For Sake of Auld Lang Syne

Image from http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/24-students-graduate-jamaica-high-school-final-graduation-article-1.1845848

It seems like it's been a hard year for those who value public education.  Instead of saving schools and improving them, policymakers continue to close schools and replace them with charters.  New Orleans' lost its last public school recently.  And, just last week, 122-year old Jamaica High School graduated its last class, a reflection of the policies of the Bloomberg-era punitive school report cards.  

It's ironic that one of the measures of Jamaica's lack of success was its graduation rate.  Yet, grad. rates ultimately are meaningless when so many college students are required to perform remedial work. And, grad. rates are ultimately meaningless when charter schools obtain phenomenal success at the cost of expelling half their class.  

In honor of June graduates and the agenda of the educational "reformers," I envisioned some mortarboards for future generations.

"Reforming" Your Way to a World of Inexperienced Teachers

The educational "reformers" say they want to attract the best people to the profession and get rid of the grossly ineffective.  Yet, by using teachers as scapegoats and striking at the heart of the profession in so many ways, they cause teachers and teacher candidates to flee.  Student enrollment in teacher programs has decreased greatly in recent years.  In California, the numbers are down 50%.    A 2012 article, identified a nationwide decrease of 33% of students in teacher programs. Could the numbers be anything but lower now?  Every survey taken seems to show teacher morale at an all-time low.  

Thanks to this "reforming" craze, students are losing out.  In 1988, the average teacher had fifteen years of experience.  Today, the average teacher has but ONE year of experience.   Now, that says a lot. It may also point to the fact that many of the so-called "reformers" view a cheap workforce as a success, witness the TFA.  But do students really profit when their teachers are inexperienced?  My experience tells me "no!" 

Keeping the Summer Slide at Bay

In a piece entitled "The Impact of the 'Summer Slide'," Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was quoted as saying, "Students and teachers work so hard, get to a certain point in June, and too many come back in the fall further behind than when they left.  That just simply makes no sense."  This phenomenon has been named the "summer slide."  It seems to affect low-income students the most. Summer vacation is complicated by the fact that so many parents must work full time to make ends meet. 

Duncan said that the current school calendar is "insufficient..., insufficient for some children."  Some who cite this "summer slide" have proposed year round education with intermittent breaks of two-to-three weeks.  Yet, studies of the effects of YRS (Year Round Schooling) have proven "inconclusive and contradictory."

For years, the threat of summer school effectively encouraged students to study.  Students who failed to work hard during the traditional calendar year might be sentenced to summer school.  No one wanted that!  Summer vacation is a time to recharge the batteries, share good times with good friends, soak in new experiences and actively pursue one's own interests.    

I will make sure this summer is a time of great growth for myself and, hopefully, for my children.  We have already taken steps here to prevent the summer slide.  My kids signed up for a summer reading club.  We're growing milkweed plants in the hopes of harvesting enough to feed three hungry monarch caterpillars by late July.  We've started a World Cup of Checkers.  We may move on to chess.

Boldest of all, and to emphasize that the most important gains in life are not purely measurable in academic terms, we adopted our first dog yesterday.  He is a beautiful, 14-week-old, black lab puppy whom we dubbed "Midnight" (a.k.a., Captain Midnight).  He has no pedigree of which to speak; he came from the shelter; but he is perfect in nearly every way.  I am happy to say that he already understands enough about his wee-wee pad to personally prevent over ten accidents and earn over ten rewards in his short stay with us.  

Midnight will teach us (and we must work to teach him) more about responsibility, faithfulness and love than anything common-core aligned.  You ask me how I know.  I don't.  I just feel.  So, as corporate interests wage war via charter expansion, let us make sure our public-schools do not become the modern-day equivalent of Odysseus' Argos .  

So, You Want to Be a Teacher When You Grow Up?

This teacher seems to have good classroom management skills.

I was perusing a first-graders' yearbook the other day.   There were a lot of happy pictures of smiling friends, sharing good times.  It made me forget about the Common Core for a second and the rigorous schedule which teachers informed me cuts out much of the learning through play and socialization activities of the past.  

I took the greatest interest in the pages that listed the children's future career choices.  In a class of about two-hundred children, there were over sixty occupations picked.

Some of the choices seemed timeless.  There were the future ballerinas, astronauts, firemen, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer players.  One girl chose "princess" and one boy chose "king," or, perhaps I should say, "The King."  Most timeless of all, one child wants to be a time traveler.  

There were some unusual choices.  One child chose iron worker.  Another child chose "pizza girl." One aspires to be a spy, but I'm sworn not to reveal the identity.  I will also refrain from revealing the identity of one future Superhero.

Some children picked careers that showed a more complex understanding of the possibilities.  One child chose a marine biologist.  Another picked an "aironotic" engineer.  Whereas there were thirteen future doctors, one specified a pediatrician and another a brain surgeon.  I was disappointed no one specified "rocket scientist."

There were some surprises.  Children chose careers that were, for the most part, unheard of when I was their age.  Computer programmer proved relatively popular.  Five children picked it, doing Bill Gates proud.  Even though some seemed most interested in writing games, it is a sign of how far we have come technologically.  Most surprising of all, and I still can hardly believe it, not a single child chose the career of lawyer.  I am sure, if possible, parents might pick this career for many.  

I didn't see many Wall-Street related careers either.  There was one banker, but he was outnumbered by three bakers.  As I looked at the careers, I noted that most of the professions are pretty directly about helping people, running the gamut from superhero to hospital worker.  

I wondered how many of these careers would fit the title of common-core aligned, college and career ready.  There was such a wide range of professions represented.  The list includes scientist (chosen by girls as well as boys), soldier, zookeeper, pilot, "pleseman" (police), race car driver, garbageman, artist, waitress, archaeologist, toy maker, author, Mommy, Daddy, photographer, baby nurse and piano composer.  

This brings me to the bottom line.  So, which professions do you think are currently in the highest demand on this first-grade circuit?  Well, here are the top five choices from my small sample:

5.  Singer (10 picks)
4.  Artist  (12 picks)
3.  Doctor (13 picks)
2.  Policeman (19 picks)

and drum roll please, the top choice was...

1.  Teacher (27 picks, including one music teacher, one reading teacher, one soccer teacher and one Mom/Reader/Teacher).

I should point out a few things.  First, if I were to combine doctor, vet, dentist and hospital worker, we would have 25 votes in the medical field.  The world of statistics is a wonderful place by which we can warp complex issues, making them seem far simpler to suit our purposes!  Teacher would have still weighed in at #1 though; only "pleseman" would have been pushed back one.   

I was surprised to see "artist" weighing in at #4.  I am happy to say art is still taught at that school and it is so important in their young lives.  I just renovated my kitchen by putting up selections from the end-of-year art folders sent home this week.  Art will never be measurable by those high-stakes assessments and so it is denigrated in many academic budgets, but art is ultimately one of the most powerful forces in human development.  

 

Lastly, I must say I was gratified to see so many kids in different classes, and with different teachers, viewing the teaching profession with high regard despite all the media and now legal attacks that would make us believe otherwise and seek to destroy the profession.  I guess this is why I started playing around with the simple stats in the first place.  When I saw a few kids choose "teacher" in one class, more in another class and then still others in other classes, it did a world of good for my outlook.

We do not live in a world of grossly ineffective teachers.  We live in a world of grossly ineffective "ed. reformers" who would like to use a few bad teachers as justification for destroying our unions and our profession, stripping us of our due-process rights as well as of our dignity.

Fourteen percent of children in my little sample rallied behind the profession.  If nothing else, it reconfirms for me why I must continue in the defense of public education and the profession I love so much.  It also confirmed, in my mind, that in this struggle to save community-based public education, students and their parents are the natural allies of teachers.  If we do not mobilize all our forces before public education is irreparably crippled, not only will society suffer untold harm, but more doors to children's dreams will close before their eyes. 

The Legacies of NCLB: Build It and They Will Come--or Will They?

In my mind, the 9/11 image above is one of the saddest in U.S. history; it brings to mind the terrifying day of tragedy that wiped out so many innocent human lives in flames of unimaginable horror and sets it against the backdrop of the President trying to peacefully read a book to a room full of little people full of endless potential.  Unfortunately, the picture also forever links in my mind that day and moment with No Child Left Behind.  The bill had already been passed by both houses of Congress and was soon to be signed into law by President Bush.  Off hand, the legislation set lofty, albeit entirely unrealistic goals:  "Build it and They will come."

By setting high standards and using measurable goalposts reflected in AYP ratings (Adequate Yearly Progress), the act established a litany of "corrective" policies for "failing schools," possibly culminating in lucrative corporate charter takeovers which might line the pockets of private interests.  The act ultimately decreed the impossible:  one-hundred percent student proficiency by the close of the 2013-2014 school year.  Well, here we are in 2014.

It was built, but where are They?  Some are still waiting for Them to come.  And, they blame teachers for the barren, burnt out nature of a blighted landscape.  If all students have not achieved proficiency (indeed, 70% failed the NY state 2013 Common-Core tests), grossly ineffective teachers must be blamed.  Today, RttT seems no less misguided.  RttT professes the same sickly obsession with high-stakes testing and the favoritism shown charters.

Why doesn't the U.S. government just dictate perfection, one-hundred-percent proficiency, in all of its policies, foreign and domestic, establishing a litany of measurable goals, penalties and a "fall guy." Then, it can sit back and wait and wait and wait some more...

To begin with, the situation in Iraq worries me greatly.  We would all like peace there.  I think we would all like an inclusive, democratic government based on a respect for diversity.  So, why don't we just decree it.  If the goals are not met, why don't we blame our men and women in uniform?  They are used to defending themselves and others from bombs and bullets, not this nonsense.  We could court martial them one by one and simultaneously try to relieve them of their pensions!  We could replace them with a corporate-owned army of mercenaries!

Then, we could dictate that there should be no more destruction caused by fires.  No one wants to see buildings or forests burnt to the ground and innocent lives threatened.  If the government's goals are not met, we can just blame the firemen, and any women, for their failure to extinguish flames fast enough.  We can fire them!  Their hoses and extinguishers won't work against such absurdity!

We don't need to dictate an end to poverty because it's already been determined that teachers are the sole force standing between every single American and a comfortable lifestyle.  Why, if such and such had only had three highly effective teachers in a row, then....

We live in disheartening times, especially if you have the misfortune of trying to help kids in classrooms across America!  You make a convenient scapegoat!  So, I'm sure even if They did come, They wouldn't want to stay!  And, who could blame Them?

Why Not Run Your Family Like a Business?: The "Reformy" Way of Ruining the World!

Feeling inspired by corporate reformers trying to run schools like businesses?  Take it to heart.  Run your family like a business.  Make it a profitable venture and realize:

1.  Love doesn't count for much.  Money makes the world go round.

2.  Children must work to eat.

3.  If Children don't hold up their end of the household expenses, show them the door.  There are public institutions to care for them. 

4.  Children must be fired, if necessary, based on the determinations of a flawless value-added measure of their data.

5.  Children must be subject to constant quality review inspections--which must include their school performance as well as household chores.  Children who excel should receive merit pay above and beyond that of their siblings.  

6.  The data must be publicly displayed and inputted into a computer base where it will sit for all eternity for purposes not entirely known at this time.

7.   As the primary shareholder in the Board of Directors for your family, remember, you are strictly accountable to no one! 

What does it matter if "reform" has rent the fabric of society so long as we rake in money and ace PISA tests?  To hell with our fellow man!  To hell with humanity!

The Mystique of a "Master Teacher"

Jenny Sedlis, once sidekick of Eva Moskowitz, and current head of Students First NY, must surely be a master teacher given how much she has to say on the subject.  When she heard Cuomo delayed the firing of teachers counted as ineffective based on Common-Core tests, she said, "The two-year safety net that will allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom regardless of how their children perform on state tests is wrong-headed.  This safety net opens the door to dismantling the whole evaluation system."  Would that it were so!  I am not my students' test scores, let alone any Common-Core test score, concocted to fail 70% of New York's student body.  Students are not that score either.

Although I can't find any positive information that Sedlis ever taught much in her life, let alone in a NY City public school, she's obviously worked long enough to figure out that master teachers live to prep to tests and enjoy shouldering the blame for the low test scores of kids working in overcrowded and underfunded schools, sometimes the kind of kids the Success Academy "kicks out."  


Here, to the right, is a self-proclaimed master teacher of three years, Michelle Rhee.  Let's release this "master teacher" into a classroom of thirty, grossly underfunded kids, some of whom may live in poverty, struggle with learning disabilities and/or language deficiencies.  We all know the real issue is the teacher, any other conditions are besides the point!  

This time around, Rhee will have no co-teacher.  Let's turn this scenario into a reality show.  Stream it live.  Let the world see how well she does and share in her golden success and reams of pristine data.  Should she falter, then let's give her that extra edge by sending a bee into the equation.  Sit back and watch her shine with her special brand of magic, hopefully minus the masking tape....  

Assess-Me Street

Do you ever wonder these days what happened to the childhood you remember?  With the current trend towards testing overkill, I wonder that PBS hasn't been paid yet by some mysterious donor to promote even more high-stakes assessment.  But if it does occur, I have full faith that David Sirota will unmask the villain!  

The song below imagines a new educational-deformer spin on the old Sesame Street Standard.

The Assess-Me Street Theme (based on the Sesame Street Theme)

Sunny day,
Blowin' the haze this way,
On my way to where we feel heat.

Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Assess Me Street?

Come and test.
Everything's the best.
Friendly proctors there,
That's where we meet.

Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Assess Me Street?

The Twenty-First Century Teacher Bashers

Even PBS has succumbed to taking millions to strike at the heart of my profession and the public sector in general.  First, there was the supposedly neutral anti-pension PBS NewsHour series scheduled thanks to the generous donations of John Arnold of Enron fame.  This was exposed by David Sirota.

Then, there was a "Teaching Channel Presents" series promoting Common Core funded by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation.  Once again, Pando reporter, David Sirota, working with Nathaniel Mott, exposed this.  The Foundation's ties to Microsoft and "Pearson's Common Core System of Courses with the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment" meant it stood to gain huge profits from the success of the Common Core.  

It's an unsettling world in which we live.  The things in which we put our trust have turned against us.  Millionaire-controlled media has its sites set clearly on public schools.  If public schools fail, private interests stand to gain millions upon millions.  Even non-profit charters may be run by CEO's who earn more than the United States president.  Witness Moskowitz, the woman who seems to always get her way!

My once-noble profession has been portrayed by the media as a stronghold of miscreants.  Teachers who, like myself, have forsaken higher-paying, higher-prestige careers to work in the service of kids in classrooms across America are twenty-first century scapegoats.  We are branded by the millionaire-controlled media as lazy perverts who perpetuate poverty, unworthy of any due-process rights.  

And, the test scores of the very same students whom I am trying to help may be used as a lethal weapon against me.  The whole idea is absolutely absurd.  It negates any past successes in my life.  It penalizes teachers who work in underfunded, overcrowded districts with poorer students with special needs and limited English capabilities.  Sadly, the politics outside my door have crept into my classroom.  And, despite the fact that I have always loved working with the kids, I begin to wonder why I became a teacher at all.  It must have been to help defend the profession I love so much!

"Creative Disruption" Could Kill You: So, Book a Physical this Summer!

Educational Deformers seem to love "creative disruption," a principle applied initially to advertising and, later, the larger business world.  Eli Broad, for one, established his Superintendents Academy, offering a fast-track to those who would sell out public education.  Schools closed.  Communities suffered.  Teachers were disembodied.  

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, favors the same.  He views Hurricane Katrina as the best thing since sliced bread:  New Orleans lost its 128 public schools; the Recovery District is now a blanket charter district.   Many African-American teachers were swept away in the tide of reform.  

We've seen a lot of disruption in NY in the last two years.  When King and Tisch predicted a great drop in the Common-Core test scores for 2013, they were planning a little "creative disruption" of their own.  The cut scores were set to ensure that seventy percent of the state's Common-Core test takers would fail.  They attempted to fabricate a crisis.  Parents, instead of lashing out at the teachers and demanding more reform, realized that the state was to blame.  

We are seeing more "creative disruption" this year with the new teacher evaluation system based on state and local test measure of students and 22 elements of Danielson, demonstrated in three to six observations as well as a pile of artifacts. It appears that teachers rated ineffective based on the Common-Core test scores of their students may get a two-year reprieve; an alternate formula may be used for their assessment.  But for teachers with students who fail other, non-Common-Core, high-stakes measures, there will be no pardon, only the joy of "creative disruption"!  And, students will still suffer the same amount of testing.

With another year of "creative disruption" coming to a close, I cannot recommend highly enough that everyone schedule all those long overdue doctors' appointments, particularly a yearly physical.  Teachers, surely, are not the only ones to suffer this "creative disruption."  With school closings and Common-Core, sometimes convoluted, curriculum and testing, I am sure students as well as parents are subject to a significant increase in stress levels that may increase the risk of sickness.


"Creative disruption" has, doubtless, led to more stress and sickness-related absences and more medical issues than ever before.  Some are crippled by migraines.  Others suffered colds that lingered and then lingered some more.   Some had foot pain and back pain.  Others had brain pain.  With all the stress of these past months, I am afraid there may be many more ailments simmering beneath the surface.  So, book your yearly physical now, for peace of mind, if nothing else.  Take advantage of your healthcare while it remains intact because "creative disruption" can kill you.  

Shallow Test Machine (based on Lennon and McCartney's "Yellow Submarine")

NY state may offer a two-year reprieve, allowing other evaluative measures to be used, for teachers rated ineffective based on the Common-Core test scores of their students.  However there is no student reprieve from the excessive testing.  And, there is no reprieve for teachers whose students bomb state tests, or other measures of student learning, that are not designated "common core."  In these scenarios, it's full steam ahead for junk science as NY state navigates the often dangerous and unfriendly waters of its RttT grant!  In that vein...

Shallow Test Machine (based on Lennon and McCartney's "Yellow Submarine")

In the town where I was born

Lived a man who failed to see
And he told us of his life
In the land of test machines.

So we failed ev-er-y-one
when we found their scans of green
And they died in many ways
In our shallow test machine.

We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine
We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine.

And our friends have all been bored
Many more of them have been scored
And the hand begins to slay.

We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine
We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine.

{Full speed ahead Mr. Throatstrain, full speed ahead
Full speed ahead it is, Regent
Set the cut score, raise the standards
Aye, aye, Sir, aye, aye
Commiss'ner, Commiss'ner}

As we live a life diseased
Every one of us hears students plead
Sky of blue and scans of green
In our shallow test machine.

We all live in a shallow test machine
A shallow test machine, shallow test machine
We all live in a shallow test machine
A shallow test machine, shallow test machine.

We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine
We all live in a shallow test machine
Shallow test machine, shallow test machine.

Settlement Houses and the Search for Schools as Solutions to Society's Problems

The picture above shows Amelia Earhart in Britain with the boys of Toynbee Hall.  Each, in a different way, boldly operated outside the boundaries of society's expectations.  When I was about the age that my eldest daughter is now, I knew Earhart as a woman of brave designs, breaking gender barriers.  She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic.  It wasn't enough.  She wanted to be the first aviator to circumnavigate the globe.  

Years ago, I assumed she crashed to her death in the Pacific.  I'm sure my assumption was based on the views of those around me.  Propelled by my daughter's admiration for Amelia, we've read up on the aviatrix, including Amelia's  The Fun of It, her last reports, online sources and newspaper articles.  There is not a doubt in my mind now that she landed her plane short of its destination at Nikumaroro Island, just as she landed short in Ireland on her trans-Atlantic trip to Britain.  I have no doubt that she sent out radio signals and held out as bravely as possible with her navigator, Fred Noonan, to the end.  I know a great deal was done in the attempts to find her and Noonan.  Somehow, I still feel that she did not so much fail as we failed her.  We gave up the search.  

Like Amelia, Toynbee Hall, founded 1884, defied prescriptions of the day.  Located in London's east end, Toynbee Hall moved beyond blaming the poor for their poverty.  It became a model for future settlement houses.  It provided the poor with food, shelter and higher education.  It attempted to charitably offer some of those forsaken by the wider society the skills necessary to become self-supporting.  By bringing the rich and the poor together, Toynbee House defied increasing trends towards societal segregation. 

Toynbee Hall became a model for settlement houses in other nations.  By 1913, the U.S.  had 413 settlement houses in 32 states.  Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago is, doubtless, the most famous of the lot.  U.S. settlement houses provided many free services to community members, including daycare, education, after-school activities, job training, health care, and classes in arts and crafts, music and drama.  Settlement houses came to be known as community neighborhood centers.

Settlement houses in the U.S had an additional function of helping immigrants adjust to their life in America.  I am sure many of those who sought to help others had some cultural biases directed against those whom they served.  Still, I think most immigrants welcomed these institutions and the people in them who so willingly donated money, time, knowledge and kindness to help them navigate a strange, new, unforgiving and sometimes unfriendly landscape.  

Russian reformers attempted to plant the settlement model in their country in 1905.  Tsar Nicholas II, however, soon viewed the idea as dangerous.  He closed the settlement houses by 1908.  Indeed, his failure to support any lasting reforms, including, perhaps, these settlement houses as well as the  October Manifesto, seemed to presage his own fate.  When one cannot bend, one often breaks.

Given his distaste for reform, Tsar Nicholas might have been correct in feeling threatened by these houses.  U.S. Settlement houses increasingly took on political goals.  They organized to push for progressive measures, including a wider political voice for women, child-labor laws, public kindergarten and improved sanitation in poor neighborhoods.  With the advent of WWI, settlement houses began to lose steam and redefine themselves.  They continue today as members of the United Neighborhood Centers.

In my mind, the application of settlement-house models to schools is entirely natural.  In the last decade of educational deformity, community-based schools have been targeted for closure.  In my mind, this is a crime.  Charter schools are opened in their place.  They recruit the students who seem to need the least help.  They further segregate society.  They banish students who cannot make the grade and, in that way, preserve their seemingly near pristine stats and claims of 100% graduation rates.

With increasing poverty in society, community-based schools need to be strengthened, not weakened.  Community-based schools are in the best position to act like twenty-first century settlement houses, integrating populations as they provide basic services and help people gain marketable skills.  Schools are natural choices for community focal points.  

I'm sure Amelia's plane is somewhere out there, swept into the sea and now buried deep in the Pacific floor by the sands of time.  I'm equally sure you won't find her body in it or that of Noonan.  I'm sure she landed it safely and made it ashore.  After the time and expense of a search, we, ultimately, gave up on her.  

I hope we don't give up on children like those pictured with her at Toynbee Hall.  I hope we do not continue to blame teachers for poverty.  Instead, I hope we put our faith in the teachers who dedicate their lives to help these children.  I hope we give teachers the resources they need to teach these children despite the time and expense.  I hope schools can bring diverse peoples together and when possible offer wraparound services, settlement-style.  At the very least, I hope we can give these students the supplies they need to learn in rooms with a lower student-teacher ratio.  I hope we can allow them to learn in classrooms in which teachers are respected community members, rather than scapegoats.  We have already seen too many twenty-first century Tsars choosing to close pubic schools instead.  Let's not bury our hopes under a false blanket of "teacher blame."  Let's not give up on this search when so many lives and the welfare of society may otherwise crash.  

The Modern-Day McCarthy

Common-Core Aligned Report Cards

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/viral-common-core-homework_n_5049829.html

As the common-core aligned homework above seems to overly confuse a far simpler problem, I sometimes feel similarly when I consider some of the new comment codes for report cards.  

We received a radically new set of report-card comment codes this year.  I imagine we are trying to meet the requirements of our RttT bribe grant.  We must make ourselves completely Common-Core aligned. 

For many years, we had about fifty comment codes for report cards, including some in Spanish.  I kept my copy of codes in a protective plastic cover to save it from the wear and tear of repeated usage.  Back then, we physically bubbled in perforated sheets.  For several years now, we have submitted marking-period grades electronically.    

This year, we received a new set of comment codes, many pages in length.  As I'm sure I will not laminate all those pages, it's nice that the codes are attached electronically to our grading spreadsheets.  Some of the comments enjoy very high #s.  As a historian, some are easier to remember than others, like 1066 ("Does not complete homework assignments").  In the name of convenience, I made my own cheat sheet with the several comments I will need the most for students who are not making the grade:  missing homework, excessive absence, lateness, low test grades.

Two of my favorite comments are missing.  I used to enjoy comment 14:  "Has ability to do better."  I and my colleagues also lamented the loss of old comment code 34:  "Has cut class," a most important messages to send home on paper.  Now, as it appears, we can only remark on absence--which a parent might mistake for a few legitimate days of illness.  Of course, there are other ways to reach parents, but I like to reinforce all of that on the report card, given the importance of the document itself.

There are so many comments now that one feels, at times, like one is looking for a needle in a haystack.  Some of the comments seem gratuitously convoluted.  Let me give you some real examples:

Comment Code 1607 (coincidentally, the year Jamestown, Virginia, was founded):  "Meets standards in evaluating reasoning in important US texts, including application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning."

Comment Code 1611 (coincidentally, the first year of publication for the King James Bible):  "Meets standards in analyzing foundational US documents for themes, purposes, and rhetorical features."  (My spell check doesn't even accept the word "foundational"!)

I pity the poor foreign-born parent trying to make heads or tails of these comments or the Mom and Dad coming home from a hard day at the office to confront this stuff.  

In the spirit of great Common-Core aligned comments, I have decided to propose a few of my own:

Comment Code 13,897:  "Exceeds effectiveness in a full range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in larger groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on post-graduate-level topics and texts, utilizing arcane, Common-Core based mumbo jumbo to superficially appear to reach a standard of erudition beyond the grasp of mere plebeians."  

Comment Code 17,201:  "Approaching standards in yielding reams of data based on personal socioeconomic factors for future databases, subject to environmentally hazardous mining practices by capitalist vendors, and cyber thieves, for purposes not yet entirely grasped."

Comment Code 21,918:  "Meets standards for enjoying seat time in a course entitled "Related Arts" which serves as a front for more test prep so as to aid the school in approximating more closely a full range of standards which may ultimately be unattainable by many who speak little English, at the cost of their teachers' jobs."

Comment Code 28,567:  "Far below standards in suffering patiently through six days of extended testing without exhibiting signs of severe psychological distress, resulting in physical symptoms."

If I could make a report card for the Common-Core reformers, I am sure it would not be very flattering.  I might use the following old-time comments:

17:  "Generally non-cooperative"
18:  "A distractive influence in class"

Then, I'd offer some encouragement:

12  "Shows a great deal of effort"
14  "Has ability to do better"

But, ultimately, I'd have to end with every student's worst nightmare:

35:  "Call for appointment"

When 21st-Century "Scapegoating" Strives to Strip Teachers of Due Process...

The NY Post featured an article Sunday entitled, "It's nearly impossible to fire tenured teachers."  They included the insulting picture above.  In twenty years, I have barely sat down in class except when sick, let alone, slept in class.  (Any teacher with experience knows:  if you assume the pose above, you've just made yourself a sitting duck for drone attacks, friendly and otherwise!)  I strongly doubt the woman above is a teacher, and she is surely not representative of teachers, yet the paper would have us believe so for its purposes of propaganda.  

I find the tactics used by the Post reprehensible.  The paper focuses on a few sensational stories as a basis to strip all teachers of their due-process rights.  

Here is an example of their tactics: 

Deven Black, librarian

Deven BlackPhoto: Facebook

Castle Hill MS, Bronx
Touched a 13-year-old girl and told her she “looked sexy” after being warned about making inappropriate comments to students.
30-day suspension

I was reminded of tactics used to scapegoat other groups in history:

Illustration from the antisemitic
children's book,The Poisonous
Mushroom, in which a Jewish man
is depicted as a child molester
attempting to lure German children
with candy
Courtesy of Randall Bytwerk. 

From http://www.thebreman.org/exhibitions/online/1000kids/propaganda.html

You find a few bad eggs or invent some.  Next, you whip up public emotions to a fervor with your propaganda.  Then, you begin to strip away the rights of the targeted group, slowly at first, as you test the waters, but then when little opposition is encountered, you gather steam.  

If some criminals escape justice because of their Fifth or Sixth Amendment rights, does that mean we should scrap the Bill of Rights?  If some Jew acts inappropriately, does that mean we must target an entire group?  I would say only if there is already an underlying hatred and a will to do wrong.  

I am not implying, by any means, that the educational deformers are Nazis or Jew haters.  I do wonder though if they studied fascist propaganda techniques to terrorize teachers en masse, most of whom have good hearts.  Teachers tend to value the rewards stemming from helping children over the big bucks of well-funded teacher haters who would brand the profession as one of perverts as a means by which to strip away due process rights.  Many of this circle of millionaires ultimately hope to privatize public education, opening up the possibilities for great profit.  If we do not meet their injustices head on, I ask myself, what have teachers really learned from history?  

High-Stakes Testing: Sowing a Barron Field for Teaching

The whole world seems to have gone crazy with testing.  Pearson and the likes surely must love it.  And, if you can beat down career teachers by using their students' test scores as a weapon against them, I guess it is all the more attractive to those who would kill public-school teachers, close their schools and reopen them for personal profit.  I hate excessive testing.  I hate the prep that must accompany it.  And, I abhor the ends for which it is being used.  

Test prep will never be an effective use of classroom time.  In days of yore, high-school students knew it was their responsibility to study for Regents exams.  Test grades were used merely to measure students.  Having great teachers did not guarantee great test scores.  If it had, whole classes would have sunk or swam together.  They never did.  For those who cared to do well, Red Barron's books (not to be confused with the Red Baron!) were best buddies against the backdrop of warm June afternoons at home.  Very little test prep occurred in schools. 

In the City, teachers are directed to test prep today.  They must test prep for dear life.  Over time, the amount of prep, its importance and the money spent upon it have only grown.  Teachers are exhorted to begin Regents review by the first day of May.  Since the Regents tend to ask the same points from year to year, students benefit from multiple-choice-based drills;  In effect, they just need to learn what the Regents wants them to know to game the system.  In the past, I helped students prepare, viewing it as a good deed to help them along in life.  Now, I am expected to Regents review to save my own pants and those of my school.  And I resent it.

Effective Regents review is not effective teaching, no matter what anyone would like to believe.  This is the price we pay for a system which demands accountability.  If students don't do well on the test, they have failed; the teacher, too, has now failed, and so, too, has the school.  Repercussions ensue.  During the Bloomberg administration, buildings would be closed and teachers fired.  Administrators given the boot. 

In this type of system, teachers are encouraged to water down knowledge to the basest Regents elements and teach to a limited set of ideas.  Some teachers will become year round Stanley Kaplanesque lackeys because this is all the system asks of them.  Even if the Common Core makes insidiously more difficult tests and raises the stakes to a new level, it doesn't mean classrooms won't soon be learning to game the new test-based standards.  There can be no perfect test.   Students may not learn to question, think creatively, build social skills or address current issues because these things are not tested and cannot be effectively tested.

We are prodded to enslave young minds to the whims of elite test makers, accountable to no one it seems, who enrich themselves at our expense.  They help decide what knowledge and skills will be omitted from the tests and which will make or break schools.  They are demi-gods and that which cannot be measured might as well be a curse upon mankind.  Even more frightening, in this age of test-based accountability these tests are politically designed as loaded weapons aimed straight at public-school teachers, their schools and their unions.  

One of My Letters to an Editor

How Many Great Teachers do They Think will Want to Work in their Overcrowded, Underfunded Schools Without Tenure?
How Many will Want to be Blamed and Fired for the Low Test Scores of Students in their Community?

To the Editorial Staff:

In the editorial entitled "Stand firm for evaluating NYC teachers," I find yet another example of the teachers who serve society serving as society's scapegoat.  I am a teacher of twenty years.  I graduated among the top of my class.  My first semester teaching, I may have appeared "grossly ineffective" in my assigned school.  Some students would not heed kindly admonitions to sit down or stop talking.  I contemplated leaving the profession.  I was "excessed" to a better City school.  Suddenly, overnight, I became, relatively speaking, highly effective. 

In a current system that places faith in test-based accountability, if teachers lack the due-process rights granted by tenure, many will flee to the suburbs for far higher pay in neighborhoods in which students buy into the system.  Teachers who  remain to help the neediest children will become martyrs to their good intentions.  Many City students do not speak English, require extra school services or struggle with disabilities.  Some students have trouble coming to school, staying seated when present or reining in their short fuse.  Many of these students fail to buy into the system.  They do not see school as a way out.  Some students do well in class, but fail to return a single homework or study outside the perimeters of the building.  Parental contact usually has little to no effect. 

Schools with the greatest incidences of impoverished minority students actually have relatively few tenured teachers.  Due to extremely difficult conditions, these schools cannot retain a stable workforce.  After all, who, in his or her right mind would try to build a career teaching in an overcrowded, underfunded school, subject to closure due to the inability of students to do well on standardized tests? 

Tenure does not guarantee lifetime employment.  If one has effective administrators, they effectively refuse tenure to those unfit for the classroom.  In New York, there is a three-year period in which to do so.  Tenure does not mean that ineffective teachers cannot be removed.  It only guarantees teachers due-process rights. 

Tenure protects academic freedom.  Tenure prevents principals from using their schools as huge patronage systems.  Tenure allows teachers to offer suggestions and "blow the whistle" with less fear of reprisal.   Tenure releases teachers from the pressure of producing grades to meet the expectations of a current administration.  Tenure protects teachers from false accusations which may be hurled by teenagers disappointed by their grades.  Tenure protects teachers from vindictive administrators.  Tenure protects teachers who try to help students who may not make the grade on standardized tests.  Tenure protects many teachers from becoming many martyrs.