Brooklyn event on NYC school segregation, 9/16: Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

New York City schools remain highly segregated nationally, in terms of race and class, as indicated in this UCLA study last year. Both mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Farina have failed to adequately address the issue.

A forum at the Brooklyn Historical Society tomorrow addresses the issue. (128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

Click here to register for the free tickets. 

Of course, the UFT, with its eternal mode of cozying to leaders, has failed to recognize or struggle on the issue publicly. It stood quiet while this segregation escalated in the Bloomberg years.

The Narrow, Myopic Vision of the Solidarity Caucus

7/14 postscript on doublethink below.
A novice United Federation of Teachers (UFT) caucus, Solidarity, is making a premature run for the 2016 union election. Much attention has been given to related personal controversies. This article takes the opportunity to look at the caucus, its origins and its campaign program or platform.

The caucus had in its genesis an intense opposition to both the MORE Caucus and the Unity Caucus statements of empathy for Eric Garner, who was killed in a chokehold by New York Police Department officers. In the nearly one year since, deadly police brutality, particularly against people of color, has become the civil rights issue of the nation. People from across the political spectrum were shocked and quite disappointed when a grand jury issued no indictment against any of the officials involved in killing Garner. This is important to recall when considering the character and principles of the caucus.

In its founding it insisted on staying narrowly focusing on teacher issues and on eschewing any attention to any other concerns beyond teachers' issues. Yet, while it appropriates the images of Albert Shanker, Unity Caucus leader of the UFT, it ignores that more largely, the labor union movement has taken stances of solidarity with civil rights activists and anti-war activists. It ignores that in 1957 the American Federation of Teachers dismissed locals that refused to desegregate. It ignores that the United Auto Workers, the AFT and other unions marched in solidarity in the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington.  It ignores that strikes have had their greatest popularity when they had reached out to the community. Witness the work that the Lawrence 1912 Bread and Roses textile strikers did in reaching out to the community prior to their strike. Witness the parallel work that the Chicago Teachers Union has done when it took a year of community outreach in preparing for its 2012 strike. The CTU won widespread parent support after making sure to have a two-way dialog to understand the concerns of parents and students, instead of simply pursuing an employee-centered contract and strike campaign. Teacher-community partnership continues to this day in other examples such as St. Paul, Minnesota

Hypocritically, in the quest for allies for its caucus once it had an election in mind, it opportunistically parted from the caucus' founding principle to eschew larger issues or the community and solicited support from a community anti-high-stakes testing group, Change the Stakes.

Now, let us look at the Solidarity Caucus' platform and what is missing

While it gives attention to the special needs of Absent Teacher Reserve teachers (ATRs) where others are silent, this is almost where its issue attention ends. It does not look to the experiences of the regularly assigned teachers. One wonders if the authors even consulted regular classroom teachers. There is no specific discussion about the Danielson Framework, the New York State-dictated Measures of Student Learning (MOSLs) or other aspects of New York City's Advance teacher evaluation system. There is no attention to structural dynamics such as mayoral control, which determine the parameters of what the City Department of Education can do. There is no attention to the Common Core State Standards, which are alienating teachers from their profession and are alienating students from learning. There is no attention to the parent-student solidarity movement which is so essential for teachers who are suffering under the over-testing regimen, the opt-out movement. 

The caucus platform includes complaints about the use of tests in value-added metrics to evaluate teachers. However, the platform does not recognize how the testing emphasis is directly linked to other larger issues, some of which are issues that lead directly to the excessing of teachers into the ATR category: the DOE's testing focus narrows the latitude of what teachers can do in the classroom, the testing focus on core academic subjects crowds out attention to non-core subjects such as foreign language, the arts or physical education. Moreover, the platform studiously ignores larger social-economic-political realities. It ignores that there is a corporatist campaign by politicians in both major parties and an economic privatization campaign by privatizers that capitalize by the test-based stack ranking (rank ordering) of teachers and students and overall privatization of curricula, tests and schools.

Additionally, the caucus program's focus on the teacher involves an ignoring of the effect of the high-stakes tests on students themselves. It ignores the emotional stresses upon students and the attendant alienation from the schooling process in this overall climate of high-stakes testing and driving non-tested subjects out of the curriculum. Just as a decent doctor would care about a patient personally and their living and working conditions and how those impacted the person's health, one would hope that teachers would care about their student charges and the factors that impacted on their life. Just as one commenter on a blog in reaction to the formation of the caucus by saying that he cared about the living conditions of the students, I would echo those points. Teachers are choking under the attacks by corporatist politicians and by privatizatizers, and more rank and file teachers are recognizing this. Yet, Solidarity has made a big conceptual error to ignore this larger context in their program. In this sense, it is mirroring the conceptual errors that conventional, mainstream unions or caucuses, that Michael Mulgrew and the Unity Caucus makes.

Teachers ought to consider the larger social conditions impacting on students. As emphasized previously on this blog, income disparities are extreme in this nation and within the nation, income inequality is more extreme in New York city and state. (See this posting re inequality in the city; and regarding poverty impact on learning see introductory comments at this blog posting.) The stresses of race and class inequality impact on students' lives and negatively impact their educational performance. From issues of police mistreatment of youths of color to profound personal emotional stresses of poverty, these experiences inform the lived reality of the children that we teach in our classrooms. If we wish our students to have the best educational experience, we as teachers should not only attend to our own craft, our own performance, but we should also be concerned with recognizing the social inequality; we should work to change that inequality. This is why I am a social justice education unionist.

POSTSCRIPT:
There are many aspects about the organizing tactics of the key personalities in the caucus that are at once deceptive and deeply disturbing.  Most recently, a social media page connected with the group has been created. A Solidarity page headline boasts an army of 10,000. It turns out that the organizers of the page snatched up 10,000 names and made them --unwittingly, mind you-- into "supporters." This is putschist organizing at its basest.
New exploitative techniques in political deception on Facebook:
Just when you thought it could not get worse. The leader of Solidarity has taken the names of a few dozen well-known opponents of Michael Mulgrew and posted their names in Facebook postings. The risk is that the uninitiated would think that these persons endorse the Solidarity cult.
Doublethink alert:
The Solidarity leader ignores that the New Action caucus supports Michael Mulgrew in every election in NAC's quid pro quo for executive board seats, and he cries foul when Mulgrew and Unity opponents challenge his desire to ally with NAC, questioning whether they are truly an opposition caucus. Yet, Solidarity claims to oppose Mulgrew and Unity. Thus, this is a classic example of doublethink: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, especially used in political indoctrination. If you cannot be clear how Solidarity leaders think, can you be clear where their true convictions lie?

New Blog Tells it Right: the Education Reformers are Humpty Dumpty Reformers

A zesty new blog, WagTheDog, with a catchy name, vigornotrigor in the URL, has a good article critique today's teacher evaluation systems, along with the thinking that drives these kinds of "reforms."

Here is the essential beginning:

EFFECTIVE teachers are continually learning and DEVELOPING

Posted on June 28, 2015

The dictionary says developing means to grow, advance, and mature. In NY State a  teacher rated developing is not considered to be effective and a teacher improvement plan (TIP) must be implemented the following school year.

On any given day a teachers interactions with students can range from INEFFECTIVE to HIGHLY EFFECTIVE and ideally all teachers are continually learning and DEVELOPING.
Using a single standardized test score along with three to five classroom observations over the course of a 180-day school year is clearly an unreliable and INEFFECTIVE way to measure student learning and teacher quality.
Americans have been “sold” the Common Core by leaders who have carefully crafted and regulated the words, language, and narrative of the education reform movement. As Humpty Dumpty declared…

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’

~ Lewis Carroll, “Through The Looking-Glass”

Humpty Dumpty leaders with their penchant for doublethink rely on a litany of terms and  “educationese” to justify and sell their reforms to trusting parents using reinvented and redefined terms and phrases such as grit, rigor, college and career ready, data driven, personalized learning, flipped, 21st century skills, transformational, close reading, dive in, student learning outcomes, domain, unpack, complexity, human capital  leaving  parents and teachers confused and wondering why don’t reformers just…

Humpty Dumpty reformers claim the Common Core will ensure career readiness yet the standards do not call for additional trade/vocational pathways and job shadowing, apprenticeships, internships, job mentoring, work-based learning are nowhere to be found in the standards.
Humpty Dumpty reformers like Arne Duncan maintain that there is too much emphasis on testing and test prep…

“But the larger issue is, testing should never be the main focus of our schools…Yet in too many places, testing itself has become a distraction from the work it is meant to support…I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools..”

While David Coleman, the chief architect of the Common Core Standards declares in a 2011 Keynote Speech that the standards are designed to be measured by tests and teachers are expected to teach to them…

“… these standards are worthy of nothing if the assessments built on them are not worthy of teaching to, period…
There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that. There is no amount of hand-waving, there‟s no amount of saying, “They teach to the standards, not the test; we don‟t do that here.” Whatever. The truth is – and if I misrepresent you, you are welcome to take the mic back. But the truth is teachers do.
Tests exert an enormous effect on instructional practice, direct and indirect, and its hence our obligation to make tests that are worthy of that kind of attention.”

Humpty Dumpty reformers claim to support the Common Core with its single track college prep mandate for all students “ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.” while making inconsistent and contradictory statements like…

The Common Core will – by design – make some courses more difficult for many students, and for marginal students that may be enough to nudge them out of school altogether.

The Common Core Will Not Double the Dropout Rate ~ Paul Bruno

What if encouraging students to take a shot at the college track—despite very long odds of crossing its finish line—does them more harm than good? What if our own hyper-credentialed life experiences and ideologies are blinding us to alternative pathways to the middle class?…

“Kid, I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material” Is exactly what we should be telling a lot of high school students. ~ Michael Petrilli
Humpty Dumpty reformers say education reform and standardized testing is a civil rights issue while threatening to punish civil disobedient children and parents who opt out of standardized tests and placing gag orders on students and teachers to restrict and prevent them from discussing the poorly designed and written tests.

“Students in grades 3-8 are required by New York State to take standardized tests annually. No students should be required, however, to take tests that subject them to hidden advertising.
Clearly the trademarked products mentioned throughout the exam had no relevance to the stated goals of testing students’ reading comprehension and analytical skills. Surely Pearson can afford to edit standardized tests and remove all mention of trademarked products.”

Eighth grader: What bothered me most about the Common Core test, Isaiah Schrader 5/8/13
In the Humpty Dumpty world of the Common Core, “level the playing field” means providing accommodations for learning disabled students during classroom instruction and assessment AND denying those same accommodations during standardized testing at the end of the school year.
Humpty Dumpty reformers like Arne Duncan justify testing learning disabled students at their grade level without accommodations rather than their instructional level, by relying on sensational and unsubstantiated claims…

“The Obama administration said Tuesday that the vast majority of the 6.5 million students with disabilities in U.S. schools today are not receiving a quality education, and that it will hold states accountable for demonstrating that those students are making progress…
Under the new guidelines, Duncan says he’ll require proof that these kids aren’t just being served but are actually making academic progress.
“We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel,” Duncan said.
These are students with a range of disabilities, from ADHD and dyslexia to developmental, emotional and behavioral disorders. During his conference call with reporters, Duncan was joined by Kevin Huffman, Tennessee’s education commissioner.
Huffman challenged the prevailing view that most special education students lag behind because of their disabilities. He said most lag behind because they’re not expected to succeed if they’re given more demanding schoolwork and because they’re seldom tested.”

Claudio Sanchez, “A ‘Major Shift’ In Oversight Of Special Education” 6/24/14 
Humpty Dumpty reformers claim the lack of academic progress and poor performance of learning disabled students on grade level standardized tests without accommodations is proof these students are receiving a substandard education and they are not being tested enough.
In contrast, The National Center for Learning Disabilities has reported on the lifelong challenges faced by learning disabled students and that individual academic progress may be incremental and inconsistent depending on the accommodations and services provided to the student, and the specific nature and severity of the disability.

“In an ideal world, students who struggle are able to overcome their challenges and grow to become adults who enjoy personal satisfaction, high self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and productive relationships within their families and in the general community. If only this was the case…
No matter how many times it’s been said, it needs to be repeated again and again: learning disabilities do not go away, and LD is a problem with lifelong implications.
Addressing features of LD during the early years can indeed help to circumvent and minimize struggles later in life, but we know that problems with listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, math and sometimes social skills can persist, even after years of special education instruction and support.”

While I fully support holding all students to the same high academic standards, I do not believe it is fair to deny learning disabled students testing accommodations that enable them to equally “access” the readings and questions on the test so they can fully demonstrate their knowledge and critical thinking skills.

Humpty Dumpty reformers convince parents that students must close read in order to be ready for college and careers while the National Institute for Literacy Equipped For the Future (EFF) program has determined that Reading With Understanding is a more appropriate skill because..

“The Common Core focuses on academic (and to some extent, vocational) purposes for all, while EFF contextualizes skills within a fuller range of adult family-related, work-related, and civic purposes at all levels…
Another key area of difference is in what the “standard” attempts to describe. Each EFF content standard describes a transferable skill process that can be applied to a wide variety of adult purposes and tasks…
In contrast, the Common Core documents target discrete skills and sub-skills which, like other sets of K-12 standards, may lead teachers to focus only on each sub-skill and not also provide learning activities which help students apply and transfer their skills outside of the immediate learning situation…”

Humpty Dumpty reformers claim in one breath that the Common Core-aligned PARCC assessments determine whether students are “on track” for college and careers while admitting in another breath that the tests are not a comprehensive or reliable means of measuring college and career readiness
Humpty Dumpty reformers promote and sell Personalized Learning as a way to catch up delayed and disabled students via technology and digital tools that deliver and pace course materials according to individual academic needs and abilities.

“Many fans of education technology believe that specialized technology is the most effective way to deliver “differentiated” instruction that is “individualized,” or “personalized” to a large number of learners, with diverse backgrounds and learning styles…
Personalized learning means instruction is paced to learning needs, tailored to learning preferences, and tailored to the specific interests of different learners.
In an environment that is fully personalized, the learning objectives and content as well as the method and pace may all vary (so personalization encompasses differentiation and individualization).”

While Humpty Dumpty reformers convince parents that more screen time is actually a good thing for young children who are still developing critical social and emotional skills, ed tech leaders send their children to schools that shun technology.

“The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.”

“A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute” Matt Richtel, NY Times, October 2011

Click here to read the rest of the blog posting.

Early Education Gaps by Social Class and Race Start U.S. Children Out on Unequal Footing

How will attack teachers, because they happen to teach children from lower on the socio-economic ladder, do any good for the profession, for the students?

As long as we do not address the gripping inequality of the economy, the reformers will have ample opportunity to cite disparity in educational outcomes and continue the attacks on teachers, students and schools. What will activists do, to resist this?

Early Education Gaps by Social Class and Race Start U.S. Children Out on Unequal Footing 

Understanding disparities in school readiness among America’s children when they begin kindergarten is critically important, now more than ever. In today’s 21st century global economy, we expect the great majority of our children to complete high school ready to enter college or begin a career, and assume their civic responsibilities. This requires strong math, reading, science, and other cognitive skills, as well as the abilities to work well and communicate effectively with others, solve problems creatively, and see tasks to completion.

 Unfortunately, the weak early starts that many of our children are getting make it hard to attain these societal goals. Since key foundations for learning are established beginning at birth, starting school behind makes it likely that early disadvantages will persist as children progress through school, and last into their adult lives.

 Knowing which groups of children tend to start school behind, how far behind they are, and what factors contribute to their lag, can help us develop policies to avert the early gaps that become long-term problems. Inequalities at the Starting Gate: Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills Gaps between 2010–2011 Kindergarten Classmates explores gaps by social class and race/ethnicity in both cognitive skills—math, reading, and executive function—and noncognitive skills such as self-control, approaches to learning, and interactions with teachers and peers. We refer to these skills gaps as gaps in school readiness. 

Low social class poses major barriers to young children’s readiness in reading and math 

Black and Hispanic ELL children begin kindergarten with the greatest disadvantages in math and reading, due largely to links between minority status and social class  

Low social class also affects children’s social, behavioral, and other noncognitive skills 


Read the rest of Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss' June 17, 2015 article at Portside here.

Here is the direct link to the major article at the National Institute for Early Education Research that they summarize:

Inequalities at the starting gate

Cognitive and noncognitive skills gaps between 2010–2011 kindergarten classmates

Friday, June 19, 2015

Emma Garcia

Economic Policy Institute

This study seeks to broaden the debate by examining the education gaps that exist even before children enter formal schooling in kindergarten, and showing that the gaps extend to noncognitive skills, which are also critical for adulthood outcomes (Heckman 2008; Heckman & Kautz 2012). Regarding the analysis of early education gaps, this paper is modeled on Lee and Burkam’s 2002 monograph Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School, which found that cognitive gaps between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds and races and ethnicities were both sizeable and statistically significant at school entry in kindergarten.1 This is important for policymakers because, if unaddressed, there is the potential that gaps persist over time and compound. Such early-in-life inequalities point to the need for substantial interventions to reduce them, including early educational interventions, to ensure that children arrive in kindergarten ready to learn and for compensatory policies to support these children throughout the school years (from kindergarten through 12th grade). Moreover, the social and economic disadvantages that generate these gaps should be addressed directly and eliminated through social and economic policies, not just education policies (Morsy and Rothstein 2015; Putman 2015; Rothstein 2004).

Countdown to Cuomo Perpwalk & The Smoke-Filled Room Insight on Deals in WFP Cuomo Endorsement a Year Ago

As the New York Post and the Perdido Street School blog report, the clock is ticking closer to a Preet Bharara move against hedge fund & charter school operator-beholden New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat).

New York Post Sunday night: "Preet Bharara creeps closer to Cuomo with latest indictment" 
[UPDATE: Cuomo administration implicated in federal probe, regarding improper dealings with the real estate industry. See the June 1, 2015 article by Andrew Perez and David Sirota in the "International Business Times."]

And this big piece Monday afternoon from Perdido Street School blog, from the Albany Project: "Preet's Working His Way Up The Food Chain: For the skeptics out there who remain dubious that US Attorney Preet Bharara is working his way up the chain to Governor Cuomo comes this theorizing from The Albany Project."

And  this from Perdido Street School, also from yesterday, citing Capital NY: "What Was Really Behind The Working Families Party Deal With The Devil/Cuomo Last Year"

Blake Zeff at Capital NY has an excellent analysis of the Cuomo/deBlasio/Working Families party deal a year later.

 

New NYC Parent Group Vs. School Overcrowding

From DNAinfo: news of a new group of NYC parents of schoolkids, fighting against crowding:

QUEENS — Parents affected by overcrowding at citywide schools have united to form a group to push for solutions.

The group, Overcrowding Advocacy for Zoned Schools NYC, was created after hundreds of parents were told earlier this year that there was not enough space in their zoned schools for their kindergartners. 

Currently, the group consists of parents zoned for P.S. 196 and P.S. 144 in Forest Hills,P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, P.S. 78 in Long Island City and P.S. 199 on the Upper West Side, parents said.

“We are advocating for both short- and long-term solutions to address overcrowding within New York City public schools,” said M.C. Sweeney of Forest Hills, a mother of two whose children are zoned for P.S. 196.

Click here for the full article by DNAinfo of New York's Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, "Parents Unite to Fight Overcrowding in City Schools."

Meet MaryEllen Elia -- Another Meryll Tisch Kindred Spirit in Albany, as new NYS Education Commissioner

Here we go again?

For the recent years in New York State we were subjected to John King, recipient of a speedy Ed.D. degree, along with Merryl Tisch, THE grand doyenne of high stakes tests and the Common Core. King gave the whiny face to the hard sell of the Common Core across New York State. The problem was that he was totally tone-deaf to the people's (students, parents, teachers) pain over the Common Core States Standards Initiative, particularly evident in the 2013 to 2014 academic year.

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.

Tisch's puppet? Fall woman for Cuomo?

"I'm Your Puppet":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liKhLNY5GYI