What Shael Polakow-Suransky Should Do Now

I wondered in a post yesterday if Shael Polakow-Suransky might continue on at Tweed even though a new administration has taken over that is supposed to be at odds with many of the education reform policies Polakow-Suransky developed and/or implemented as deputy chancellor.

Carmen Farina told a reporter from Capital NY that she has made no decisions on personnel yet, but Norm Scott has a fabulous idea for what should come next in Shael's career trajectory:

Shael taught in the system for years and certainly can reclaim his teaching license and show everyone how it's done.

To which another commenter added:

What a great idea, Norm. I would like to see Herr PS conferring with one student in a class of 32 or so, while the other 31 children are actively engaged in independent activity.

It really is a great idea - let expert Shael show us all how it's done, Danielson-style.

And why not start at one of those schools that Bloomberg, the feudal lord Shael served these past years, wanted to close?

Come one, Shael - take Norm up on it.

Go back to teaching and show us how a highly effective expert teacher practices his craft.

Is Shael Polakow-Suransky Staying On At Tweed?

Buried in Eliza Shapiro's Capital NY article about Carmen Farina's first workday as NYCDOE schools chancellor is this:

Asked about whether the D.O.E's chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will stay on, Fariña said "no personnel decisions have been made yet."

This wasn't the only polite answer she gave. 

When asked about charters, Shapiro reported that Farina said that "the department will have a 'protocol' for charter schools' role in the system soon."

Political responses on the first day at work, which totally makes sense - no reason to upset any apple carts on Day One.

And with Farina appointed so late to the chancellor position, I can see where she wouldn't want to clean house at Tweed right away.

Nonetheless, if Polakow-Suransky isn't gone from Tweed by the end of the school year, we have a problem.

Shael Polakow-Suranksy Will Not Be The Next Chancellor

More politicking in this Capital NY piece about the next chancellor - one of the names mentioned is current deputy chancellor Shael Polakow-Suranksy.

I'm going to go on record now - there's no way in hell de Blasio picks Shael.

De Blasio ran pushing a clean break from the Bloomberg years - how does he pick one of the chief architects of the Bloomberg ed agenda, a guy still working for Bloomberg now, make him chancellor and still claim he's making a clean break from Bloomberg?

I dunno what the over/under on the other names are, but another name that is being thrown around by ed deformers like Eric Nadelstern is Andres Alonso, former head of the Baltimore school district who made his bones working under Joel Klein at Tweed.

I'm not privy to the machinations going on behind the scenes between the deformers and the union and others pushing their favorites, but it's difficult to see how de Blasio can pick Alonso and remain true to his "Clean Break From Bloomberg" platform as well.

Which doesn't mean he won't pick someone like Alonso - after all, he did just meet with Rahm Emanuel to talk shop, so who knows what de Blasio is capable of?

Personally I think this Capital NY piece is just more politicking by the candidates and their supporters, the way a Gotham Charter Schools piece a while back on the chancellor sweepstakes was.

With the election tomorrow, we'll know soon enough who de Blasio picks to be chancellor and just where he intends to go post-Bloomberg.

I'm not all that confident the break is going to be as clean as most of us would like from the Bloomberg years.

But I am pretty confident writing that Shael is going to get a chance to lap up some of that wingnut welfare courtesy of Gates/Bloomberg/Broad on January 2.

Which One's Lying?

John King sez reason no forums yet scheduled in NYC b/c DOE hasn't got them a venue; Suransky says not true. Who's telling the truth?
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) October 29, 2013

McGraw Hill Loses Regents Exams, NYCDOE Makes Students Retake The Tests

Just outrageous:

Students from a Chelsea high school have to retake their English Regents exams today after their original tests fell off the back of a truck on their way to be graded, the teachers union said last night.

The United Federation of Teachers said about 75 11th-grade students from Chelsea Career and Technical Education HS have to retake the test after education company McGraw Hill lost the booklets.

“We were told that the test booklets were on a truck, somehow the boxes of tests fell out,” said English teacher Jan Scott. “Some they recovered, but not ours.”

The city Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

“All my students know is that no one ever found their test,” Scott said.

McGraw-Hill and the NYCDOE make the mistakes, the students at Chelsea Career and Technical High School are forced to pay for those mistakes.

How come the people in charge of this system, the ones who talk so often and so passionately about holding others accountable, are never held accountable themselves?

And there's a class and race angle to this story.

The student body at Chelsea Career and Technical High School is 91% black and Latino.

70% of the students receive free lunch.

That's why the NYCDOE is making these kids take the ELA Regents exam again.

You can bet had this happened to white and Asian kids at Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech, the NYCDOE would have sent emissaries out into the community to assuage outraged parents over the mess.

But a majority black and Latino school with 70% of the student body receiving free school lunch?

Screw 'em, Walcott and Bloomberg say.

The next time you hear Walcott or Bloomberg or Polakow-Suransky or any of the functionaries at Tweed say how much they care about the kids while teachers are only in it for themselves, remember the kids from Chelsea Career and Technical High School.

Will Teachers And Schools Be Shown The Same Mercy The Tweedies Are Begging For?

Shael Polakow-Suransky on what the scores from the Common Core tests that will be released to the public tomorrow and are expected to show a sharp drop from last year mean:

"You can't really compare these directly, because they're not just slightly different tests, they're dramatically different tests," said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city's chief academic officer. "It's going to be difficult to make close comparisons with old state exams."

Ah, but you'll still try and close schools based on these scores, yes?

I mean, there's no moratorium on school closures in place despite the difficulty in making comparisons between the old tests and the new tests, is there?

Which means Shael and his Tweedies want the public to see the test scores one way when it comes to the mayor and the central office staff and a completely different way when it comes to teachers and schools.

Gotta love the contradictions you have to swallow to be a true believer reformer.

Who Is Polakow-Suransky Kidding?

Michael Mulgrew outside of Stuyvesant High School, one of the Regents grading sites, today:

“Who was the genius who decided that it was a good idea to take all the tests that the children take and put them in trucks and send them to Connecticut to get scanned into systems so they can send them back here?” Mulgrew asked.

That's a very good question.

Why, it was the geniuses at the NYCDOE, that's who.

But they don't think there's any real problems with the grading and think the UFT is using the mess to score political points.

In fact, Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky said the UFT was politicizing the problems:

 “It’s ugly to be using this for political gain,” he added.

Shael is so right - the DOE would never ever politicize something like test scores or graduation rates or teacher evaluations or whatever.

What a joke.

Polakow-Suransky lies every time he opens his mouth.

This time is no different.

The Regents grading has been a disaster.

They have lost tests.

They can't get the test scanned.

They can't get them graded.

They can't get the computer system to run right.

Even when they can scan the tests, sometimes they can't scan the tests correctly.

Can you imagine if this were teachers tasked with this job and these kinds of foul-ups and instances of incompetency were occurring?

Polakow-Suransky, along with Bloomberg's other paid shills and liars, would be screaming to high heaven about the "failing teachers."

But since Shael is to blame for this mess, along with the rest of the geniuses at Tweed, there's nothing to see here, just move on, all is well, have a nice weekend.

All of these changes were wrought so that the NYCDOE could hold teachers accountable via "objective" and "scientific" scores based on the state tests.

As I wrote earlier this week, the screw ups have ensured that there is NOTHING "objective" and "scientific" about the Regents results this year - NOTHING.

Meanwhile no one holds Bloomberg accountable for this mess, no one holds Walcott accountable, no one holds Shael and the rest of the shillsters at the Tweed p.r. firm accountable for this mess.

Once again, there are two sets of standards here - one for elites like Bloomberg and their functionaries like Shael Polakow-Suransky and Dennis Walcott and one for the rest of us.

There is no accountability for the elites in this country or this city.

They're Setting Us Up To Fail

The four horseman of the NY State education reform world (Tisch, King, Walcott, Polakow-Suransky) wrote an opinion piece in the Daily News to let everybody know that these new Common Core tests that 4th-8th grade students are taking next week will be really, really hard and they expect scores to fall a lot.

They offer this reassurance:

And yes, because the new tests are aligned to a higher bar, the percentage of students scoring proficient or above will not be comparable to previous years. Kentucky saw an almost 35% difference between the Common Core scores and its old test results. This does not mean schools are getting worse or students are learning less; this is a completely different baseline.

Transitions take time. This year’s results will not lead to a surge in summer school attendance and are not meant to disadvantage any one teacher or school.

The results will serve a more important purpose: Parents will learn where their children are on the path to college and career readiness, and teachers will get the feedback they need to help their students master the new benchmarks.

Yet these scores WILL be used as part of the new teacher evaluation system next year.

According to a WNYT.com article, the NYSED claims the new Common Core tests won't have much impact on teacher evaluations:

 On the State Education website, it says the expected declining scores will have "little or no impact" on principals' or educators' growth scores.

But this teacher in Saratoga crystallizes exactly how many of us our feeling:

"The results of these tests will be used to determine whether we are good educators," Swift suspected. "Low test scores will lead to our low evaluations. It seems that we've been set up to fail."

A commenter on the article says the same thing:

 I am not sure how they can say it will have no impact on teachers evaluation being that that is why the kids are taking the test. The test scores are part of the evaluation.

That's exactly right.

It would be one thing if they put these new Common Core tests into place a few years before APPR went into effect, piloted the changes through and carefully assessed how things were going before shoving the thing on the whole state.

But they're not doing that.

They're pushing the new Common Core tests and the new teacher evaluation system based upon those tests in the same year.

 

They're telling us that scores are going to drop precipitously and we should know that going into testing season but we shouldn't worry about the consequences - even as they tell us that teachers are going to get this more "rigorous" test score-based evaluation system that will use the Common Core tests for its data and will root out the "bad teachers."

 

It's a set up, pure and simple.

It's a shame our union leadership, such as it is, played directly into the education corporatists' hands by agreeing to this garbage.

But they did and now we teachers will have to do the best to protect ourselves from what is a very toxic system developed purely to label teachers as "bad" and schools as "failing."

I think Bruce Baker at Rutgers is providing plenty of ammunition for the eventual lawsuits over this garbage.

Here are two recent posts you should read here and here.

Get as familiar as you can with how they're screwing you with the VAM and the growth measures, because it may save your reputation and your job in the very near future when they VAM you out of your job.

Message To Tisch, King, Walcott And Shael

You say you know test scores will drop significantly this year because of the new Common Core test difficulty.

You say that the drop in scores will be due to the "new baseline" that will be used to measure "college and career readiness," that we shouldn't see these scores as evidence that students are learning less and schools are getting worse.

But you're still going to use the test scores to fire teachers and close schools.

New baseline for measurement of students, but still going to use those scores for APPR and school closures.

No wonder teachers don't trust the people in power and no wonder teachers are suspicious of the real agenda behind Common Core, which seems to be to raise the bar dramatically without providing the supports and resources necessary to reach that bar, then use the Common Core results to bludgeon teachers, close schools and privatize the system.

No wonder we think this whole thing is rigged to drive the corporate/privatization agenda, but couched in the language of "caring about the kids."

Polakow-Suransky Says School Closure Process Is An Art

NYCDOE Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky tells the New York Times that school closures based upon school report cards are "an art, not a science."

Huh?

These guys at the both the NYSED and the NYCDOE are always telling us these methodologies they're using on both individual school report cards and individual teacher evaluations are "scientific," "objective," and "rigorous."

The old way of evaluating schools and teachers was "soft" and "subjective."

The new way - the Shael way, the Gates way, the Obama way, the Cuomo way, the Bloomberg way - is "hard," "data-driven," "objective," and "scientific."

So what if the tests that these school report cards are based on were error-riddled?

So what if the value-added measurements used in the NYCDOE Teacher Data Reports have a median margin of error of 52% and maximum margin of error of 87%?

This is data-driven science and you CANNOT argue with the numbers.

Except when you can, of course.

Which is apparently always.

These numbers they pick and choose, the way they decide to weigh them, the tests they decide to use for them, the rubrics they decide to use for the tests - this stuff is ALL subjective.

It leaves out a whole host of other ways to evaluate schools and teachers and privileges just a few.

Parents at P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village say that is exactly the case with their children's school:

 “They are educating critical thinking and creative minds and that is not at all reflected on these tests,” said Nick Gottlieb, co-president of the school’s PTA and a father of two students. Lisa Siegman, P.S. 3’s principal for the past 12 years, said the progress report favored schools that improved their test scores over those that maintained high scores.

“It’s such a complicated statistic that you can have families feel that their kids are doing really well and still get a C,” Ms. Siegman said.

Yes, but how do you "rigorously," "scientifically," and "objectively" measure the teaching of critical thinking skills to children, Mr. Gottlieb? 

Don't you understand that if something cannot be immediately measured by a Pearson no-bid contract test, it does not exist in any objective way?

Don't you understand that what the NYCDOE is doing here is SCIENCE and cannot be argued with your critical thinking skills?

Except when of course even Shael Polakow-Suransky admits it's not a science.

Might be good to tuck away this Shael quote and bring it back up at the PEP school closure meetings later this year.

Why Evaluating Teachers By Test Scores Is A Bad Idea

Here is an opinion piece from the NY Times that asks readers to remember the connection teachers make to students and how good teaching is NOT about tests and test scores but is about helping students to reach their full potentials as students AND as human beings:

What I Learned at School
By MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE

Providence, R.I.

THE tumult over state budgets and collective bargaining rights for public employees has spilled over into resentment toward public school teachers, who are increasingly derided as “glorified baby sitters” whose pay exceeds the value of the work they do.

But how exactly do we measure the value of a teacher?

As a writer, I often receive feedback from readers I have never met. But the other day, I received a most unexpected message in response to one of my essays:

“I am so proud of you and all you have accomplished. I shared your opinion from The L.A. Times with my family and reminisced about you as my student at Hibbing High School.”

It was signed Margaret Leibfried, who was my English teacher — a teacher who appeared at a critical juncture in my life and helped me believe that I could become a writer.

Thirty years ago, in Hibbing, a town in northern Minnesota that is home to the world’s largest open-pit iron mine, I entered high school as a bookish introvert made all the more shy because I was the school’s only nonwhite student. I always felt in danger of being swept away by a sea of statuesque blond athletes. By 10th grade, I’d developed a Quasimodo-like posture and crabwise walk, hoping to escape being teased as a “brain” or a “chink,” and then finding being ignored almost equally painful. I spent a lot of time alone, reading and scribbling stories.

Ms. Leibfried taught American literature and composition grammar, which involved the usual — memorizing vocabulary and diagramming sentences — but also, thrillingly, reading novels.

Thrilling to me, that is. Many of my classmates expressed disdain for novels because they were “not real.” For once, I didn’t care what they thought. Ms. Leibfried seemed to notice my interest in both reading and writing, and she took the time to draw me out; she even offered reading suggestions, like one of her favorite novels, “The Bell Jar.”

That year’s big project was a book report, to be read aloud to the class. However, Ms. Leibfried took me aside and suggested I do something “a little different.” Instead of a report, I was to pick a passage from a book, memorize it and recite it in front of the class.

While I longed for the safety and routine of the report, I was curious how this new assignment might work out. By then obsessed with “The Bell Jar,” I chose a passage that I thought showed off the protagonist’s growing depression as well as Sylvia Plath’s sly humor.

The morning of the presentations, I remember my palms sweating so badly as I walked to the front of the class that I held my hands cupped in prayer formation, so I wouldn’t wipe them on my shirt.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

Dr. Gordon twiddled a silver pencil. “Your mother tells me you are upset.”

I finished and, to my surprise, the class broke out in applause. “As a writer and a good reader, Marie has picked out a particularly sensitive piece of prose and delivered it beautifully,” Ms. Leibfried said, beaming. I felt, maybe for the first time, confident.

Ms. Leibfried was followed the next year by Mrs. Borman, quiet, elderly and almost as shy as I was. She surprised everyone when she excused me from her grammar class, saying my time would be spent more productively writing in the library. I took the work seriously, and on a whim submitted an essay I’d come up with to Seventeen Magazine. When they published it, it was big news for the high school — it was even announced on the P.A. system. Mrs. Borman wasn’t mentioned, nor did she ever take any credit; in her mind she was just doing her job.

I can now appreciate how much courage it must have taken for those teachers to let me deviate so broadly from the lesson plan. With today’s pressure on teachers to “teach to the test,” I wonder if any would or could take the time to coax out the potential in a single, shy student.

If we want to understand how much teachers are worth, we should remember how much we were formed by our own schooldays. Good teaching helps make productive and fully realized adults — a result that won’t show up in each semester’s test scores and statistics.

That’s easy to forget, as budget battles rage and teacher performance is viewed through the cold metrics of the balance sheet. While the love of literature and confidence I gained from Ms. Leibfried’s class shaped my career and my life, after only four short years at Hibbing High School, she was laid off because of budget cuts, and never taught again.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee, the author of the novel “Somebody’s Daughter,” teaches writing at Brown.

Do you think Michelle Rhee touched any students the way these teachers touched this writer?

Do you think Shael Polakow Suransky did?

How about any of the "driven by data" crowd at the Gates or Broad Foundation education indoctrination centers?

The kind of teaching described above will wiped out if the Gates/Broad/Bloomberg/Obama/Duncan/Rhee/Klein model for teaching and teacher evaluations continues to be promoted.

It's that simple.

Bloomberg Agrees To Remove Toxic, Cancer-Causing Light Fixtures - In Ten Years

The Mayor of Money has heard the fears and concerns of citizens regarding the cancer-causing toxic lights in NYCDOE schools that are leaking PCB's.

He says he'll have them all out - in ten years:

Responding to pressure from federal officials and worried parents, the Bloomberg administration said on Wednesday that it would replace light fixtures containing the toxic chemicals known as PCBs in nearly 800 school buildings across the city over the next 10 years.

City education officials said they had allocated $708 million to the effort, which will also involve broad improvements in energy efficiency, and opening bidding for a contract this year. A total of 772 schools have fluorescent fixtures that must either get new ballasts or be replaced completely because they contain PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, the officials said.

For months, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has been pressing the city to assess and replace older fixtures containing PCBs in all of those schools because of the danger of leaks. With so many buildings involved — nearly two-thirds of the city’s 1,200 school buildings — the Bloomberg administration balked at the cost, which it initially calculated at about $1 billion.

But advocates for environmental improvements countered that the city would recoup the investment through savings in electric bills because modern light fixtures are more energy-efficient.

The new plan immediately drew criticism from school advocates who said the problem is too urgent be addressed over a decade.

“The work can be completed in two years if they decided to make it a priority,” said Miranda K. S. Massie, director of litigation and training with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which has represented parents in a lawsuit against the city over PCB contamination from caulk in the schools. “There’s no reason to subject school children to PCBs contamination for an extra eight years.”

Health experts say that the PCB contamination does not pose an imminent health risk, but that the longer the problem persists, the higher the likelihood that the chemicals could prove harmful. PCBs have been linked to cancer, impairment of immune and reproductive function, lower I.Q. and other problems.

Here's a statement from Clueless Cathie Black on the PCB removal plan and the timeline:

“This is a progressive plan to increase energy efficiency at our schools and simultaneously address the issue of PCBs in old light fixtures,” the city schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, said in a statement. “Given that both the E.P.A. and the Department of Health have said there is no immediate health threat to students in these buildings, we believe this is the most responsible way to proceed.”

“This plan can be accomplished without any significant interruption to student learning, and it will generate significant energy savings in the long run,” she said.

What does that jive mean - "a progressive plan"? What the f--k is she talking about? A progressive plan would be to eliminate the toxic, cancer-causing material NOW.

Here's the UFT president in response:

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the plan “frustrating.”

“It’s pretty clear that the mayor is kicking the can into the next administration,” he said. “The idea that they are prioritizing boilers and energy efficiency — how about prioritizing the hazardous materials first? There’s a health hazard inside the buildings. That’s the priority right now.”

And the lighting fixtures are NOT the only toxic materials in the school buildings.

Turns out that the caulk used around doors and windows is also toxic and potentially cancer-causing.

Maybe they can get all that stuff out in twenty years?

And how many people will come down cancer or die as a DIRECT result of this hazardous material?

Oh, well - if Cathie Black says the Bloombergian Ten Year PCB Removal Plan is a progressive one, then it must be.

Right?

Wrong.

Who knew that the school buildings themselves are actually more toxic than the overall education reform policies of Bloomberg and Black.

You can bet if Black's or Bloomberg's children were in any of these toxic schools, it wouldn't take ten years to get the PCB's out.

Bloomberg Poisons Schoolchildren

And doesn't give a shit about it - that's the only possible way to read this:

Federal inspectors say they have found toxic PCB chemicals leaking from light fixtures at a public school in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The Environmental Protection Agency says all 19 aging fluorescent light fixtures tested at P.S. 45 showed abnormally high levels of the toxins. Most samples far exceeded government regulations and require removal.

The government and the city Department of Education are in a standoff about how to handle the issue.

DOE officials say the city cannot afford to repair all fixtures in all of its schools and insists the PCB leaks pose no immediate health risk.

The EPA and environmental activists say the contamination is a serious long-term health threat to children and school staff.

A DOE spokesperson said in a statement about P.S. 45, "All leaking ballasts and/or light fixtures that exhibited signs of PCB staining that were inspected by the EPA have already been removed. The remainder of the ballasts or light fixtures in the school will be replaced in the near future."

Six schools, including P.S. 36 on Staten Island, have tested positive this year for the toxin.

PCBs were commonly used in construction materials from the 1950s until the late 1970s, when they were banned. They have been linked to immune and reproductive system disorders.

The Daily News reports that ALL nine city schools spot-checked for dangerous levels of cancer causing PCB's were found to contain elevated levels of toxins.

ALL NINE.

Not some.

Not a few.

ALL NINE.

The Daily News says these nine schools are just the "tip of the iceberg" because the DOE told the EPA in a letter that there are "564,000 of the outdated "T12" lights in 772 school buildings across the city."

772 school buildings with 564,000 lights that are KNOWN to cause cancer when they leak PCB's near children.

But the city says it doesn't have the money to do anything about these.

And we just cannot take money from the accountability and performance sectors and use it to, you know, make the schools safe.

I wonder what Shael thinks about this.

Didn't his second wife die of cancer?

Ah, well, what does he care.

His allegiance is ALWAYS to the test data.

Not to the children who he, along with his bosses Cathie Black and Mayor Bloomberg, are in danger of killing by refusing to deal with this health risk problem.

Bloomberg Gives Pal's Girlfriend 110G Job While Threatening Layoffs For City Employees

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be the Mayor of Money:

At the same time he was forecasting lay offs and issuing dire warnings that the city couldn't afford the size of its work force, Mayor Bloomberg was also nailing down a $110,000-a-year city job for the girlfriend of one of his closet political allies, The Post has learned.

Sources said City Hall arranged the hiring of Joan Cusack, the longtime companion of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, right after she was bounced from the state payroll last year.

Now a manager at the Human Resources Administration, Cusack, 65, is making $19,200 more than she did as a member of the state Crime Victims Board, which went out of business last June.

The very month she was booted from the state payroll, Cusack landed an interview with HRA Commissioner Robert Doar, who promptly offered her a newly created position to manage procurement and commodity contracts.

HRA spokeswoman Connie Ress said Doar determined Cusack "had an appropriate background to do the job. Other staff interviewed her as well and agreed with this analysis."

The job was never posted, and no other candidates were interviewed.

Cusack started work on Sept. 20 -- one day before Bloomberg imposed a hiring freeze on all agencies.

Molinaro and Cusack declined comment.

Interesting - the mayor hired Cusack the same way he hired his own girlfriend's drinking buddy, Cathie Black, to replace Joel Klein.

There was no job opening posted.

No actual search for candidates was conducted.

And someone with connections but only oblique qualifications for the job was hired.

In Cusack's case, Bloomberg actually had the position created.

In Black's case, he had to declare Shael Polakow Suransky Black's Keeper of the Education Knowledge.

Either way, these boondoggle hirings cost the city money.

No worries though - Mayor Mike will just make sure he cuts $12,000 from NYPD and NYFD pensions and lay off a few more senior teachers.

And it will all be good.

Who Lets Cathie Open Her Mouth To The Press?

Dunno who gave the okay for the Cathie Black interview with New York Magazine, but boy oh boy they really need to think about reinstituting the media embargo on her.

A commenter at Gotham Schools pulls out this telling quotation from the article:

“Well, too many people will say, ‘I don’t have the money.’ But the smartest principals will figure out ‘How do I reallocate my resources for the things I think are most important in my own school? The teacher evaluation, the … all of the work now in terms of curriculum development, for the core standards.’ This is going to be a game-changer. But it’s a lot of hard slogging, also. Then we have, with the new schools, whether they be charter schools or just new approaches … they’re very exciting. But too many people are afraid of change. They’re very wed to whatever they truly believe in. So obviously there’s a lot of noise about that.”

Huh?

WTF is she talking about ?

I dunno, and she doesn't either.

Geez, put a gag on her.

Or keep her away from the booze.

Or both.

Meanwhile, back at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott explains Bloomberg's rationale for hiring Black:

Yet her main task for the next three years is to win grassroots hearts and minds so that the changes go down more smoothly and the results generate more love for Bloomberg. “The distrust in the system is real. We understand that,” says Dennis Walcott, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for education and community development. “But at the local level, for the most part, people think their child is doing better and getting a better education. Part of our challenge is to make sure people understand the connection to Tweed and to this administration. Cathie is acclimating herself to this new world, but her style and personality will allow people to see things differently and hear them differently and build trust where people are distrustful.”

Man, Walcott must be drinking the same shit Cathie Black is if he thinks Black is going to engender more trust from teachers, parents and students PK (post-Klein).

So far, what Black has engendered is blunder after blunder, faux pas after faux pas, and comparisons to Sarah Palin.

Not exactly an auspicious start to her chancellorship.

I suspect that Cathie with an 'i' Black will make it through this school year and then, come June, quietly decide that as a 67 year old, she wants to spend more time with her family in retirement and Testbot Shael Polakow Suransky, her deputy chancellor, will take over operations from her.

Doubtful that Testbot Shael will engender any more trust than Black.

But at least he can talk the ed deform jive with tripping over his tongue.

Bloomberg's Education Reforms: PCB's First

Nothing is MORE important that testing and accountability.

WE MUST HAVE ASSESSMENTS!!!

So says Deputy Chancellor/Wanker Shael Polakow Suransky.

But removing dangerous toxins from schools?

Yeah, not so much on that:

As the father of an 8-year-old attending Public School 36 on Staten Island, Richard P. Ghiraldi was alarmed to learn that students were being exposed to a known carcinogen in the classrooms.

Last month, Mr. Ghiraldi and hundreds of other parents kept their children home from school for four days after tests showed that lighting ballasts — the devices that convert current into electricity for fluorescent lights— were leaking the highly toxic chemical compounds known as PCBs onto the light fixtures and floor tiles.

“I was surprised they still had these old ballasts in schools,” Mr. Ghiraldi, a 40-year-old paralegal, said. “You’d think the custodians and the teachers would think it’d be a danger.”

Yet as he and other worried parents in New York City press doctors and government officials on the specific risks that their children face from toiling beneath the aging classroom fixtures, which remain in some 800 of 1,200 city school buildings, the answers have been frustratingly vague.

There is no immediate health risk from PCBs lingering in schools, all are told, yet with one important caveat: the longer the exposure, the higher the risk.

...

Widely used in electrical products and construction materials like caulk before a federal ban took effect in the late 1970s, PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, have been linked to cancer, impairment of immune and reproductive functions, and other illnesses, as well as lower I.Q. levels.

The challenge, as with exposures to many other contaminants, medical researchers say, is that linking the health problems to a specific type and length of PCB exposure with certainty is difficult if not impossible. Some toxicologists note that the risk depends on variables like intensity and duration of exposure.

And just because a light ballast is leaking, they say, it does not mean that PCBs have gotten into the air and that children are being exposed to them.

“It does tell you about the potential, and that’s why you want the ballasts out of there,” said Dr. Bruce Kelman, a toxicologist whose company, Veritox, in Seattle, provides assessments of exposure to contamination in schools, workplaces and homes. “One ameliorating factor is that the kids don’t live in the school, and each room won’t have the same levels of PCBs.”

Adding to the parental stress in a strained budget year, the Bloomberg administration has disputed the urgency of replacing all of the aged T-12-style fluorescent lighting, estimating it would cost about $1 billion. Its negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency continue.

Anxiety about the dangers posed by PCBs began rising last summer after the city undertook a pilot testing program with the E.P.A. that revealed levels of air contamination exceeding federal guidelines for safety. It soared after the agency, effectively overruling the Bloomberg administration, said further tests could not wait until summer 2011 and began its own spot inspections to identify leaking ballasts last month.

So far, the E.P.A. inspections, which test PCBs in the light fixtures but not in samples of indoor air, have revealed PCB levels above federal regulatory limits in all three buildings tested: P.S. 11 in Brooklyn; P.S. 53 on Staten Island and a building housing both P.S. 13 and P.S. 358 in Brooklyn. (The furor at P.S. 36 on Staten Island arose after a teacher called attention to brownish stains under a light fixture and the city performed tests.)

In December, testing financed by two environmental advocacy groups also found high levels of PCBs in caulk at P.S. 56 in Brooklyn.

“You don’t send your children to school thinking, ‘My kid is going to be exposed to a chemical that’s toxic enough that they ban it in building materials,’ ” said Celia Green, whose 10-year-old son attends P.S. 56.

You see, your problem Ms. Green, is not being aware that Mayor Bloomberg does NOT give a shit about your kid or you.

Neither did Joel Klein and neither does Cathie Black.

Neither does testbot Shael.

What they care about is a) saving money b) making money for their corporate ed deform buddies and c) privatizing the system.

Now if you could prove that it was ATR's, teacher pensions or seniority rules causing the cancer, then these people would be all over this stuff, screaming to high holy hell about the dangers.

But because you cannot do that, and because it costs money to remove cancer-causing toxins from school buildings that they would rather spend on "assessments," your kid goes to a school that may give him/her cancer in the future.

Welcome to Bloomberg's New York.

City Practices Layoffs

No, I'm not kidding - but a judge really stuck it to Bloomberg:

On the same day Mayor Bloomberg was raising the specter of massive layoffs, human-resources workers from every city agency were being trained how to hand out pink slips without running into legal complications, The Post has learned.

The training session for about 100 HR staffers was the first of its kind since 2002.

It was conducted by experts from the Law Department and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which oversees personnel, on Thursday morning.

That same day, Bloomberg warned that thousands more layoffs could be in the offing if municipal unions don't provide givebacks on pensions and health benefits.

The mayor's budget for fiscal 2012 already assumes more than 5,000 layoffs -- and that's before Gov. Cuomo unveils the new state budget next month with what are expected to be heavy cuts in aid to the city.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg yesterday blasted a Manhattan Supreme Court justice who blocked the city from going ahead with planned layoffs, accusing her of playing havoc with the city budget.

Justice Emily Jane Goodman issued a temporary restraining order late Thursday preventing the Finance Department from axing nine deputy sheriffs and demoting three supervising deputy sheriffs.

When city lawyers pointed out that the agency would lose $4,045 in savings each day, Goodman interjected, "So, we can afford two chancellors?" -- a stinging reference to the deputy that Schools Chancellor Cathie Black was required to take on by the state education commissioner.

Speaking on his weekly show on WOR-AM yesterday, the mayor shot back: "This judge decides to step in [and say], 'Oh, I feel sorry for these people.' What about the taxpayers? We're going to have to lay off people now in other areas."

Touche for the judge - the city can afford two chancellors?

Indeed, it can.

At least Moneybags thinks it can.

Maybe if he had hired somebody for the chancellorship with, you know, education experience, Bloomberg wouldn't have had to hire two chancellors.

But the Mayor of Money never wants to hear criticism from others, not even a judge.

I'll also note the heartlessness of the mayor's words, mocking the judge:

This judge decides to step in [and say], 'Oh, I feel sorry for these people.' What about the taxpayers? We're going to have to lay off people now in other areas."

Nothing like a little empathy for people from the Mayor of Money, eh?

As for having to lay people off because the judge won't let him lay off nine deputy sheriffs, why doesn't he start with some DOE consultants?

Or test-loving deputy chancellor Shael, who shouldn't be anywhere near people, let alone in charge of them?

Or Cruella de Black herself, so unqualified for the job of chancellor that the mayor won't even let her answer her own questions.

Or how about getting rid of the $770 million dollar boondoggle known as CityTime?

NYCDOE: Teacher Data Report Errors Not Our Fault

This is the mantra of the Bloomberg administration - any problems are NOT our fault.

We DIDN'T do anything wrong.

You DID.

So LEAVE us alone.

Bloomberg did this when he whined about the $80 million CityTime theft being hard to unravel because the contract was so complex.

Now the DOE is doing it over the errors in the TDR's.

They say the errors are the fault of the schools themselves, not the DOE.

They say they have to release the reports anyway, despite the errors, because people, you know, asked for them.

People being the press.

But as for the problems with them - the errors involving class lists, teacher assignments, even grade levels - well, they don't supersede the need to reveal this data.

Nor does the fact that the TDR's, on average, have a 30% MOE from year-to-year.

It's amazing how the chief accountability guy at the DOE - second-in-command wanker Shael Polakow-Suransky - likes to hold other people accountable, but refuses to take any responsibility for his own screw-ups.

In that character flaw, he is just like his boss, the Mayor of Accountability, who refuses to take responsibility for the $80 million CityTime theft or the $700 million cost overruns for the project even though there is now CLEAR evidence that the city knew about the problems with the project seven years ago.

Accountability is apparently only for teachers, not for deputy chancellors or mayors.

Cathie Black Waiver Lawsuits

NYSED commissioner David "Loves The Classics" Steiner granted a waiver to Cathie Black to be NYC schools chancellor with the stipulation that her deputy, the chief academic officer, would have some independent power.

Yesterday, Bloomberg said the chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will not have any power independent of Black.

Today Bloomberg and Black went a-visiting to a school without any sign of the chief academic officer, Polakow-Suransky.

So here's a question:

Does Bloomberg open himself and Black up to a lawsuit that alleges he has reneged on the deal to grant the cheif academic officer some independent power and therefore the waiver for Black should be retracted?

Shael Polakow-Suransky Loves His Data

No surprise, but this guy is a data fetishist who relishes holding people "accountable."

If there's a takeaway here, it's that Polakow-Suransky is less a loyal Joel Klein flunky, as some critics have charged, than a thoughtful educator who has always been stirring up the same Kool-Aid as Klein and Bloomberg in terms of increased testing being the best way to ensure quality education. GothamSchools says that he's interested less in data itself than in how it can be used to change instruction; other education bloggers are less convinced.

The problem with the data fetishists - even ones like my man Shael here who claim they only want to use it to find the best way to ensure quality education - is that they privilege the data so much that any education decisions, lesson planning or curriculum decision that get made without data becomes naturally suspect.

The data becomes a means and an end.

Listen, I have no problem using a little data from ARIS or some other source to inform instruction or change some unit goals when I see from the data that things are going differently than expected.

But more often than not, I know this stuff already without the freaking data, and all the time I have to spend poring over that stuff takes time away from the actual lesson planning, grading, and other things I do as a teacher that make a good teacher.

Sometimes I leave these ARIS meetings after we've looked at three classes of results on the latest DOE multiple choice extravaganza wanting to tear my hair out.

I have said this before, I will say it again:

Teaching is more than data collection, collation and analysis.

Teaching is a craft, part performance, part inspirational, part educational.

There is soul to it.

The more data collection, collation and analysis I have to do, the less time, energy and spirit I have for the performance, the inspiration and the actual education.

I bet a man like Polakow-Suransky, seemingly more comfortable with numbers and stats than human beings, isn't going to understand that part of teaching.

But neither did Bloomberg or Klein, despite all the jive they talked over the years about "great teachers."

If they really wanted to ensure a quality education, they could start by fixing the hole in my classroom ceiling that has been spewing dust for over a year, they could get me a new set of August Wilson plays (Two Trains Running, please), they could fix the school heaters so they have a temperature gauge somewhere between 32 and 105, and they would lower my class size below 34.

But they're not interested in that stuff.

They're interested in "shocking the system," bashing teachers, busting the union, ending seniority rules so they can save a bunch of money on salary and pensions, and turning the system into one big KIPP/TFA thing where their education management organization and test prep companies can make bundles of yummy yummy education dollars.

Scary thing is, they're well on their way to hitting all their "benchmarks."

And Polakow-Suransky is part of that movement.