Mayor Bloomberg Makes Incoherent Statement Defending Common Core

On the heels of John King calling critics to the Common Core "special interests" and Arne Duncan insulting critics to the Common Core of being "white suburban moms" who are mad because their kids aren't "as brilliant as they thought" comes this doozy from Bloomberg:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't understand what all the fuss is about over Common Core, the more rigorous national standards that aim to boost college- and career-readiness, and whose implementation in New York State has engendered controversy among parents and teachers.

"It's too hard for your kid, lady?" said the mayor, during his regular Friday morning appearance on the John Gambling radio show. "Think about what they’re gonna do if they can’t get a job. That's hard. And people say, 'Well, we test them too much.' Life is full of tests and you're gonna be tested all your life."

"Kids gotta decide, do you hang out with that bad guy that might have a gun," he went on. "Do you get in the car after you’ve had a couple of drinks, or even if you’re not driving but maybe the driver has. Pregnancy, teeange pregnancy. There are a lot of things that you have tests on. Tests on whether you read or write isn’t exactly onerous and that’s the kind of pain you gotta go through if you want to have a future."

More and more, Bloomberg makes these statements that make you shake your head and wonder when they'll announce publicly that he has dementia.

I dunno what teen pregnancy or hanging out "with that bad guy that might have a gun" has to do with the Common Core or the Common Core tests, and to be frank, Bloomberg doesn't make such a great job of connecting these strings of delusion together into anything coherent.

If Bloomberg's radio show statement was a Common Core argumentative essay assessment, the kind so many kids are asked to write every week in every class under the Common Core, it would receive a failing grade for coherence, focus, supporting evidence and and analysis.

Life is full of "tests" - that's what he's saying.

But you know, sometimes the "tests" in life are stupid and pointless and the way you pass those "tests" is pointing out how stupid and pointless these tests are and making them go away.

Education Reformers Grilled Over Common Core, Testing, And Evaluations

From the Baltimore Sun:

A panel of state lawmakers grilled Maryland's top school officials Thursday over whether education reforms are being executed too quickly and putting undue stress on teachers.

Senators on the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee told state schools Superintendent Lillian M. Lowery that they have been bombarded by concerns from teachers and parents.

Many, they said, complained about how the state is simultaneously implementing three big programs: a new testing system, new ways to evaluate teachers and a more rigorous set of education standards known as the Common Core.

"A lot of them have talked about tremendous stress," said Sen. Ronald N. Young, a Frederick County Democrat, adding that some teachers say they're ready to give up and others now take medication for stress.

"Isn't there some way, based on what I'm hearing from teachers, that they can't be given a little more time?" Young asked.

Lowery responded that the state has already sought ways to slow down the reforms, delaying when the new teacher evaluation system tied to student achievement takes effect and when new tests will be used to measure the state's education system.

Lowery said that years ago, several school districts voluntarily started developing the lesson plans that are helping teach the tougher new standards. "It's going really well in some places," she said, adding: "First and foremost, we need time. If we're going to do this right, we need time."

The three big reforms have sparked controversy that ranges from conservatives accusing the state of taking over education to progressives complaining about testing children too much. Baltimore County teachers filed a grievance this week about the extra hours they have to work because lesson plans based on the Common Core have not been available until just weeks before they are to be taught.

Republican candidates for governor have vowed, if elected, to reverse the state's choice to join the 44 other states and the District of Columbia that signed on to the Common Core.

"This is one of the worst program implementations I have ever seen, in terms of educating parents and families," Sen. Ed Reilly, an Anne Arundel County Republican, said to Lowery and other top state education officials. "Public relations is part of your job — all of your jobs — and it's been done very poorly."

The pushback is gaining steam.

Arne Duncan's Bad, Bad Week

Really bad week for @usedgov betw @arneduncan insulting moms, tepid results of SIG program & twitter fight betw press flack & Ed reporters
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 23, 2013

He can take heart that no matter how bad his week gets, he'll always be welcomed on the Morning Joe set on Monday.

NYSED: Tests And Evaluations First, Curriculum Later

In all the jive ass news editorials shilling the Common Core and calling opponents and critics of reform neo-Luddites and the like, you never hear this truth:

ALBANY—Teachers across the state are waiting on the state education department to develop the rest of a $28.3 million curriculum that they've already begun teaching.

State officials are just a step ahead in developing lesson plans that students need to pass the rigorous Common Core exams. When the state began testing elementary and middle-school students based on the standards last April, schools did not have all of the state-designed “modules,” which are units of material for teachers to cover.

And they still don't, causing some school leaders to lament that they're heading into a second year of testing students on materials that haven't gotten into classrooms yet.

NYSED Commissioner King says the SED modules are "optional and supplementary" but not required.

But Carol Burris notes:

“It's like the speed limit is just a suggestion,” said Carol Burris, a high school principal in Long Island and national education-policy expert who has been critical of the state's reform agenda. “When you spend $28 million on something, you're intending for that to be used, unless you think it's fine to just burn taxpayer money.”

The hacks at SED also say districts can buy other curriculum options if they don't like having to wait for the free state stuff that is taking forever to be developed.

But Jessica Bakeman writes:

the reality is many districts aren't buying other curriculum or textbooks that purport to be aligned with the Common Core, partly because there's no guarantee the other options will prepare students for the state tests. Also, there hasn't been enough time for proper vetting, experts said.

In short, the arrogant people at SED and the Regents rolled out the half-based Common Core standards, the half-baked Common Core tests and the half-baked teacher evaluations tied to those tests before they finished baking the first couple of Common Core modules for teachers to teach to students.

But they refuse to acknowledge any mistakes, they refuse to allow any slowdowns in Common Core implementation and they are adamant that reform is going "full speed ahead" here in NY State.

This will all end very, very well.

I mean, how can it not?

We Need Transparency On The Data And Stat Manipulation At Tweed During The Bloomberg Years

From Newsday:

A former Hempstead school employee who informed state officials about the district's practice of systematically changing some students' failing grades has filed a federal lawsuit alleging wrongful termination in retaliation for his action.

Carlos Ramirez, the Hempstead school district's former director of technology, sent a letter in June to state education officials informing them of his concerns about the district's grade-boosting practice. The district decided to stop rounding up final course grades of 63 and 64 to passing scores of 65 in July -- just days before it fired Ramirez.

Ramirez filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn seeking back pay for wrongful termination and an unspecified amount of damages, said his attorney, Aymen Aboushi of Manhattan.

The lawsuit describes Ramirez as an "exemplary employee" who was "subject to unlawful retaliation" because he reported activity that was "in detriment of public school students and their families."

The case has not been assigned a court date, Aboushi said.

"We hope one of the things that comes out of this is some transparency," he said. "Money is not the driving force for this lawsuit."

I would love to see similar lawsuits here in NYC to get some transparency on all the data manipulation and shenanigans the Tweedies under Klein and Walcott have engaged in.

Diane Ravitch has been posting "insider" reports from a NYCDOE central employee that allege widespread data manipulation and statistical fraud at Tweed.

While "philanthropic" organizations and education reform "non-profits" all hail the Bloomberg Years as a wonderful time for education, those of us in the belly of the best know how much fraudulent the academic results in schools have been.

Credit recovery programs that gave out semester credits for reading comic books (thus increasing the graduation rates), earlier test score inflation under NYSED Commissioner Mills that had Bloomberg and Klein hailing themselves as geniuses, such pressure to raise test scores all throughout the Bloomberg Years that many schools cut any program or activity that didn't engage students in state test prep.

It's been an awful time, not withstanding the pro-Bloomberg propaganda you see at corporate education-reform sites like Gotham Schools.

Now that it is almost over, I hope we get some transparency on these last 12 years so that some of the Bloombergian education reform myths can be properly sent to the graveyard where they belong.

Cuomo, Legislature At War

The knives are now officially out for Cuomo in Albany:

ALBANY — The battle between the Legislature and Gov. Cuomo's anti-corruption commission is set to explode Friday.

The Senate and Assembly plan to jointly file papers in Manhattan Supreme Court to quash subpoenas from the commission that seek detailed information on lawmakers’ outside income and clients, according to sources.

Private lawyers representing the legislators will argue that the subpoenas are overreaching, violate the constitutional separation-of-powers edict and seek protected client information, sources said.
They will also charge that the panel is improperly browbeating the Legislature into accepting an ethics reform deal, they said.

“It’s about protecting the institution of the Legislature,” said one source.

Following a spate of legislator arrests this spring, Cuomo repeatedly warned he would use the state Moreland Act to form a corruption-probing commission unless the Legislature passed an ethics package. After lawmakers balked, Cuomo created the panel in July.

It would be one thing if Cuomo were honestly trying to clean up Albany and state politics.

But few politicians in Albany are as dirty as Cuomo himself.

He has hidden his corporate donors list, closed down his lobbying group the Committee To Save New York rather than reveal the donors who gave to the group, taken millions from gambling interests to legalize gambling, taken hundreds of thousands from real estate interests in return for millions in tax breaks and given millions in tax breaks to the movie and TV industry for donations in return.

In addition, Cuomo had his Moreland Commission quash subpoenas to his own campaign donors in order to hide who was paying him cash for political favors.

And that's just the stuff we know about - you can bet there is more under the radar.

Now if Sheriff Andy runs for president in 2016, we'll see a lot of this stuff unearthed by his opponents in the race and given to the press to run against him.

But up until now, Cuomo has kept his own dirt and criminality under wraps while tarring the legislature as the most crooked entity in Albany.

Are there crooked and corrupt legislators in Albany?

Of course.

But should we root for a crooked and corrupt governor to take on those crooked and corrupt legislators in a battle to clean up state politics.

Nahh.

I say, pox on all of them - but an especially itchy pox on the crooked, corrupt and hypocritical governor.

Failed Movie Director Lectures About Education Reform

From the NY Post:

M. Night Shyamalan, who directed “The Sixth Sense,” focused on education for his recently published book, “I Got Schooled.”

At the apartment of former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, who founded the Parents’ Transparency Project, Shyamalan spoke to a group that included Grace Hightower, Katie Couric, Alexandra Pelosi, Gilt Groupe founder Kevin Ryan, Newark Schools chief Cami Anderson and Success Academy Charter Schools founder Eva Moskowitz.

“In America, we’re actually educating our kids very well… but just the white kids,” Shyamalan said. “If you pull out schools in which 85 percent of students qualify for a free meal, which are predominantly African-American and Hispanic, the data show that the rest of the kids are being taught better in America than anywhere else in the world. Countries like Finland teach their white kids well, and we teach our white kids better.”

These education reformers and failed directors/would-be reformers have been drawing the race card an awful lot lately to sell their corporate reforms (see here and here.)

Failed director Shyamalan doesn't seem to realize that race is not the issue, class is.

Lots of poor white kids face many of the same educational challenges poor kids of color do.

This dude should go back to making crappy films and leave education policy to people who know what they're talking about.

I covered this before in the summer, but it needs to be said again.

Commemorating The Fifthieth Anniversary Of November 22, 1963

Be A Teacher - Read A Script, Follow Orders, Raise Test Scores Or Be Fired!

What a joke this is:

With so much teacher bashing, who in the world would want to teach? 

Seeking to combat such sentiments, the Department of Education — in partnership with the Advertising Council, Microsoft, State Farm Insurance, Teach for America, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions and several other educational groups — is unveiling a public service campaign this week aimed at recruiting a new generation of classroom educators. 

According to the Department of Education, as many as one million teachers could retire in the next four to six years. Hoping to attract young, high-achieving college graduates — particularly in science, math and engineering — the campaign, called Teach, uses video spots and radio announcements that portray teaching as creative, invigorating and meaningful, and as compelling a career as medicine, acting or engineering. 

...

Microsoft, along with State Farm, is financially supporting the campaign with an undisclosed amount. Some of the funding will be used to hire recruiters to visit college campuses and talk to juniors and seniors about a career in education. 

“The challenge is to change the conversation around teaching so that it becomes the career that you want your child to go into,” said Kathy Payne, senior director of education leadership at State Farm, “rather than the career that you counsel children out of.”

Even the clueless Motoko Rich manages to get a "What Jive This Thing Is" quote:

The campaign comes at a time when public education is increasingly riven by battles over the use of standardized testing in teacher performance evaluations and the rollout of the Common Core, new benchmarks for what students need to know and be able to do between kindergarten and the end of high school. The standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.

Some critics say that such policies, which have been encouraged by the Department of Education, could make recruiting top candidates to the profession more difficult. 

“Obviously teaching is a wonderful profession, but I think it’s a little blithe in the way that it presents the profession,” said Anthony Cody, a former public-school teacher and current education blogger, of the Teach ads. “It’s a very tough job and it’s being made tougher every year, and a lot of the other things that the Department of Education is doing are making it really difficult to stay in the profession.” 

Reading the Common Core scripts, having lesson planning and autonomy taken from you, having test scores of other individuals you cannot control used to evaluate you, having value-added algorithms with margins of error larger than Bill Gates' ego used to calculate yearly ratings, having your salary based on voodoo VAM calculations, getting bashed by politicians, business leaders, professional teacher haters, and two bit celebrities like Rosie Perez every day of the year - yeah, teaching really is a glamorous job full of lots of creativity and meaning.

Please - jive ass crap from the same corporate criminals and political functionaries who have been busy destroying the teaching profession for the past decade +.

More Hackery From Merryl Tisch

Tisch urges rethinking of network system, says it's sustainable but rethink way to include students w special needs and Eng lang learners
— Beth Fertig (@bethfertig) November 21, 2013

Last week, here's what she said:

The next mayor should “reconsider” the current system of school-support networks, State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said Monday, adding her voice to a chorus of critics – including mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio – who have questioned the signature Bloomberg education policy.

“Me, if I were going to take over the school system, I would look heavily to change the networks,” Tisch said during a panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit group, PENCIL.

“I think the networks have basically failed children who are [English-language learners],” added Tisch, who is due to defend the state’s education policies at a state senate hearing Tuesday. “They have failed children who have special needs.”

Yeah, both times she notes how the problem with the networks is especially centered on children with special needs, but somehow she went from "next mayor should reconsider networks" to "networks are sustainable with changes for special needs students..."

As Leonie notes, somebody from Bloomberg's crowd got to her and now she's backtracking what she said.

Just another example of what a hack Tisch is.

Here's A Shael Polakow-Suransky Proposal I Can Agree With

Wow - sometimes Shael says stuff that makes sense:

A top city education official on Thursday suggested a relatively inexpensive way to boost the number of high school students who go to college – pay their application fee.

Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky said the department is considering paying the $65 application fee for high school students applying to the City University of New York, which he said would cost the city about $500,000 annually.
...
CUNY currently gives schools “a very limited quantity” of waivers to distribute to their neediest students, but doesn’t accept waivers from other groups, such as the College Board, according to CUNY application forms. The department’s plan would pay the fees of some 6,600 students annually with “an economic need” who are not currently covered by the waivers, according to a department spokesman.

Polakow-Suransky said that every year some students who don’t get waivers balk at the fee and decide either not to apply or to wait until a time when they can afford it – which may never arrive.

He added that the plan is still in the works, but that CUNY has expressed interest.

While they're at it, provide two additional fee waivers to SUNY schools for all state students.

Governor Cuomo can hit up his hedge fundie buddies for the dough or better yet, stop paying Hollywood to make movies here that they can't make anywhere else anyway.

The Common Core Standards And The Common Core Tests Go Hand In Hand

Peter Greene at Ed Week asks if the Common Core standards can be decoupled from the tests and concludes no, they cannot:

A recent recurring refrain around and about the comments sections is the notion that the Common Core standards are, in and of themselves, quite fine, and if we could just uncouple them from the testing and implementation regimens, all will be well. The standards themselves are an improvement so let's build on that opportunity, and not stand in the way of fine new standards just because their ugly testing step-cousin is trying to sneak through the door with them.

The Common Core standards could really work - we just need to get rid of the high stakes tests...

 I can remember thinking like that. I can remember looking at the standards and thinking, "Many of these are actually fine." (I should note that I teach at the high school level, not elementary.) In fact, one of my earliest complaints about the CCSS was that they were one more example of folks telling us to do things that we already did. And I don't think there's a teacher alive who wouldn't relish the promise of freedom to pursue the standards in any way they deemed best.

"You know," I thought at one point. "If it were possible to just use these standards as a rough guide to follow as a thought best, and we got the government to stop testing, I could live with this."

 And that was the moment when I knew that, no, the Common Core standards were not pure of heart and I would never learn to love them.

Because what would decoupling look like, after all? What incantation would exorcise the testing demons? Would teachers go to government and say, "Thank you for these guidelines. Trust us-- we will use our best professional judgment and produce the best-educated generation of students ever. Just step back and watch us work." No, that would never work, and it would never work because the CCSS are not for us. They never were.

People who like the standards are looking at them as a guide, as that helpful assurance that teachers sometimes like that we are on the right page. We like standards. We like standards like drivers like white lines. And we think of standards as a map, a tool to help us find our way. To us standards say, "Here's a map. We trust you to find your way."

Not the Common Core. The primary purpose of the CCSS is to call teachers out. It says, "Here's what you are supposed to be doing, or else. And we'll be checking up on you every step of the way." It is not a tool to be used by teachers; it's a tool to be used on them.

The Common Core standards say, "Here's what you must prove you're accomplishing." If you tell your students that you expect them to study and learn the chapter about Torquemada and 15th Century Spain, they know there's a test coming. Everyone expects the Spanish Inquisition. The CCSS are not about helping us teach; they are about holding us accountable, so they are meaningless without testing (and some parts are meaningless with it).

Since they were designed to hold teachers accountable, they were designed to be tested.

He's got a lot more on this, go over and read the whole thing.

But the main point is, the standards and the tests were developed to work together (as were the teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores and the data collection programs like inBloom.)

You cannot have one of these criteria dropped and have the others work the way they're supposed to.

The education reformers who imposed this crap on America know this.

That's why they're desperately trying to defend the standards, the curriculum being developed for the standards, the tests that go along with the standards, the evaluation systems that hold teachers accountable for those scores and the data collection projects that collect all the data for accountability purposes.

It all goes together - it's all part of the same plan.

It's Not How Many Tests, It's The Stakes Attached To Them

DFER Joe Williams and TNTP's Tim Daly write in the Daily News over the absurdity of the teachers unions protesting the test score-based teacher evaluation system that they helped put together and push into law:

Lately, student testing has become everyone’s favorite political punching bag. Just this week, New York State United Teachers, the state’s powerful teachers union, issued a statement decrying the proliferation of new tests and insisting on a moratorium for their use in teacher evaluations.

The union didn’t mention its dirty little secret: It’s a big part of the problem. Yet instead of owning up to its role or trying to fix the problem, the union is scapegoating state Education Commissioner John King, Gov. Cuomo and the state Board of Regents.

It’s a little like the Cookie Monster demanding to know who emptied the jar.

Here’s what happened: In 2010, New York joined more than a dozen other states in bringing its outdated teacher evaluation systems out of the Dark Ages. For nearly a century, teachers across the state had been simply deemed either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” by their supervisors. Great teachers got no additional recognition, and almost nobody was ever deemed “unsatisfactory.” State law prohibited student learning outcomes from being considered.

Then, a coalition of New York leaders from both parties came together to pass legislation modernizing educator evaluations and embracing richer learning standards.

Despite the union’s longstanding desire to exclude any connection between student learning and teacher performance assessments, the law decreed that 40% of a teacher’s performance would rest on progress in student learning. Existing state tests would be a factor in the grades where they are given.

But seeking to preserve its considerable clout and ensure that as little weight as possible be given to statewide tests, NYSUT lobbyists sought and won a concession that half of that 40% would be negotiated locally at the bargaining table, where union leverage is often overwhelming.

Fast-forward to today. The union-driven provision has created a monster. To comply with collectively bargained contracts, districts are layering new tests upon tests. Some of them are useful; many are unnecessary.

Now that communities are noticing the trend and complaining that the new tests are taking too much time away from instruction, the union seems to have forgotten all about its role.

The 20%-20% was done so that the unions could tell their members that the test-based rating component for teachers would not be based all on one high stakes test score.

That was supposed to be a better alternative than 40% based on the state tests.

The authors are right to say that the 20%-20% rules are a big part of the overall testing problem.

And they are right to point out the unions agreed to the system and indeed were in at the development of it every step of the way - something I have pointed out over and over and over here at Perdido Street School.

But if the authors think switching the test score-based component to 40% state tests will alleviate the problems with the evaluation system and the overtesting, they are sorely mistaken.

While it is true that the numbers of tests are a problem, the bigger problem is the insane emphasis on testing overall - the high stakes attached to the tests for students, school, administrators and teachers.

You can get rid of all the "local assessments" and just give one state test a year in every subject to every student to evaluate the children, the schools, the administrators and the teachers.

But that will not solve the overtesting problem because the stakes will still be attached to the test scores and the insanity in the system will remain - the endless test prep, the anxiety over the scores, the unreliability of the VAM used to rate the teachers, etc.

In other words, the problems stem not only because of the number of tests given but from the stakes attached that has everybody from students and parents to teachers and administrators in fear if the numbers don't go up.

I should add that the authors fail to acknowledge that the Danielson rubric is another part of the overtesting problem too, since it mandates constant "assessment" - pre-assessments, formative assessments, interim assessments, summative assessments.

It's a nice try by Williams and Daly to blame the unions for the overtesting problem.

They're not wrong to point the finger at the leaderships of the unions and note how these guys helped develop this system (and indeed, still defend it.)

But they are wrong to say that tweaking the number of tests given will fix the problem.

How Would An Opt-In Law On InBloom Work?

From the Times Union:

On Wednesday, the ire of teachers, parents and several state legislators was directed at another aspect of the increasingly controversial federal Race to the Top initiative and its implementation in New York: The creation of a vast trove of student data that the state Education Department wants to build in collaboration with a grant-funded nonprofit firm.

In an almost daylong hearing at the Capitol, members of the Assembly Education Committee questioned state education officials about the data gathering, which collects student test scores, attendance records, discipline history, health, ethnicity and other information.

The elected officials questioned how such information will be protected from hackers, or others who might use it to unlawful ends. In light of the worries, lawmakers suggested they would push bills to limit the data storage — possibly by having parents "opt in" rather than automatically be included in the program.

NYSED Commissioner King of course defended the inBloom data collection operation, as well as inBloom officials who failed to show up to the Assembly hearing:

Education Committee Chairwoman Cathy Nolan was angered that inBloom, the Atlanta-based nonprofit that the state has given the task of gathering and storing the data, decided not to send a representative to the hearing. Company spokesman Adam Gaber said in an email the company's staff was unable to attend due to "prior commitments."

Nolan suggested she would subpoena the firm.

"I was very disappointed; I reached out to the inBloom company and they refused (to come). ... That's a red flag," said Nolan, who berated state Education Commissioner John King over the firm's absence.

King said lawmakers had "legitimate questions" about the security issues. But he defended the data bank, arguing that it would simply standardize the reams of student information that are already gathered, but are currently kept in an array of isolated digital silos.

With the information in one location, such as a cloud-based system, teachers and parents could better track the progress of their kids.

Part of the plan calls for school districts to set up locally run "dashboards," or password-protected Web portals that would allow parents and teachers to log in and examine student data.

Some of the state's more affluent school systems already have such features, King said.

The program, King added, was also concerned with "ensuring that parents and educators have access to curriculum and materials." 

Ah, but neither King nor his merry men and women in reform and data collection have the trust of the public anymore:

King has spent the past few months grappling with unrest over the implementation of the federal Common Core educational standards, another aspect of the Race to the Top initiative. Just as there has been mistrust of the standardized tests that districts are using as part of the Common Core, parents, teachers and others have exhibited a deep suspicion of what one speaker at Wednesday's hearing described as a massive "data upload" for millions of students.

"Human beings are not meant to be quantified," said Julie Bigger, a parent from Central New York.

Some said they feared the project was a beachhead for new money-making ventures that would package and sell the data, while others were worried about protecting discipline records of youngsters who may have been suspended or gotten in trouble at one point in their student career.

...

They also wondered how much the system would cost when the federal grant money ran out, which will likely happen within the next two years.

If an opt-in bill is passed into law, that would go a long way toward killing off inBloom - but only if the law contains a provision that does not allow the SED, the Regents or the governor to punish districts that do not get many opt-in's.

Cuomo has been known to use the budget as a bludgeon before, most notably over the teacher evaluation system.

So opt-in only works if it is a true "opt-in" (i.e., that parents have the right to decide whether they want their kids' information handed over to inBloom and nothing will happen to their kids, the schools or the districts if they choose not to join the project.)

UFT Leadership Defends The ADVANCE Teacher Evaluation System Once Again

Excellent report from James Eterno from yesterday's Delegate's Assembly:

No speakers were permitted to oppose a Unity Caucus resolution reinforced the UFT's support for the evaluation law.  However, the UFT is calling for a moratorium on using the results of high stakes tests for teacher evaluations until alterations to the local portion of the Measures of Student Learning portion of the system can be worked out in contract negotiations.  The Unity sponsored resolution was on the regular agenda.  It was introduced a few minutes after Delegate Megan Moskop from MORE introduced a resolution for next month during the new motion period calling for the UFT to support legislation to scrap the entire teacher evaluation law.

When Megan raised the MORE resolution, Mulgrew had no choice but to allow her to speak on its behalf as it she had obtained the floor.  In Megan's speech, she emphasized how using high stakes tests to evaluate teachers is a huge step back for the teaching profession, our members and the students.  Megan skillfully pointed to some of the points made by Mulgrew in his Presidents' Report about how misuse of standardized testing and education profiteering is bad for kids as well as teachers.

MORE also had excellent literature in support of this resolution which noted that the UFT had a task force report in 2007 that completely opposed  using high stakes tests  in any way shape or form to evaluate teachers. MORE also was highly critical of the Danielson observation system in the resolution saying it "subjects teachers to a cookie-cutter observation system that limits professional autonomy and reduces teaching to a series of numbered scores." Megan received energized applause when she concluded her remarks by saying teachers need a voice and that the entire 3012c law needs to be repealed.

When Megan finished speaking, UFT Vice President Janella Hinds rose to defend the evaluation system law.  Janella said that MORE misunderstood the new system as it rates teachers based on multiple measures which the UFT likes.  This was also emphasized in the Unity Caucus literature that was handed out before the meeting. Janella argued that the new system took the power to rate teachers negatively out of the exclusive hands of principals.  She added that we do not want to go back to the old system where ratings were exclusively the purview of principals.  In addition, Janella objected to the criticism of the Danielson framework which she claimed was not part of the evaluation law. She also disagreed that tenure was weakened under the evaluation law as she pointed out that each teacher rated ineffective would be visited by an independent validator the following year.

Janella also said that the problem was not so much the law as the Department of Education's inept implementation of the law and that is why the UFT filed 17 grievances against the DOE on evaluations.  She closed by saying that how her students do on the Regents is a very important part of what she does and that MORE is trying to organize through fear which is not good. Her remarks were politely, if not enthusiastically, received.

There you have it - the current UFT leadership supports the teacher evaluation law, supports using test scores to evaluate teachers, supports the cookie cutter approach to classroom observations via the Danielson (Teach THIS way or be declared "ineffective"!), believes the evaluation system that they helped devise will be just swell as soon as they conduct some minor tweaks during contract negotiations.

MORE, on the other hand, believes teachers should not be evaluated using test scores (and used the UFT's own rationale from the past on that very issue to support their stance), believes the Danielson rubric does much harm as it allows for only one way of teaching and limits teacher autonomy, believes the new evaluation system destroys tenure and gives more power to the powers-that-be to  harass and fire teachers.

I can say that at my school, an overwhelming number of teachers are much closer to the MORE position on the evaluation system than the UFT leadership's.

If the UFT leadership continues to defend this evaluation system - especially test score-based ratings and Danielson - they are going to find that they have a major rebellion in the ranks on their hands.

There is a lot of FEAR and LOATHING out there over this system, a lot of damage being done to good, effective, professional teachers.

Pity the cronies running the UFT do not care about that.

Teachers will remember this betrayal from the leadership.

Assembly Members Take It To InBloom

InBloom is in trouble:

Lots of questions cropped up about the protection of the data and on Wednesday the curiosity turned to outright ire against the Atlanta-based grant-funded non-profit firm that is organizing and maintaining the data, inBloom.

Specifically, members of the Assembly Education Committee said they were furious that representatives of the organization declined to appear before them at the nearly day-long hearing.

“I was very disappointed. I reached out to the inBloom company and they refused (to come),” said Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Cathy Nolan who then proceeded to rip, criticize and generally berate Ed Commissioner John King over the firm’s absence.

Among the possible remedies suggested by Nolan: sending subpoenas to inBloom and putting forth legislation that would require parents to “opt in” to the data collection.

iBloom spokesman Adam Gaber said in an email that “Due to prior commitments, inBloom informed Assemblyman Nolan that we were unable to send a representative to today’s meeting.”

“These people wouldn’t come. That’s a red flag,” said Nolan. “It doesn’t speak well when people say they won’t come and talk to us.”

“Our ability to protect our privacy has not caught up with the mechanisms we use to collect and store data,” added Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, who earlier said it was “outrageous” for state education officials to suggest school districts couldn’t operate without the data program. O’Donnell has proposed an opt-in bill.

Hiding from legislative scrutiny - not an auspicious start for inBloom officials.

Commissioner King and Chancellor Tisch both support imposing inBloom on parents and school districts whether they want it or not.

Assembly Speaker Silver once supported the same inBloom imposition.

It will be interesting to see if he still supports that imposition now, with parents in an uproar all over the state over the data collection, many districts handing back the Race to the Top money that initially funded the inBloom data collection project because of security concerns and now inBloom officials failing to show up for a meeting with the Education Committee.

NYSED Commissioner King Should Open Up A Whine Shop

He's always whining how the message about how wonderful his education reforms are never gets out to the general public - and usually he blames the media for not carrying his message.

Here's his latest whine:

Commissioner King, speaking to reporters afterward, admits the message about what the department believes are the benefits of using data collection companies like Inbloom, has not been getting out.  

“What’s clear is that there’s a lot of misinformation about Inbloom, about the data system that the state has in general,” King said.

Let's revisit a vintage King whine from earlier in the year:

“One of the challenges is that the media conversation about education always boils down to black hats and white hats,” King said, referring to the polarized sides of the education debate. As an example, he pointed to a recent New York Post story about a reading passage in the state’s curriculum that contained criticism of the passage’s content but little recognition of its value as a challenging text that reflects real-world issues.

“That may be all that space allows, but I think ultimately our challenge is to have a deeper conversation of what it would really take to change student outcomes,” King added.

He said New York had tried to tackle the communication problem by circumventing the media altogether through EngageNY.org, the state’s website that includes free curriculum and resources for teachers.

Yeah, see the problems Commissioner King and his merry men and women in reform are having in selling their reform agenda to the public is fundamentally a messaging problem.

It has nothing to do with the fact that children are getting sick to their stomachs from anxiety over the stress that has been put on them via the Common Core, the new curriculum, the Common Core tests, or the new teacher evaluation systems that tie kids' test scores to teacher ratings.

It has nothing to do with the fact that students and teachers both hate the new SED Common Core unit modules - the ones that have kids spending 17 days on one short story and practicing close reading over and over and over...

It has nothing to do with the fact that parents do not trust Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, John King, Merryl Tisch or any of the various inBloom functionaries King wants to hand over sensitive student data to.

Nope - it's simply a messaging problem.

Now if only the media would just get his messaging out the way he wants, parents would love inBloom, kids would love the Common Core lessons, teachers would love to be rated via the Common Core tests, and peace would break out in the Middle East.

Yeah, it's the media's fault.

Too bad fellow deformer Paul Vallas doesn't buy that crap:

Asked by Steiner if there was a problem with how officials had communicated their reforms to the public, Vallas said the issue was more fundamental.

“We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”

A rare moment of transparency and honesty from a member of the corporate education reform aristocracy.

The problem isn't the messaging of the reforms.

The problem is the reforms.

Poor, Poor Eva

colleague jokes "Eva Moskowitz didn't get a spot on the de Blasio transition team. bummer.”
— Azi (@Azi) November 20, 2013

Maybe next time.

Gotham Charter Schools notes no teachers on the transition team, no UFT heads - but some good, solid friends of public schools, IMO:

The committee includes Zakiyah Ansari, the Alliance for Quality Education’s advocacy director and a leading critic of the Bloomberg’s education policies; Cynthia Nixon, an actress who herself has worked with AQE; and Kim Sweet, a special education advocate whose organization has repeatedly sued the city under Bloomberg. All are public school parents.

Commenters at GCS complaining there are no teachers on the team.

Well, teachers didn't join the de Blasio band wagon until late in the parade - especially the teachers unions.

Transition team members are usually awarded to friends and allies.

Alas, the UFT was neither of those to de Blasio until very late in the game.

So I'm not surprised there isn't a teacher on the team.

But don't sweat it.

Transition teams don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Hell, Obama had progressive educators on his transition team, but look how that turned out.

See who de Blasio picks for chancellor.

That will be the best indication of what kind of administration we get.

Children Have Only One Childhood

A commenter at a discussion on the Common Core reforms at Comsewogue High School:

9:02 p.m. -- Trustee Alexandra Gordon head to the podium to speak about her experiences with common core. "Our kids only have one childhood and if we don't act for them or if we don't advocate for them who knows whats going to come down the pike next," said Gordon. "

John King has his children enjoying their childhood in a Montessori school.

Don't let him take the childhood away from your children with his Common Core drudge work or his imposed test anxiety.

And we can take back these mandates.  Here is PJS union head Beth Dimino:

8:51 p.m. -- "The schools are not a thing. We are the schools. This man is not the assembly. We are the assembly. What we have done is we have given over out power to people that we thought was going to be mindful, respectful and trustworthy with our children and they are not," said Dimino. "We are just not going to let it happen any more."

That's exactly right.

Cuomo Pays Hollywood To Film In New York

Next time you hear Sheriff Andy lecture about fiscal discipline, remember this:

ALBANY—New York's tax rebates for movie and TV studios are so generous that the state is actually paying them to film here, according to an analysis prepared for—but not published by—one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's tax commissions.

The 137-page addendum to the commission's formal report asserts the Film and Television Tax Credit—which Cuomo has expanded to $420 million a year—now accounts for nearly a quarter of all business tax subsidies the state offers, and should be rolled back.

The analysis was funded by Blackstone founder Peter G. Peterson and commission co-chair Peter Solomon, an investment banker and former deputy to New York City mayor Ed Koch.

Both conservatives and liberals have criticized business tax credits for unfairly picking winners and losers with scarce taxpayer dollars. But the Solomon panel's decision to commission a critical review of their efficacy and recommend the Cuomo administration move in the opposite direction was not in the original script.

Cuomo named the commission late in 2012, a year after he rankled business leaders by renewing most of an expiring income tax surcharge on the wealthy—something the freshman Democrat had pledged not to do. It worked through this year looking for revenue-neutral changes to the state tax code, only to have the governor abruptly convene a second panel to examine ways to cut taxes in October. H. Carl McCall, who chairs the SUNY board of trustees, co-chairs both commissions, which have several members in common. While the governor insisted the commissions would work in parallel, some liberal groups charged he was sidelining Solomon as he scrutinized the tax credits.

“The film production credit, now generally 30 percent of qualifying costs, is large relative to industry profits and tax liability,” the addendum says. “Because the credit exceeds tax liability many times over and is refundable, in effect it is a program of cash payments by the state to credit recipients.”
“It is not clear from our analysis that there is sufficient justification for the size of the film credits. The state should consider scaling back the credits and monitoring the film industry closely to determine the impact on its activities of such a cutback,” the addendum concludes, suggesting a reduction of $50 million per year.

Paying an industry to do business here can be effective, the addendum acknowledges. But why target Hollywood?

The addendum says a similarly tailored credit for manufacturing would offer factories 40 times what they would otherwise owe in state taxes. While film has blossomed in New York—especially since the opening of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard—the addendum notes that “the industry accounts for less than one percent of the state’s employment” and “many of the film industry jobs are temporary.”

The addendum also questions whether movies or projects, including Steiner Studios, wouldn't have come anyway.

Given how Cuomo handed out million in tax breaks to the real estate industry in return for campaign donations and took a couple of million from the gambling industry in return for legalizing casinos and expanding gambling across the state, it behooves some independent entity not connected to Cuomo to look and see just what Sheriff Andy is getting in return for his Hollywood largesse.