Charter Schools Destroy Catholic Schools Too

The Daily News takes a look at what the charter school movement has done to Catholic schools:

Emotional students and teachers packed up years’ worth of belongings as their beloved school, St. Augustine, closed its doors forever last June. A charter school moved into the building.

The conversion reflects a sea change happening throughout the state, said Abe Lackman, who is presenting new research in April to the National Conference of Catholic Educators.

Lackman, a scholar-in-residence at Albany Law School, told the audience that Catholic school enrollment in the state has been on the verge of collapse in the last decade, and that transfers to charter schools account for 37% of the decline. About 180 charter schools in the state have drawn roughly 32,000 students away from the Catholic school system.

“Without some type of relief, those charter schools will draw another 50,000 students over the next decade,” said Lackman, who started researching K-8 schools last August. “I think it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Lackman said about 200 new charter schools are opening in the state in the next several years. Nine are opening in the Bronx next school year.

His initial findings have generated buzz in the city, propelling a panel discussion titled “The Tension Between Catholic Schools and Charter Schools” at St. Francis College in Brooklyn last week.

Of the five borough Catholic grammar schools that closed last year because of financial woes, two are now charters: Harriet Tubman Charter School at St. Augustine, and the Bronx Charter School for Excellence at Our Lady of Solace. St. Martin of Tours now houses Public School 51.

Rev. Thomas Fenlon, pastor at St. Augustine - which recently merged with Our Lady of Victory in Claremont - said losing students to public and charter schools also means losing a moral curriculum.

“(The school) was an important part of our church, our parish, our mission, to try to help the children and talk about the values that are important to us,” Fenlon said, “and we’re not able to do that.”

Make no mistake, charter schools sell a moral curriculum as well - it is the Gospel of Work, Shop, Obey.

And make no mistake, a few more years of unbridled charter school growth and almost every Catholic school in the city will be gone, replaced with a Moskowitz "Success" Academy or some other charter that preaches the Gospel of Work, Shop, Obey that is supported by hedge fund managers and other Wall Street criminals.

For years, Catholic schools and traditional public schools have co-existed peacefully in this city, but now the Catholic school is being killed by the very cancer that was created by the free marketeers to kill off the traditional public school.

It is time to rid this city of the charter school cancer.

I used to think that charter schools could peacefully co-exist beside traditional public schools the way Catholic schools have, but the last ten years has shown me this is not the case.

Charters really are a cancer and the industry and its entrepreneurs will not be satisfied until they have killed off every traditional public and parochial school.

Dark Day In New York

Here is Diane Ravitch's Education Week post about what the new evaluation deal will mean for New York State students, schools and teachers - in full:

A Dark Day for New York

Dear Deborah,

In New York, the politicians, the union leaders, and the media are all exchanging high fives over last week's agreement about teacher evaluation. Gov. Andrew Cuomo took credit for forcing the parties to settle. But it's a dark day when politicians impose an untested scheme on educators, despite a wealth of evidence that these schemes are inaccurate, unstable, and have negative consequences and no evidence that they improve education. See this and this. If we were serious about improving education for all children, we would take a broader view of the causes of and remedies for low achievement.

But the politicians have decided to solve our education problems not by looking at root causes but by firing teachers. They feel certain that we can fire our way to the top. In 2010, New York won a Race to the Top award of $700 million. To obtain this money—very little, if any, of which will ever reach any classroom or student—New York said it would devise a teacher evaluation plan that was based in part on student test scores. Although this idea finds little support among testing experts, it is an obsession with the current U.S. Department of Education. The winning New York proposal, in order to get the support of the teachers' unions, said that 20 percent of teachers' evaluations would be tied to student scores.

When states determine that test scores should count for 20 percent or 40 percent or 50 percent or some other percent, this is a purely arbitrary decision. There is no research, no experience, no evidence whatsoever that identifies what portion, if any, of a teacher's evaluation should be based on the increase in their students' test scores.

But the state's winning proposal set the number at 20 percent. As the union and the state haggled, Gov. Cuomo intervened and said the proportion should be 40 percent. The union had already won a court decision upholding the earlier 20 percent, which was mutually agreed upon, but never mind.

Now, we enter the realm of pure politics, where issues derived from research or from any consideration of education implications become irrelevant. After Cuomo stepped in, the tabloids (the New York Post and the New York Daily News) wrote frequent and strident editorials demanding that the parties accept 40 percent, and that anything less would be a blatant capitulation to unaccountable teachers and their greedy union. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan informed New York that its Race to the Top winnings were at risk if it did not soon resolve the teacher evaluation issue.

Meanwhile, almost 1,400 principals (about a third of all principals across New York state) signed a petition to protest the educator evaluation system devised by the state education department.

Gov. Cuomo warned the unions that he would impose his own evaluation plan if they didn't reach an agreement, and he said that any district that did not accept the evaluation plan would lose any new state funding. Is it not amazing that the governor, who has never taught and never evaluated teachers or principals, presumes to know how to evaluate teachers and principals?

Last week, with Cuomo's deadline looming, the state and the unions reached an agreement. It says that 20 percent of teachers' evaluation will be based on the state tests and another 20 percent on locally designed tests, or on the state tests used in a different way. (It's the same scores, used for the same purpose; I have no idea how those scores might be used in "a different way,") The remaining 60 percent is supposed to consist of classroom observations and other measures. All teachers must be rated on a scale from 0 to 100, using these multiple measures. This draconian point system will guarantee that a teacher with a perfect 60 out of 60 on teaching skill will nonetheless be judged "ineffective" if he or she is in the ineffective range on scores. As it now stands, the rating system is so bizarre that a teacher could be rated effective in all three categories and still be rated "ineffective" overall.

The agreement contains this strange sentence: "Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall." Unless I can't read plain English, this says that the 40 percent devoted to test scores overrides the other 60 percent. In other words, 40 percent is equal to 100 percent. The teacher who doesn't raise test scores is ineffective. Oh, and state education Commissioner John King—who taught for three years and founded charter schools—will have the ultimate authority to review every district's additional measures for rigor and quality.

Carol Burris, one of the leaders of the Long Island principals' revolt, explained how this would work. (See here.) Gary Rubinstein, an experienced math teacher, felt certain that this whole edifice would soon collapse because of its absurdity.

This raises the stakes on high-stakes testing as they have never been raised before. Teachers will be graded on a curve, meaning many are in line to be fired for not raising test scores enough because they are competing with all other teachers. To deter narrowing the curriculum, the state plans to introduce many tests in many subjects, even in the arts and physical education. To gauge value-added, there will be pre-tests in the fall and post-tests at the end of the school year. Our schools will be test-centered in the extreme. Many days will be devoted to testing, not instruction.

Whence came this belief in the unerring, scientific objectivity of the tests? Only 18 months ago, New York tossed out its state test scores because the scores were unreliable. Someone in the state education department decided to lower the cut scores to artificially increase the number of students who reach proficient. No one was ever held accountable.

Now we are expected to believe that the state has made tests that are good enough to be decisive in firing teachers and ending their careers. Joseph D. Novak, in Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge (Routledge), makes the shrewd observation that while the scoring of standardized tests may be objective (after all, they are scored by computers), the construction of the tests is highly subjective: "The test-maker chooses the specific subject matter content to be covered, the exact wording of the question, and the exact wording of the choices in multiple-choice exams." It is the test-maker who subjectively decides "what will be accepted as 'correct' answers." As New York demonstrated, even the scoring may be subjective, given state officials' ability to set the cut scores wherever they wish.

But back to the politics: In addition to the parties involved, charter school supporters hailed the agreement, which was odd because teachers in charter schools will not be subject to its provisions.

And, of course, Secretary Duncan hailed the pact and urged other governors to follow Cuomo's example. I am sure that Secretary Duncan knows that President Barack Obama wants teachers to "stop teaching to the test," as he said in his State of the Union address, and to teach with "creativity and passion."

Does anyone seriously believe that teachers in New York state will dare to stop teaching to the test? How many will be fired if they take that risk?

If you care about education—real education, where students are encouraged to think for themselves, not just take tests—and if you care about children, who will be subjected to unending test prep in every subject, and if you care about the long-term prospects for our society—which will not be improved by this scheme of measure-and-punish—this is a dark day for New York.

Diane

This is an important piece, so I decided to repost it in full with links.

Indeed, when the 40% of the evaluation based upon test scores trumps the 60% based upon other measures like classroom observations, when a teacher can be rated "effective" on all three parts of the evaluation (20% from state tests, 20% from city tests, 60% from classroom observations) and STILL be rated "ineffective" overall, when the state and the local districts are going to have to add new tests into every subject in every grade at least twice a year and turn schools into nothing but test prep and testing factories in order to pull this nightmare off - it truly is a dark day in New York State.

It is going to be difficult to bring light to this darkness since so many in the corporate-owned media are cheerleading this system rather than exposing the very dangerous flaws to it.

Unless you have been paying close attention to this evaluation process, you have no idea how bad the final product decided upon last week is going to be.

Teachers Unions Are The Villains In Hollywood Once Again

The NY Times reports that anti-teachers union activists have moved from using documentaries like "Waiting for Superman" as propaganda in their fight against unions to using feature films in the vein of "Norma Rae - only this time the villains are the unions:

In a rare mix of hot policy debate and old-fashioned screen drama, 20th Century Fox is preparing a September release for “Won’t Back Down.” The film heads smack into the controversies around so-called parent trigger laws that in California and a handful of other states allow parents to dump bad teachers and overrule administrators in bottom-ranked schools.

Viola Davis, an Oscar nominee as best actress for “The Help,” plays a teacher who risks career and friendships to join the revolt. Maggie Gyllenhaal is the single mother who sells cars, tends bar and rouses parents to take charge of their grade school.

Holly Hunter, the union rep, loves her teachers and so she fights the takeover with a ploy you might expect from a corporate villain.

“When did Norma Rae get to be the bad guy?” Ms. Hunter mutters. Her role recalls the title character in the pro-union film “Norma Rae,” as she navigates the ferocious politics of education reform’s nuclear option, the trigger laws.

These measures have backers on both ends of the political spectrum and on both economic extremes: from Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation supports the takeover movement, to the poor or working-class parents of Adelanto. But they have also pushed unions and school administrators into an unwelcome role as opponents of change.

Now the trigger laws have connected with a movie culture whose new preoccupation with timeliness lends urgency and risk to reality-inspired dramas that in the past were usually set safely in the past.

“Won’t Back Down” describes itself as being “inspired by actual events.” But it portrays a fiercely contested school takeover — set in Pittsburgh, though Pennsylvania does not have a trigger law — before any has occurred in real life.

Texas, Ohio and Connecticut are among states that now permit a trigger process. But a take-over in Adelanto would be the country’s first, according to Ben Austin, the executive director of Parent Revolution, which promotes the tactic with backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“I thought it was a prank,” Mr. Austin said of his surprise at a call in which he learned that Walden Media, backed by the conservative-leaning billionaire Philip Anschutz, was shooting a drama in which teachers and parents aim to take charge.

For Walden, the film is a second shot at an education-reform movie. With Mr. Gates and the progressive-minded Participant Media, Walden was among the financial backers of the documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman.’ ”

That film, released in 2010, advocated, as potential solutions to an education crisis, charter schools, teacher testing and an end to tenure. But it took in only about $6.4 million at the box office and received no Oscar nominations after union officials and others strongly attacked it.

“We realized the inherent limitations of the documentary format,” said Michael Bostick, chief executive of Walden. Now, he said, the idea is to reach a larger audience through the power of actors playing complicated characters who struggle with issues that happen to be, in his phrase, “ripped from the headlines.”

...

Daniel Barnz, the director and a writer of “Won’t Back Down,” said he had wanted to recreate the thrill of past action-inspiring social dramas without being snared in partisan debate. Working from an earlier script by Brin Hill, he introduced the parent-trigger mechanism as a plot device but insisted that the character played by Ms. Davis be a teacher, thus bringing teachers into the reform process.

“I am extremely pro-union,” Mr. Barnz said. In the movie’s fictionalized law for Pennsylvania (which, because it was shot there, helped subsidize the film’s $20 million budget with a tax credit), a school takeover could occur only if a majority of both parents and teachers were to demand it, rather than parents alone, as in California.

...

Mark Johnson, who produced “Won’t Back Down,” said the film’s humanity might outshine its politics. “With issues movies, some of those you remember best you remember for the people, not the issues,” he offered.

For Ms. Davis, certainly, the appeal is personal. In what she called her first real leading role — in “The Help,” she fronted an ensemble — Ms. Davis described her character as wrestling personal demons while fighting for something that does not involve race. “I’ve never had that,” she said.

As for education, she added, experience persuades her of the need for teachers and mentors who can operate outside the system. “I’m sorry, I just know if you don’t have a strong advocate for a child, they’re not going to make it,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Gyllenhaal framed her character, a frustrated parent, as “someone who doesn’t think of herself as an activist at all,” but “gets radicalized by the situation she’s in.” She is much like Meryl Streep in the activist thriller “Silkwood,” Ms. Gyllenhaal noted, or the flawed, sexy legal crusader played by Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich.”

Ah, yes - the writer of anti-union movie funded by an anti-union company with an anti-union message is actually pro-union.

Uh, huh.

I'm sure it will be very fair to unionized teachers even though they're the villains of the piece.

BTW, one of the actresses in the movie, Maggie Gyllenhaal, was outed by the NY Post as a wealthy member of the Park Slope Co-Op who is too lazy, arrogant or important to do her own shift and sends her employees to do it instead.

Gotta love a member of the Hollywood elite who bashes unionized teachers by making an anti-union movie but reportedly can't do her own volunteer shift at a food co-op and sends an employee to do that work for her.

Life During Wartime

The sound of test scores, off in the distance, I'm getting used to them now, worked in a small school, worked in a big school, I've worked all over this town...

...until they closed all the schools down, of course...



Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?

Uh, huh - the test scores in Houston were horseshit and Detroit got closed down by the city manager and reopened as one big ass KIPP school...

Why stay in college? Why go to ed school?

They're just going to fire you off the value-added anyway...

Life During Wartime.

The Nightmare To Come

Let's start out by giving the credit, or the blame, to the person who deserves it the most for all these new teacher evaluation systems that states are implementing around the country that tie evals to test scores and require multiple observations a year for every teacher.

Barack Obama, the CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN MAN, has gotten all of these changes implemented via his Race to the Top law.

In his 2012 State of the Union address to the nation, he claimed that his administration has brought more change to the nation's education system than anybody else has in over a generation (which is true) and that this change is in the process of improving the lives and educations of American children who are attending public schools (arguable at best, demonstrably false at worst.)

This morning the NY Times takes a look at some of the problems that states are facing from the "change" that Obama wrought and states have implemented in schools:

Steve Ball, executive principal at the East Literature Magnet School in Nashville, arrived at an English class unannounced one day this month and spent 60 minutes taking copious notes as he watched the teacher introduce and explain the concept of irony. “It was a good lesson,” Mr. Ball said.

But under Tennessee’s new teacher-evaluation system, which is similar to systems being adopted around the country, Mr. Ball said he had to give the teacher a one — the lowest rating on a five-point scale — in one of 12 categories: breaking students into groups. Even though Mr. Ball had seen the same teacher, a successful veteran he declined to identify, group students effectively on other occasions, he felt that he had no choice but to follow the strict guidelines of the state’s complicated rubric.

“It’s not an accurate reflection of her as a teacher,” Mr. Ball said.

Spurred by the requirements of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition, Tennessee is one of more than a dozen states overhauling their evaluation systems to increase the number of classroom observations and to put more emphasis on standardized test scores. But even as New York State finally came to an agreement last week with its teachers’ unions on how to design its new system, places like Tennessee that are already carrying out similar plans are struggling with philosophical and logistical problems.

Principals in rural Chester County, Tenn., are staying late and working weekends to complete reviews with more than 100 reference points. In Nashville, teachers are redesigning lessons to meet the myriad criteria — regardless of whether they think that is the best way to teach. And at Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tenn., physical education teachers are scrambling to incorporate math and writing into activities, since 50 percent of their evaluations will be based on standardized tests, not basketball victories.

In Delaware, under pressure from the teachers’ union, the state secretary of education announced last month that teachers would not be assessed on metrics based on how much growth students showed in their classrooms, as planned, because not enough of such data existed. In Maryland, districts were granted an additional year to develop and install evaluation models without the results being counted toward tenure, pay and promotions. And in New York, Thursday’s agreement came after a stalemate lasting months in which more than 1,300 principals signed a petition protesting the new evaluations.

States “are racing ahead based on promises made to Washington or local political imperatives that prioritize an unwavering commitment to unproven approaches,” said Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There’s a lot we don’t know about how to evaluate teachers reliably and how to use that information to improve instruction and learning.”

Indeed, there is a lot that we don't know about value-added measurements of test scores and the voluminous 57 page rubrics that are going to be used to grade teachers in New York State, but what we DO know already from some of the states that have implemented Obama's education change is that this stuff a) doesn't help teachers OR students and b) is not improving education.

Unless you think forcing an administrator to grade a teacher ineffective on group learning because he didn't use it for the ONE lesson he was observed on (though the administrator HAD seen him use group learning in previous lessons) makes sense, will help teachers and students or improve public education.

You would think if some "reform" that is ostensibly in place to improve education is clearly not working, state pols would look to change it.

But you would be wrong.

Indeed, this new evaluation system in Tennessee seems cumbersome and nearly unworkable, but that's not stopping the state from going through with it, minus a few minor tweaks:

Emily Barton, assistant commissioner for curriculum and instruction at the Tennessee Department of Education, acknowledged that the new system had kinks, but said that she heard “a consistent theme that the process is leading to rich conversations about instruction and that teacher performance is improving.” In early 2010, the legislature required that half of a teacher’s evaluation be based on annual observations and half on student achievement data. The following year, the state board of education added specifics: each year, principals or evaluators would observe new teachers six times, and tenured ones four times.

Each observation focuses on one or two of four areas: instruction, professionalism, classroom environment and planning. Afterward, the observer scores the teacher according to the state’s detailed and computerized system. Instruction, for example, has 12 subcategories, including “motivating students” and “presenting instructional content.” Motivating students, in turn, has subcategories like “regularly reinforces and rewards effort.” In all, there are 116 subcategories.

“It’s one thing to be observing — I love that, it’s my primary role,” said Troy Kilzer, the 44-year-old principal of Chester County High School. “But you know when a good lesson is being taught without looking at a rubric.” Mr. Kilzer said the new system had led to more precise discussions with teachers about their skills and better lesson planning. But he can hardly keep up with the work.

For principals, it is not just the observations, but also the pre-conference (where teachers explain and show the lesson), the post-conference (where observers explain what teachers might have done better) and four to six hours inputting data. “We are spending a lot of time evaluating people we know are very good teachers,” Mr. Kilzer said.

For many principals, the observations mean less time for the kind of spot visits to classrooms that they relish — and for everything else. “Parents were used to immediate feedback, or they’d stop back for a meeting,” said Connie Gwinn, principal of H. G. Hill Middle School in Nashville who is supportive of the new system over all. “We don’t have the opportunity to do that any more.”

In November, state officials allowed some observations to be combined. Now, evaluators must measure the same number of data points, but they can do it in fewer visits.

Gera Summerford, president of the Tennessee Education Association, compared the new evaluations to taking your car to the mechanic and making him use all of his tools to fix it, regardless of the problem, and expecting him to do it in an hour.

“It has been counterproductive to the intent — a noble intent — of an evaluation system,” said Stephen Henry, president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association.

I would argue that there is nothing "noble" about any of the reformers' reforms, that ALL of these changes brought about by so-called education reformers have been meant to scapegoat traditional schools and teachers and put into place mechanisms to fire unionized teachers and close unionized schools.

So far, it's been "Mission Accomplished" in Tennessee and Florida, the two states that first "won" Obama's Race to the Top education initiative that forced these reforms on states in the first place, where teachers are being evaluated using nightmarish evaluation systems with negative consequences for students, teachers and schools.

And now, after Andrew Cuomo bullied the coward teachers unions in New York State this week to agree to a new teacher evaluation system here, New York is going to be the next state to enjoy "change".

Here is how Gary Rubenstein in the Daily News described the new teacher evaluation system in New York that was agreed to by Governor Cuomo, the NYSED, the Regents and the state teachers unions this week:

On Thursday, the New York State Department of Education and the state teachers union came to an agreement on revising the teacher evaluation process to include students’ standardized test scores.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, New York’s highest court ruled that New York City’s Department of Education could publish the ratings of 12,000 teachers, which are also based on standardized test scores.

Both developments are part of a push to use gains made by students on tests (so-called “value-added data”) to determine which teachers to promote, fire or simply keep on the job. This is in contrast to the more traditional, principal-led evaluations that critics have long charged are too subjective.

Those critics have won, but I doubt our schools will benefit. I doubt, also, that this new system will last.

As a veteran teacher, I cringe when I hear politicians say that current evaluations do not include student learning as a factor. When my principal observes my class, he will witness student learning in many forms. For example, he might see me call on a student who has been struggling.

Perhaps that student will not be able to answer the question perfectly, but he will be able to do it far better than he would have at the beginning of the period. My principal is a veteran and knows learning when he sees it. I trust his judgment.

The new evaluations hinge on a flawed notion of student progress. This will lead to their downfall.

One reasonable way to determine if, say, a fifth-grader has progressed would be to, at the beginning of the year, administer a pretest that is identical to the test she will take at the end of the year and then compare the two results.

But this is not what happens. Instead, students take the fourth-grade test at the end of fourth grade and the fifth-grade test at the end of fifth grade. Since the fourth-grade test is easier, scores often go down on the fifth-grade test. To see if this decrease on the harder test still qualifies as “progress,” evaluators compare the fifth-grade scores of all the students in the state who got the same score on the fourth-grade test. From this, they attempt to calculate student gains.

If it seems confusing, well, it is. And this is an oversimplified explanation of how value-added data works.

Even some of the experts who created value-added measures admit they are not very reliable. Error rates of over 30% mean that even an effective teacher could be deemed ineffective, and vice versa. That is why, as a safeguard, according to New York State law, value-added data cannot be used to count for more than 40% of a teacher’s entire evaluations — the other 60% is still based on principal observations.

Forty percent is still way too high, but things just got worse. According to the state Education Department, under the new system, “Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall.”

In other words, if a teacher gets a low enough student performance score, he will get an ineffective evaluation regardless of how well he does on the other 60% of the evaluation.

In essence, then, the student performance score is not weighted as a maximum of 40%, as required by state law, but 100% for certain teachers. This loophole makes New York, for all practical purposes, the only state in the country that ignores the myriad experts who say that evaluation is to be based on multiple measures, not solely on test scores.

This is also why the last seven New York State Teachers of the Year have written a letter opposing these evaluations. These are the teachers who would, if the measures were accurate, have the most to gain (at least financially) from such a system. But they oppose it because no one should be judged by such flawed measures.

Rubenstein says he is confident that this evaluation system will not last once New Yorkers get a closer look at it and realize the consequences of making test scores 100% of the evaluation.

I am not as confident as Rubenstein on that point.

The corporate media has been hammering teachers for a long time now as THE problem in public education. 100% of the editorial boards in the corporate media have hailed this deal as the best thing since sliced bread. Corporate media columnists like Nick Kristof have also hailed the deal and said it will finally take care of the big problem in education (i.e., "bad" teachers.) The politicians who brought this law to fruition and the corporate education reform forces that promoted all of these changes are crowing about how "bad teachers" are going to finally be held accountable.

I don't think these forces are going to surrender any of the "change" they won in the law that now essentially allows districts to fire a teacher after two years if the test scores on a value added measurement with a MOE over 35% come up "bad".

Many of these people have already misled the public about the value of value-added, about the reliability of the new system based upon test scores, indeed, they have misled the public about the percentage of the evaluation that is based upon test scores.

Governor Cuomo, for instance, claims New York gives over a smaller percentage of the overall percentage to test scores than many other states that have changed teacher eval laws lately.

This is patently not true.

Given that New York is using test scores as 100% of the evaluation (come up "ineffective" on the test score part of the eval and a teacher MUST be declared "ineffective" overall), it is obvious to anyone who even looks perfunctorily at the new evaluation system that this is not true.

New York is using test scores as THE determining factor in the new evaluation system.

But that hasn't stopped the governor from lying about it.

Or the editorial boards like the one at the Times, for that matter.

And you can expect the corporate media, the politicians and the corporate education reformers to continue to to do the same as the contradictions and unworkable parts of the new eval system in New York become apparent.

Their default mechanism is to ALWAYS blame teachers and claim anybody who criticizes their reforms is simply invested in the status quo and doesn't want "change."

Never mind that the states that have already put many of these reforms into action have discovered how destructive these reforms actually are.

Never mind that the New York eval system agreed upon this week is a nightmare that will force new standardized tests into EVERY grade in EVERY subject, may actually require BOTH city AND state tests in EVERY grade in EVERY subject in order to grade teachers on the test scores.

Never mind that the value-added measurement the state and the districts will use for those scores is rife with error and has wide swings in stability.

Never mind that the new law will require so many observations every year of teachers that already overworked principals will now do little but observe teachers and have pre- and post-observation conferences to discuss the 57 page Danielson rubric and just what page a teacher missed hitting on in his/her lesson.

Never mind all that.

Rather what they will say is, Change is good, change is needed and we don't care if children and adults are harmed by our rolling out a vast new and untested evaluation system for teachers that hasn't even been completed yet (indeed, many of the tests teachers will be graded on haven't been created.)

The system is broken and we are going to fix.

That's what they'll say, indeed, that's what they're already saying.

But it's difficult to fix something when the "fix" is even more damaging than the original problem, and that's exactly what we have in this new evaluation agreement.

This isn't going to end well and unlike Gary Rubenstein, I have a feeling it's going to be around for long enough before New Yorkers return to sanity that many people are going to be harmed by this, careers will be ended, reputations ruined.

And I am willing to bet my S" rating that the people who brought this nightmare into being - from the pols to the hedge fund managers and education reformers to the corporate media columnists and editorial boards to the union leaders, will be the only people NOT held accountable for this in the end.

Who Would Want To Become A Teacher These Days?

No one in their right mind, that's for sure.

The president cheerleads the firing of teachers in Rhode Island and puts into place policies that promote the same around the country.

Celebrities who know nothing about teaching blog about how bad teachers are at Huffington Post and other places online.

Oprah holds teacher bashing witch hunts on her show. NBC dedicates a whole week of this crap on their nightly "news" program.

Hollywood puts out pseudo-documentaries about "bad teachers," and then follows these up with so-called comedies about the same subject.

Every newspaper editorial board in New York cheerleads a new teacher evaluation system that makes test scores THE determining factor in whether a teacher keeps his or her job or not, even though the evaluation system they use has huge margins of error and wide swings in stability.

Many newspaper columnist concur with their editorial boards.

The mayor says he wants to fire 50% of teachers, says he wants to close over 100 more schools in the next few years and proceeds to go ahead on both plans.

No one stops him.

The governor says teachers are selfish scum and puts in place a system that ensures thousands will be fired each year based upon the "science" of a value-added measurement system of test scores with huge margins of error and wide swings in stability.

No stops him either.

Indeed, the unions jump on board and help him destroy teachers.

They send out deceptive emails to their members that fail to mention how test scores are now THE determining factor in teacher evaluations.

Come up "ineffective" on the part of the eval based upon test scores and you're fired in two years unless you can prove you are not "incompetent."

This is the current environment we teachers face.

I meet with all of my seniors in the early part of the fall to find out what their college plans are.

This year, whenever anybody told me they wanted to study education or become a teacher, I related just how difficult it is to be a teacher these days, then asked them to watch for anti-teacher stories in the newspapers and on the TV news over the next couple of weeks.

Inevitably every student who followed my suggestion came back and said "Oh, wow, you're right - almost everything you see in the media these days about teachers is negative."

It sure is.

I have then been quite upfront about the following points to students:

Teaching is a wonderful career and you will have some amazing moments in it that you could NEVER have working in private industry, but these moments are becoming fewer as the corporate forces complete their grip on education policy and force schools to be come all-test prep all the time. It is difficult to have human moments in a job that now requires so much dehumanizing activity.

Second, teaching is no longer a calling or a career. It is now a service job no different than fast food worker or call center operator - you will be squeezed for your labor as hard as the corporate forces running the system these days can squeeze you, then you will be tossed on the ash heap.

Third, you have to be ready to hear constant denigration about your profession in the media every time you turn on the TV news or read similar things in the newspapers or blogs when you go online.

Fourth, the so-called education reformers do NOT really want to improve education. Rather, they want to blow up the current system and put one into place that they can control and profit from. So teacher constantly have to deal with reform ideas promoted by so-called reformers that are meant to destabilize the system and scapegoat teachers and schools.

Finally I tell them if after all this, they still want to be teachers, that's great.

But they need to go into this with their eyes opened.

Gang of Four

Dedicated to Andrew "Makes The Trains Run On Time" Cuomo:

Cuomo's Power Grabs

Teachers weren't the only group to experience Andrew Cuomo's dictatorial power grabs this week:

ALBANY — In his proposed budget for next year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has inserted language that would allow him to move money between state agencies without legislative approval.

He has included a clause that would allow him to give out some contracts without the customary review of the state comptroller. And he added another provision that some budget experts fear could expand his authority to borrow money for construction projects.

Riding high after a string of successes during his first year in office, Mr. Cuomo is now taking an expansive, and expanding, view of the role of governor, in the name of reining in the state’s sprawling bureaucracy.

But even some of Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democrats are raising questions about what they view as a power grab. And suddenly a staple of civics class — the notion of checks and balances between different branches of government — is the talk of the Capitol.

“I think many of us, including myself, feel that there is overreaching proceeding down the path by our new governor, and that it is ultimately not healthy for there to be excessive power in the executive branch, even though he’s popular,” said Assemblyman James F. Brennan, a Democrat of Brooklyn.

Within the last two weeks, the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican, both criticized Mr. Cuomo’s administration for a pact that allowed the state inspector general to see the tax returns of state employees. The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat, offered a broader critique, raising questions about proposals that his office said “would give the executive greater powers that would reduce long-established checks and balances.”

Cuomo didn't dispute the assertion that he is grabbing more power for himself. He didn't apologize either. Rather he said he is making government "more efficient" by taking powers granted legally to the legislature for himself.

In other words, he is going to make the trains run on time.

This isn't the only power grab Cuomo has made, of course:

At the Capitol, concerns about Mr. Cuomo’s maneuvers have escalated over the past year, even as he has used a combination of charm, intimidation and strategic skill to push his agenda through a change-averse Legislature.

He offered an all-or-nothing proposition with his first budget last year: Lawmakers could accept his plan or he would impose it through emergency spending measures. (They accepted it.)

He also made waves by merging the state insurance and banking departments to create what skeptics have viewed as his own attorney general’s office — the State Department of Financial Services. The governor initially sought to give that agency sweeping investigatory powers that some experts said could have made it more powerful than the attorney general’s office, but he ultimately scaled back his proposal.

...

Much of the concern over Mr. Cuomo’s latest budget proposal has focused on provisions that would increase his office’s authority over financial matters — a provocative move in part because New York’s Constitution already gives the governor significant power in deciding how the state spends its money.

For example, a 130-word paragraph sprinkled hundreds of times throughout the budget would allow the governor to move appropriations between state agencies after the Legislature had approved the state spending plan. Mr. Cuomo’s budget office said the clause would allow the state to consolidate back-office services like purchasing and information technology more easily, saving hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years.

Mr. Cuomo is also proposing to strip the comptroller’s office of the power to review some state contracts before they are approved. And he is seeking to allow public authorities to transfer funds among themselves; lawmakers said that could have the effect of allowing, for example, revenues from the New York Power Authority to be used to pay for rising construction costs at the World Trade Center.

Richard L. Brodsky, a former Democratic assemblyman who wrote legislation to improve accountability of the state’s public authorities, said the provision would undo safeguards that lawmakers had put in place with some difficulty.

“It goes to the heart of the reform efforts that took six years, three governors and two attorneys general to get done, and it’s extremely important,” Mr. Brodsky said.

To Cuomo, what is important is taking power for himself, disempowering others in the process, and advancing his own agenda and his own career ambitions.

This is what he did to teachers this week by pushing through an evaluation deal that turns over the intents of the Race to the Top law passed by the legislature and agreed to by the unions back in 2010.

This is what he is doing to the legislature by subsuming more power into the executive.

Judging by the poll numbers, New Yorkers are cheering Cuomo's dictatorial power grabs - at least for now.

But dictators often come to bad ends - even the ones who get the trains to run on time.

The UFT Leadership Try To Cover Their Asses Over The New Evaluation System

UFT President Michael Mulgrew and NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi got taken to the cleaners on the teacher evaluation deal with the state this week.

Mulgrew sent out an email yesterday that conveniently forgot to mention the new teacher eval deal he and DeadEye Dick agreed to, but today he sends out one that links to a misleading Q&A at the UFT site.

Here's what the Q&A says about the new requirements of the evaluation system regarding test scores:

NYSUT and state leaders settled the disputed details of the statewide evaluation system. That deal clarifies and strengthens the 2010 evaluation law by clearly limiting the weight of the state’s growth model based on its tests and reinforcing collective bargaining as the vehicle for shaping evaluations to meet local needs. A full 80 percent of the evaluation system must be negotiated in each locality. Now with this explicit guidance about how to proceed, localities should be able to move ahead with implementation.

Here is the NY Times article announcing the deal between the state and the unions:

The agreement, announced at a news conference in Albany, allows school districts to base up to 40 percent of a teacher’s annual review on student performance on state standardized tests.

Half of that portion must be based on students’ test score growth from one year to the next.

For the other half, the agreement offers the roughly 700 school districts in the state some latitude. They could use test data to measure student achievement in some other way — say, the progress of specific groups of students, like those who are not proficient in English or have special needs. They also could devise their own tests, or use tests developed by a third party, provided that the tests were approved by the state.

The remaining 60 percent of a teacher’s rating is to come from subjective measurements, primarily classroom observations by principals.

The UFT is using the 20%+20% part of the test portion of the evaluation (20% coming from state tests, 20% coming from either city tests, third party tests or the city analyzing the state test data a different way than the state is) to distract from the fact that a total of 40% of a teacher's evaluation is coming from test scores.

In addition, the UFT Q&A fails to mention that if you come up "ineffective" on the test portion of the evaluation (the 40%), you have to be declared "ineffective" overall as a teacher.

Here is the press release Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and NYSED Commissioner John King issued after the deal that touches on that matter:

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch and State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. said today the newly agreed upon teacher and principal evaluation system was made possible by a collaborative willingness to implement a process that will help improve student performance.
...

King said teachers will be rated as either ineffective; developing; effective; or highly effective based on a scale of 100 points.

Other key provisions of the agreement include:

State assessments can be used for up to 40 percent of the evaluation if the local 20 percent share based on state assessments is used differently and collectively bargained;

The remaining subjective, collectively bargained 60 percent must consist of tightly defined, research backed measures. A majority (at least 31 percent) of the 60 percent must be based on classroom observations by a principal or trained administrator;

There must be multiple observations and at least one observation must be unannounced;

Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall. Teachers who are developing or ineffective will get assistance and support to improve performance. Teachers who remain ineffective can be removed from classrooms;

All evaluations must be done annually by September 1;

All evaluation plans are subject to review and approval by the Commissioner to ensure rigor, quality and consistency with standards;

The Commissioner has the authority to require corrective action, including the use of independent evaluators, when districts evaluate their teachers positively regardless of students’ academic progress; and

Appeals must be timely and expeditious and districts may terminate probationary teachers/principals or grant or deny tenure while an appeal is pending.

The UFT can jive and shuck all they want about how the system isn't in place yet until Mulgrew comes to some agreement with Bloomberg.

The fact is, the NYSUT and the UFT agreed to a framework that allowed the state to mandate 40% of teacher evaluations come from test scores and a teacher MUST be declared "ineffective" overall if they come up "ineffective" on just the part of the teacher evaluation that comes from test scores.

And you can bet the same political pressure that was put on the NYSUT to drop their successful lawsuit against the state over the testing part of the evaluation and agree to EVERYTHING the governor, the Regents Chancellor and the NYSED Commissioner wanted for the evaluations will be put on Mulgrew and the UFT to come to an agreement by January 2012 that gives the city and Bloomberg EVERYTHING he wants on the evaluations.

So far, the UFT has shown no ability to stand up to political pressure or indeed, win any major concessions.

Not unless you think the UFT getting Bloomberg to agree to independent arbiters for 13% of teachers rated ineffective is a major concession.

The misleading doesn't stop there in the UFT Q&A. The Q&A says the following about the use of local assessments that are negotiated between the local districts and the unions:

That deal clarifies and strengthens the 2010 evaluation law by clearly limiting the weight of the state’s growth model based on its tests and reinforcing collective bargaining as the vehicle for shaping evaluations to meet local needs

The reality is, the deal gives the NYSED Commissioner full powers to declare any locally-negotiated agreement null and void if he decides the assessment the local district and the union agreed to is not "rigorous" enough.

Again, here are Tisch and King on that expanded powers that the NYSED Commissioner did not have in the original 2010 Race to the Top law as passed by the legislature and signed into law by then-Governor Paterson but does have now:

All evaluation plans are subject to review and approval by the Commissioner to ensure rigor, quality and consistency with standards;

That means if King decides the local assessment part of the evaluation plan is not rigorous enough, he can reject it. The unions were hoping to get some kind of agreement that would allow for portfolio assessments or some other kind of classroom-based assessment to be used for 20% of the evaluation based upon local measures of student growth. But as the Times reported on Friday, the kind of measures of student growth that local districts can use is limited to this:

They could use test data to measure student achievement in some other way — say, the progress of specific groups of students, like those who are not proficient in English or have special needs. They also could devise their own tests, or use tests developed by a third party, provided that the tests were approved by the state.

Notice - each part has the word "test" in it.

Local districts can use state test data differently than the state, they can create their own tests or buy third party tests and use that.

But the 20% of the eval based upon local measures of student growth MUST come from test scores.

Finally the unions also gave the NYSED Commissioner expanded powers to decide if local districts are being "rigorous" enough in their evaluations of teachers. If Commissioner King decides they are not, he can send in his own evaluators:

The Commissioner has the authority to require corrective action, including the use of independent evaluators, when districts evaluate their teachers positively regardless of students’ academic progress;

Mulgrew and the UFT leadership got taken to the cleaners in this deal. Same goes for Iannuzzi and the NYSUT leadership.

Mulgrew is now trying to cover his ass and fool the majority of the UFT membership that he and Iannuzzi got a good deal for teachers.

They did NOT get a good deal for teachers.

He and Iannuzzi sold us out.

To reiterate: we now will have 40% of our teacher evaluations based upon test scores (20% from the state; 20% from the city OR 40% from the state apportioned into two separate 20% data sets.)

If a teacher is declared "ineffective" on the test part of the evaluation (the 40%), he or she MUST be declared "ineffective" overall as a teacher.

Two years of an "ineffective" rating and you are terminated unless you can prove you're not "incompetent."

In addition, the unions gave the NYSED Commissioner expanded powers to decide what local assessments are "rigorous" enough to count for the 20% local assessment criteria.

Assessments that do not meet the NYSED Commissioner's standards of rigor will be rejected.

Also, the unions gave the NYSED Commissioner the right to decide if districts are being rigorous enough in their evaluation of teachers and send in his own independent evaluators if he decides he doesn't like the process.

Michael Mulgrew and the UFT leadership want to rewrite the history of this week and use deception and omission to make believe that the teacher evaluation framework agreed to by the unions and the state is not a deleterious piece of garbage that makes test scores THE determining factor in a teacher evaluation and allows for teachers to be fired if they come up "ineffective" on just that part of the eval.

As usual, the UFT leadership has gotten destroyed in a negotiation and now is lying and deceiving to make believe it didn't happen.

King Standardized Test

The education reformers are crowing this morning over the NYSUT/UFT cave-in to Cuomo in the evaluation agreement.

As usual with the reformers, they lie about the things they are promoting.

Joe Williams of the Democrats For Education Reform says the following about the new evaluation system:

The much-maligned standardized test isn’t king. Under the new plan, the bulk of a teacher’s evaluation (60%) remains in the hands of the school principal, not in standardized testing. That’s as it should be. Implementing more meaningful classroom evaluations will help teachers improve their craft — especially for the four out of five teachers who don’t teach in tested grades or subjects.

That's a lie - the standardized test is king (as in John King!) - the state plans to roll out new tests in every subject in most grades and local districts can roll out new tests as well.

Soon EVERY subject in EVERY grade WILL be tested.

And since a teacher MUST be rated "ineffective" if they come up "ineffective" on the test score-based portion of the evaluation (40%). that renders the other 60% meaningless.

Essentially, the new teacher evaluation system is based 100% upon test scores.

If you teach a subject that is already tested, you can expect to be under these guidelines soon (perhaps by 2012-2013.)

If you teach a subject that is currently not tested, the city and state will soon have tests ready for those subjects and you will be under those guidelines by 2014-2015.

NYSED Commissioner John King bragged last May about all the wonderful new assessments the state is working on to tie to the Common Core Standards, so truly we can expect to see King Standardized Test very, very soon.

The UFT And NYSUT Caved On Everything

After yesterday's cave-in to Cuomo, Tisch, King and the corporate education reform interests, the unions in NY State no longer serve any useful purpose for teachers.

They have allowed state tests to account for 40% of the new teacher evaluation system.

They have further allowed teachers to be declared "ineffective" overall as teachers if they come up "ineffective" on just that 40% measure.

In other words, the other 60% of the evaluation doesn't mean squat.

They have caved on appeals, allowing the chancellor to decide 87% of appeals of "ineffective" ratings.

They are allowing the city to add new standardized tests in every subject in every grade - not to measure student performance, but to grade teachers.

Indeed, the NY Times reported last year the city doesn't even plan to count the city tests for students.

They will only count for teachers.

Tell me, what exactly are these people at the unions doing for us?

I mean, other than collecting their paychecks and second pensions and collaborating with the corporate pols to destroy teachers?

The abomination that is yesterday's teacher evaluation deal becomes even clearer in the light of day this morning.

Neville Chamberlain and Michael Collins would be proud of Michael Mulgrew and Dick Iannuzzi.

They gave away everything and yet are declaring victory.

Heckuva job, fellas.

Starting next year, students will do nothing in school but prep for tests and take tests.

Principals will do nothing but observe teachers (since each teacher has to be observed at least twice a year - in my building, that means 240 observations a year.)

How will teachers who teach subjects that have no state or city tests be graded?

Who knows?

What kind of value-added measurement will the state use to grade teachers who teach subjects that are tested?

Who knows?

How will teachers know what other teachers they'll be compared to on the new evaluation bell curve?

Who knows?

The only thing we do know is that the UFT and the NYSUT both caved on EVERYTHING.

Test Scores Count For 100% Of The New Teacher Evaluations In New York

The NYSED, the Regents chancellor and the governor all say that test scores only account for 40% of the new teacher evaluation system.

Classroom observations and other assessments count for 60%.

But if you are deemed "ineffective" on the 40% portion of the evaluation assessed through test scores, you have to be declared "ineffective" overall.

In effect, test scores are actually 100% of the new evaluation system.

If you come up "ineffective" on the test portion of the evaluation, it doesn't matter how you do on the other 60%.

The value-added measurement the state is going to use to grade teachers is going to be rife with error and wide swings in stability from year to year, if it is anything like the VAM the city used for Teacher Data Reports, so you can be sure that thousands of teachers are going to be unfairly deemed "ineffective" by this new system.

Which is actually the point of the system.

This is all about creating chaos, blowing up what the powers that be see as the "status quo" and trying some bold new experiments on students and teachers.

NYSED Commissioner King, Regents Chancellor Tisch and Governor Cuomo all have this goal in mind.

Today, with the help of the unions, they achieved their goal.

Let the firings (and the yummy yummy profit-making for Pearson and all the other test vendors) begin.

A Riot Of Their Own

Debt-driven austerity measures and the sharp economic downturns in the Eurozone have led to youth unemployment rates that are as high as 50%.

Young people between the ages of 16-24 are truly becoming a new Lost Generation.

This does NOT bode well for the future.

Only 45% Of New Yorkers Approve Of Cuomo's Education Policies

Looks like the Sun King isn't as popular on education issues as he thinks:

On the eve of Gov. Cuomo's deadline for a deal on new teacher evaluations, voters are split on his handling of education policy, a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday found.

Among the state’s voters, 45% approved while 42% disapproved. The difference was within the margin of error.

Approval for Cuomo's education policy was higher in the city, where he earned a 47% approval rating.

Disapproval was higher among voters with children in the public schools, with 51% of them giving him a thumbs-down.

Cuomo has markedly higher approval ratings over all, with 69% of voters giving him positive marks in the most recent poll.

Unlike a recent poll on Mayor Bloomberg, Cuomo trounced the teachers union among voters asked whom they trusted more. Half of voters trusted Cuomo to protect the interest of public school students, while 38% picked the union.

At the same time, 49% of voters had a favorable view of public school teachers versus 23% who had an unfavorable one.

I say, let Cuomo impose his teacher evaluations based upon test scores today.

He will then own the new teacher evaluation system.

When it proves to be a nightmare - and it will - he will own that nightmare too.

Once voters - and especially parents - see that the new evaluation system will require new standardized tests in every grade in every subject, they are going to hate the system because students are going to do nothing in school but prep for tests or take tests.

Once they see that because Cuomo has decided to institute "competition" among teachers, ranking each individual teacher among his/her peers and firing the bottom 10%, with the likely consequence that teachers will no longer cooperate with each other, they are going to hate this system.

Once they see just how much this new "straight-forward" evaluation system poisons schools, turns teachers against each other, and turns children into nothing but test scores, they are going to hate this system.

And Cuomo - The Sun King - will own it.

This will be his system that he forced onto the state.

He will attempt to deflect responsibility for it, of course - he will say teachers screwed it up or the unions worked against it or something along those lines.

But make no mistake - if voters already don't like his education polices (and you know they don't when he only gets 45% approval for his ed policies but gets 69% approval overall), they will know this is his fault.

So the unions should do nothing today and let Cuomo impose his system.

He will come to regret it.

"Long-Term Criminality" At Murdoch Paper

Not a surprise:

(Reuters) - An investigation into Rupert Murdoch's top-selling British newspaper, the Sun, has uncovered evidence that it paid tens of thousands of pounds in retainers to public officials for tipoffs, a source with knowledge of the probe said on Wednesday.

Much of the evidence passed to police has been provided by Murdoch's own News Corp group, and deepens a crisis at the Sun, where officers have arrested nine former and current senior staff in recent weeks over illegal payments.

Murdoch has been trying to regain the high ground ever since an outcry last summer - over revelations that his journalists had hacked the voicemails of crime victims and their families - forced him to close the profitable News of the World title and abort a planned multibillion-dollar buyout of Britain's biggest satellite broadcaster.

"This is not about sources or expenses, this is an investigation into serious suspected criminality over a sustained period," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It involves regular cash payments totaling tens of thousands of pounds a year for several years to public officials, some of whom were effectively on retainers to provide information. In totality it involves a six-figure sum."

Does anybody really think Murdoch wasn't aware that his journalists were paying sources and had public officials on retainer?

He ought to be arrested too.

The "long-term criminality" engaged in by News Corp employees was condoned at the top of the company - right from Murdoch.

Judge: Sports Scores No Longer Have To Be Accurate

Working off today's court finding that the NYCDOE only has to provide Teacher Data Reports to the press, not vouch for the accuracy of the data contained therein, a judge in the New York Appeals Court has found that New York media outlets may now print sports scores that are not accurate.

The judge wrote in his decision that the important thing with sports is the disclosure of the scores from the games, not the accuracy of those scores.

Under that new guideline, the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Giants 3-2 this evening in a sporting event played up at the Polo Grounds.

Don Newcombe won the decision, Carl Furillo knocked in the winning run in the top of the ninth inning.

What you say? The Brooklyn Dodgers play in L.A. and the Giants play in San Francisco and those players are long retired (in Furillo's case, I believe deceased...)?

So what?

We don't have to be accurate with our reporting any more.

All we have to do is make sure we get the "facts" as reported to us out there.

You can believe that sports score I just gave you just like you can believe the Teacher Data Reports the Post will be publishing in a few days...

City Wins Teacher Eval Case - Set To Release 12,000 Teacher Evaluations To Press

The judge ruled teachers have no right to privacy in this matter, even though the city's Teacher Data Reports are flawed and have large margins of error.

Here's NY1:

The evaluations of 12,000 city teachers will be released, after a judge ruled today the city can make them public.

The decision came as part of a Freedom of Information Law request filed by news organizations, including NY1.

The teachers union sued to block the release, saying the methodology for determining the grades is flawed and could contain inaccurate records.

The city has argued the teachers have no right to privacy when it comes to information about their job performance.

A lawyer representing the news organizations says the public has a right to the information even if the teacher assessments are flawed.

The press is licking their lips to publish these and bludgeon teachers with them.

So what if they're flawed?

They get to make fun of teachers, call them lazy and stupid, and that's really the point, isn't it?

What kind of society do we live in where the primary criteria the press and the political establishment look to use regarding the release of teacher evaluations is not accuracy but disclosure?

Apparently the only thing that matters these days is "the public's right to know" - even when the facts are, you know, wrong.

The Moral Rot At The Core Of Rupert Murdoch's Media Empire

Here's the latest:

Rupert Murdoch faces a revolt from journalists and employees at The Sun who feel he is throwing them to the wolves in order to save himself in the police bribery/hacking scandal.

The Mirror gets a good quote from one Sun journalist on just how bad the war within News Corporation is:

One senior executive said: “We are being destroyed from within. As we saw with the News of The World, there is nothing the Murdochs will not do to protect their own backs.

“It beggars belief they can so readily throw to the wolves good, decent, loyal journalists who have dedicated so much to the paper. They are being treated like hardened villains.

“The Sweeney-style operations are entirely disproportionate. It appears to be all about keeping the Murdoch family out of the line of fire, but we won’t stand meekly by this time.”

The Independent reports that Murdoch and News Corporation are now facing legal action here in the U.S. over the hacking scandal:

Rupert Murdoch's global empire is set to face new legal action in the US over alleged illegal practices by News Corp journalists. The lawyer at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal in the UK, Mark Lewis, who was instrumental in exposing the scale of illegal voicemail accessing at the News of the World, is in the "advanced stages" of bringing his first case against News Corp on the other side of the Atlantic.

The news comes as Mr Murdoch prepares to fly to London following a series of arrests of senior Sun journalists.

The prospect of Mr Lewis supervising legal action in the US will do little to reassure the embattled board of News Corp that a new front on illegal practices is about to open in their own back yard. US authorities, including the FBI, are already accelerating their own inquiries into the Murdoch media empire over alleged violations of US law on corrupt payments to foreign officials.

With the arrest of five more senior Sun journalists over the weekend on suspicion of corruption and conspiracy - adding to the four former and current Sun employees arrested last month - a visit to London this week by News Corp's chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch, is already being viewed, according to one News Corp executive, as "five-star crisis management" with the future of The Sun on the line.

Sources close to Mr Lewis's legal team have already scheduled key meetings in New York to take place within the next few weeks. Although US investigators have so far found little evidence to support allegations that News Corp journalists illegally accessed the voicemails of 9/11 victims or their families in the US, the FBI have remained focused on allegations of bribery and illegal payments made by News Corp employees.

The Independent also reports that Sun employees are not at all reassured that Rupert Murdoch is committed to the paper:

Inside News International's London headquarters, there is growing concern among journalists that the arrests are primarily being made to protect News Corp's global brand. One Sun journalist described Mr Mockridge's email about "due process" as "a sham of emotionally laden drivel".

Although Mr Mockridge claimed that the Sun's editor Dominic Mohan was "committed to leading the paper through this difficult period", The Independent has been told that Mr Mohan has confided to close colleagues he fears that he could soon joins the ranks of those arrested by the Met's specialist unit investigating corruption, Operation Elveden.

Another NI journalist, who asked not to be named, said: "Far from Dominic offering guarantees about leading the paper, he's told some of us he thinks he'll get his collar felt. He said his email traffic was 'colossal' because a lot of people preferred not to knock on his door in the climate. So he may have missed stuff that will be seen as dodgy."

Murdoch's biographer, Michael Wolff, wonders if this is the week that Rupert's son, James, gets arrested.

Finally, The Independent wonders if and when the cancer infecting Murdoch's business in Britain will spread across the Atlantic:

The danger for News International's remaining UK media stable is growing by the day. Operation Elveden could turn out to be far more toxic for the future of the company even than Operation Weeting, which is the inquiry into phone-hacking allegations.

As the Management and Standards Committee, the investigative body set up by News International's parent company, News Corporation, continues ploughing through millions of journalists' emails, feeding information to Scotland Yard, the prospect grows of the cancer originally confined to the NOTW spreading across the Atlantic and from one part of Mr Murdoch's media empire to another.

I'll say again, I have a difficult time believing that if journalists at all three of Murdoch's British papers engaged in hacking, bribery, extortion and other crimes, some of those same journalists didn't engage in the same kinds of crimes when they moved over here to work at The New York Post or The Wall Street Journal.

Joel Klein's News Corporation Putsch

The crisis at News Corporation continues to spread this morning:

Dark rumours were swirling as long ago as last spring, when Rupert and James Murdoch paid three unprecedented visits to Wapping in the space of a month.

Not only were father and son considering closing the scandal-racked News of the World, went the chatter on the Wapping grapevine, but its sister paper, the Sun, was also in the line of fire. Back then the fears seemed outlandish, born of the febrile atmosphere around the Sunday title that was to bring about its demise last July. There was little evidence the toxic allegations of malpractice would spread to the daily tabloid.

But what seemed incredible last year is now being discussed openly in Fleet Street following the arrests of five Sun employees on suspicion of bribing public officials. They follow the arrest of four other current and former Sun executives and journalists in January – and the separate arrest of a reporter on the paper the previous November – on similar suspicions.

The drip, drip nature of the arrests is in danger of becoming a flood. What started as a separate, but minor, line of investigation for the Metropolitan police team predominantly charged with examining allegations of phone hacking now threatens to become an epic bribery scandal of equal gravity.

Indeed, the moral rot at the core of News Corporation is more and more exposed as the arrests in the various police investigations mount:

A total of 21 people have now been arrested in the bribery probe, Operation Elveden, including three police officers, though no one has yet been charged. Those arrested include Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch's News International, the company that owns the Sun, and ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who went on to become prime minister David Cameron's communications chief.

That the arrests are linked to alleged bribes paid not just to police officers but prison staff and Ministry of Defence officials, confirms Scotland Yard is throwing its net wider as it seeks to root out corruption. The arrest of an MoD official may invite speculation that the Official Secrets Act could have been breached.

Here in the United States, News Corporation may face investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for the bribery charges:

The latest Operation Elveden arrests sharply increase the danger to News Corporation of potential multimillion dollar fines by US authorities as part of the continuing investigation into alleged bribery of public officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The eight arrests escalate the FCPA crisis for the company by extending the allegations of bribery from the News of the World to the Sun newspaper, and by broadening its scope from police officers to other public officials. An official from the Ministry of Defence and a member of the armed forces were also arrested for alleged corruption and "misconduct in a public office".

The threat of prosecution under the FCPA constitutes the greatest danger of the phone-hacking scandal for Rupert Murdoch's media empire. It could expose the company to tens of millions of dollars in fines and the risk of imprisonment of its executive officers.

So what is Rupert Murdoch's strategy going forward on this widening scandal?

Why, put Joel Klein in charge of whacking every News Corp. employee who is even suspected of bad behavior:

Toxic allegations that the Yard failed to take allegations of endemic phone hacking on the News of the World seriously did for the careers of both the Met's commissioner, Paul Stephenson, and his deputy, John Yates.

Now it is the mirror image of this relationship that is damaging the Sun. The paper's journalists are said to be furious that the arrests have been triggered by information supplied to the Yard by the Management and Standards Committee (MSC), an independent committee set up by the New York-based News Corporation, the parent company of News International. Following the first set of arrests, a News International source suggested it was intent on "draining the swamp", a comment that provoked fury among the company's journalists.

In a statement, the MSC said it was ploughing through a mass of information as it seeks to ensure "that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past will not be repeated". The committee has given a team of advisers, lawyers and forensic IT staff a broad remit to search for any evidence of wrongdoing. Significantly, the investigation is not confined to the now defunct News of the World. Overseen by Will Lewis, the former Telegraph executive, the committee is working closely with the law firm Linklaters, which is conducting a review of all three remaining News International titles – the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.

"The MSC is authorised to conduct internal investigations to fulfil its responsibilities in relation to News International's papers," the committee said in a statement. "It has powers to direct News International staff to co-operate fully with all external and internal investigations, and to preserve, obtain and disclose appropriate documents."

Chaired by Lord Grabiner QC and reporting directly to Joel Klein, executive vice-president and board director of News Corp, the committee's team is examining some 300m emails and what one insider described as "masses of hard copy". "They are looking at more information than one person could read in an entire lifetime," the insider said.

Well, Klein always did love data, didn't he?

Now he's got a treasure trove of it to look through, but one main piece of evidence found recently points to EXACTLY what Klein and Rupert intend to do next - pin this mess on Rupert's son, James.

The NY Times has that part of the story:

LONDON — As dozens of investigators and high-powered lawyers converge on Rupert Murdoch’s News International in the phone hacking scandal, attention has focused on the printout of an e-mail excavated three months ago from a sealed carton left behind in an empty company office.

Addressed to Mr. Murdoch’s son James, it contained explosive information about the scale of phone hacking at The News of the World tabloid — information James Murdoch says he failed to take in because he did not read the whole e-mail chain.

The e-mail returned to cause trouble for News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of News Corporation, several weeks ago when the company said that it had been deleted from Mr. Murdoch’s computer. Even as people familiar with the investigations said the e-mail and its convoluted history will form a crucial part of the inquiry into allegations of a cover-up, the scandal appeared to be widening on Saturday, as senior journalists at News Corporation’s Sun tabloid were arrested.

Tracing the story of the e-mail, which was found in November and first became publicly known in December, also sheds light on the intrigue surrounding Mr. Murdoch, the company’s heir apparent, and on efforts to protect him from the scandal.

Embroiled in three separate police operations, a parliamentary investigation, a judicial inquiry and a flurry of civil suits with potentially hundreds more waiting in the wings, News Corporation has begun to provide information that suggests a broader sweep of hacking activity at News International than was suspected even recently and more widespread knowledge within the company of past efforts to cover it up.

This new level of cooperation includes the release of damaging material from an internal investigation that is being overseen by executives who, observers say, are using it to consolidate their power within the company, a move that could come at James Murdoch’s expense.

The executive running the internal investigation who is releasing all the damaging material that has been resulting in arrests for Sun employees is of course Joel Klein.

He's the guy who is supposed to be "draining the swamp," as The Guardian story put it.

But more and more, it seems like he is running the cover-up around Rupert and throwing everybody else to the dogs - including Rupert's son, James.

Here is Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, on twitter:

NYT story re James Murdoch doesn't say he'll be arrested shortly, and that company is riven by perceived Joel Klein putsch--but almost says...Front page NYT story about James Murdoch will move case in UK more than same news in British papers...Joel Klein strategy at News Corp is to let Brits sink or swim. Unclear how much this is de facto or if Murdoch has bought in.

That last point is interesting - is Klein running this strategy at Rupert's behest or is he freelancing it?

Hard to know, but it quite clear Klein is running News Corporation strategy on the scandal and therefore essentially running News Corporation.

He's the one throwing everybody under the bus over at The Sun

We'll have to see if some of the pre-Klein News International and News Corporation employees begin to push back against Klein.

This article from Reuters on February 6 gives an indication of just how contentious things are between the people Klein brought in and the pre-Klein people:

News Corp says the committee is independent of News International. But it isn’t independent of the parent company: via Joel Klein it reports to News Corp board member Viet Dinh, who was an associate counsel to the US senate banking committee for the Whitewater investigation of President Bill Clinton. Dinh, who also served as a US assistant attorney general in the George W Bush administration, has been on the board for eight years, and is godfather to a child of Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s eldest son.

Klein was initially hired by Rupert Murdoch to head a new education division at News Corp.

In the United States, people in News Corp’s headquarters are aware of the growing tensions in London but feel they have no alternative but to stick to their course, according to a company insider.

The committee is divided into teams of lawyers and police who work in soundproofed offices, according to the people who are familiar with the work. The volume of data is so large that there is no question of reading each document. Instead, searches are carried out for key terms, meaning that no one knows what secrets may be buried in the documents - many of them deleted or corrupted emails that have been recently recovered - until the right term is hit upon.

MSC workers try to keep a distance from News International’s journalists. At first they were in the same building, but kept bumping into reporters and editors in the lobby or lifts. Now they are in a separate building where they share a floor with BrandAlley, an online clothing retailer in which News International has a stake.

“Filthy insects”
But different buildings do not guarantee peace. News International journalists say they are furious at the committee. When media reports began circulating that an insider had described the MSC’s work as “draining the swamp,” tempers flared.

“What do they mean, ‘drain the swamp’?” asked a News International journalist. “Are they saying we’re a bunch of filthy insects?” News Corp, the journalist continued, “is seen as the enemy now. They have failed to exercise due diligence... and their response now is to dump on their own employees. It’s a disgrace.”

The NY Times has more on the battle between management and employees:

Among former employees of The News of the World, said one, there is cynicism about the motivations of their former employer. Some feel, the person said, that the management “is protecting itself and serving up journalists.”

Britain’s National Union of Journalists criticized what it characterized as the handing of the staff members to the police without internal investigation of the evidence. “It’s a very brutal way of treating senior journalists who may or may not have done anything wrong,” said the group’s deputy general secretary, Barry Fitzpatrick.

News Corporation is at war with itself and Joel Klein, the master of creative destruction, is leading the charge.

I have to admit, I'm dubious Klein really wants to drain the swamp at News Corp.

Quite frankly, it seems to me that he has circled the wagons around Rupert and is slowly throwing everybody else to the wolves.

That includes Rupert's son, James.

There is little doubt to me that the Times article today about James and the incriminating email was planted by Klein.

Whatever happens next, one thing we can be sure about.

Things are going to get much worse for News Corporation before they get better.

You can't have a company at war with itself and expect it to thrive.

News Corp. In Crisis Once Again

Five more News Corporation employees arrested in the Murdoch phone hacking/police bribery scandal today - bringing the total number arrested in the scandal to 30.

This time, five senior journalists at The Sun were taken into custody after News Corporation provided evidence to police that these employees had engaged in criminal activity.

The Sun is now in crisis, with employees at the Murdoch-owned paper railing against News Corporation and wondering who will be thrown under the bus next in the scandal.

The Guardian reports that Sun employees are "stunned" and "angry" about the turn of events, with News Corporation itself turning employees in to the police.

Reuters reports that News Corp. employees at The Sun feel there is a witch hunt against them by their employer who formerly celebrated their work but now is tossing them to the wolves to save his own ass.

Rupert Murdoch and his consilgiere in the scandal, Joel Klein, have flown to London together to deal with the crisis.

According to Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, Klein is now calling all the shots in News Corporation's scandal containment strategy.

This Bloomberg Businessweek piece on Murdoch from February 9 says pretty much the same thing.

Klein's strategy for dealing with the widening strategy seems to be three-fold:

"Take Old News Corp. Employees."

"Call Police."

"Have Police Arrest Them."

Only thing is, the strategy has now, in the words of Michael Wolff, created such internal acrimony in the company that employees are turning on each other.

Rupert and Joel Klein have flown to London not to reassure employees, as BSkyB reported, but rather to stanch the damage from the still-widening scandal.

In Wolff's estimation, the future fall-out from the scandal includes:

Murdoch faces...his son's arrest; DOJ investigation; more bribe revelations; more hacking fallout; challenge to BskyB control

That means they may be getting ready to close The Sun and fire all those employees as damage control.

Expect the older News Corporation employees to strike back against both Murdoch and Klein, dishing dirt off the record.

The Guardian has a little of that:

The mood amongst reporters is, in the words of one, "stunned" – which is probably an understatement – coupled with a worry as to where this will end. Could a tip-fee paid five years ago now be considered a bribe? There is no shortage of anger, too. Some of it is directed at the Guardian, stemming from the newspaper's earlier exposé of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, although much is aimed at the company's Management and Standards Committee that has been providing information to the police which led the Elveden squad to make all its arrests.

...

The scale of uncertainty is such that it is impossible to predict with confidence what will happen next. But if the Elveden investigation is not yet over: one thing is clear – a punch-drunk Sun is owned by an organisation that is at war with itself.

Michael Wolff says the Obama DOJ now has direct cause to look very closely into News Corporation here in the United States.

If the hacking, bribery and corruption perpetrated by News Corp. employees in Britain was so widespread amongst Murdoch's newspapers and many of those same British journalists eventually ended up working here in the U.S. at either the NY Post or the Wall Street Journal, there is no reason to think they were not continuing their criminality here.

And yet, as I have noted before, the Obama DOJ doesn't seem all that interested in going after Murdoch on this.

You have to wonder if Obama and Murdoch haven't made some kind of deal through intermediaries - you don't go too hard on us with the phone hacking/bribery stuff, we won't go too hard on you in 2012.

Reuters reported earlier in the week that the feds so far have found no evidence of hacking in the U.S., though the DOJ is looking into "possible violations by employees of Rupert Murdoch's media empire of a U.S. law banning corrupt payments to foreign officials such as police and law enforcement."

We'll see if that investigation goes anywhere.

So far, the only crimes the Obama DOJ seems less eager to investigate than the Murdoch scandal are the tortures ordered by Bush administration officials and the crimes committed by Wall Streeters, so I have doubts that the Obama people are going to do anything of substance here.

Still, none of that is going to help Murdoch and Klein if News Corp employees in Britain go to full scale war against them internally and start leaking damaging items to the press.

I bet Rupert isn't thinking too closely about the Cuomo-imposed teacher evaluations deadline this weekend.

He's trying too busy trying to save his own wrinkled ass.