In the Wake of the Vergara Decision, Make Some Teacher a Martyr!

The ad as it appeared in the paper:

The ad as it might have more aptly appeared:

"The City of New Orleans": A Spin on the Arlo Guthrie Tune, In Loving Memory of the Public Schools of New Orleans

Secretary of State, Arne Duncan, once remarked that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans.  A charter-based recovery district was established, allowing for profits to be made off of the misfortune of so many.  Now that public schools have been rooted out, one would be hard pressed to find any legitimate academic gains (see here also).

The City of New Orleans, 2014

Teaching in the City Of New Orleans
Localized Control, Monday morning fail
Hundred schools and thousands of restless students
One Parish Board; one-hundred schools for sale

All along the southbound odyssey - the school's pulled down by Katrina
And floats along past houses, farms, and fields
Passing "suits" that have no name, and courtrooms full of fired black teachers
And the graveyards of their rusted contract deals

Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your public son
I'm the schools they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone, every single one, when the day is done

Dealing stats games with John White in the "Charter Churn"
Profits a point - We all are keeping score
Pass the paper bag that holds their data
Feel the deals rumbling 'hind closed doors
And the sons of TFAers, and the sons of Profiteers
Ride corporate magic charters made of steals
And, students who learn to "walk the line," rocking to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of failing is all they feel

Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your public son
I'm the schools they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone, every single one, when the day is done

Night time on the City Of New Orleans
Shuffling schools all around the levee
Nearly home - we'll be there by morning
Through the Recovery District, rolling down to the sea
But, all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And Bobby Jindal sure won't hear the news
The Parish Board sings its songs again - the data men will please refrain
These schools got the disappearing public school blues

Good night, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your public son
I'm the schools they call the City Of New Orleans
I'll be gone, every single one, when the day is done

The NYC Educational Landscape in 2020?

The concept of the school as a focal point in a community is slowly eroding.  In the last decade we have witnessed the dicing and demolishing of NYC comprehensive high schools into smaller, supposedly higher achieving schools.  Big schools were closed, only to be replaced my new, smaller models enjoying no more success.  Even Gates admitted he was wrong here.  Why he couldn't just discard smaller schools for smaller class sizes, I'm sure I'll never know. Perhaps the idea is too obvious for his tastes.

I scanned lists of the many new schools which surfaced during the Bloomberg era.  It was somewhat unsettling.  Naturally, I began to wonder what the educational landscape of NYC might look like in 2020 if all this educational deformity continues unabated.

Some Possible NYC schools in 2020:

1.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Your-Children-Not-Mine Academy for Educational Guinea Pigs

2.  The Locked Gateway School (By Invitation Only) for Further Privatizing Public Education

3.  The Stanley H. Kaplan Institute for Excessive Testing Expertise

4.  The Public School for Charter School Rejects, otherwise known as the Failure Academy

5.  The Bronx High School for No Arts

6.  The Broad Academy for Sustainable Educational Deformity

7.  The Brooklyn Lab School of Artificially-Grown Compliant Laborers

8.  The Michelle Rhee Academy of Apiarists

9.  The Collegiate Institute for Sub-Par Credit Recovery

10.  The It-Takes-A-Village-Controlled-By-Corporate-Interests School of Educational Reform

11.  The Manhattan School of Performing Tests

12.  The Inner-City Academy of Grossly Ineffective Teachers Failing to Help Those with Insurmountable Obstacles in Life

13.  The North-South Magnet School of Repelling Compelling Reform

14.  The Eva S. Moskowitz Honors School for Lobbying with Millions of Bucks to Mute the Voice of Millions

15.  The (Last) New York City Public School for Re-Integrating Society

Open Season on Teachers in California!

Yesterday, Judge Rolf M. Treo upheld the plaintiff's case in the Vergara Trial.  He ruled that state teacher tenure laws and seniority rights in California are not constitutional.  In his opinion, they harm students by subjecting them to ineffective teachers.
  

Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., an attorney for the plaintiff said, "It's a terrific, wonderful day for California students and for the California education system.  These laws are hurting students and hurting teachers.  They make no sense.  They are damaging in every respect."

Los Angeles schools chief, John Deasy agreed.  "Nothing we do in our schools is more important to the education of the child than the quality of his or her teacher."  That makes for a nice, cheap solution to the "education crisis," especially if you are cheap in paying your teachers!

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, seemed to wish to take this decision a step further and strike down tenure across the country.  In his words, "The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.  Today's court decision is a mandate to fix these problems."

These people know not what they do.  In a system of accountability based largely upon student test scores, the most talented teachers will be driven away from working with the neediest children in their underfunded, overcrowded classrooms.  This is a tragedy.   

I doubt Treo, Boutrous, Jr., Deasy and Duncan could survive a year teaching the neediest children under those conditions.  When Obama and Duncan are ushered into schools, they seem to find sanitized versions.  I would really like them to try to read a story in a classroom in which students have trouble sitting down, staying on task, understanding English or keeping their furniture on the ground.  

This is just another move by which corporate-backed reformers wish to divert attention from underlying socio-economic problems by crucifying public-school teachers.  What they do not realize is that they will also crucify the students.  No teacher in his or her right mind will want to work in the schools that need the best teachers the most.  The best teachers will flee.  Will educational deformers then try to erect a Berlin Wall of education and commandeer their labor force like a modern-day Khymer Rouge?  

I pity teachers with poor administrators and students living in poverty.  They will face a double challenge.  They will suffer at the hands of students under their care who suffer from "ineffective" test scores and they will suffer at the hands of vindictive administrators above them.   They will be crushed from both sides.  

There are too many stories of principals of questionable integrity.   A recent NY Post article pointed to Principal Smolkin, still on the job after forging letters of complaint about his teachers, in one case charging the union rep. who questioned school policies with pedophilia.   Who would want to become a teacher in such times or at such a school?  If many of us could rewind the clock, would we still be in any classroom given the politics outside of it?  

I have no doubt that this decision will be appealed and overturned in the name of sanity and the awful precedent it sets.  College professors would no longer be secure.  Older workers would face layoffs in so many professions.  They would be targeted as "grossly ineffective," despite their experience, as an excuse for legalized age discrimination in a bid to hire a newer, cheaper labor force.  

I'm betting Judge Treo does not have lifetime tenure.  I'm betting he is subject to political pressures, perhaps, even the need to refinance a re-election campaign.  I might be wrong, but I don't see how a judge with lifetime tenure, shielding him from the whims of politics, would have the gall to make such a decision.  And, I don't see how anyone with any knowledge of the realities of the classroom could recognize in this court decision overall long-term benefits for our neediest students.  It is open season on teachers in California and students will be caught in the metaphorical crossfire.