on testing traumatizes students, families and teachers
3. Huge investment in charters results in profiteering, corruption and abusive treatment of teachers and students
4. Support for school closings destabilizes neighborhoods and promotes gentrification
5. Reinterpretation of federal regulations and support for Common Core produces widespread demoralization and humiliation of Students with Disabilities

Do Teachers Unions Need to Fight Harder for Their Members? Labor Day Reflections by Dr Patricia Robinson-Linder

On this Labor Day – and I am extremely grateful for it – I am collecting my thoughts with regard to my membership in labor unions. For the record, I have all my life held down two full-time careers, which necessitated my membership in eight labor unions. Most of them are part of the AFL-CIO. Two of my show business unions are affiliated with the Teamsters. Also, for the record, I belong to both of the teachers’ unions, the AFT and the NEA, as well as the professors’ union, the AAUP. I have been working in one of my careers since I was fifteen months old. At some point in my maturation, I decided that “the union can help you and the union can hurt you”. Clearly, I tried never to be naïve .Even so, in forty-five years of teaching, ten for the School District of Philadelphia, and more than sixty years in entertainment, there has been only one epic fail, and that was at the hands of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. First, allow me to say that I have no particular quarrel with the downtown, Chestnut Street representatives who connected with my schools. They were good, except in one way, and I now believe that that one tragic flaw was orchestrated somewhere on high and handed down through many layers of the American Federation of Teachers. Looking back, I believe I received no substantial warning from the teachers’ unions as to how the corporatization of education would affect us so negatively. I am referring to the advent and arrival of Common Core, the almost ridiculous and certainly obscure “newer” methods of teacher evaluation, the fervor of administrators to accept the garroting of highly-qualified, wonderfully-educated career faculty, including what I would call “smear campaigns,” and the bizarre and often pointless paperwork assignments (e.g. “back-mapping”) that kept us away from our preparation and execution of admirable classroom presentations, and our work with students, much of it individualized, that encouraged all students to internalize their lessons. Although I had been reading about it, the entire corporatization process remained something of an abstraction to me, something that would occur “in the future,” perhaps after I retired. Rather, in my last three years of teaching – and without the meetings that should have been called, the “coaching” of what one should do in these antagonistic situations, and the early and strong denunciation of some of School District of Philadelphia’s anti-education, anti-teacher practices, the whole corporatization initiative hit me fully in the face. The unions needed to protect us better. We needed full, direct warnings and instruction as to what to do to protect ourselves, the parents and guardians of our students, and, most of all, our students themselves.I fought through two years of the hostile chaos, battle-scarred beyond belief. The third and last year, just as I was about to file my retirement papers, in an irony that I view in a different light each day, I was hurt at school. Things had happened before, but not like this one – and yet I held no one at fault. Boys and girls will be boys and girls. Some youngsters running through the halls at the end of the week in some kind of a TGIF-energized moment, knocked me off my pins, and I flew into two walls. At first, I had a kind of lucidity, then I didn’t. Temple University told me that I was suffering from a double-concussion. I went into treatment that addressed some loss of memory, some trouble with the speech centers of the brain and those controlling coordination and spatial distances. My family doctor told me that “it would all come back”. My memory eventually returned in full in late April of my retirement year and the speech centers had cleared and re-aligned by February. Even with the best physical therapy, my balance never fully returned; I still watch out for myself in that regard. Ultimately, an old injury, incurred in theater work, was exacerbated by the new, and I now walk with a lift in my right shoe and, I’m sorry to say, with a limp.Retirement proceeded precisely as it should have, making me a retired employee of two states, Pennsylvania and Maryland, both of which were good to me. I have returned to college teaching and full-time theater and film work, yet I am haunted by that last year in public education. Somehow, I still feel the AFT had failed me, but if the concussions and other injuries had not occurred, could I have not done real, substantive teaching for those students, in spite of the unions’ failure to grasp the real gravity of it all, that would have set those young people on real lived lives and rewarding career paths? I suspect I will think about that one forever.

Guidelines for Investigating or Suing Charter Schools

When launching investigations of charter schools at the state or municipal level, or suing charter schools for misappropriation of public funds, the following questions should be asked:

1. What private interests benefit from the closing of public schools and the creation of charter schools? What tax breaks are conferred and what profits are made? To what degree do groups lobbying for the creation of charter schools stand to benefit financially from the policies they are pushing for?.

2. What is the connection between the creation of charter schools and real estate speculation which leads to rising rents and displacement of long time neighborhood residents?

3. To what degree do charters engage in weeding out of students who do not perform well on tests or are unwilling to conform to draconian behavior codes ? What are the consequences of large number of such students being pushed into local public schools, which have to accept them, or, if they are older, joining a population that is unschooled entirely?

4. To what degree do charters engage in unfair labor practices in their treatment of teaching and support staff, and how do these practices contribute to undermining the stability and professional integrity of the teaching profession in the communities where charters are located?

5. Which politicians on a city, state and national level receive major contributions because of their support of charter schools, and where are those donations coming from?

What Happened to Education Strategies that Promoted "Community Centered Pedagogy?"

 In the late 1980's and early 1990's, responding to a wave of violence sweeping through urban America, educators of color began proposing that public schools transform their pedagogy to enhance the self esteem and historical undersanding of young people in the hardest hit communities. They called for the transformation of social studies curricula to incorporate more Black and Latino history, for the creation of new public schools in which Black and Latino history were integral parts of the school culture, for the development of strategies to recruit more Black and Latino teachers, especially from communities that were most at risk.

There was a tremendous amount of energy and idealism accompanying this vision of Urban Education, and controversy as well. Supporters claimed these measure were necessary to save a generation of youth at risk; critics claimed they would intensify racial divisions, promote hostility to white  teachers and administrators and, in the most extreme cases, undermine patriotism and national unity.

 Fierce debates about such strategies occurred all through the 90's, but by the time  George W Bush had taken office, the critics had largely won the day. When No Child Left Behind was passed, its architects decided to base their vision of compliance and equity entirely on conformity to  National Standards which allowed little if any adaptation to community traditions.  The same approach was incorporated, in even more restrictive form, by
Barack Obama's "Race to the Top" which called for mandatory closing of schools which did not perform well on standardized tests as a condition for receiving federal grants.  Not only were inner city schools not rewarded or honored for adapting pedagogy to the cultural traditions of the communities they were located in, they were penalized for doing so if their efforts did not raise scores on standardized tests.

   The rise of  "standardization" as the centerpiece of national education policy, had a powerful impact on the charter school movement, which in its early stages, had proponents who tried to create schools incorporating community centered  pedagogy, and went out of their way to try to recruit teachers and administrators of color.  With startling rapidity, charters with that approach began losing ground, and most importantly losing funding, to charter chains such as K.I.P.P., and Success Academies, which saw student test scores on standardized tests as the centerpiece of their pedagogy and actually preferred inexperienced white teachers with little connection to the communities they taught in to veteran teachers of color who were the dominant teaching staffs in neighborhood public schools.

      Worse yet, the example of these charter chains was used as a sword for policy maker to hold over the head of public school administrators, warning them that unless they followed this model of pedagogy and teacher training, they were likely to see their schools closed, and their jobs eliminated.

     By the time of Barack Obama's second term in office, community centered pedagogy was so out of favor that no local school board in any major city dared promote it. High test scores on standardized exams, preferably those which incorporated the Common Core standards, were to be the sole measure of education equity anyone would take seriously.

    Perhaps it is time to revisit "the path not taken."  Punitive standardization has not promoted education equity, not in  New Orleans, not in New York, not in Washington DC, not anywhere. It has  not inspired students, it has not empowered teachers, it has not given families stronger connections to their neighborhoods.

    Perhaps it is time to bring back community history and recruit teachers and principals who see neighborhood cultures and traditions as an asset to their work rather than an obstacle to overcome in the pursuit of "standardization."

R.I.P. Avis Hanson "Teacher for Life"

One of the greatest teachers I have ever met passed yesterday evening. Her name was Avis Hansen and for more than 30 years, she was a teacher, English chair and advisor to the student newspaper at two Bronx high schools, Morris and Taft. . Among the many great students she mentored was Dr Clara Rodriguez, Professor of Sociology at Fordham University and an internationally known pioneer in Latino Studies. Avis Hanson's interview with the Bronx African American History Project, one of the most eloquent we ever conducted, will be in the book of the BAAHP's oral histories Fordham Press will be publishing. In it, she described how her West Indian family, looking for better educational opportunities for their children,found their way to a predominantly Jewish section of the Bronx during the Depression years when landlords began advertising vacant apartments to "select colored families." The neighborhood her family moved to, Morrisania, not only became her home for more than 20 years, it was the site of the high school where she got her first teaching position, Morris High School, which was a short walk from where she lived. As someone who knew poverty as a child, who knew discrimination, Avis Hanson welcomed students of all backgrounds who entered her classroom at Morris, provided they showed the same passion for learning that she did. She burned with a fire for knowledge and a passion for justice that lit up the lives of those fortunate to know her. Never married, Avis Hanson survived into her early 90's, still in touch with her favorite students and those she mentored.

RIP Avis Hanson. You embodied what it means to be "a teacher for life.

What a REAL Education Commissioner in NY would fight for

1. Restore the local diploma for high schools graduation for students for whom Regents exams are developmentally inappropriate. Let all young people who work hard and pass their courses get a high school diploma

2. Cut the length of exams in elementary school to 2 days with no more than 90 minutes of testing each day.

3. Eliminate the use of standardized testing to rate teachers, principals, schools and school districts. Use such tests for diagnostic purposes only to help individual students.

4. Enforce complete test transparency and end punitive test secrecy

5. Radically expand the number of consortium or portfolio schools in the state that are exempt from state tests and develop holistic strategies for assessing student performance

6.. Bring back vocational and technical education through out the state in collaboration with community colleges and local employers.

7. End the requirement that all tests in the state be aligned to the Common Core standards and end all contracts with for profit test companies. Go back to the system of having teachers and teacher educators devise state tests.

8. Prohibit cancellation of recess or physical education for test prep and work to promote play and physical activity among students