Cuomo in Quid Pro Quo with Hedge Funders in His School Bill

[UPDATE, From the HedgeClipper blog's HedgePapers No. 15: "Cuomo’s Latest Scheme: Tax Refunds for Billionaires Who Donate to Elite Private Schools and Privatized Charter Schools"]

Don't let the group name fool you: Cuomo's 1%er friends are getting a payback.

*Resist the Trojan Horse hype: Don't let Cuomo's bill's enticement of tax credit for teacher out-of-pocket spending for classroom supplies keep you from seeing what this bill is: a massive shifting of public money to private schools. This is a distraction. The state government ought to provide adequate money for classroom supplies within the schools. Teachers should not be obliged to pay to pay for the supplies.

The real education progressives can keep on waiting for U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara to put New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in cuffs for the perp walk. In his boldest pay-back to his hedge fund patrons, he has pushed a new education bill that serves their interests.  Yet, in this age of the U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision Cuomo can probably get away with this as there are no restraints on political donations to candidates. Short of finding a recording of Cuomo and hedge funders in an explicit "I'll do this if you do this for me" conversation, Cuomo will be able to get away with this brazen give away to his hedge fund patrons.

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) reported on their website (a day after "The New York Times" beat them to the punch in "Cuomo Promotes Tax Credits for Families of Students at Private Schools") that Cuomo in his new tax credit bill "Parental Choice in Education Act" will lower the taxes of large donors to private schools. Read also this UFT site on his pay-back/kick-back to his political contributors.

Quid pro Cuomo; somebody else is always to blame.

To dispel any doubt that Cuomo has benefited handsomely from the largesse of hedge funders, read, "Andrew Cuomo Has Taken Nearly $5 Million In Contributions From Hedge Funds: Report" from "The International Business Times," March 4, 2015.

On a closely related issue, read Juan Gonzalez' column, "Hedge fund executives give 'til it hurts to politicians, especially Cuomo, to get more charter schools," New York "Daily News", March 11, 2015.

To the UFT's credit it noted that Cuomo's proposal is a blatant give-away to elite donors.
The program allows for dollar for dollar write-off of donations to private schools.  For instance, someone donating a million dollars to a private school would have his or her taxes reduced by $1 million.

In his public pitch for the tax credit program in television ads, Cuomo is pitching this with social justice language, "giving every child an opportunity to excel" and similar rhetoric. Of  course the actual details are not in the ads. Yet, the actual intended beneficiaries of the program are private schools, for in order for the schools to receive the funds they must have foundations. Also, public schools can only get up to $20 million in tax credits, and tax credits to private schools can total $70 million.
As the UFT noted, this stands in irony, as the state owes more than $5 billion to schools, according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement. The governor has balked at paying this money, yet in the meantime he has found the funds to give $150 million per year to underwrite the private schools and Cuomo's donors.

The UFT closed its article with the following criticism. [It is all valid, but it is disingenuous, as the Unity caucus-dominated UFT was solidly allied with Cuomo up through the challenge that he faced last year from upstart Zephyr Teachout: recall that the UFT (i.e., Michael Mulgrew and company) and other major state unions threatened to dissolve the Working Families if they would shift their allegiance from Cuomo to Teachout. Furthermore, Mulgrew's proxy Andy Pallotta paid $10,000 for a table a year ago at Cuomo's birthday fundraiser.]

Most telling is that Cuomo’s proposed tax credit bill bears striking resemblance to model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group that wants to destroy public education and whose funders include the Koch family.

Our governor is in step with ALEC’s right-wing ideology against public schools. But he is far out of step with New York State residents, as recent polls show.

The state Legislature must reject this destructive proposal.

Michelle Rhee's group's link and legalized corruption
Former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has moved on from her post-D.C. schools stint, StudentsFirst. Yet, the organization lives on. It is ever so active, in alignment with Cuomo and the Eva Moskowitz orbit of Democratic politics and "reform" education policies. Teachout last year excoriated the hedge-funders' influence as "legal corruption." From "A guide to what the big Cuomo donors want in 2015," Capital New York, December 8, 2014:

New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure committee formed by the pro-charter organization Students First NY, spent $4.2 million this past election cycle to help Republicans re-gain control of the Senate.

The bulk of that cash came in the final weeks of the campaign and was given by a dozen donors, most of them current or retired hedge fund managers like Paul Singer, Dan Loeb, Julian H. Robertson Jr., and Paul Tudor Jones II.

The alarm about this sector’s given has been sounded most aggressively by Zephyr Teachout, Cuomo’s Democratic primary opponent, who has now mended fences with the labor-backed Working Families Party (which first floated her as a candidate but ultimately endorsed the governor) to take on wealthy charter school backers.

According to Teachout, these donors are trying to undermine public education in New York by buying support for charters. In her mind, this is tantamount to “legal corruption.”

NYSED Adds Detail to 3012c Law --WITHOUT THE LEGISLATURE Voting On It

 *NYSED subverts democracy in response to massive opt-outs

This just in : The New York State Education Department has issued a document that tells local school districts to create SLOs, in the context of missing data, due to the massive numbers of opt-outs. In particular read D99.

This is unsettling from a democratic perspective. They have just taken it upon themselves, in executive authority fashion, to augment state law, 3012c.

New York State United Teachers and Change the Stakes (acting as a good government group) ought to take the NYSED to court over this overreach of authority.

The full guidance document is available for download athttps://www.engageny.org/resource/guidance-on-new-york-s-annual-professional-performance-review-law-and-regulations

Please share widely . . .

NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

GUIDANCE ON NEW YORK STATE’S

ANNUAL PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

FOR TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS

TO IMPLEMENT EDUCATION LAW §3012-c AND THE COMMISSIONER’S REGULATIONS

UPDATED: April 24, 2015

Questions added to April 2015 Guidance

D99. Due to unforeseen circumstances, our district/BOCES has a number of teachers who will not receive a State-provided growth score as expected. What should we do?

Education Law §3012-c requires all teachers and principals in a district/BOCES who are subject to APPR to have a complete evaluation each school year. State aid increases are linked to the Commissioner’s approval of documentation that a school district has fully implemented the standards and procedures for conducting APPRs in accordance with Education Law §3012-c and Subpart 30-2 of the Rules of the Board of Regents by September 1 (see Sections C31 and 32 of APPR Guidance). Pursuant to Education Law §3012-c, a complete evaluation includes a score and rating for the State Growth or Other Comparable Measures, Locally Selected Measures, and Other Measures of Educator Effectiveness subcomponents, as well as an Overall Composite score and rating. The Department’s longstanding guidance to districts/BOCES for teachers and principals of grades 4-8 ELA and math with close to the minimum “n” size of student growth scores needed to generate a State-provided growth score has been to set back-up SLOs for the State Growth or Other Comparable Measures subcomponent, in case there are not enough students, not enough scores or are unforeseen issues with the data to generate a State‐provided growth score (see Section D52 of APPR Guidance).

If your district did not suspect that a back-up SLO would be needed and due to unforeseen circumstances, your district/BOCES has teachers or principals who will fall below the minimum threshold of 16 SGP scores in that grade/subject, district/BOCES leaders must determine the processes that will be used to set SLOs (e.g., short-term SLOs, back-up SLOs) to ensure that all educators are evaluated. As a reminder, pursuant to Education Law §3012-c, all teachers and principals subject to evaluation must have a complete APPR each school year. Therefore, district/BOCES leaders must put back-up SLOs in place for all educators who you anticipate may not receive a State-provided growth score, even if this occurs later in the school year.

Many educators set short-term SLOs for a variety of reasons – maternity leave, high levels of mobility, low threshold of student scores on State assessments, etc. The Department recommends that all districts/BOCES consult with their local counsel regarding the implementation of back-up SLOs for APPR purposes. You may also wish to review Sections D12, D19, D24, D52, E10, and M31 of APPR Guidance, as well as the “Alternative Target Setting Models within SLOs” webinar for guidance on SLOs based on small class sizes.

Pickering v. Garcetti -- How Mass Opt-Outs Will Aid Teachers Brought Up on Charges Over Opt-Out Advocacy

In the coming prosecutions we will see a collision over state authority and teachers' expression rights in the public interest.  The parents' and students' opt-out activities will support teachers in their claim to use the free speech power as expressed in Pickering, over the state power as expressed in Garcetti.

The massive parent and student support that we have seen in the opt-out rebellion in the last two weeks profoundly shows popular revulsion for the high-stakes standardized tests that have no purpose other than to sort teachers. And as has been shown in statistical analyses, whether by Gary Rubinstein or by the American Statistical Association, Value-Added Measuring is invalid in assessing teachers.

Case law on public employee free speech, briefly
In Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) the Supreme Court justices upheld a teacher's right of free speech. A teacher had written a letter criticizing school board policy. The Court decided that teachers have a right of free speech if they are speaking truthfully and in the public interest.

By contrast a more recent Supreme Court ruling, Garcetti v. Ceballo (2006) the Court held that the interests of smooth government operation trumped government employee free speech rights. The case involved a dispute on the over over proper procedure with a warrant. For a lengthier look at the question of teachers' free speech rights see this posting at Diane Ravitch's blog.

A few days ago I wrote on how the Supreme Court has protected the free speech rights of youths. A case on a youth of the Jehovah's Witnesses faith was supported in a quest of being free from mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. In a later case, a youth was supported in challenging the constitutionality of the mandate of reciting a prayer in school. These precedents would support those youths that would resent being compelled to sign a contract of secrecy regarding test content. Further, parental rights have been found to have had given greater weight than property rights.
How all this relates to kids and this month's tests: students should not have to sign secrecy oaths. Parents' rights mean that they can allow their children to opt out of tests.

Teachers: Massive student opt-outs, massive parental OKs are proof that you are speaking to a public interest need
The entire 11th grade in one Seattle school resisted taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test. (See "What If They Gave the SBAC and Nobody Took It?") In Long Island the percentage of students\opting out of taking the Common Core-based tests took a meteoric rise. In Baldwin, Nassau County, student opt-outs took a 232 percent increase. (New York State has decided to use its own test, instead of the PARCC or SBAC tests used in other states.) A full 39 percent of third through eighth grade students opted out of taking the English Language Arts "assessment" (test for those of you in the real world). Across New York, the number of opt-outs (from about 73 percent of the districts) there were 185,000 opt-outs on the ELA test, an increase over the 49,000 from last year. About 1.1 million students took the test last year.

These numbers demonstrate that the parents and students are in alignment with the teachers.
So, if and when authorities prosecute teachers, as suggested by this disciplinary threat in Philadelphia, this mandate in New Mexico that compels teachers to withhold their speech on opting out, this suspension of a Rhode Island teacher, and this threat in Rochester, New York, teachers will be able to argue that the Pickering principal of protecting speech that is in the public interest evidently outweighs the Garcetti case emphasis on the smooth operation of the government.

It will be a great fight over the judgments of the two precedential cases. Bring it on.

Teachers should express special thanks to Change the Stakes, NYS Allies for Public Education, United Opt Out, Long Island Parents and Teachers Against Standardized Testing and APPR.

Duncan Crosses Rubicon As He Threatens Opt-Out Districts With Sanctions

*Several Supreme Court decisions could supply bases for opposing Duncan's threats

In his Apr 21 statement that the federal government is obliged to intervene if states fail to address the growing number of students that are boycotting federally mandated annual exams. (Federal law in Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate annulized testing. However, the form of the test is up to respective state authorities. New York has opted for a Common Core State Standards (CCSS) -based test that is outside of the SBAC or the PARCC test consortia.) It is estimated that over 184,000 students opted out of the CCSS based English tests in New York last week. (Essential Update: See also this issue covered at Diane Ravitch's blog, on 4/22/15, "State May Have Power to Withhold Federal Funding to Punish Opt-Outs." Talk about collective punishment!)

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan is taking a disturbingly authoritarian course with his threat of sanctions against school districts that fail to achieve 95 percent compliance with high-stakes tests, as stemming from the ESEA. The hinted punishment by federal or state authorities would be withholding funds, the New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) denies the claim that districts will lose funding over low participation rates in high-stakes standardized tests.

Orders to be followed without question are in two places: in militaries, and in authoritarian regimes.

Duncan and the U.S. DOE is demanding compliance without question with his new statement.  

Duncan has truly crossed the line with his threat of sanctions for non-compliance. Further disturbing is his expectation that districts directly address the non-compliers. Of course, we must realize what this leads to. If districts must investigate and curtail opt-outing activity, they must find, document and punish non-complying students and their parents. And note below how he is attempting to enlist state authorities in addressing non-compliance this month with the Common Core tests.

A federal education department spokeswoman said last week that the agency could withhold funding from states if some of their districts have too few students take the exams, but that it has not yet done so because states have addressed the issue on their own.

State education department spokesman Jonathan Burman said in an email Tuesday that the “the feds are discussing the possibility of imposing penalties for failing to hit participation rate targets.” He added that the state is also expected to “consider imposing sanctions” on districts that fail to meet the 95 percent threshold, which could include withholding money “in the most egregious cases.” (Opt-out advocates have questioned the state’s interpretation of the testing law, and say that sanctions are only allowed after a district falls below the 95 percent level for three years.)

Duncan, unless he reverses his statements, is handing the 2016 election to Republicans. How could someone expect Democrats to continue to get popular support from liberals? And wouldn't Independents lean closer to Republicans after this threat?

*Supreme Court case precedence would make fighting Duncan easy

Duncan's demands for compliance, echoed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, could be easily challenged in federal court. For, Supreme Court precedent maintains that parental rights are held highly, above concerns for other matters such as property rights. For example, see Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990) which notes that parental rights are protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. Parental rights figured in the decision, Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) which upheld the right of Amish parents not to send their children to public schools past eighth grade. And of course, Duncan's actions over the past six years have been riddled with Tenth Amendment violations.

Consider also the matter of compulsory student signing of silence oaths on state tests, which would seem to violate the First Amendment. Easily, precedential case law could render these mandates unconstitutional. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) established that it was unconstitutional to expect students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; Engel v. Vitale (1962) barred state mandates that students recite prayers in school. Certainly, a lawyer could soundly argue that from these cases it can be argued that children cannot be compelled to sign oaths to be silent about test contents. Additionally, we have seen at least one well-known instance of the disciplining of a New Mexico student over informing other students of opt-out rights.

Easily, litigants could bring case against Duncan, Cuomo and any other government officials seeking to enforce cooperation with state tests and silence oaths on test contents.

How would Duncan achieve his goal of identifying and reprimanding opponents and opposition leaders? Existing staff would take on new investigative and police powers. 

This would give people an ugly taste in their mouth when hearing “Democrat.” If Hillary Clinton or other presidential contender of any political party have any sense of savvy they would run in the other direction from Duncan and Cuomo and their talk of sanctions over opt-outs.

Researchers: American Teens are More Stressed than Adults - Could Our Soul-Deadening Test-Prep Regime Have Something to Do with It?

Time magazine reported this month that U.S. teens are stressed out more than adults.

Could not the overwhelming education regime of deadening Common Core State Standards which elides literature and the heavy test and test-prep until you drop have something to do with this?

Could not the elimination of arts and extra-curricular athletics have something to do with alienation and particularly alienation from school have something to do with high adolescent stress?

American Teens Are Stressed and Bored. It’s Time to Talk About Feelings

by  Diana Divecha and Robin Stern

April 10, 2015, TIME magazine

Diana Divecha, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist and research affiliate at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Robin Stern, Ph.D., is associate director of the center and a psychoanalyst.

The kids are not alright

Every night, at dinner tables around the country, parents ask their kids the same question: “How was school?” We’re about to find out how millions of American youth feel about their school day. On April 9, the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Born This Way Foundation invited high school students across the United States to go online to declare how they feel while they’re in school. And how they’d like to feel.

Why does it matter how kids feel during the school day? A child’s day is a roller coaster of emotions. And sadly, many of the feelings are unpleasant.

A growing body of research highlights the importance of how kids feel and how they manage those feelings, or not. Emotions drive attention, learning, memory, and decision-making. They affect relationships and psychological well-being. Learning to handle emotions well is especially important in adolescence, a time when neural networks are being sculpted that will influence behavior patterns for life.

But American youth, especially teens, are not in good emotional shape. They feel mostly “bored and checked out” at school, according to adolescence scholar Larry Steinberg. Academically, they are underachieving when compared to youth in other developed nations. And their mental health is declining. During the school year, their stress has edged beyond that of adults, according to a survey of the American Psychological Association last year. They rank in the bottom quarter among other developed nations on measures of well-being, life-satisfaction, and relationship quality, according to a recent UNICEF study.

Emotional skills can be taught, and some schools have adopted programs to do just that. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, the nation’s leading organization advancing this cause, says that children should have five core emotion competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Teaching kids about their feelings can mean the difference between whether a personal setback becomes chronic failure or strengthens resolve, whether a disagreement with a friend festers into anger or is navigated gracefully, whether the intellectual insight is fanned or extinguished.

Schools that have adopted social-and-emotional-learning (SEL) programs are seeing the difference: An analysis of 213 such programs showed that, if evidence-based and well-taught, they can improve students’ emotional skills, prosocial behaviors and relationships with others, and attitudes about school. In addition, behavior problems are reduced, and students make modest gains in academic achievement. And 93% of teachers indicated in a survey that they want SEL training in their schools. Programs have been successful in diverse settings: rural and urban areas, independent and public schools, poor neighborhoods and affluent ones. A cost-benefit analysis released last month from Columbia University concluded that every dollar spent teaching an SEL program yielded an $11 savings through benefits such as reduced aggression and violence, substance abuse, delinquency, better mental health, and better academic performance.

But the funding to support SEL programs and the policies to guide them are slow to come. Several federal bills are pending that would mandate and provide the funding for SEL programs and teacher training. A few states, including Illinois, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, are beginning to move ahead on their own.

 Read on, at the original TIME magazine article for more discussion of the issue. 

 

An important flashback to 2010, year of Waiting for Superman and Cavanagh/Jones/Scott's response.
From the National Education Association (NEA) site:

An Upset Educator’s Letter to Oprah — ‘Ask teachers.’

By Cynthia McCabe

Britton Gildersleeve, a college writing teacher in Oklahoma who also helms the Oklahoma State University Writing Project, said she wrote the letter “in a white heat, I was so angry,” following the show’s airing. In her 20 years, she’s never seen the public and self-appointed education “reformers” so willing to bash educators, Gildersleeve said.

“I think it’s convenient,” Gildersleeve said, pointing out that even those willing to bash teachers they don’t know can easily remember a favorite teacher from their own past.
Her letter to Oprah wasn’t a personal attack, Gildersleeve said.

“I don’t dislike Oprah,” she said. “I understand she has a good heart. But why didn’t she have anyone on the show,” who could speak to the challenges of public school teachers? The show featured Microsoft founder Bill Gates, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and Davis Guggenheim, the director of the forthcoming education documentary Waiting For Superman.
A highlight from her letter: “If you want to change education, Oprah, don’t make the mistake everyone else has. Ask teachers. Would you have a conversation about the national state of medicine and health care without asking for the input of doctors, nurses and patients? And yet we have left parents, teachers and students completely out of this critical talk.”
Following is the full text of the letter:

Dear Oprah,
I teach. Given, I teach at university level, but I’ve been teaching for several years — about 20, to be exact. And I’ve seen the changes that No Child Left Behind — and your beloved testing — have made in my students. None of the changes are good: students want to be spoon-fed (they are in testing environments); students want to do only what will get them high grades. The list is long and sad.

I also direct a non-profit federally funded professional development grant for teachers, pre-k to university, the Oklahoma State University Writing Project. It’s the local site of the National Writing Project, an amazing partnership among research universities, classroom teachers, and schools. Not to mention the inclusion of parents and students. All of these voices are absent in the current national conversation.

Oprah, let me tell you about Oklahoma teachers and their classrooms. Many of my friends and colleagues at the high school level have more than 170-200 students in their classrooms. Do you think a student is worth 10 minutes a week from his/ her teacher? Outside of the classroom? Do you think a “good” teacher should spend that much time on weekly grading — 10 minutes a student? Please do the math: that would mean another 83+ hours weekly, Oprah — outside of classroom. IF each student receives 10 minutes of attention on his or her work outside the classroom.

“Don’t they have plan periods?” I hear people ask. No, many don’t. “Plan periods” went the way of smaller classrooms — there are too many school duties: hall monitors, cafeteria duty, mandated professional development that has nothing to do with the school’s demographics. And even if they did, that’s less than five hours weekly…
And yes, good teachers work a lot of outside hours. Unfortunately, in Oklahoma (where our average teacher salary ranks 47th in the country), many teachers need to take part-time jobs. Does this impact their teaching? Certainly. It also impacts the ability for a single mother of two or three children to put food on the table and pay the rent. Do you want teachers to spend more time on students? Lower classroom size — hire more teachers. And pay them competitive salaries — competitive with other career paths requiring a minimum of a bachelor?s degree. Even nurses (another under-rated career) make more than teachers do.

You don’t want teachers to have tenure? Then figure out a way that a principal in a small town (like, say, Skiatook, Okla.) will be unable to fire teachers s/he doesn’t like. Not because the teacher is ‘bad,’ but because the teacher attends the wrong church. Or maybe doesn’t attend church at all. Small towns — and big ones, as well — have politics, Oprah. And surprise: they affect every decision in a school, even to the detriment of teachers.

Tenure doesn’t keep bad teachers in the system — there are ways, as others have noted, to fire teachers. Your guest, Michele Rhee, notes that she fired hundreds. Many had tenure. And many probably weren’t bad teachers, unfortunately. Ms. Rhee, who once thought it was okay to tape students’ mouths shut?? She’s now in charge of evaluating schools? Let me tell you, Oprah, I teach pre-service teachers, in addition to my job directing a NWP site. Not ONE of my students would think that’s okay.

You can’t fire a doctor without just cause, Oprah — there’s a system. Is that ‘tenure’? Or trying to be sure that in this ostensible democracy, we have the right to confront our ‘accuser,’ and hear what is being said about us. Each year in Tulsa, Okla., new teachers don’t make the grade. Even in the third year of teaching, we let teachers who don’t work out go. Unfortunately, we lose an enormous number of teachers — good ones — who can’t deal with the incredibly complicated paperwork, the overtime demands, the lack of time to do what they went to school for: teach.

I wish someone who knew even a little bit about real classrooms, the heart-breaking challenges teachers face daily (teachers spend an average of $400 annually, out of their own meager salaries, to equip their rooms), had a national forum. I wish one of your guests was a real teacher. John Legend? Really? Come on, Oprah, I don’t try to tell John Legend how to make music; he’s going to tell me about teaching? Or perhaps you’re stereotyping? Instead of John Legend, why don’t you have Pedro Noguera, who wrote a stunning book discussing the problems black males face in the system (The Trouble with Black Boys)? Or Mike Rose, who’s worked for decades with working class, side-lined students and schools of America? Or Diane Ravitch, who recanted her support of NCLB because it not only doesn’t work, it harms students?? And Race to the Top is simply an Obama-ised NCLB, I’m sorry to say.

Why don’t you, with your great forum for change, invite real classroom teachers to talk about what it’s like to teach homeless students with no resources (students or teachers)? Why don’t you ask my son, who recently graduated with a Master’s of Arts in teaching, what it’s like to teach students living in foster homes for drug abuse, rape — both victims and perpetrators — violence, assault? Why don’t you ask him how he struggles to be a “good” teacher? And wonders — daily — what that even means in the context where he finds himself?

If you want to change education, Oprah, don’t make the mistake everyone else has. Ask teachers. Would you have a conversation about the national state of medicine and health care without asking for the input of doctors, nurses and patients? And yet we have left parents, teachers and students completely out of this critical talk.

If you want real change, invite real teachers to your show, Oprah. The irony is that the conversation seems to valourise teachers, saying that “good” teachers can change things for kids. So can smaller classrooms, food, adequate resources, the freedom to teach according to a child’s needs. But then, that’s not what the “experts” are saying, is it? Unfortunately, the “experts” have no real experience with students. Or teaching. Or classrooms. They only know how to tell the teachers in the trenches what to do?
Wondering how in the world education came to this pass,
Britton Gildersleeve

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Educators in Action: Attacks on Teachers

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POST TAGS: Britton Gildersleeve, National Writing Project, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma State University Writing Project, Oklahoma teacher, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey, quality teachers, teacher letter to Oprah

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Education Policy Leaders Today: Typical Bad Managers

Note how the hallmarks of bad managers so happen to be parallel with the worst, yet common practices of "education leaders:"

From Larry Alton, "5 Signs of a Bad Manager" at Business.com:

1. Micromanaging is the go-to approach

Nothing kills a business and employees’ spirit like micromanaging, but sometimes we just can't help ourselves. Many people think they’re genuinely “helping” or that nobody else can do the job quite as well as them. If you spot this in yourself, it’s kind of like being an addict—you probably won’t get better on your own.

2. They embrace “do as I say, not as I do”

A great manager leads by example, so if they’re always late, don’t follow the dress code, aren’t sure where the team is on a project or otherwise drops the ball on the regular, watch out. There will of course be times when even great managers slip up, but if this is the MO of a manager, then their heart isn’t in it. And if theirs isn’t, why should anyone else’s be?

Related Article: Meeting Mania: How to Curb this Corporate Addiction

3. They’re not qualified

Whether it was nepotism that put them in this role or the hiring manager had a crush on them during interviews, not all managers deserve their position—yet. If you think that’s you, then it’s time to buckle down and earn that spot no matter how you got it. Of course, this is assuming that you think it’s a feasible goal. If it seems too challenging or you’re in over your head, it might be better for everyone if you sought a transfer to another position lower down the totem pole while you hone your skills.

4. They’re a meeting addict

There are many ways to foster a successful company, but being addicted to meetings just for the sake of it isn’t one of them. Meetings are often big time wasters, they can be expensive and time consuming to pull off, and some people always tend to hog these precious minutes (or even hours). It’s a sign of poor time management and a symptom of a manager who’s using fluff to make it seem like something important is happening.

Related Article: Are Technical Skills More Important than Leadership Qualities?

5. They don’t treat everyone fairly or equally

Whether it’s rampant racism or sexism, or simply the fact that the manager seems to have a “pet,” this is one of the toughest management issues to deal with. If it’s clear to you that a manager doesn’t see everyone as equals, it’s probably obvious to everyone else. This destroys company morale, makes the manager look unprofessional and will slowly poison the company. If you spot this tendency in yourself, it’s time to consider how to handle it.
There are many ways to become a better manager, but fixing what you're not doing well can go a long way.

Read more: http://www.business.com/management/5-signs-of-a-bad-manager/?sr_source=lift_taboola&utm_source=cpc&utm_medium=taboola_simplereach&utm_campaign=content_mobile