Washington Post: Firing Teachers Hasn't Turned Around D.C. Schools

Here's something novel - the Washington Post reporting that school reform is more complicated than getting a broom and sweeping out all the so-called "bad teachers":

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called it a “fresh start” and a “momentum-shifter” for Cardozo Senior High last month when administrators removed nearly half the staff at the school.
Henderson had used her power to “reconstitute” the struggling school, requiring the entire staff to reapply for their positions. It is a dramatic response to chronically low achievement, built on a philosophy that has driven D.C. school restructuring in recent years, first under Michelle Rhee and now under Henderson: Clear out poor educators and handpick a set of new ones to transform a school’s culture and performance.

Federal policymakers also embraced this approach under No Child Left Behind, the sweeping 2002 law that named reconstitution as an option for turning around low-performing schools. But the District’s efforts to remake schools this way have largely failed to produce improved test scores, suggesting that replacing staff is not by itself a reliable route to addressing the challenges of high-poverty inner-city schools.

Rhee and Henderson have reconstituted more than two dozen schools in the past five years — including Cardozo, which was last remade in 2008. Of the 18 D.C. schools reconstituted between 2008 and 2010, 10 have seen their standardized test scores decline further. Two of the schools have closed. Six have improved.

While test scores can be a crude measure of progress, school and city leaders use them as a key metric in judging schools.

Teachers say the District’s mixed record with reconstitution is a sign that urban schools and students face complicated problems — such as rampant truancy — that can’t be solved by trading one set of teachers for another.

“It seems like we’re always being told it’s our fault, like we should be superheroes,” said one Cardozo teacher who was rehired in May and who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their jobs. Reconstitution “doesn’t acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of issues outside the control of the teacher.”

Gee, more complex than just firing the teachers and declaring we're going to accept "No Excuses!" when it comes to achievement.

Who knew?

Note To Randi Weingarten On Her Moratorium Call

You can call for a moratorium on teacher evaluations and school closures tied to Common Core tests all you want.

David Coleman and Merryl Tisch can sit in the audience and hear your entirely reasoned argument.

They're not going to put a moratorium on anything here in NY State.

Both the governor and the NYSED Commissioner want every school district in the state to use the APPR evaluation system to fire teachers next year.

They told us that last week when they warned Buffalo about a memorandum of understanding between the district and the union that no teachers would be fired using APPR the first year because it is untested and unpiloted.

Buffalo has since rescinded that agreement under threat of losing RttT and Title 1 money.

And Merryl Tisch and John King both said after your speech that there will be no moratorium in NY State from APPR.

They say they've taken all potential problems into account, so teachers in NY State will be fired using the new teacher evaluation system based upon Common Core tests.

Thanks for the free coffee and donuts at the speech though, Randi.

They were swell.

And I know you just loved getting all the attention you got today for this speech, you attention hound you.

But nothing will happen as a result of this speech.

The powers that be in NY State have told us so already.

The firings based on Common Core commence next year.

John King Declares Side Agreement In Buffalo Void

Given that the whole rationale behind APPR is to fire as many teachers as possible, this is not a surprise:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — New York state education officials have declared void an agreement between the Buffalo school district and its teachers union in which the district said it wouldn't hold two years of evaluations against teachers.

Buffalo Superintendent Pamela Brown says the district will go along with the state's finding.
The state objected to the Jan. 15 agreement between Brown and the Buffalo Teachers Federation because it conflicted with the teacher evaluation plan the district submitted to the state.

New York, by law, required all of its roughly 700 school districts to establish new teacher rating systems and to use the findings, in part, to weed out bad teachers.

Union President Philip Rumore says it's not fair for teachers' jobs to be at stake based on an evaluation system that's being newly implemented.

Who cares if the evaluation system is unpiloted, untested and not ready for prime time, says our erstwhile NYSED Commissioner with the whopping two years teaching experience - you WILL fire teachers using this system!

As a commenter on a previous news article about this Buffalo side agreement noted:

The fact that King continues to plow ahead asserting the need to eliminate teachers in an untested system reveals the true agenda for other people's children.

Indeed it does.

Cuomo, NYSED: You MUST Use APPR To Fire Teachers

NYSED Commissioner John King, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo, is threatening two different districts with side agreements to their teacher evaluations agreements.

As was reported yesterday, Governor Cuomo threatened the Buffalo school district and teachers union for being close to "ethical and legal fraud" for making a side agreement that no teacher will be fired the first year under APPR because the system has yet to be fully implemented and the kinks in it have yet to be worked out.

Here is what the head of the Buffalo district wrote in the agreement:

“The District understands that it would not be fair to our teachers to use this process against them during this early stage of implementation,” Superintendent Pamela Brown wrote in a memorandum of understanding with the Buffalo Teachers Federation that was struck on the same day as the city and union agreed on an evaluation plan but was not shared with the state.

Governor Cuomo disagreed with that assessment of the process:

In a radio interview today, Cuomo called the side deal, struck at the same time as Buffalo and its union agreed on a new teacher evaluation system in January, “very close to legal and ethical fraud.”

NYSED Commissioner King has stated that Buffalo MUST use the new APPR evaluation system to fire teachers the first year because

 “The law says the evaluations ‘shall be a significant factor in employment decisions.'"

But an NYSUT official pushed back against King's assertion, saying

“That interpretation is wrong. The agreement is permitted under the law,” said Carl Korn, a New York State United Teachers spokesman. “The law says the district ‘may’ bring charges [after two years of ineffective ratings].”

The NYSED says that because the letter of agreement between Buffalo and the union was not sent to the state as part of their teacher evaluation plan, which has to be signed off upon by King, it is not part of the agreement and is superseded by the "official" plan that was approved by NYSED.

Therefore they MUST use the APPR system to fire teachers the first year running, no matter how many problems arise in the system, or they will lose state funds.  They sent a letter to the district stating just that in January:

The state reserves the right to revoke its approval of the district’s plan, she wrote – and if that happens, the district stands to lose not only its $33 million increase in state aid, but nearly $14 million in various other funding, she wrote, and could jeopardize tens of millions in additional funding.

NYSED decided that statement wasn't threatening enough and sent another one in March:

“The department considers void any other previously signed agreements between and among those parties,” she wrote. “The Buffalo Public Schools must implement the terms of its approved [annual professional performance review] plan.”

Just in case you think the NYSED is fooling around, the Democrat and Chronicle reports they have threatened the Rome school district over the issue as well:

In Rome, a local newspaper reported in March that the district and local union agreed to “hold harmless” teachers and principals from negative evaluations in the first years of implementation.“Please take immediate steps to rectify any confusion that may have resulted from the Rome Sentinel news story (including contacting the Rome Sentinel to correct the story),” the education department wrote to Rome schools on March 27, referring to the newspaper article.

“Further, failure to have an approved (evaluation) plan, in full compliance with (education law), can result in various consequences, including but not limited to suspension and/or redirection of federal funds.”

The NYSED and Regents say that the expected lower test scores on the vaunted new Common Core tests won't be held against teachers, yet they're threatening any district that doesn't use these scores as part of the new APPR system to label teachers "ineffective" and fire them.

And they're doing this even though the system has yet to be fully implemented, even though the value-added formulas the state is using for APPR have not been tested, even though the Common Core tests themselves have not been validated for use in teacher evaluations.

As one commenter put it at the Buffalo newspaper:

The fact that King continues to plow ahead asserting the need to eliminate teachers in an untested system reveals the true agenda for other people's children.

That's exactly right.

You can imagine the system NYSED Commissioner John King is going to impose on NYC teachers come June 1 if the UFT and the NYCDOE do not come to an agreement beforehand.

King and his NYSED cohorts have shown little-to-no concern over teachers' fears that an untested system will unfairly smear many teachers as "ineffective," ruin their careers and wreck their professional reputations.

Pity that the UFT leadership seems just fine with King and Cuomo imposing their own system in June.

Common Core Test Assault Begins

And so it begins.

They ratchet up the test difficulty by three grades levels.

They fail to give teachers and schools the curriculum needed to prepare students properly.

They barely - but just barely - inform teachers and parents what is going to be on the tests.

They tie teacher evaluations to the scores.

They know the scores are going to fall 30% from last year.

They will blame this decrease on teachers.

The new APPR system allows them to "i rate" tens of thousands of teachers across the state using these Common Core test scores.

The clock begins to run - those tens of thousands of teachers MUST get scores up next year or face dismissal under APPR.

Testing as a weapon of mass destruction.

That's high stakes test accountability education reform in a nutshell.

How Will The UFT Pull Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory?

I am very happy that the UFT won its arbitration case against the NYCDOE over the turnaround firings.

Still, I feel unsettled.

We have seen the UFT "win" rulings over school closures before, then fail to follow up their "victories" by ensuring that the schools the NYCDOE had targeted for closure are given the support they need.

Ultimately this is only a UFT "victory" if the union leadership decides to a) force the DOE to provide the appropriate support and resources needed for staff and students at these schools and b) fights the NYCDOE every step of the way if and when they try and sabotage these schools and the teachers working in them.

One final thing: this is still a "loss" if the UFT agrees to a system-wide teacher evaluation system that enshrines dozens of "local assessments" all throughout the year as part of the "local" portion of the Cuomo evaluation system.

Remember, the reason Bloomberg targeted these schools in the first place was because the UFT wouldn't give him everything he wanted on the evaluation system late last calendar year.

If the UFT decides to cave on that fight and allows the NYCDOE to put some onerous and odious evaluation system that requires dozens of "local assessments" into place on top of the new state tests that are coming as part of the Common Core jive, then this will be a short-lived UFT "victory," since many of the teachers at these schools will end up fired with "I" ratings in a couple of years.

As will many of the rest of us.

That's what this fight has always been about and I wish I could say that I have confidence that the UFT leadership isn't about to win this battle over the turnaround firings and still lose the entire war over the evaluations.

But eleven years as a UFT member has taught me to never underestimate the UFT's ability to sell members down the river and pull defeat from the jaws of victory - time after time after time.

Not Adding Value

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" education reformer.

He believes teachers have to increase test scores and graduation rates of all students or be fired.

Obama was quite open about that when he cheered the firing of the teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island back in 2010:

Speaking at an event intended to highlight his strategy for turning around struggling schools by offering an increase in federal funding for local districts that shake up their lowest-achieving campuses, Obama called the controversial firings justified.

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," he said. "And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th-graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent."

Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state of Rhode Island.

As of 2010, 26% of families and nearly 30% of individuals lived below the poverty line in Central Falls.

The town declared itself insolvent in 2010 and declared bankruptcy in 2011.

It can't afford to pay its pensioners, it had to lay off most of its municipal employees.

The factories in the town long ago closed.

Central Falls has all the ancillary problems that come with high rates of poverty - alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, homelessness, depression, etc.

But Barack Obama doesn't care about any of that.

All he cares is that the teachers in that town increase students' test scores and graduation rates, regardless of what is happening outside of school.

When teachers couldn't do that, Obama wanted the school "turned around" and much of the staff fired.

You see, teachers cannot make excuses when it comes to kids' lives.

Doesn't matter how bad the economy is, how depressed the town is.

NO EXCUSES!!!

Given Obama's "No Excuses!" education policies, what are we to make of the president's own economic record as of today?

(Reuters) - U.S. job growth braked sharply for a third straight month in May and the unemployment rate rose for the first time in nearly a year, raising chances of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve to support the sputtering recovery.

Employers added a paltry 69,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the least since May of last year, and 49,000 fewer jobs were created in the previous two months than had been thought, the Labor Department said on Friday.

The report is troubling for President Barack Obama, whose prospects of winning re-election in November could hinge on the economy's health. Republican opponent Mitt Romney called the report "a harsh indictment" of Obama's policies.

The jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in April, although the increase reflected more people entering the labor force to look for work, a possible sign of growing confidence.

The data offered the clearest evidence yet that the deepening debt crisis in Europe and a slowdown in China were starting to dampen an already lackluster U.S. recovery. Concerns over the course of U.S. fiscal policy may also be weighing.

...

Stocks on Wall Street ended down more than 2 percent, extending May's rout. The Dow Jones industrial average sank into negative territory for the year.

Gee, that seems like a pretty dismal record.

Unemployment is heading back up, fewer people are finding work as we roll toward summer, the stock market is now in negative territory for the year and GDP has fallen below 2%.

While the country is not yet in imminent danger of a double dip recession, it is in danger of one.

It surely doesn't look like our intrepid Obama is adding much value to the American economy, does it?

Uh, uh - it sure doesn't.

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" kind of guy, so I bet he manned up and took ownership of these serious economic problems.

I bet Obama didn't try to blame the country's economic woes on outside forces like the Eurozone crisis or China's slowing economy or political gridlock in Washington.

After all, if Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers and teachers all over this country aren't afforded any excuses, why should Obama be afforded any?

He must see that, right?

Wrong:

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told his supporters on Friday he could break Washington's gridlock in a second term, and pushed Congress to enact his "to-do list" prescriptions to heal the economy in spite of it being an election year.

...

The Democratic president has repeatedly blamed his opponents on Capitol Hill for blindly opposing his efforts to kick-start growth and job creation in the hopes that bad economic news would hurt his re-election drive.

Earlier on Friday, responding to a disappointing jobs report that drove down stock markets, he also pointed to high gasoline prices and Europe's brewing economic crisis as factors getting in the way of recovery.

So much for "No Excuses!"

The piss-poor jobs report, the falling GDP - these aren't Obama's fault.

They're China's fault! They're the Eurozone's fault! They're the Republicans' fault!

I guess the president's "No Excuses!" philosophy only counts for teachers, not for presidents with shabby economic records.

If the Obama White House was a school in Rhode Island, Obama himself would call for it to be "turned around" and all the employees fired.

I think America needs to hold Obama to his "No Excuses!" rhetoric.

Bloomberg Intends To Fire 50% of Teachers At SIG Schools

Went up this afternoon at the Daily News:

City officials are determined to replace roughly half the staff at 33 schools that will be shuttered this summer, documents show.

The city will push forward with axing 1,750 staffers even though doing so won’t necessarily qualify for $58 million in a federal turnaround grant, legal documents state.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew struck back Monday, charging the mayor with closing schools rather then improving them. “That’s why his education legacy is in shambles,” said Mulgrew.

The city plans to shut the 33 schools this summer, requiring each of the teachers to reapply for the job at a new school that will reopen next fall with the same students.

The city may not get the federal funds, as it won’t in every case be able to meet the federal requirement that half the staff at the schools be axed.

Bloomberg went on record saying he wanted to fire 50% of all NYC teachers.

He's starting with the SIG schools.

You can bet that after he leaves office, there will be a lot of pressure from the hedge fundies and Wall Street crooks like Kathryn Wilde for Bloomberg's successor to continue his education policies, including the school closure policy and the teacher bashing.

And given the money Bloomberg plans to throw around as a "philanthropist" once he is out of City Hall, he may still have de facto control of the schools even after he no longer holds political office.

Scary but true.

So the UFT's strategy of waiting for Bloomberg to go is short-sighted and ultimately doomed to failure.

The corporate attack on public education, teachers, and unions is bigger than the Little Autocrat.

They ought to be developing a coherent, community-based strategy to fight back against this.

But they're not.

We have some dark days ahead before Bloomberg goes.

And we may have still darker ones afterward.

Remember - Bloomberg Said He Wants To Fire Half Of All New York City School Teachers

The various newspapers in the city are covering the DOE/UFT impasse over a new test score-based teacher evaluation system as if an intransigent union is protecting "bad" teachers from being held accountable by a fair, objective process.

As I posted yesterday, this new test score-based evaluation process is anything but fair or objective.

It is riddled with error, arcane and complex beyond belief, and has already been shown to tar excellent, highly effective teachers as "ineffective."

Of particular concern is the test score-based value-added system the city uses to see which teachers have "added value" to their students that has "wide margins of error and gives judgments that fluctuate — sometimes wildly — from one year to the next."

In one state that has already put this kind of "accountability" into place - Tennessee - both the intended and unintended consequences of this test score-based evaluation system show just what havoc it will wreak in New York State public schools if it comes to fruition here.

Tammy H. Lovell, a third grade teacher in Franklin, Tennessee, explained some of the problems in The Tennessean:

I have no problem with a plan that requires all teachers to be evaluated annually. However, the state’s current plan has too many flaws; in their haste the state’s legislators implemented it before it was properly thought through, causing teachers, administrators and even students undue amounts of stress and anxiety.

Let me give two examples of what I mean. First, the plan greatly increases the time required to create and plan out a lesson without adding value to the children’s educational experience.

I recently completed my announced instructional observation. I chose a lesson that I would normally do, using materials that I already have and regularly use. Even under those circumstances, I spent at least 20 additional hours writing up the lesson, making sure that I covered all the indicators in the rubric. I know other teachers who spent more than 30 hours.

The lesson was no better for my students than what I would have done otherwise. In fact, it was probably worse. Remember, I teach 8- and 9-year-old children. Because I had to include all the elements on the checklist — rather than choosing the ones appropriate to that particular lesson — I’m afraid they might have been overwhelmed. Choosing two or three things, and doing them well, would have been better.

Second, the plan evaluates many teachers based on the performance of students other than their own.

For example, in third grade the students take TCAP, a standardized test. For the test to effectively measure a child’s learning, you have to compare it to that child’s performance on a similar test from the previous year. But third grade is a “baseline” year; there are no tests for kindergarten through second grade. So K-3 teachers and a whole lot of others (high school teachers, those who teach related arts like music, band, art, physical education and the like) have to be evaluated based on test scores for kids and often subjects we don’t teach.

I chose the fourth-grade social studies scores, even though I don’t teach it. Oh, and the fourth-grade teachers are using eighth-grade test scores. Makes sense, right? Seems that things like this should have been a little better considered before the plan was required for everyone.

The new evaluation system in Tennessee is so badly designed that politicians in both parties are calling for it to be reviewed and changed.

So far, the governor has refused calls to do this, though he has appointed an education reform group led by former Tennessee senator Bill Frist to review the system and see if changes need to be made.

The ostensible reason for all these new evaluation systems is that there are hundreds of thousands of "bad teachers" out there in the country who need to be fired so that every child can get an excellent education.

Mayor Bloomberg said just that last November:

“Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke,” Bloomberg said. “Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”

As the mayor acknowledges, he currently does not have the ability to fire as many teachers as he wants.

But as these new evaluation systems that are rigged against teachers go into place all across the country, more and more districts are going to have that option.

Indeed, that is what this fight is all about.

As Michael Fiorillo noted in a comment at Gotham Schools, this evaluation fight has NEVER been about improving public schools or education outcomes for children:

The RttT funds relating to teacher evaluations are not and have never been about benefitting students, but reconfiguring labor relations in the schools. Along with school closings and reorganizations, they are part of the assault against laws and contract provisions that govern tenure and seniority, are intended to give supervisors more levers for purging seasoned teachers and denying tenure to new teachers, and ultimately lead to the ed deformer's wet dream of a constantly churned, at-will and compliant labor force that will meekly implement the power and profit-driven mandates of the 1%.

If the so-called education reformers REALLY wanted to improve education for children, they would follow the suggestions of Tammy H. Lovell, the teacher from Franklin, Tennessee:

If you really want to improve education, then go volunteer in a local school. If your business wants to make a difference, then donate money for new technology or more books in the classroom. If you want every single child to show a year’s gain, then help to make sure every single child has enough food, a warm place to sleep, access to health care, parents with a job and a safe place to play.

I am busy trying to make a difference, and I could use some help.

But many (if not most) of the so-called education reformers who promote teacher accountability through test score-based value-added evaluation systems aren't looking to improve education.

They're looking to bust the unions for good, completely open the public education sector up to for-profit companies, replace a unionized workforce with a meek, compliant non-unionized one that can be fired at any time for any reason, and cash in on kids just the way they have cashed in on so many other things.

In fact, two of the most famous of the reformers - former chancellor of New York City, Joel Klein, and former chancellor of Washington D.C., Michelle Rhee - are both in the process of cashing in on reform (Klein here, Rhee here - notice how both are awash in Rupert Murdoch's money - Murdoch himself stands to make billions off education reform initiatives. )

The tabloids and the Times are doing the bidding of the 1% in this battle by framing the teacher evaluation fight as fight between education reformers who want accountability for teachers to improve education for kids and an intransigent teachers union looking to protect teachers who are afraid of accountability.

What this fight is really about is a corporate education reform movement putting the "awe" part of the Shock Doctrine into place to finish off privatizing one of the last truly "public" institutions in this nation.

Before they can complete that goal, they have to gut the work protections teachers currently have and put into place a system that allows them to fire teachers at will.

Bloomberg already told us he wants to fire half the teachers in New York City.

This test score-based value-added evaluation system will be the mechanism that allows him to do just that.

Corporate education reformers like Murdoch, Klein and Rhee will then move in to pick the carcass of the public education system clean.

The unregulated education management organizations, the for profit charter companies, the test providers, the test prep companies and the online education and tutoring providers will take their chunks too.

Somewhere, Milton Friedman is smiling.

Why Stop At Just Firing Teachers?

Commander-In-Chief-In-Waiting Mike Bloomberg said if he had his way, he'd fire 50% of New York City public school teachers and double class sizes to 70.

Hey, Mikey, why stop at firing 50% of NYC school teachers?

Why not stick 'em in Guantanamo Bay and unleash the CIA on them with taxpayer-provided waterboards?

Better yet, why not unleash your own army on them with all that fun new anti-terror technology your police commissioner is always bragging about and keep the torture right here in NYC.

All you have to do is declare unionized teachers "terror suspects" and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want with them these days.

Let's be honest here, the way you talk about teachers and the way you treat them, it's pretty obvious you think we're worse than terrorists.

So don't stop with firing teachers, Mr. Mayor - indulge your inner Cheney.

It's the right thing to do - for both the kids and America.

Do Barack Obama And Arne Duncan SUPPORT The Firing Of Every Teacher In Providence?

As Modern School points out here, two weeks ago Secretary of Collaboration Arne Duncan praised the Rhode Island teachers union for all the "collaboration" they have done with the districts in the state.

Last week, the mayor of Providence FIRED EVERY teacher in the city.

Ironically, Obama's Secretary of Collaboration Arne Duncan was silent on the Rhode Island firings.

Perhaps that was because, despite all the collaboration the unionized teachers in Providence have done on issues like Race to the Top, school closures and teacher evaluations, Duncan SUPPORTS the FIRING of EVERY teacher in Providence.

I think, considering his (and his boss's) cheerleading of the FIRING of EVERY teacher up the road in Central Falls, Rhode Island last year, a pretty good argument could made that both Duncan and Obama SUPPORT the FIRING of EVERY teacher in Providence.

Perhaps somebody could ask the Secretary of Collaboration the next time they see him about this?

Or perhaps somebody could ask his boss, President Obama?

I think their silence on this issue is more telling than any jive ass words they could utter, but let's hear those words anyway.

Mass Teacher Firings: Betrayed Trust

That's how Providence, Rhode Island teachers feel about the notices this week that went out telling ALL Providence teachers they had been FIRED:

PROVIDENCE — After two hours of contentious discussion, the School Board voted 4 to 3 Thursday night to send out termination notices to each of the city’s 1,926 public school teachers.

More than 700 teachers jammed a high school gymnasium to tell school officials that their hearts were broken, their trust violated and their futures as teachers jeopardized.

“How do we feel? Disrespected,” said Julie Latessa, a special-needs teacher, before the vote. “We are broken. How do you repair the damage you have done today?”

Every teacher received a certified letter from the School Department on Thursday informing them that they might be terminated at the end of the school year. It also said the School Board would vote on the proposed dismissals at Thursday night’s meeting, which was moved to the Providence Career and Technical Academy to accommodate the huge turnout.

Many of the teachers were caught off guard by Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to terminate teachers instead of laying them off. Last night, speakers questioned the mayor’s rationale: a $40-million school budget deficit and a March 1 deadline by which the School Department must notify teachers if their jobs are in jeopardy.

“This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied.”

...

Speaker after speaker demanded to know why they were being fired. Didn’t the teachers union sign on to the federal Race to the Top initiative? Hasn’t the union collaborated with Supt. Tom Brady on new curricula? Isn’t the union working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers on a new teacher evaluation?

“I’m feeling disrespected, devalued and marginalized,” said Ed Gorden. “Termination is a career-ender. You are putting a scarlet letter on every one of us.”

Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.

It's very simple - Providence, Rhode Island just busted the teachers' union.

They can hire the cheapest teachers now, dispense with the more expensive vets and save the district millions.

So what if the school system is destabilized beyond breaking?

This is ABOUT THE MONEY.

The rich oligarchs - these guys, the superrich who already own 85% of the country's wealth - want more, more, more.

The last powerful union - the teachers union - is being broken in their power grab.

And of course this has been done with the full consent and help of "liberals" like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George Miller.

Even worse, the teachers union leadership doesn't seem to understand the danger.

Or maybe they're on the neo-liberal payroll too, just like "liberals" like Barack Obama, George Miller and Bill Clinton.

Either way, while teachers are being fired all over the country for the simple of crime of making too much money or being a member of a union, AFT head Randi Weingarten is putting out plans on how to fire teachers with more ease.

Hey, Randi, haven't you noticed the oligarchs have been doing this pretty easily already?

So now we're down the the end game. Hundreds of thousands of teachers will be fired across the country this year, evaluation rules have been changed so that in the near future most teachers will be graded using value-added systems tied to test scores with huge margins of error, setting up perhaps a million teachers to be fired in the next few years.

And that's not hyperbole - that's reality.

Hell, they just fired nearly two thousand in Providence alone.

Oh, and those teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island who were fired as a result of Obama's RttT policy who got their jobs back because they collaborated with the ed deformers to add time, days and other goodies to the school?

They got fired this week too.

ALL of them.

The lesson for teachers is to STOP COLLABORATING with the ed deform movement or their political shills.

How many fired teachers will it take for the NEA and AFT leadership to get that through their heads?

Or will it take an Egypt-like coup inside the teachers unions to finally bring the point across - NO MORE COLLABORATION.

COLLABORATION LEADS TO EXPLOITATION AND MASS FIRINGS.

The Providence teachers collaborated and gave the reformers everything they wanted.

They were fired for their collaborative efforts.

Same for the Central Falls teachers.

And the same will happen all across this country until teachers FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE OLIGARCHS