Now we get MaryEllen Elia from Florida, fired just months ago from Hillsborough, Florida district (which includes Tampa), in a 4-3 vote, as their schools superintendent. Chancellor Tisch dismissed the flap (To her credit she has more classroom and schools leadership experience than King had.)
[Update: Tampa Tribune, September 19, 2013, on how she got an F.]
Yet, she got a unanimous nod from the New York State Board of Regents, from the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor. As with NYC principals, you can fall on your face, and rise to the top. But for teachers? Once you slip, never forgiven.
The controversy with Elia? This piece today in the Diane Ravitch blog gives important clues, and her points of controversy put her very well in sync with NYSED chancellor Tisch (pro-high stakes tests, pro-Common Core, pro-test-based evaluations of teachers, pro-merit pay of teachers --see this profile by the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss):
Parent activists are wary of Elia because of her past support for high-stakes testing. To win their confidence, she must clarify her views about testing, about the Opt Out movement, about detaching test scores from teacher evaluations, about merit pay, and about Common Core.
And for the anxiety factor: the New York teachers unions are rumored to like her. But who exactly is that (UFT? also NYSUT?) and why do they like her? Ravitch says that Elia was in the rightist Gov. Rick Scott's transition team.
*NYSED couldn't protect its own site *Can you trust its choice for housing your child's data?
*S**y B***h hack = a scandal of poor site security, John King's BridgeGate-sized Epic Fail
*Update: Syracuse teachers president endorses Iannuzzi's no confidence call vs. King
As broken by a parent's blog, Schools of Thought and its "Commissioner King Endorses “Sexy Bitch” Quizzes as Fun Test Prep For NY Students!," the New York State Education Department's site linked for much of a day this week to a salacious site called S**y B***h. Clearly, this demonstrated the NYSED's site hackability.
This incident, plus the Target massive security breach now up to 100 million customers' card data, plus the recently reported Nieman Marcus breach, plus the Sachem district, Suffolk, Long Island, breach of 15,000 students' records, dramatically demonstrates ONCE AND FOR ALL that sites can be hacked. More to the point, the NYSED's site's hackability is of looming significance because one would expect any site associated with NYSED should have iron-clad security, but this has been broken obviously. This bodes badly for the inBloom student data system. Yes, it will be run privately. But if NYSED cannot protect its own site, how can it vouch for inBloom's security. [As of blog press time, the NYSED is still down.] If Target and Nieman Marcus, who rests on credit or debit card use, cannot guarantee system security, how can parents have faith in inBloom?
NYSED's sites plug Common Core --this is a central objective for the sites at this point. This scandal of lax site security cannot help but steer more attention to Common Core and its flaws. King, Cuomo and Mulgrew must be breathing sighs of relief as the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie BridgeGate scandal roils on and on and on, devouring media attention, and preventing more attention to present New York State scandals, as opposed to past New Jersey scandalous acts.
Toward the end of the parent blog breaking the story the parent adds: King’s Sexy Bitch Quizzes are to NY what Christie’s Traffic Problems are to NJ!
"Damned straight" we can say to that!
No voters chose John King; Regents did. Maybe that's why he acts like a king.
I bring in NYSED Commissioner John King in first, as Common Core and inBloom are his pet projects. And as he in desperate moments falls into "besides federal law" requires CC and student data tracking, repeating Gatesean myths.
No Common Core, no need for souped up NYSED sites. No CCSS-linked tests and data collection, no need for inBloom. Make no mistake, this is the central project for John King and Merry Tisch.
Just as this week has been the epic fail for Chris Christie with his widely panned press conference performance, this site hack has been bad news for ed deform cheerleaders and NYS.
Now to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: he cannot smell the coffee: parents hate Common Core; they loathe John King for his haughtiness. King must go. Yet Cuomo doesn't get the urgency. Parents noticing the NYSED site hack will no doubt spread the word as another collossal blunder by Cuomo, and implicit demonstration of his failure to tackle the human representation of the Common Core cancer, John King.
Remember it's not just his obnoxious aloofness to parental concerns at the Common Core town meetings. King:
*Repeatedly threatened to remove control of the Buffalo School District from elected representatives, his most recent threat here; and ally Cuomo's bullying rhetoric here, alleging that the District and the union's APPR restrictions were an "ethical and legal fraud"
*Blanket-characterized Common Core opponents as Tea Partiers
Make no mistake, teachers will notice. Some hard questions for Cuomo and Mulgrew
And questions: let's give up for a moment asking why JK is into CCSS.
Why is Cuomo so committed to John King? Passing the buck to the Regents or the legislature doesn't cut it. Cuomo is supposed to be the political leader of New York State. Sounds a little like Chris Christie: blame lots of allies; but assume no accountability yourself.
Why is Mulgrew so committed to Common Core? (And mere gripes for a better curriculum don't suffice.)
Why won't he absolutely draw a line in the sand against the inBloom program?
Why on earth is Mulgrew probably the most enthusiastic labor backer of Cuomo?
Why cannot Mulgrew get it that teachers in New York City --not to mention NYS for that matter-- are not happy with John King or Common Core?
So Mulgrew is trying to steal the MORE caucus' motto, Our working conditions are our students learning conditions? He should heed notice that Common Core is part of kids' learning package and he is part and parcel part of the hell for a learning experience that King and Tisch have imposed on young minds in NYS.
But note that when the Common Core Gospel of Faith traveling show came to Manhattan, it was only MORE caucus supporters (not Mulgrew-allied Unity caucus reps) among UFT members that spoke out against the Common Core. And remember that the tour was supposed to come to Queens and Staten Island. Could the delay against scheduling be that those boroughs are a little bit more "suburban"?
Link for video of protest: http://bcove.me/2y9zapsa
About
two dozen teachers and parents marched outside the Town of Tonawanda
home of Regent Robert M. Bennett on Monday to show their displeasure
with the way the state has implemented new learning standards and
tests designed to measure them.
The
Buffalo Teachers Federation protest lasted only 35 minutes, but the
teachers hoped to send a strong message by choosing to picket on the
sidewalk outside the home of a state education official.
“What
I want is for Mr. Bennett, and all of the Board of Regents, to be
aware that teachers and parents alike are not happy with the
implementation, are not happy with the amount of testing,” said
Joanie Cavanaugh, a teacher at Hutchinson-Central Technical High
School who was among the protesters.
The
residential location was an unusual one during a national “Day of
Action” that featured rallies and news conferences organized by
teachers unions, educators and community groups across the state. The
events also included a panel discussion on education in West Seneca.
The BTF picketing of Bennett’s house appeared to be the only event
in the state that was staged at the home of a public official.
“This
is not just about teacher evaluations. This is about what we’re
doing to our kids,” BTF President Phil Rumore said, pointing to the
Common Core standards being pushed by State Education Commissioner
John B. King Jr. “The Regents are the ones who have allowed
Commissioner King to take these steps that are detrimental to our
students.”
Bennett,
who has represented Western New York on the state’s Board of
Regents since 1995 and is now chancellor emeritus, said he was
disturbed by the tactic of picketing his home.
“It’s
disappointing, to say the least,” Bennett said before the protest.
“A phone call would have sufficed. If Phil wanted to talk to me or
yell at me, he could have just picked up the phone.”
Bennett
was not at the house during the protest. The pickets walked quietly
on the sidewalk, carrying signs that read, “Our students are not a
test score.” They ended the event by chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho,
Emeritus Bennett has got to go.”
Seven
years ago, the BTF joined other unions in the city in picketing the
homes of members of Buffalo’s state-appointed financial control
board. But Monday’s protest was the first time in Rumore’s more
than 30 years as BTF president that the union picketed the home of an
education official.
New
York State United Teachers is calling for increased funding for
public schools, a de-emphasis of standardized testing and a
three-year moratorium on high-stakes consequences tied to those
tests.
Gov.
Andrew M. Cuomo last year tied school districts’ increases in state
aid to their implementation of teacher evaluations, with 20 percent
of teacher ratings based on student performance on state tests.
Districts had the option of using state tests, locally developed or
selected tests, or methods other than tests to measure teacher
effectiveness for another 20 percent of each teacher’s rating.
NYSUT
spokesman Carl Korn said he was not aware of the BTF’s plans to
picket Bennett’s house.
The
Buffalo District Parent Coordinating Council said while it shares the
BTF’s concerns with how Common Core standards have been implemented
and “excessive use of assessments,” it does not support
protesting outside “anyone’s private residence.”
“For
the sake of our children,” a statement from the group read, “it
is imperative that we work TOGETHER to get this right!
Educators
in West Seneca took a different approach to mark the day. Panelists
in an education forum in the West Seneca Central School District
touched on a wide range of issues – including high-stakes testing
and the creation of a new statewide system for student information
that uses a nonprofit education group, inBloom, to process and store
data.
“The
point was to make it clear that those who have expressed their
opposition to high-stakes testing and to inBloom do not represent a
vocal minority,” said West Seneca Superintendent Mark J. Crawford.
“There are lots of people who are concerned, and the concern, I
think, is increasing throughout the state.”
New
York is one of 45 states to adopt Common Core, which establishes
learning standards that are intended to better prepare students for
college and the workforce. The pace at which New York State has
implemented Common Core has been widely criticized by parents and
teachers.
New
York, along with Kentucky, was the first state to implement tests
aligned with Common Core. Last year, students in third through eighth
grades took state tests based on the Common Core. This year, high
school tests will start to be aligned with the Common Core.
Many
teachers and local school officials across the state have complained
that the state did not provide schools with adequate support to
implement the upgraded instructional standards.
Crawford
said speakers at the West Seneca event did not oppose the Common Core
standards but raised concerns about the way they have been
implemented.
“There
are a lot of things that myself and others feel are useful and
desirable in the Common Core,” Crawford said. “The problem has
been that it was not completely developed, and it wasn’t given to
teachers completely, and then our students are tested on material
they haven’t had.”
The
West Seneca event was not planned in connection with the BTF protest.
While
Rumore complained that schools are “testing our kids to death,”
Bennett said the amount of state-required testing has remained
relatively constant for many years.
“The
fact is, the state tests have not increased at all in 10 years,”
Bennett said.
“That’s
a mischaracterization,” Rumore said. “The state has made it a
requirement for teacher evaluations that students be tested. I know
it’s a local option, but they’re the ones that have been pushing
this testing from the beginning.”
Rumore
said his greater concern, more than the amount of testing, is what he
referred to as the “premature implementation of Common Core.”
Bennett
said the Common Core is designed to make students competitive. The
state establishes learning standards; each district decides what
curriculum to use.
“The
Common Core are learning standards and not a curriculum,” Bennett
said. “They were developed in 2008 and 2009 by a national council.
They’re not new.”
*45-50 percent of the children are in poverty in the largest cities west of Albany --the real, hidden story behind education turmoil in NYS
New York State Education Department (NYSED) Commissioner John King must feel emboldened: in Brooklyn this week Astroturfers turned out and mouthed the mantras for Common Core. They or similar "activists" reprised their canned speech performances on Wednesday in Lower Manhattan. So,it's no surprise that the news at the close of the week is that King is repeating his threats against Buffalo Public Schools, threatening a state takeover. This would be the first state takeover of a district in New York State since the state took over the Roosevelt school district. The Buffalo News reported, "he still lacks confidence the Buffalo school district is capable of turning around it’s struggling schools. What’s more, King said he may take more direct action to intervene if schools do not improve."
(Remember that it was toward this school system that New York governor Andrew Cuomo directed his infamous "death penalty" for "failing" schools comment this summer.)
King, at a disadvantage in upstate New York cities, as the media are not wholly compliant as the NYC media are, had to make his case through meeting with the Buffalo News staff. He repeated his threat to assume direct powers over the cities schools if the statistics do not improve as he expects, at a pace he insists upon. This summer he already assumed some powers by dictating that Lafayette and East High Schools partner with Erie 1 BOCES.
Buffalo News readers offered some comments that gave a greater insight into what's happening in Buffalo:
If King had first visited the schools met the students, teachers and administrators allowed for them to work out a plan to prepare students to take advantage of the opportunity it would have helped or tried first as a pilot program offered to all secondary school students with the skill-set to succeed in the programs offered at BOCES.
King has to come down from his ivory tower spend some time in the schools he remains troubled about since they are non-criteria have to accept any student sent many of them too old to complete a high school diploma within the legally required time span in NYS education regulations. Or try to provide a high school education to students that are not only limited in the English language but whose formal education ended at 6th grade or never had any formal education in their own language to begin to understand the challenges these schools face.
And since the Buffalo Public Schools seemed to have unlimited funds these days going on a hiring spree offering jobs to Teach For America recruits paying $5000 fee for each one of the 30 they plan to hire fresh out of college with only an undergraduate degree surely the district should have the financial wherewithal to provide the supports King is so troubled about at the schools he commented in this story.
and:
I wish you could see the tests the NYS Department of Education has inflicted on the schools. You can't of course, because the company that the state has contracted with to prepare them considers them "proprietary." Teachers have to sign confidentiality agreements to not discuss the contents of the test even after the tests have been given. They are long, confusing and full of errors. In the state of Rhode Island, a common core math test was given to 50 accomplished adults - people who were successful professionals with college degrees - and 60% of them failed! In the word of one of the state legislators in Rhode Island who took the test, "My eyes have been opened." I hope more people get their eyes opened.
But the truly significant story is that which arises from analysis of the 2010 US census, the scandalously high level of poverty in New York State's big cities and in numerous instances, adjacent suburbs. For more, see below.
# # #
With charter schools on the outs with in-coming New York City mayor Bill deBlasio, we can image that the various franchises, such as in Eva Moskowitz' Success Academies, Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone or other charter school chains will search out additional locales to yield over chunks of their school systems.
# # #
One new trend upstate: Bolden Vargas, superintendent in Rochester, is pursuing the idea of letting colleges manage some of the city's "struggling schools." We would wonder how parental participation and fair contracts for school employees would fare under such a system. So far, the Rochester Teachers Association publicly seems alright with the proposal. But RTA president Adam Urbanski said that teacher and parent involvement would be critical for the plan to work.
Significantly high levels of poverty in New York State cities
Incidentally, according to a new report by the Rochester Area Community Foundation and ACT Rochester Rochester is the fifth poorest city in the United States among the 75 largest metropolitan areas. 46.6 percent of the city's children live under the poverty line. The same city is ranked third for concentrations of extreme poverty among the top 100 metropolitan areas. Buffalo ranks number six among among the top 75 metropolitan areas.
A new report by New York State Community Action Association (NYSCC) indicated that in Rochester the child poverty rate was 50.4 percent. In other New York State cities north of the Tappan Zee Bridge, aside from Albany, about 40-50% of children are in poverty, in declining order of city general population size rank: Buffalo, 46.6%, Syracuse, 49.0%, Schenectady, 39.3%, Utica, 44.2%, Troy, 47.8% and Binghamton, 49.2% of the children live below the poverty line. South of the Tappan Zee our most troubled areas fare relatively better: the Bronx's child poverty rate: 41.1%, Brooklyn, 33.0%, Yonkers, 22.9%, Mt. Vernon, 21.6%.
Gripping poverty across New York State is the story that we should really pay attention to. The United States poverty rate is 14.4%; the New York State rate is 15.1%. Before we can expect students in poor communities to perform at a level comparable to those in the tony towns of Westchester or Nassau Counties we should seriously tackle poverty and its impact on families and child development.
Great job, Governor Cuomo --Ineffective on education, Ineffective on economic development. May you face serious political challenges in 2014, especially in the elections, lest you get a sudden awakening of conscience.
*New research on data systems gives parents strong reason to remain fearful of data breaches of children's data in inBloom
NYSED Commissioner John King and Merryl Tisch's faith-based (as opposed to tried, tested and honestly internationally benchmarked) standards promo campaign gospel ("I believe in the Common Core" -John King) Common Core States (sic) Standards tour came to Manhattan Wednesday night. The event was clearly exploited by astroturf groups such as the rabidly anti-union and anti-professional teacher Educators4 (sic) Excellence. With their canned use of high school graduates or high school students that have nary been impacted by the Core as have fourth graders, this was a night for promoting the Core in a fashion that had many of the hallmarks of a Madison Avenue or Frank Luntz-managed campaign.
And as Perdido Street School blog reports, this was indeed orchestrated, as he indicated with Epoch Times Thursday in "In Oddly Similar Terms, Parents Exalt the Common Core" reports of scripts and suspiciously well-timed cheers. And in contrast to the Common Core gospel tour of the last few weeks we hear John King react to the audience, indeed, responding to certain concerns of audience speakers.
For a frank, first hand account, read, "John King’s Flying Circus Lands in Lower Manhattan."
As of Sunday, December 15, NYSED still is holding off on giving dates or locations of the Queens or Staten Island meetings. Guess E4E and StudentsFirst need more time to rehearse their talking points. Defiance: Adamantly for inBloom
A speaker blasted New York State and its commitment to contiuning the contract with inBloom, with a specific question pointed to King. The commissioner, in words that he will surely eat at some point in the next two years was adamant, albeit in his usual genteel (somnolent) soft-spoken way, insisting that inBloom is secure, that New York is going forward.
A study, which is expected to be released on Friday, by the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School in New York, found weaknesses in the protection of student information in the contracts that school districts sign when outsourcing web-based tasks to service companies.
Many contracts, the study found, failed to list the type of information collected while others did not prohibit vendors from selling personal details — like names, contact information or health status — or using that information for marketing purposes.
“We found that when school districts are transferring student information to cloud service providers, by and large key privacy protections are absent from those arrangements,” said Joel R. Reidenberg, a law professor at Fordham who led the study. “We’re worried about the implications for students over time, how their personal information may be used or misused.”
But aside from a few parents from Change the Stakes and teachers from the United Federation of Teachers new Movement of Rank and File (MORE) caucus, we heard from few parents critical of the Common Core standards and their ancillary high stakes tests. The lack of parental participation is sadly not too shocking in the city. For the shift away from Board of Education to mayoral control under the Department of Education, has meant a shift from popular, democratic input and thus engagement in the educational policy of the city. Furthermore, with mayor Michael Bloomberg's smoke and mirrors "school choice" program, tens of thousands of students are traveling far from home, with 90 or 120 minute commutes not uncommon. With the effectual destruction of the neighborhood school at the high school level and increasingly the lower grades, far fewer children are going to district schools. All of this adds up to parents' being less involved in school-level educational concerns.
So with the essential disenfranchisement of New Yorkers is it any wonder that fewer parents were involved in the schools. Another scandal, which we hope that incoming mayor Bill deBlasio will rectify.
It is critical that pressure must be put on the New York State Board of Regents to do the right thing regarding education policy and removing Commissioner John King, more specifically. However, the Regents, the body that appointed King, are not directly answerable to the public. They are elected to five-year terms by state legislature. Thus, the following list zeroes in strategically upon certain critically important state legislators. I applaud the authors of the webpage that composed the list below. For they have performed an important civic service.
From the New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) site:
ACTION ALERT: The following Board of Regents members have terms that are set to expire, and we MUST affect the appointment process:
• Christine Cea (Staten Island) • James Jackson (Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Schoharie, Sullivan, Ulster) • James Cottrell (at-large) • Wade Norwood (at-large)
Never before has the Board of Regents appointment process been held to public scrutiny. But this year WE WILL MAKE AN IMPACT. The interests of our children MUST be represented by our elected NYS Assembly Members.
Here are 4 steps that we all must do on a weekly basis:
2.) Call and email Assembly Education Committee Chairpersons: Catherine Nolan (D) Phone: 718-784-3194 and 518-455-4851 nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us Deborah Glick (D) Phone: 212-674-5153 and 518-455-4818 glickd@assembly.state.ny.us
3.) Call and email each of the following Assembly members: To affect Christine Cea appointment: Matthew Titone (D) Phone: 718-442-9932 and 518-455-4677 titonem@assembly.state.ny.us Michael Cusick (D) Phone: 718-370-1384 and 518-455-5526 cusickm@assembly.state.ny.us
4.) Use the guidelines here to tell them that we need NEW Board of Regents members: - Tell them there are 4 Regents up for re-appointment. - Tell them you demand the appointment of Regents who support an immediate moratorium on Common Core, high stakes testing, and data sharing. - Tell them the public will hold NYS Assembly members accountable for their votes for or against the appointment of the NYS Board of Regents members.
Here is a sample letter to email that you can also use as a script to guide you on the phone: Dear__________________________________ This year 4 members of the NYS Board of Regents are up for re-appointment, Cea, Jackson, Cotrell, and Norwood. New candidates will be interviewed by the Education Committees in February, and you will be voting on these re-appointments in March of 2014. I am writing to let you know that I am very concerned about the damaging effects of Regents Reform Agenda, and that this year, the public will hold NYS legislators accountable for their votes for or against the appointment of individual Regents. Therefore, I am asking that you please appoint Regents who support an immediate moratorium on Common Core, high stakes testing, and the uploading of student information to the inBloom cloud. The Regent’s Reform agenda in NYS is destroying public education and violating student privacy. As an elected NYS legislator, you MUST represent the interests of our children and the will of the people. Sincerely,
Background Information on the NYS Board of Regents:
- Candidates wishing to apply to become a Board of Regents member must send a resume to the Assembly Education and Higher Education Committees before January 31. In-person interviews are conducted by Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan and Debra Glick in February.
- Legislators vote in early March, but they are generally given one or two nominees to vote on, less than 24 hours before the election, that are selected by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Although the public is told that the entire legislation votes, in reality it is Sheldon Silver that chooses. Many legislators abstain because the process is so dysfunctional.
WE MUST CONTACT THE ELECTED OFFICIALS ABOVE SO THAT WE CAN INFLUENCE THE BOARD OR REGENTS APPOINTMENTS. - The Regents preside over the New York State Education Department and SUNY.
- The Board consists of 17 members; 1 from each of the State's 13 judicial districts and 4 members who serve at large.
- The Board is headed by the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch.
- Those serving on the Board of Regents come from diverse backgrounds and fields. Some are former educators but most are not.
- The duties of the Board of Regents include: setting graduation requirements, testing regimens and curriculum and approval of the State Education Department's budget.
- The regents are not paid a salary and are not required to have any educational training or background.
- While Commissioner King may have proposed the haphazard and incompetent implementation of the Common Core and subsequent testing, The Board of Regents approved this rollout.
-The process by which one becomes a regent is not widely understood. Members of the NYS Assembly may nominate a potential regent. Their appointment is confirmed by a joint vote of the legislature. The Democratic Majority in the State Assembly currently controls the selection process.
- Although a regent’s term expires after 5 years, historically a current regent is automatically re-appointed and will serve until they resign or retire. We must change this.
The Board of Regents wields a great deal of power, and they must be held responsible for their actions. Many parents have appealed to individual Regents and asked for their support of parent efforts to resist harmful education reforms. Likewise, powerful advocacy representing parents, teachers and school administers have also appealed to the Board of Regents but they are not listening.
UPDATED: *Rank and file teachers chafe under Common Core's scripted lessons, test prep *Buffalo Teachers Federation Blasts Common Core Test Prep *UFT Should Show Same Solidarity and Attend Comm. King's Appearance At Elementary School *How Conditions Will Change Little in the Change from Bloomberg to deBlasio *Change the Stakes Calls for Bronx Cheer vs. King at his NYC tour *Burris: NYSED has lost its moral authority *UFT should support NYSAPE's 4 point action plan *Postscript: Disgraceful Pavlovian math lesson for Kindergarteners
Progressive teacher unionists have sought an alliance with parents. Chicago teachers built alliances with parents over school closings and other issues. In New York City teachers have an important opportunity to build a broad alliance with parents. The New York City appearance of New York State Education Commissioner John King and New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Wednesday, December 11, 5:00 to 7:00 at P.S. 397, the Spruce Street School, 12 Spruce Street, between Nassau and William Streets, a block from City Hall park, Manhattan, is an important occasion for teachers and parents to stand shoulder to shoulder against Common Core, the associated test prep regimen, inBloom and APPR.
Principal Carol Burris in NSAPE video
At the beginning of November, 22 Unions across New York State backed NYSAPE's position on King's resignation. From Long Island to the North Country, from Western New York to the MidHudson, and from Central New York to the Capital Region. In addition, one of the state's largest teachers' unions, the Buffalo Teachers Federation (in the state's second largest city), has independently called on King to step down. The impetus for King to step down is his obstinate support for New York's continuation of implementation of the Common Core State Standards [more properly called the Common Core national standards or Common Core Gates Standards], constant test-prep, and the 400 data point collection inBloom, a Murdoch-run system for student data collection in a cloud hosted by Amazon.
(NYSAPE's video on NYSED officials' failure to listen to parents) The New York State Allies for Public Education, whose Steering Committee includes Carol Burris, Chris Cerrone and Leonie Haimson, has a four point plan of action, 1) for King's resignation, 2) for legislators to vote for better Regents, 3) against inBloom and excessive testing, 4) for alerting local school boards that parents do not want their children's information to be stored by inBloom.
[Postscript: Change the Stakes calls for a NYC welcome and a Bronx cheer for Comm. King as he makes his NYC tour Tuesday and Wednesday --details below. They noted that as of Dec. 8 there still is no word on how to address questions for the events
Class Size Matters has an update in anticipation of a Jan. 3 State Supreme Court session on their legal appeal for an injunction on any more children's information being uploaded onto the inBloom cloud.]
Buffalo's teacher union president Phil Rumore said, in announcing the union's call for his resignation, as reported in the Buffalo News:
By having them take a test that they weren't prepared for, hurt them. His focus on standardized testing is just ruining our kids. It's ruining our kids joy of learning, and the teachers joy of teaching.
The newspaper further reported:
Rumore said teachers across the state are under tremendous pressure to have their students perform on standardized tests. He sited the implementation of teacher and administrator evaluations based on those tests as another reason for the motion.
The News added that the last straw for the BTF was when King walked out on a parent's forum on the Common Core.
Already, mental health professionals are saying that Common Core and its curriculum is detrimental to the emotional well-being of students. See videos of statements by Mary Calamia, LICSW here and Dr. Gary Thompson here. In forum after forum in New York State, students speak of their lost enthusiasm for school, parents speak of confusing curriculum modules, teachers speak of alienation from their profession. Some of the curricular materials are culturally insensitive. The principal of a Mohawk nation elementary school reports that some of the Common Core curricular modules depict native Americans in culturally insensitive ways.
It's Not Just Common Core, How Conditions Might Change Little in the Transition from Bloomberg to deBlasio
King, Tisch, sitting impassively, but are they listening?
Beyond the issue of Common Core, King's
corporate-minded education "reform" policies drive a metrics-crazed regimen of myriad imposition of conditions driving teachers' alienation and exhaustion. The quantification and documentation mania that teachers are chafing under seem to come from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, but really they are dictated by state laws and regulations, all coming from Race to the Top compliance with the Common Core. New York City teachers are not the only ones suffering; and it is critical that teachers remember that their working conditions stem from Albany, not simply from Bloomberg, and so they will continue under de Blasio, unless there is significant popular pressure directed at state education policy-makers.
Read the letter of resignation of Kathleen Knauth, a New York State principal that quit, seeking early retirement, due to the state's policies. The policies driving her to quit stem from APPR and other laws supporting New York's Race to the Top compliance.
View this video of a star teacher that also sought early retirement over the work conditions. Implicitly, the changes he cites stem from New York State's Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR).
Tisch's circular argument in Brian Lehrer's 8/15 radio show
The Common Core is only law in New York State because he and State Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch aggressively pushed for it along with other changes to comply with New York's Race to the Top, which states supported to get federal monies, in the wake of the 2008 Grand Recession. Effectually, the Obama administration is pushing something close to a national curriculum. Multiple federal statutes prohibit the exercise of such authority. As teachers learn in their American education history classes, such authority is the preserve of individual states.
King and other Common Core backers tell us that it is internationally bench-marked and essential for making all students college and career-ready. He is diverting education from education for the sake of being a well-rounded, independent thinker, healthy and creative young person. He cannot point to any nation that edges out fictional literature with a maximum 50 percent figure, that side-lines science and social studies, subordinating those topics to incidental discussion in English classes. He argues for the Common Core math standards, but skips over how the lead math author of the Common Core, Jason Zimba concedes that its level of math preparation would prepare students for a non-competitive community college, lopping off a high school year of math.
The Common Core's English component was written by David Coleman, someone who failed to get a teaching job and his Achieve, Inc. colleague Sue Pimentel, a lawyer by training and a test assessment professional. The math authors (including Zimba, a fellow alum of Coleman) have no kindergarten through 12 teaching experience. The lack of school experience and first hand understanding of young minds and personalities is a parallel to our modern era's replacing of a public voice with private institutions' shaping public policy.
Recent public attention has been given to how King and Tisch spearheaded the education policy setting role in New York State by the privately funded Regents Fellows, who in their founding years were provided $1 million by Tisch herself. Read "Regents Pay a Political Price for Their Free Advisers, Dissenters Warn
" by the New York Times. ALEC and too many other shadowy non-governmental organizations are driving public policy. We do not need an education commissioner who actively supports a private group shaping public education policy.
The UFT should re-schedule its December 11 Delegate Assembly business for another date and should attend the Wednesday forum at the Spruce Street School at Spruce and Nassau Streets, by the Brooklyn Bridge, supporting parents and teachers wishing to express the daily, lived experience of the Common Core and other misguided New York State education policies. Then again, this would be an about face, as the NYS PTA and the UFT-dominated NYSUT this fall uploaded a puff piece for parents promoting the Common Core, sounding all the stock buzzwords to rally the flock to Common Core compliance. (Their shilling for the Core is not surprising, as the NYSUT's national parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers and the national PTA received $5.4 million and $500,000 respectively from the Gates Foundation, which initiated the Common Core.)
Too bad, because the UFT members in an online poll do not like Common Core's curriculum at all. The poll is buried deep in the UFT website, at pages such as this one. The numbers are actually a little worse for CCSS from when I captured the poll image.
Further, it should encourage state legislators, Assembly Education Committee members listed here, to pledge to vote for Regents that oppose King's policies.
King and Tisch's NYC tour of their faith-based Common Core (backed into a corner, King says that he has faith in the Common Core). (Still no details on Queens or Staten Island meetings. Do King and Tisch consider them pesky suburbanites?) Tuesday, December 10 in Brooklyn
Medgar Evers College 1650 Bedford Avenue (map here) 6:30-8:30 PM
Tuesday, December 10 in The Bronx
Evander Childs Campus 800 East Gun Hill Road (map here) 6:00-8:00 PM
[Postscript: Controversial Kindergarten math video shared by Chris Cerrone:
What is even more troubleing is that this robotic lesson is actually on the New York State Education Department engageny.org website as a Common Core math module ideal. Parents, do you want your children to be educated like trained animals? Teachers, do you want this to be the vision of model teaching? I hardly think that this flies for progressive teaching at the Montessori School of the King's children.]
*Prussian NYS ed leadership *Doing right CTU, contrasted against Petainesque UFT *Heroes or vulnerable incumbents?: the members of the Assembly's Education Committee
First, in Illinois the political leaders listen a little bit more to the people. But in New York State it is like 19th Century Prussia with Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and NYS Education Commissioner John King not deigning to listen to those outside the privileged top class. Tisch, King, Governor Andrew Cuomo know they can get away with this. King and Tisch are only accountable to Regents. And the latter themselves are insulated, only accountable to the legislature, and only up for re-election in 2015, a year after the 2014 state elections. As the New York Times indicated in an article on the influence of the shadowy Regents Fellows, an unaccountable private clique that sets education policy behind the scenes, the Regents are split into a Bloombergian metrics-faith-based faction, and a more traditionally educator faction. The lag time between now and 2015 will give them time to regroup or at least plot to thwart a popular mobilization against them.
NYS Assembly Education Committee chair Catherine Nolan has distinguished her self in speaking for the public schools at out-going New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's sham Panel for Educational Policy hearings. Surely, she must smell the acrid stench of the Common Core cafe. Thus, if she leads the Assembly charge against the Common Core and assists in the formation of a Senate caucus against the Core (in that chamber the parties are more evenly divided and it is there that the CCSS might be thwarted more quickly), she will be well positioned to catapult to the next political level, a US House of Representatives seat.
But which seat would she want? Not her own turf, her ally Joseph Crowley is there; not the Forest Hills/Flushing seat, new frosh Grace Meng is there. Money bags Carolyn Maloney of Upper East Side/Astoria would be a tough one to beat with her resources. Yet, the perniciously anti-Muslim Peter King would be a perfect target to challenge. Nolan, start shopping for a home in his district!
Sadly, while the Chicago Teachers Union has taken wise stands on inBloom and Common Core, in New York City we have the United Federation of Teachers leadership which as recently as this summer staunchly supported the Common Core. The UFT's president Michael Mulgrew's approach to co-opt the Common Core anxiety: just complain about missing curriculum and call for postponing associated high-stakes tests, note: not calling out of principle to reject the standards and the ancillary high stakes tests. Mulgrew, will you call on the next mayor to pull New York City out of inBloom's jaws?
Postscript: a Congressional seat is Nolan's to walk away with. The following are members of the New York State Assembly Education Committee, their district number and main communities in their district. Note how --aside from New York City, Long Island, as well as (by coincidence or design?) communities that were the site of tumultous town halls over the Common Core, figures prominently in the locales represented by the education committee. And to underscore the salience of this issue, we call attention to Perdido Street School's report that the Common Core has become a lightning from for voter discomfort and some state politicians are already running scared. The legislature members are sitting ducks for challenges, as the legislature failed to pass provisions that would have protected student privacy. Challengers, you want and issue to take down representatives? Study the Common Core and inBloom fiascos.
Catherine Nolan, Chair, 37 – Long Island City, Sunnyside and Ridgewood
Carmen Arroy, 84 - Bronx
Michael Benedetto, 82 - Bronx
James Brennan, 44 - Brooklyn
Karim Camara, 43 - Brooklyn
Barbara Clark, 33 - Queens Village and SE Queens
Jane Corwin, 144 – Clarence & NE suburbs of Niagara Falls and Buffalo
Steve Englebright, 4 – Coram, East Setauket, Stony Brook, Port Jefferson
Al Graf, 5 – Centereach, Farmingville, Holbrook, Ronkonkoma
Carl Heastie, 83 - Bronx
Earlene Hooper, 18 – Hempstead, Roosevelt, Freeport
Kieran Michael Lalor, 105 – hamlets east of Poughkeepsie: Wappinger Falls, Fishkill, Hopewell Junction
Peter Lopez, 102 – Cobleskill, Catskill, Saugerties
William Magnarelli, 102 – Syracuse and NW suburbs
Alan Maisel, 59 - Brooklyn
Shelley Mayer, 90 – Yonkers and towns to the east
David McDonough, 14 – Bellmore and Wantagh
Steven McLaughlin, 107 – Troy and most of Renssalear County
Michael Miller, 38 – Ridgewood and Woodhaven
Joan Millman, 52 - Brooklyn
Daniel O'Donnell, 69 - Manhattan
Amy Paulin, 88 – south White Plains, Scarsdale to New Rochelle
Edward Ra, 19 – Glen Head, Westbury, Mineola, Garden City
Phil Ramos, 6 - Brentwood, Islip and North Bay Shore
Robert Sweeney, 11 – Lindenhurst and other SW Suffolk County towns
Claudia Tenney, 101 – Utica to Walden in Orange County
Fred Thiele, Jr., 1 – Hamptons and Montauk
Matthew Titone, 61 – Staten Island
Michele Titus, 31 – South Ozone Park to Far Rockaway
Harvey Weisenberg- 5 towns, Oceanside and Long Beach
"I'm Your Puppet":
