The NY Post Gins Up The Great Teacher Scandal Of 2015

The following is a guest post by Harris Lirtzman, former Director of Risk Management for the New York City Retirement Systems in the NYC Comptroller's Office from 1996-2002 and former Deputy State Comptroller for Administration from 2003-2007.

The NY Post is having a case of the vapors bad by even Postian standards (here, here and here). Chalkbeat is in a tizzy. The only reason that the Daily News isn’t apoplectic is that the Post “owns” the story about the young woman who claims to have earned a high school degree without having done anything to “deserve” it. Carmen Farina must be summarily thrown to the wolves or, better yet, into the nearest volcano, for presiding over the scandalous practices in her very own schools that led teachers and administrators to begin “cheating” and “failing” their students. Thanks to the Post we even know the very minute when all this nefarious stuff began: 12:00:01 a.m., January 1, 2014—the millisecond after a Mr. William de Blasio became mayor of New York City and took control of the City’s school system.

We all have been told that education reformistas don’t do anything unless it is “data driven” and informed by “evidence-based practice.” Sadly, the media outlets that reformistas use to make their case to the public about the failures of public education, the “monopoly power” of teachers unions and the awfulness of bad, vampire teachers (“bad” because they belong to unions and “vampires” because they get health care and pensions) prefer to panic the public by telling stories using the old propaganda technique of the “Big Lie.” The “Big Lie” is something so astoundingly audacious that people believe it when they would dismiss a smaller lie as foolishness. We teachers, trained to value “facts” and “critical thinking,” try to refute reformista propaganda with evidence and reason and are surprised when the “Big Lie” sweeps away everything that stands before it. Our best bloggers are doing what they can but reformista propaganda is well-funded and tenacious. Public school teachers need to find an effective way to tell a counter-narrative that resonates with the public but which is true to our professional and personal values.

We all have “stories” to tell and it is only by weaving them together persuasively into a counter-narrative that we have any hope of countering the flood of “Big Lie” propaganda that washes over us each day. Here is my “story,” simply one of thousands that we can frame fully and quickly if we are going to defend public education and protect our profession.

I was a special education teacher in a high school in the Bronx from 2009-2012. During my tenure "conversation" with my principal in December 2011, which was an irregular one to say he least, I expected to be denied tenure because I had been raising serious questions within my school about widespread violations of student IEPs. I’m certain that my advocacy on behalf of my students was what precipitated the “tenure conversation” five months before anyone else in my school had the “conversation” that year but here’s what I was actually told:

Principal Grismaldy Laboy: "Mr. Lirtzman, your passing rates are low and are not consistent with the memo that I sent around to teachers last year that our school would have a 70% pass rate for each class."

Untenured Teacher Harris Lirtzman: "I have only failed two students for academic reasons in the last year. I have failed students who never attended my class. If a student came to class, made any reasonable effort to do the work and turned in anything that indicated some grasp of the basic elements of algebra, the student got at least a 65. Any student I failed was for attendance reasons."

Principal Laboy: "I don't, and the DOE doesn't, distinguish between absentee and academic failures."

Untenured Teacher Harris Lirtzman: "You are aware that I have a first period integrated algebra class. Several students never attended my class after the first week or appeared erratically during the term. They were "Long Term Absent." I worked closely with the attendance teacher here to get the kids to school on time. What else should I have done? Stand in front of their homes at 6:00 every morning and kidnap them?”

Principal Laboy: "Mr. Lirtzman, if you'd been able to make your classes more engaging they would have come."

Of course, conversations like this have been going on all around the City for the last ten years. My chapter leader sent the “grade quota” memo the principal distributed to central UFT and the district
superintendent as evidence for teacher coercion by administration to pass LTA students and, well, just about any student. Nothing. Not a surprise.

Now I can think of many reasons why Carmen Farina should resign—primarily her abject failure to sweep Tweed clean of the nest of reformistas filling up every corner of the place. But because of her willingness to allow some teachers in some cases to use multiple measures to evaluate their students? Because administrators began to press teachers to pass students without regard to attendance or academic performance only eighteen months ago? I think not.

In a conversation I had this morning with Geoff Decker, the reporter at Chalkbeat writing the stories about Farina and the “cheating scandal,” he asked me whether I thought Farina was “lowering the stakes” in the schools. I tried to explain to him that Farina hasn’t lowered the stakes in City schools because she can't lower the stakes in City schools even if she wanted to: the State sets teacher and principal evaluation standards tied to student test scores and the Renewal and other schools on the State "struggling" school list all use graduation rates, credit accumulation and other accountability measures to assess performance.

The high stakes connected with reformista accountability—receivership, teacher reapplication to struggling schools and the specter of being dumped into the ATR, administrators with feudal power over professional staff—have resulted in jumped up graduation rates and student test scores for the last decade and forced credit-recovery miracles and minimum passing rates stipulated in contractually illegal quotas onto reluctant teachers since Mayor Bloomberg obtained control over the Department of Education.

When reformistas put teachers’ careers on the line but don't hold administrators accountable for the incentive structures they impose inside their own schools the result is what the Post thinks it “discovered” this week. Tweed spent ten years trying to convince the State that "everything's OK here" because Mayor Bloomberg needed to validate mayoral control. Tweed spent the last eighteen months trying to convince Governor Cuomo and the State Senate that “everything’s OK here” because Mayor de Blasio needed to keep them from taking away mayor control entirely.

At least Chancellor Farina has set up a “task force” to investigate the nonsense that passes for accountability in our schools—though Farina might have written one more “Chancellor’s Regulation” giving Richard Condon and his crew of investigators at OSI even more authority for all the good a task force will do. No one demanded a "task force" at any time during the twelve years that Michael Bloomberg controlled the schools because it served no reformista purpose to do so. My friend, James Eterno, has been calling for a "truth commission" which would expose the institutional corruption and fraud that has infested reformista accountability measures in the City since 2002. Don’t expect to have the “facts” about the Bloomberg administration’s management of the schools revealed any more honestly than the “facts” are being told now about the de Blasio administration’s management of the schools.

Reformista media will continue to tell the “Big Lie” in all its forms to the public. We teachers will try to refute the “Big Lie” with facts and counter-arguments. The audacity and power of the “Big Lie” is a ferocious thing to behold. We must tell ourselves and the public the truth and we must tell the public our stories.

But we always need to understand that our reformista adversaries do and say the things they want to do and say because they can—evidence, facts, truth, fairness and data be damned. Mayoral control of the schools was blissfully wonderful for the NY Post for twelve years. Mayoral control of the schools became a satanic plot that allowed New York City teachers to stop educating their students on January 1, 2014. It is useful for our adversaries to make it so.

The “Big Lie” is powerful and reformistas will continue to use the “Big Lie” against us until we teachers can create a story—a deep and coherent counter-narrative—that the public is willing and able to hear. I don’t yet know how we do that but I do know that if we don’t do it quickly we will become spectators spouting “facts” that no one wants to hear while our schools and our profession are swept away by the “Big Lie” before our very eyes.

Gotham Schools Finally Owns Up

I've been saying for a long time now that Gotham Schools is such a pro-corporate education reform-friendly site that they ought to dispense with the sham about being "independent journalists" and just own up to being the corporate education reform shills they are.

Turns out, now they have - they've renamed the site "Gotham Charter Schools" and are continuing to offer all the corporate education reform-friendly news that's fit to post and make their hedge fundie backers and corporate donors happy.

Good to finally see some honesty from the public relations specialists and Gates Foundation interns at Gotham Charter Schools.

De Blasio - A Public School Parent Who Could Be Mayor

Dana Rubenstein at Capital NY:

De Blasio pointed out that if he wins, he will become the first mayor in the city's history with children in public school.

It's not a claim I could substantiate. I can say with certainly, however, that he would be the first mayor with a child in public school at the time he was mayor in at least 50 years.

(Abe Beame sent his children to public school, but they graduated long before he became mayor.)

None of the other leading candidates from either party who have children made the decision to send them to public school: Bill Thompson sent his daughter to private school and his step-children are in boarding school, while Republicans Joe Lhota and John Catsimatidis sent their children to private schools.

The two Democrats with connections to public education—John Liu, who sends his son to public school in Manhattan, and Anthony Weiner, who has said he plans to send his son to public school—trail their rivals by significant margins in the polls.

Fernando Ferrer, the Democratic nominee in 2005, said his daughter graduated from public school, although she actually graduated from Catholic school.

In 2001, when Michael Bloomberg was mounting his first run for mayor, his youngest daughter, Georgina, was a senior at the Spence School and his older daughter Emma was a senior at Princeton. 

His opponent Mark Green (and Green's opponents in the Democratic primary: Peter Vallone Sr. and Alan Hevesi) all sent their kids to private schools.

Ruth Messinger, the Democratic candidate for mayor in 1997, sent her kids to public school, but they weren’t school-aged by the time she ran for mayor and anyway she lost to incumbent Rudy Giuliani, who sent his kids to private school.

Ed Koch didn’t have any kids. Dinkins sent his kids to private school, the Ethical Culture School and Fieldston, but they weren’t school-aged.

Beame's two sons went to public school, according to his former campaign manager, though they were grown-ups by the time their father got to City Hall.
 
John Lindsay had school-age children, but he sent them to private school.

Bobby Wagner, the son of Robert Wagner, went to the Buckley School and Phillips Exeter Academy. (I can't find any information about the Wagner siblings. Help, please, if you know.)

Vincent Impellitteri had no children.

Bill de Blasio has two.

His daughter Chiara is in college now, but she graudated from the Beacon School, M.S. 51, and P.S. 372.

Fifteen-year-old Dante de Blasio attended he same elementary and middle schools and is now a student at Brooklyn Tech.

De Blasio’s status as a public school parent comes gives him an undeniably appealing talking point, one he has shown no hesitation in using. "Lucky husband of @Chirlane. Proud public school parent," reads his campaign Twitter profile.

It's been helpful to de Blasio in making his case to voters, no doubt.

“To have a mayor who says, 'I’ll tell you how much I’m going to care about the public schools, I got my own kid there,' is a very powerful signal,” said Ken Sherrill, a Hunter College political science professor. “That’s more than spending one night in public housing."

Good piece by Rubenstein.

This is the kind of piece Gotham Schools should be doing.

Instead, they're doing hit pieces on de Blasio dating back to his time on a school board in the 1990's.

I wonder how much the Quinn campaign paid GS for this advertising spot?

Nah, just kidding - they don't have to take Quinn's money for this post.

They'll be paid in kind by the hedge fundies and Wall Street folks around donation time.

Startling Statistics From The Common Core Tests

From the NY Times:

On the English exam, 3 percent of nonnative speakers were deemed proficient, and 6 percent of students with disabilities passed.

Essentially, if you are an ESL student or a student with an IEP, you will not pass the Common Core exams.

Can't wait until they change the high school Regents exams.

As things stand now, we've already seen some support services students forced to sit for some exams four times.

Soon, every support services students will sit for the exam over and over and over until they max out of the system without graduating.

Because as the rules stand now, students must pass five Regents exams with a 65 or higher to graduate.

If the 3rd-8th grade math and ELA exams are any indication of what will be done to the high school Regents exams, graduation rates around the state will plummet.

Spin, Baby, Spin

Those fine journalists at Gotham Schools, ever mindful of their funding and perhaps angling for some of that Bloomberg philanthropy money, spin the state tests scores for the mayor:

The state’s first round of Common Core test scores are out and they are just as low as officials warned.

But there is some good news for New York City: Its scores are close to the state average, and far ahead of those of other large cities.

...

As expected, New York City’s scores are lower than they have been, too. But the good news for city students and educators — and, perhaps especially, for Mayor Bloomberg — is that the city’s proficiency rates are not so far off the state’s.

...

The picture gets even better when looking at the scores of other large cities with student populations similar in many ways to New York City’s. While the new scores have New York City students hitting the proficiency standard only about half as often as they did last year, other cities saw performance fall more sharply. In Buffalo, only a third as many students — 9.6 percent — are considered proficient in math as they were last year. In Rochester, only a fifth as many students — just 5 percent — hit the math proficiency bar.

A commenter on the post notes the following:

There definitely is a positive spin in the charts shown since nyc is close to the average of ny state, but since the next four largest cities are below the state average, the stat inference can be drawn that the missing data from the chart (all other schools in ny state) are a mirror image of the downside figures but on the upside instead (to make the full average). But this data appears purposefully not shown on the displayed charts giving the impression that nyc didn't do quite so badly. Further, since nyc comprises almost 50% of the state as a whole, we are really interested in results of ny state w/o nyc in which case nyc would again show an even a worse comparison to the rest of the state. This is also purposefully not shown in the displayed tables above either.

I found most interesting how the deformists can so quickly mobilize their front in the billionaire propaganda papers, get Duncan to show up personally and even get Klein to put in 2 cents. Very slick orchestrated PR on short notice although no doubt they probably had a leak of the reports before the public to prepare in advance.

Indeed, the spin doctors are out in force today.

One of the problems with that, however, is that some of that spinning is getting done at "news" sites.

Walcott, Threatened By Criticism, Launches Propaganda Offensive

Dennis Walcott and Michael Bloomberg are planning to launch a counteroffensive against all the criticism they have been taking over their running of the school system:

The Democratic candidates for mayor have promised, in varying degrees, to revamp the city’s school system by undoing some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature policies. 

The attacks have put City Hall on the defensive, leaving aides worried about the future of one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to overhaul education. 

Fearing a sea change, the city’s Education Department has worked over the past few months to lock in critical components of Mr. Bloomberg’s agenda. Education officials have reserved space for charter schools more than a year in advance, called for a permanent system for evaluating teachers and sought new contracts for school bus routes, saving money in part by eliminating union job guarantees. 

And now, after months of campaign-trail criticism, culminating in calls last week for a “truth commission” to investigate Mr. Bloomberg’s management of schools, the administration is taking its battle to the public. 

Dennis M. Walcott, the schools chancellor, is planning a campaign to remind voters of what he sees as the administration’s chief accomplishments, including rises in graduation rates and test scores. He will call on the candidates to put forth a compelling vision for city schools. 

Mr. Walcott will begin his effort on Saturday, in a speech before nearly 2,000 school administrators. He will warn that the school system could fall into disarray if the policies endorsed by the Democratic candidates are put into effect. 

“What these promises have in common is that they would hurt children in the service of political interests,” Mr. Walcott will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “I find that disgraceful.” 

...

 

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Walcott recounted spending Mother’s Day sending incredulous messages to his aides after reading comments made by Democratic candidates at a forum sponsored by the teachers’ union. Several cast doubt on Mr. Bloomberg’s claims of narrowing the racial achievement gap in city schools. “We’re going to create our own truth commission,” Mr. Walcott recalled telling his staff. 

In his speech, Mr. Walcott will warn of a return to the days of the old Board of Education, which he portrays as a time of rampant dysfunction and favoritism in the school system. City Hall views the proposals to return some power to neighborhood boards as a Trojan horse to give critics of reform efforts more say over key hires, since union-backed candidates tended to dominate school board elections. “To dismantle the reforms of the last decade would be a disaster for our children and this city,” he is expected to say. “We cannot turn back the clock on our students.” 

You can see how threatened they are not only by the changes that the candidates are proposing for the system but also the attacks on their "legacy" running the schools.
The charge that the test scores and graduation rates are phonied up seems to bother them the most.

If Walcott wants a Truth Commission of his own on the Bloomberg education legacy, let's have it.

But Bloomberg doesn't get to have that Truth Commission rigged the way he has rigged the Panel for Educational Policy board, with members who must see things the way he sees them or he removes them immediately.

Bloomberg doesn't get to have the Truth Commission filled with the journalists he has been hiring by the droves to shill for him at Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Views, and Bloomberg Philanthropy - propaganda-meisters like Jonathan Alter and Andrew Kirtzman.

Nope - this Truth Commission has to be filled with parents and teachers and students who have lived through 12 years of his autocratic rule and mismanagement of the school system, who have had to deal with his pitting the Have's against the Have Not's by stealing resources from traditional public schools in order to hand them to his charter pals like Eva Moskowitz, who have endured his data-driven system where the only thing that matters is the test score.

Poll after poll shows New Yorkers want a change in how the school system is run and want autocratic mayoral control to end (see here and here for the two most recent examples.)

That is a fact that is clear from the polling data.

It is not some union-contrived propaganda to swing over the candidates to the union's view on policies.

The candidates are simply reacting to what voters want, what parents and students want.

Walcott can launch his propaganda offensive all he wants.

He cannot win because the facts are not with him and the closer the Bloomberg administration gets to sunsetting, the less control they have over the narrative.

It is true that Bloomberg still has the editorial boards to shill for him, especially at the Zuckerman-owned Daily News and the Murdoch-owned Post.

"Independent" news sites beholden to corporate grants and philanthropic gifts like Gotham Schools also carry his water for him.

But the public is no longer fooled by the propaganda - not the kind that emanates from the shills at the Daily News, the Post or Gotham Schools, not the kind that comes directly from Bloomberg and Walcott in the form of speeches, press conferences and press releases.

So I say, let's have that Truth Commission that Walcott is calling for, that Mulgrew has called for.

Let's look at the test scores, the gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students, the graduation rates, the credit recovery statistics.

Let's look at how Bloomberg and Walcott set up the schools they want to close to fail years before the actual closures by stealing resources and using these schools as dumping grounds for students from other closed schools who need the most support.

Let's look at the outside consultant contracts, all the money they have spent on technology that doesn't work or that people don't use because it doesn't work well (ARIS comes to mind.)

Let's have your Truth Commission, Mr. Chancellor and Mr. Mayor.

But you don't get to pick the members and you don't get to have only your journalists spin the findings.

Ask About Pearson

If you're going to interview former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner, you might ask a question about the overseas junket he received from Pearson and the subsequent contracts Pearson received from the NYSED.

Pearson Screwed Up Gifted And Talented Test

Gotham Schools reports a Friday afternoon news dump from the DOE about Pearson:

A major screwup by the testing company Pearson caused some children to be told they did not make the cut for city gifted programs when in fact they scored high enough to be admitted.

It’s a Friday news dump of epic proportions, at least for the thousands of city families that had their children tested for gifted and talented eligibility this year. Previously, the city had said 9,020 students had scored above the 90th percentile on two tests, making them eligible for admission to G&T programs. The real number is higher, Pearson and the Department of Education said.

Pearson, which has had a rocky road in New York in recent years, is sending a letter to parents that contains a lengthy mea culpa.

“Pearson has an established record in this field and we depend on its professionalism and deep capacity to deliver for the public.  But in this case they let our children and families down,” said Chancellor Dennis Walcott in a statement. “I have told the company’s officials in no uncertain terms that I expect this will never happen again.”

I am sure Pearson and the NYCDOE are hoping this news item goes unnoticed as people remain riveted to the news from Boston.

Gotham Schools says they will have more on this story later.

Here's hoping other news outlets pick up the story as well.

Coming on the heels of last year's error-riddled state tests developed by Pearson, including the infamous Pineapple and Hare episode, and this year's extra-lengthy tests that are literally making kids sick, maybe it's time New York State and New York City find a company that doesn't, you know, screw so many things up.

But What Great Asshats!

Above is a photo of Evan Stone and a few other members of the Asshats4Educators, the Gates Foundation/DFER-funded corporate education reform group that brought about two dozen members to City Hall Park yesterday for a rally to pressure the UFT into caving to NYCDOE demands on a new test score-based teacher evaluation system.

The boys in the green asshats don't look too happy at their little rally and that's because there were almost as many people at the Asshats4Educator rally protesting the Asshats4Educators as there were Asshats.

What was worse, many of the Asshats present were ignorant of their own agenda, as the crack team at South Bronx School showed in this interview of an Asshat member on what value-added measurement is:




There we have an Asshat4Educator in City Hall Park protesting for value-added measurements of student test scores to be used on him who can't explain what value-added measurements are.

As the guys in the Guiness ad used to say "Brilliant!"

The Asshats4Educators rally was so demoralizing for the Asshat faithful that even Asshat-friendly education reform website Gates Foundation/Gotham Schools, normally happy to publish all things asshattery without any criticism or skepticism whatsoever of the Gates Foundation-funded corporate reform astroturf group, had to acknowledge the protest against the Asshat demo right under their ad for the Asshat4Educator rally.

And with the counter rally looking like this, no wonder the corporate reform shills at Gates Foundation/Gotham Schools couldn't ignore it:

Which brings us all back to the top picture of Asshats looking so unhappy:

Wanna know why the Asshat brass look so unhappy in that photo?

Because normally they're used to excluding anybody from Asshats4Educator events who doesn't sign an Asshat loyalty pledge or promise undying fealty to their corporate reform agenda, as Ednotes reported here, but this time given the public nature of the rally, the Asshats couldn't keep the real teachers and anti-reformers away from their little shindig and they got some reality-based criticism of the corporate-funded horseshit they're trying to sell to the public.

So overall, not a great day for the Asshats4Educators, but really, when you're wearing such great free, Gates Foundation-funded green asscaps, who cares if the rally didn't go so well.

I mean, everybody loves free Gates Foundation swag, right?

Last In, First Out Debate

Both the Post and NY1 are hailing a Q poll out showing that 85% of New Yorkers are opposed to using seniority over "merit" as the basis for teacher layoffs.

And of course the corporate whores at Gotham Schools roll with that story at the top of their education listings this morning.

The pushback on this "poll" is very simple - if seniority rules are displaced by "merit" rules for layoffs, school districts are ALWAYS going to lay off expensive, veteran teachers and keep cheaper newbies regardless of merit, talent, skill, or expertise.

Because the "merit" can always be ginned up just the way the principal in the Bronx tried to gin up "U" ratings against teachers she didn't like so that they could be rubber roomed or fired.

That's it - that's the deal.

So until some "objective" form of "merit" can be found to evaluate teachers - and value-added evaluation systems using student test scores that have 12%-35% margins of error are NOT that form - seniority MUST be kept in place or you will see a mass firing of good veteran teachers and a hiring of cheap 22 year old rookies.

That of course was not how the LIFO question was framed by the polling firm.

And that is why the results came back with 85% approving of ending LIFO.

You can be sure the corporate whores at the Post, the News, the Times, NY 1 and Gotham Schools will use this in the coming weeks to push their corporate-driven agenda to end seniority and tenure.

The framing of the pushback is simple - end seniority and there will be no more senior teachers because Bloomberg and his principals will fire them all and hire much cheaper, less knowledgeable and less experienced newbies - not to make the system better, but simply to save money.

Gotham Schools Censorship Hypocrisy

Gotham Schools continues to censor commentators that don't meet their corporate-friendly education deform standards for commentary.

The latest to be banned from commenting is Mustafa (you can see some of the fall-out from that in this thread here.)

Having had a few of my comments scrubbed in the past, I decided to largely refrain from commenting there.

I also decided to delink GS from my blog and to refrain from going to GS much.

It is of course their right to decide who can comment on their posts and what those commentators can say.

But they ought to leave the sanctimonious jive about only scrubbing personal attacks and bad language from their public explanation of why they are scrubbing commentators.

I have had comments scrubbed that were neither attacks on other persons nor contained bad language.

The corporate-friendly (and corporate-needy - DONATIONS PLEASE!!!!) Gotham Schools people just didn't like what I said.

That's fine and that's cool.

I don't much like how they frame issues - it's always through a Gates reform-friendly lens.

I know a lot of other working teachers and people on the education blogosphere who feel the same way about jive ass outfits like GS (and Ed Week for that matter.)

Listen, these people are ALWAYS looking for corporate grant hand-outs, so they HAVE to keep the dialogue corporate-friendly.

If it would upset Michael Bennet or New Visions or some other deform outlet, then GS doesn't want it on their site.

So the censorship goons at Gotham Schools have been busy with their Michelle Rhee brooms scrubbing anything that would make the ed deform folks sad or uncomfortable.

Again, that's their right.

But it is also our right to call them what they are - education deform hypocrites with a corporate-friendly agenda.