As the city and several media organizations, including NY1, submit briefings to the court today in order to have thousands of teacher data reports released, some parents in Brooklyn are rallying to keep the information private.
At a rally at P.S. 321 in Park Slope earlier today, parents said the documents are flawed. The reports "grade" teachers using a system that takes into account standardized tests scores, as well as factors affecting student performance.
"Equating education with testing is a bad idea. It's bad for the kids and it's very bad for the teachers,” said one protester. “Good schooling means much more than doing well on a multiple-choice test."
"It's public shaming. It's rooted in thinking about tests and not teaching,” said another. “It makes no sense."
Similar rallies were also held at other schools in the borough.
Publishing the reports is a public shaming, that's the whole point, of course. Bloomberg and the DOE are hoping parents clamor for their kids to be moved out of the classrooms of "bad teachers," giving them more ammo to get seniority and tenure protections gutted.
I'd like to say we ought to try our own experiment in public shaming right back on the DOE people, the politicians and the media shills clamoring for this stuff to be published.
Unfortunately, these people are beyond shame.
Its nice to see signs of life but when Lord Mayor controls the media, you will never ever see opposition.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for the mayor to say, "Parents in Park Slope are idiots."
I love your blog, I encourage my co-workers to read it. You got some love in Staten Island where we are eagerly awaiting to the breaking of Curtis, Port Richmond and McKee High School.
So far, Staten Island has mostly avoided the Children First reforms, but now that most of the big schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan have been closed down and Queens got the closure treatment last year and this year, yes, here comes Staten Island.
ReplyDeleteIt kills me that the we could have gotten rid of the little autocrat had the UFT and other unions played this last election right. Instead they let Bloomberg, Wolfson et al. fool them into thinking he was invincible.
Bloomberg eats these union people for lunch (or just takes them out to lunch and pays for it...)
Thanks for the kind words, social studies in staten island! It's nice to know people are reading these rants I send out into the ether.
There is one saving grace, the people of Staten Island send their kids to Catholic school (a large majority of them-since I am Jewish and now a full-time atheist, I would never curse my kids to attend a Yeshiva). I also think Bloomberg needs as many white, middle class voters for his "forth" term.
ReplyDeleteI work on the north shore at a middle school that has been profiled in The Best Middle Schools in NYC but since the budget cuts, many of the students that we used to attract have stayed to their zoned schools. As more charters open on the north shore, the cream of the crop will swiped from under our noses and the middle schools on the north shore will be a thing of the past.
I make it a point to attend many Useless Federation of Turds meetings and have urged my cohorts to abandon Unity and join with me to strengthen TJC/ICE but many of them still drink the Unity Kool-Aid. I have screamed, yelled and b**tched about how Unity screws the pooch on everything while our DRs, Emil "I'm useless" Pietromonaco and Sean "I'm also useless" Rothkowitz keeps giving the cohorts more Kool-Aid.
I work hard and my administrators, parents and students know how much I bit*h. I am just surprised because if my current principal retires (I hope not), more than 60% of the staff will be in the cross-hairs of the next principal (Many cohorts believe will be able to get an AP for the job, yet many know their is no C-30) who will wipe us out.
2013 can not come soon enough. At least many SI residents know that Bloomberg is all about two NYC--one for the 1% who make as much as he does and the 99% who will be screwed by the lay-offs in all branches of the city government.
Whoever Lord Mayor picks, he has to win the "forgotten" borough.
Along with NYCEducator, your blog is required reading for anyone with 10+ years of experience in a "failed and getting" worse system if this idiot/Cuomo/Obama teacher bashing continues. Hate to say it but I miss noun/verb/9-11 Giuliani, I wish he got the extra term, things would have been different though how much, I can't guess after nine years of this putz.
Keep up the fight!!!!
Social Studies in Staten Island
Thanks for the kind words, Social Studies in Staten Island. I just find myself so angry at all the outrages against teachers, union members, working and middle class people. Bloomberg, Obama, Cuomo, Christie, Booker, Oprah, Emanuel, Duncan, Rhee, seemingly hundreds of know-nothing ed deform celebrities, Arianna Huffington, and on and on...
ReplyDeleteSomehow they ALL seem to think unionized teachers are the problem and if we can just bust the unions and make every school into a KIPP or HCZ, everything will be swell.
I feel the need to push back a little, even if it's from my little soapbox in the corner of the Internet.
But it is great to hear from people like yourself and know that somebody is listening and appreciating what I'm writing.
So thanks again!