Note To Preet Bharara: Discrimination And Retaliation Is The Official Policy Of The NYCDOE

From the NY Times:

The federal government accused the New York City Department of Education in a lawsuit on Thursday of engaging in a pattern and practice of discrimination against the three black teachers who worked at the Pan American International High School in Queens.

The lawsuit, filed by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, made it clear that the government believed that the school’s principal, Minerva Zanca, had targeted the three teachers with the goal of having them removed from their jobs.

Ms. Zanca once told the school’s assistant principal, Anthony Riccardo, that one of the black teachers “looked like a gorilla in a sweater,” and that she could never have “nappy hair” like another of the teachers, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also claims that Ms. Zanca retaliated against Mr. Riccardo for his complaints about her treatment of the black teachers. Once, when he refused to give an unsatisfactory rating to a lesson by one of the teachers, Ms. Zanca yelled at Mr. Riccardo, accusing him of “sabotaging her plan,” and calling school security to have him removed from the building, the lawsuit says.

The Pan American school, on 94th Street in Elmhurst, says on its website that it serves “374 recently immigrated English language learners from Latin America.” The lawsuit says that during the 2012-13 school year, when it says the discrimination occurred, the school had a total of 27 teachers. Three of the teachers were black, the suit notes.

Mr. Bharara, in a statement, said, “It is nearly unthinkable that, in this day and age, one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the United States would allow racial discrimination and retaliation to flourish.”

At schools all over the city, principals and assistant principals are going into observations with pre-conceived notions of who will be given negative ratings and who will be given positive ratings.

This is the official policy of the Bill de Blasio/Carmen Farina DOE (though the discrimination detailed above took place under the Bloomberg/Walcott DOE.)

The NYCDOE is telling school administrators that there are a certain number of "ineffective" and "developing" ratings that each school must have and that it will be held against a principal if a school does not comply with that directive.

Any principal or assistant principal not on board with the increased "ineffective/developing ratings" plan is retaliated against - either by the DOE (if the person not on board with the policy is a principal) or by a higher school administrator (if the person not on board with the policy is an assistant principal but the principal at the school is on board.)

What happened at the Pan American International High School is particularly egregious because of the vile racism attached to the pre-decided negative ratings.

But the truth is, this same kind of thing is happening across the city to other teachers, based perhaps not on blatant racism, but on other criteria that have nothing to do with teaching effectiveness.

Sometimes it's based on more subtle racism, sometimes it's based on ageism, sometimes it's based on cronyism, sometimes it's based on "Well, we have to throw somebody under the bus because that's what the DOE wants - who should that be this time?"

The UFT has done nothing to protect its members against the egregious assaults being waged by the de Blasio/Farina DOE because they've been brought in by the mayor to co-manage the system.

Despite the silence of the UFT in these matters, a terrible war against teachers goes on in schools, with the Danielson drive-bys as the weapon of choice for knocking people off.

I once hoped that things would get better in NYC schools once Bloomberg was gone, tried to take Carmen Farina at her word when she said she wanted to bring joy back to school.

But quite frankly, things are worse now than under Bloomberg because the UFT leadership is completely complicit in the insanity being waged out of Tweed, turning their eyes from the increased "developing" and "ineffective" ratings and ignoring the stories from rank and file about how bad it has gotten in individual schools.

The New York City school system is rife with FEAR these days, and while the Pan American International High School case occurred during the Bloomberg Years, much the same is happening now in the de Blasio Years, perhaps not as blatantly racist, but no less as discriminatory or retaliatory.

Any system that runs with a quota for how many negative ratings must be given is discriminatory and retaliatory - and that's exactly what we have under de Blasio and Farina.

Preet Bharara should dig deeper into the way the NYCDOE operates and he'll find patterns of discrimination and retaliation throughout the school system.

Judge Rules NY Teacher Exam Is Racially Biased And Discriminatory - What About NY's Common Core Tests?

From the NY Times:

A federal judge on Friday found that an exam for New York teaching candidates was racially discriminatory because it did not measure skills necessary to do the job, the latest step in a court battle over teacher qualifications that has spanned nearly 20 years.

The exam, the second incarnation of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, called the LAST-2, was administered from 2004 through 2012 and was designed to test an applicant’s knowledge of liberal arts and science.

But the test was found to fail minority teaching candidates at a higher rate than white candidates. According to Friday’s decision, written by Judge Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, the pass rate for African-American and Latino candidates was between 54 percent and 75 percent of the pass rate for white candidates. Once it was established that minority applicants were failing at a disproportionately high rate, the burden shifted to education officials to prove that the skills being tested were necessary to do the job; otherwise, the test would be ruled discriminatory.

In creating the test, the company, National Evaluation Systems, sent surveys to educators around New York State to determine if the test’s “content objectives” were relevant and important to teaching. The samples for both surveys were small, however, Judge Wood said.

The judge found that National Evaluation Systems, now called Evaluation Systems, part of Pearson Education, went about the process backward.

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts,” Judge Wood wrote.

Joshua Sohn, a partner at the firm Mishcon de Reya, who represents the prospective teachers in the case, echoed the that sentiment.

“They started with the conclusion, without any support, that this is what you actually needed to know to be an effective teacher,” Mr. Sohn said.

With this ruling, the LAST-2 meets the same fate of the LAST-1, an earlier version of the test, given from 1993 to 2004, that was also found to be discriminatory.

The third iteration of New York's teacher test, named the Academic Literacy Skills Test, or the ALST, is next on the case docket.  A hearing is scheduled for later this month in from of Judge Wood for that test as well.

Lace to the Top applies the judge's decision to the LAST-2 to the Common Core tests:

Judge finds Pearson's NY teacher exam to be racially biased. Sure to find the same in all Common Core tests: http://t.co/rKYyGDv4Ta

— lacetothetop (@lacetothetop) June 6, 2015

I dunno if the New York State Common Core tests are racially biased and discriminatory, but they sure are developmentally inappropriate, as Anthony Cardinale, a third grade teacher in the Carmel district, points out:

Testing. It has become a dirty word. Last year, between 55,000 and 65,000 families refused to have their children take the New York State Common Core assessments. Those numbers are likely to increase in the coming weeks.

Parents and educators continue to voice their concerns regarding the vagueness of questions, a lack of transparency, the sheer length of the exams, and the recent monitoring of students' social media accounts by Pearson. However, one of my major concerns is text complexity.

The best example of this can be found on the EngageNY website. "The Gray Hare," by Leo Tolstoy, is included as a third grade sample reading passage. According to the Fry Readability Formula, this short story is written on a 7th grade reading level. As a teacher who has administered the last two Common Core ELA assessments, I can tell you that the passages presented to my students were just as difficult.

In addition to being unfair to students, the inclusion of these passages is in complete violation of Common Core Standard RL.3.10, which states that students should be reading material on their grade level. As a teacher and a parent, I know this is unjust.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo will tell you the scores can be used by educators to improve instruction. But when the reading passages are this far above grade level, the scores become invalid. The only thing these tests tell me is that my third-graders cannot read on a seventh-grade level. I don't need a test to tell me that.

This situation is not unique to third grade, either. All students in grades 3-8 have been placed in a similar situation for the past two years.

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld the rights of parents to direct the education of their children. As parents, this means we can choose to have our children take part in these assessments or we can refuse on their behalf. Luckily, I have several more years until my daughter is in third grade. But if these tests continue to be as inappropriate as they are now, I will have my refusal letter ready.

Opting out is a great weapon against the Common Core tests and the Endless Testing agenda.

But so is suing.

Perhaps it's time to take on the Common Core tests in the judicial system over the issue of developmental appropriateness the way the last two LAST tests were taken on over racial bias and discrimination?

Allegations Of Racial Discrimination In Hillsborough Schools Under MaryEllen Elia's Leadership

Here's another item on MaryEllen Elia's track record as superintendent of the Hillsborough school district:

Marilyn Williams, a retired teacher and Tampa activist, alleges that the Hillsborough County School District discriminates against black students by subjecting them to harsher penalties than white students. She also claims students in lower-income schools, which are predominantly black, are denied access to experienced teachers.

...

Frustration. Disappointment. Anger.

These words swing through Marilyn Williams' mind whenever she thinks about how black students are treated in the district.

That's why she filed the complaint.

After earning a master's degree in conflict resolution and teaching in different schools outside the state, Williams moved to Florida in 1999. She spent a few years working with the local NAACP, which she said allowed her to gather the information necessary to challenge the system.

After a while, Williams started noticing small things. Black children who had to earn a teacher's trust. Counselors who weren't as patient. An increase in school resource officers and violent incidents.

Then she looked at the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores in Hillsborough County broken down by race. And she was astounded.

In 2013, 37 percent of black students in the third grade scored at or above the minimum achievement level for reading. That number dropped to 34 percent for eighth-graders and 29 percent for 10th-graders.

"Unless one is willing to accept the belief that black students are intellectually inferior ... then one must question why the district has consistently had poor academic performance outcomes for black students," Williams wrote in her complaint.

Williams also included a report from the Advancement Project that suggested harsh policies disproportionately affect students of color. For example, black students comprised 21 percent of the Hillsborough County school population but accounted for 50 percent of out-of-school suspensions during the 2011-12 school year.

"That kind of blew my mind," Williams said. 

Here's the update on that investigation as of February:

A special task force commissioned by Hillsborough County schools is working to address disparities in minority discipline, an issue currently being investigated by the federal Office of Civil Rights.

The Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation last year after a complaint was filed alleging that the district disciplines black and Hispanic males more harshly than their white peers for the same offenses.

District spokesman Steve Hegarty said the district recognizes there are disparities, and is working to try and reduce the gap. The task force that met on Friday is currently reviewing school policies and procedures to make sure they are implemented fairly across racial lines.

MaryEllen Elia will take over as NYSED commissioner in July.

Bloomberg: How Dare You Hold Me Accountable For Sexist Language!

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday angrily denied a published report that quoted him checking out a woman’s backside.

"I never said it, and I don't know where it came from,” Hizzoner snarled after a reporter asked him about the comments attributed to him in a New York magazine article.

A reporter for the magazine claimed this week in a profile about City Council Speaker Christine Quinn that he was at a swank upper East Side holiday party where he heard the mayor make an inappropriate comment about a woman.

Scribe Jonathan Van Meter said he was standing by as a friend tried to thank the mayor for his work on gun control when Hizzoner became distracted by the woman.

“Bloomberg gestured toward a woman in a very tight floor-length gown standing nearby and said, ‘Look at the ass on her,’” Van Meter wrote.

In the same story, Quinn admitted that of her political ally that “he’s got a potty mouth.”

Asked Thursday whether the comments were part of a pattern of sexist remarks, Bloomberg took offense to the question.

“That's an outrage for you to say,” he said.

No, it's not an outrage for a reporter to ask a question about a pattern in your behavior.

As noted here, you have had several sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits launched aginst you.

You settled those out of court and got non-disclosure agreements to make sure the alleged victims never talked to the press.

Your company was sued by the EEOC for discrimination against women as well.  

 

It's true, the EEOC did not win the lawsuit, but it's not as if there hasn't been a little smoke around the harassment and discrimination issue for you.

And now comes the New York Magazine article, which sounds believable considering other women in the past have said that you said similar things to them when you were running Bloomberg LP.

There is nothing outrageous for a reporter to ask you about this.

In fact, it would be outrageous for reporters to not ask you about it.

And what is outrageous is your faux outrage over the question.

What comes to mind in your reaction is this: "Thou doth protest too much."

As usual, accountability is for the little people, not the great Mike Bloomberg.

Bloomberg Show His True Colors Once Again

New York Magazine publishes a revelation about Michael Bloomberg today:

Mayor Bloomberg was focused on bums rather than guns at a recent Christmas party, where he ignored a compliment about his work on gun control to admire the “ass” of a female guest.

In a New York Magazine profile about Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker and candidate for mayor, the author recalled being introduced to Bloomberg at what he described as “a Christmas party for the rich” on the Upper East Side.

“My friend and I followed the host over, shook Bloomberg’s hand, and my friend thanked him for his position on gun control,” the author writes. “Without even acknowledging the comment, Bloomberg gestured toward a woman in a very tight floor-length gown standing nearby and said, ‘Look at the ass on her.’”

This is not the first time Bloomberg has been accused of harassment.

In fact, he has a rich history of both harassment and discrimination claims made against both him individually and his company, Bloomberg LP.

 

Bloomberg has settled these sexual harassment and discrimination suits in the past and gotten non-disclosure agreements from the alleged victims, so we don't know many of the details of the claims made against him.

But we do know that three women brought suit against Bloomberg for creating "a hostile environment of persistent sexual harassment and the general degradation of women" at Bloomberg LP.

In one case, Bloomberg is alleged to have twice suggested to a pregnant employee that she "kill it" (her baby) if she wanted to remain with the company.

In another case, Bloomberg was alleged to have protected a senior male Bloomberg LP employee who was accused of raping a female employee of the company, going so far as to say that the female employee was simply trying to extort money from the male Bloomberg LP manager and having other Bloomberg LP employees try and dig up dirt on the female employee in order to discredit her.

The depositions in those cases described the atmosphere and environment Bloomberg created at his company:

The Olszewski and Garrison cases combine to depict a sales floor where, as two men who formerly worked there, Jim Feingold and Rowland Hunt, put it in court documents, women "wore very short skirts, racy, unbusinesslike." Sexual comments and body-shot drinking games at company parties were reportedly commonplace, as were incidents like the office display of a brochure for sex toys, a female blow-up sex doll, and rubber breasts that squirted liquid from the nipples.

The Olszewski and Garrison cases are old news and Bloomberg long ago put those behind him with settlements and non-disclosure agreements.

But I revisit these cases because they give you a glimpse into the pathology and misogyny of Michael Bloomberg.

This is a man who does not respect women, seems to have a need to sexually objectify them publicly like the frat boy he once was (I will leave where that need comes from to the Freudian analysts among you), and seems to have a need to publicly humiliate women.

The New York Magazine article goes on to describe how Bloomberg treats Christine Quinn with thinly veiled disdain and misogyny:

According to the article, Bloomberg also has strong opinions about Quinn’s appearance – turning up his nose when she wears flats or waits too long before coloring her hair.

“The mayor has no use for flat shoes,” Quinn told the reporter.

“I was at a parade with him once and he said, ‘What are those?’ and I said, ‘They’re comfortable,’ and he said, ‘I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again,’” she recalled. “He likes me in high heels.”

“Another big thing with the mayor, when I am rooting … like, the couple of days a week before I need to get my hair colored, he’ll say, ‘Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it’s three with the gray,’” Quinn continued. “And I’m like, ‘Did you wake up being this big of an a--hole? Or did it take, like, all day to ramp up to it to be able to insult me like that?’”

Is it any wonder that the kind of man who set up the frat boy atmosphere of Bloomberg LP, publicly ogles women at UES parties, and tells a political colleague she needs to always wear high heels has such disdain for teachers?

While there are more men working these days as teachers, teaching is still seen as "women's work" and there are still many more women working as teachers in NYC than there are men.

While some of the hostility and vindictiveness Bloomberg exhibits toward teachers is class-based - he despises working people, he despises union members, he despises government employees -  much of it comes from the misogyny, anger and fear he has for women.

This is a man with a documented track record of harassment, discriminatory practices and boorish behavior.

Today at school we were forced to sit through a one hour discrimination workshop from the DOE.

While there's nothing wrong with informing employees of their rights and their responsibilities when it comes to harassment and discrimination, it seems that the Big Boss Man of the City of New York and Bloomberg LP is the guy most in need of this workshop and the lessons contained therein.

He won't get that, of course - rich, arrogant, misogynistic elites like himself rarely get held accountable for their behavior.

But the New York Magazine article today reminds me again of two things:

1) Bloomberg's an ass

2) The hostility and tyranny that Bloomberg shows toward teachers is much more deeply rooted in misogyny than education policy