The WSN Conundrum: Whom Should I Hire? That Wonderful, Skilled Senior Teacher or the Neophyte?

The DOE seems desperate to save money and decided to redo the thousands of school bus routes, eliminating some and according to their press release  saving $12 million a year.

On a sub freezing morning the newspaper reports  horror story after horror story. No buses, buses refusing to pick up kids … all on a windy morning with temperatures in the twenties.

Once again they are messing with our children!

Klein insists that change must be bold, it cannot be incremental  … he wishes to place his stamp on the school system … whether or not the stakeholders: parents and teachers support or oppose his changes. Whether or not his “boldness” results in changes that throw the system into anarchy.

School funding formulas should be based on a clear and transparent philosophy. On the State level funding formulas were driven by crass politics – the pie was divided and the formulas were crafted to meet political decisions made behind closed doors in Albany. The January, 2001 De Grasse decision  supported the litigants, sharply rebuking the State and demanded a reordering of funding formulas.

Joel Klein is not Judge Leland De Grasse.

The City funding formulas are complex. Schools that are blocks apart receive different levels of funding. It is perfectly appropriate to take a close look at these formula and devise a system that is transparent and needs driven.

Did Klein bring together parents and teachers and community members and elected officials: of course not! He “announced” his “bold” plan with great fanfare and press releases. Unfortunately for Joel his plans have been met with skepticism. Even the NYTimes: usually reticent to criticize Klein and Bloomberg weighs in with sharp criticism of the latest initiatives  based on “consultant’s hunches.”

Klein is using a complex funding system to institute his latest “hunch,” a kooky plan based on the assertion that principals will seek out “difficult” populations (low achieving, special ed and ELL) in order to increase funding for their schools and parents will bus their kids to schools with “richer” programs. “Punish” schools with senior teachers by sharply decreasing funding and reward schools with new, inexperienced staff.

When recruiting staff should a principal base her hiring decision on the skills of the teacher or the salary of the teacher?

With global warming we don’t have ice floes to use to float senior teachers out to sea, or, perhaps Joel just reread Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Who would have thought that Joel’s “bold” new program was teacher euthanasia.

Is Weighted School Funding an Experiment: Are Our Children the Guinea Pigs?

Through me the way into the suffering city,

Through me the way to eternal pain,

Through me the way that runs among the lost …

Abandon every hope, who enter here.

Weighted Student Funding (WSF) is voodoo economics raised from the murky depths of conservative think tanks.  It is based on the false premise that “low income, low achievement” schools receive lower levels of funding that “higher income, higher achieving” schools. It is based on the premise that principals will seek out low income, low achievement, English Language Learners and Special Education children because they bring more dollars to a school. It is based on the premise that parents will voluntarily bus their children to low income, low achieving schools that offer more services.

The Klein Plan avers that there are ninety or so different formulas that drive funds to schools – these formula are based more on history and politics than current day need. Parents, teachers and principals lobbied their local elected officials to gain more funding for their school: part of the democratic process. In addition the Central Board drove funds to low achieving schools: a worthy policy. If Klein’s Plan stopped at a review of the many, many formula that would be fine.

School budgets are based on average teacher salary for the school and the Central authority tweaks the funding to account for variations in teacher salary – based on years of service. The Klein Plan is based on “actual” teacher salary. Schools with experienced teachers would see funds “transferred” to schools with inexperienced teachers. To “ease the burden” Klein would use the CFE funds, not to lower class size, but to “phase in” budget reductions.

The Tweed gang passed around a sheath of scatter plot graphs to show that schools a few blocks apart receive different levels of funding; however, they doesn’t identify individual schools.

Lets take a closer look: Midwood has an average teacher salary of $71,677 – it is one of the highest achieving schools in the city with a wide range of Advanced Placement courses and a staff made up of experienced teachers. Under WSF Midwood would lose millions of dollars – do not fear – these programs would somehow magically move to a low achieving school. As the new, small high schools add grades their average salary increases, except in the schools with high teacher turnover. If a principal is successful in retaining staff – tough – she would receive less funding.

The “solution” to under achieving schools in not more funding, not more experienced teacher, not sound educational practice but kooky ideas – that are vigorous defended, not surprisingly by the neocons from a circle of purgatory.

Is Klein using our children, like the doctors in the Tuskegee Experiment? Is he “punishing” the Teacher’s Union for their latest contract success?

If so, does he belong, along with the other Sodomites, blasphemers and falsifiers in the depths of the Inferno?

“Surge” at the DOE: Preparing for the Next, New Thing

Klein has a standard speech, the “Education is the Civil Right of the 21st Century” theme, it’s pretty good. At the end he reaches into his wallet and reads a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, as an aside, reminding us that TR was a “trustbuster,” as he likes to think he was in his previous life.

He should really change his quotation: I suggest one from Lewis Carrol: 

     ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
     Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
     All mimsy were the borogoves,
     And the mome raths outgrabe.

It makes more sense than reorganization number three, or is it number four?

Bloomberg and Klein are really smart guys: what are they trying to do?

The Milton Friedman neocons want to create an endless number of charter schools, abolish public schools and allow the marketplace to determine “successful” and “unsuccessful” schools. I consider it blatant racism; however, I understand the concept.

The latest DOE reorganization plan eliminates six of the current ten regions and reconfigures the remaining four. Hundreds of regional office employees, from high paid local instructional superintendents to the lowest paid clerk have one concern: will I have a job?

Are they going to be “good soldiers” and do their job and hope for the best, or, spend all their energies looking for the next assignment?

The Empowerment School initiative is attractive, after all, decisions impacting kids should be made at the school site. Teams: principals, teachers, parents, community organizations, and, yes, kids are “empowered,” to analyze data, to drive their budget to create of climate of success. Do the support systems exist to create and sustain these “learning organizations”?

Empowerment school principals and teachers are happy that no one is looking over their shoulder micromanaging every element of their job, uncomfortable with the lack of support: no one is ever at the other end of the phone.

The DOE is “buying time” until they come up with a final solution, bad choice of words, until they are ready for the new paradigm.

The new huge data collection and analysis system will enable the DOE to track every single kid and compare pupil achievement to each and every teacher. Some say the eventual plan is to create a merit pay system whereby compensation will inexorably connect to pupil achievement.

Some claim that inside the “Thoughts of Theodore Roosevelt” book is actually a work by Mikhail Bakunin, and Joel is a secret nihilist who believes that we must create anarchy before we can create utopia. Other conspiracy theorists think that the DOE has been “skimming” funds from the consultant contracts and deep, deep in the bowels of Tweed have created a cloning laboratory. So, when that DOE bureaucrat asks you to “open wide” and is holding a cotton swab you’ll know you’re a really, really good principal or teacher.

Weighted School Funding: How the DOE Plans to Punish Success

Cathy Nolan

NYS Assembly

37th District, Queens

Chair: NYS Assembly Education Committee

Dear Ms. Nolan:

Chancellor Klein has asked me to respond to your letter voicing concerns over our Weight School Funding (WSF) initiative.

To summarize your letter: You resent the Chancellor’s comments that he found “bureaucratic inertia, patronage and chaos” throughout the system when assumed his position. The schools in your Assembly District are well run and you are proud of the high achievement levels of the students and especially the dedication of their teachers. The schools, the parents and the Community School Board had a close working relationship and the Board provided a forum for parents and the community to meet and share their concerns and develop effective policies. You are saddened by their demise and look forward to the reconstruction of local boards after the sunset of Mayoral control.

You fear that Weighted School Funding formulas will result in sharp decreases in funding for the schools in your district with concomitant increases in class size and the reduction or elimination of a range of programs, including music, art, and after school programs. You are especially angered that CFE funds will be used during the phase in to lessen the impact of these cuts rather than share in the benefits of the extra funding. You are correct.

The Chancellor has reviewed your concerns and finds them accurate.

Your schools have chosen to retain experienced teachers that are near or at the top off the pay scale. These teachers are more costly and will result in reducing the staffs in your schools under the WSF initiative.

 I have to agree that your schools have many children who have met State Standards, your English Language Learners move into general education classes quickly and you refer relatively few children to Special Education. Under  WSF  students in your schools carry fewer dollars and your schools will receive fewer dollars. The schools can increase their funding by attracting more students with disabilities, with limited language skills or are below standards in English and Math – in other words accepting more educationally challenged children – probably bused from other areas. Or, the parents in your district can opt to be bused to other schools with more challenged populations.

We believe WSF will eliminate inequalities and encourage your schools to adopt policies that will impact positively for the system at large.

I must remind you that educational decisions are solely in the hands of the Mayor, and his designee, the Chancellor. We have no statutory responsibility to consult or confer with any elected official.

The Chancellor reminds me that he and the Mayor support a number of bills dealing with raising the Charter School caps, changing teacher tenure and especially making Mayoral control permanent, we know we can count on you for your support.

Yours truly,

Joe Lackey

Assistant to the Chancellor for Inchoate Policy

Mike Reorganizes the Reorganization: Is It Deja Vu Again, Again?

Have the educational management organizations (emo) gone the way of the emu? or are they a bird of another feather?

The Mayor’s State of the City proposed sweeping organizational changes, yet again, in an already reeling school system.

The Plan calls for the dismantling of the three year old Regional structure and the creation of a number of other configurations sketchily outlined in the press. If the experience of the 321 Empowerment Schools is a guide schools are in deep trouble.

Driving decisionmaking to the school level is an excellent idea … those closest to the kids should be making the decisions that impact kids, however, school require supports.

The fourteen networks in the current empowerment structure spend all their time around the School Progress Report, the new “report card” that will evaluate schools by marking them with “A” through “F” grades. A system totally apart from the State evaluation system required by No Child Left Behind.

Under the “failed,” (according to Mike) Community School District structure a principal would pick up a phone and call someone at the District Office. A budget issue, school safety, a query on the science curriculum, and on and on … now … no one at the other end of the line. The Integrated Service Center (ISC), a mechanism that was envisioned as the fount of knowledge is barely functioning.

Empowerment without fuel, sputters … unless the DOE has constructed an implantable chip containing decades of knowledge principals are left treading water, or perhaps ten feet under the surface watching the bubbles … drowning … and the kids? Tweed seems oblivious to the impact of chaos on the kids in the buildings.

The kookiest idea is weighted student funding. Currently schools receive their budget (the system is called Galaxy and as is publicly accessible for every school on the DOE website) by way of a formula – while dollars flow in many categories the system is user friendly. The system “charges” teachers at the school’s average teacher salary. Schools with senior teachers receive higher funding but NO HIGHER DEGREE OF SERVICES.  Under the DOE plan, called “weighted student funding” the money would follow the kid with, as I understand it, would have nothing to do with actual teacher salaries. Schools with senior teachers would receive have to reduce programs to “fit in” their higher paid staff. If you want more teachers you should hire “cheaper,” less experienced teacher … does this make any sense at all?

How is the Chair of the Assembly Education Committee going to react when she finds out her Queens schools will receive fewer dollars?

Who would have thought that Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg are the Trotskyites of the 21st century – believers in the permanent revolution. Forget about incremental, consensual change through a democratic framework … impose dramatic change, wipe away the past … under the all powerful charismatic leader. Lenin lives!!

Attacks on Public Education: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream Deferred

Today we are remembering the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

King was assassinated in Memphis supporting a labor union, the striking sanitation workers union.

Tyrants: from Hitler to Saddam Hussein have targeted labor unions. Tyrants fear independent, democratic organizations that have the ability to organize, to vote and to advocate.

The coalition of right wing politics and  mega corporations have targeted labor unions and increasingly unions are painted as the sources of all evil. The rights of workers and their unions have been eroded by a range of legislation as well as blatantly targeting unions and our elected leaders turning a blind eye to these violations.

The meat packers union provided excellent jobs with union wages and benefits. The unions and the jobs are gone – replaced by non union jobs held by immigrants – many undocumented and fearful. The profits are not passed along to the consumer. Outsourcing to far away places with strange sounding names, hiring undocumented workers and vigilantly crushing attempts to start unions are the mantra of too many Walmart type mega corporations.

Public employees, and especially teacher unions are the new targets of the ideologues of the right. The destruction of teacher unions and their ability to participate in the democratic organs of government are the goal. Without teacher unions teacher salaries and benefits can be sharply reduced with concomitant reductions in taxes. Without public schools: a galaxy of private schools and charters and for profit schools competing in a marketplace with parents hopping from school to school.

A recent report calls for “freezing” salary increases after five years, since it takes about five years to train a teacher, why give them additional raises? A “saving” of billions of dollars.

For the privateers: “cheaper” schools with the marketplace determining success or failure.

The dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. again, deferred.

In the world of the privateers the poor and the powerless are irrelevant. Profit is mammon.

The NYC Department of Education plan to create 250 additional charter schools, with the ability to convert any current school to charter status has been barred by the NYS legislature. The “management” of schools by outside “educational management organizations” has been another route to remove public schools from the public sector and reduce or eliminate the role of unions. Last week Chancellor Klein told a parent body “I will not contract out the management of public schools.” The NYSun responded with an editorial bordering on the hysteric.

Should the ideologues of the right, hiding behind Department of Education consultant contracts, determine the future of the poor and the powerless.  

Should  economic tyrants be able to enslave the weakest – to create a underclass to serve the rich? It is the coalitions that the NYSun  so fears – the labor unions, liberal elected officials, the grassroots organizations that are the only hope of the descendants of King.

The Clinton Legacy: What Joel Learned from Bill

The Joel Klein bio refers in glowing terms to his years in the Clinton Office of the Attorney General. The most recent addition to Tweed, Chris Cerf was a colleague of Klein during the Clinton era.

I remember Bill staring at the TV cameras averring, “I never had sexual relations with that woman.” 

The NYTimes  quotes Klein: “…as long as I am the Chancellor of the public school system … the New York public schools will remain public schools.”

Of course back in October Tweed explained it’s plan to “privatize” schools through the creation of educational management organizations that would “manage” clusters of schools under performance contracts. In December the New York State legislature was called back into a lame duck session. If legislators wanted a raise (that would impact on the newly elected legislators – 98% of the legislature was reelected) they had to raise the cap on charter schools  from the current fifty to three hundred. And, the Chancellor would have the power to move any school from public to charter without the approval of staff or the parents in the school.

Low and behold, in the democratic caucus the Klein plan was trashed, legislators gave up a raise to defend public education …

Chris Cerf, the former CEO of Edison Schools, a private educational management organization (they “manage” public schools under performance contracts) moves from highly paid consultant to highly paid deputy chancellor.

The NYSun reports on the struggling schools that moved to empowerment status. The Department wiped away the support structure and failed to create a successor. A school has a problem, a question, a crisis, send an email. When principals demurred: they wanted real people on the other end of a phone line who had answers, the initial response was: if schools chose to use the phone rather than email they would be “charged” a fee for each call. Don’t worry: Joel says, “I believe the impact of the empowerment initiative has been very, very powerful.” What does powerful mean? Is powerful positive? Is the inability to get answers to questions powerful? Is the lack of oversight powerful?

It really is unfortunate: the “philosophers” behind the deconstruction of public schools have been busy constructing our new policy in Iraq … and poor Joel has had to fall back on his Clinton lessons.

Not to fear, Klein says, “I will not contract out the management.”

Did you ever hear of that guy named Pinocchio?

DOE School Reform: From Brave New World to 1984 to Lord of the Flies

A friend called from across the country and asked, “What’s going on with education in NYC?” An intriguing question: I described it a Brave New World to 1984 leading to The Lord of the Flies.

Someone is clearing putting “soma” in the water fountain at Tweed, leading to “newspeak” and a cannibalization among the survivors.

We are about to embark on third major reorganization in less than five years. First, moving from 32 community school districts with elected boards and an appointed central board that selected a system leader to, second, the conversion in 2003 to a Mayoral lead system: the school leader selected by the mayor, no central board or local boards and ten K-12 regions with a rigid, topdown management style. Last year the creation of empowerment schools, networks of twenty-five self selected schools with budget power at the school level with very little supervision, and, next week, the announcement of educational management organizations, “outside” school managers who will “manage” clusters of schools under  performance contracts.

Is this a business model? a carry over form the sixties? a cynical plan to distance the mayor from school failures? A Maoist approach (“Let a thousand flowers bloom!”)?

The January 15th edition of New Yorker contains an excellent article about an inner city high school in Denver and the efforts of the new business side school superintendent. Michael Bennet, a lawyer and managing director of a major investment company who jumped to the superintendent of schools. The New Yorker reports that Bennet likes to tell teachers, “You’ll never hear me say  I want to run a school like a business, I made my living off of bankrupt ones.”

The seemingly drug inducted 1984 style system, were “failure” is defined as success, is bankrupt.

Nationwide about half of all teachers leave within five years: it’s a really hard job! The “retention rate” is lower among the teachers selected through the more rigorous Chancellor’s Fellows program and Teacher For America. Hundreds of school leaders have no previous supervsory experience and limited teaching experience.

The latest iteration of reform will displace hundreds of middle management folk … creating months of organizational uncertainly and chaos.

The Augean Stables  are filling up … maybe that “foul odor” that drifted over the city wasn’t from New Jersey.

Have You Noticed? The Sorcerer’s Apprentices at Tweed Have Limp Wands …

One impact of HBO’s The Wire has been to focus attention on the Middle School, those early adolescence years where the jumble of hormones we call “teenagers” begin to slowly, ever so slowly, move toward adulthood.

Edwize, followed by the NYPost  and the NYTimes  have featured looks at these middle years. The recent release of the NYSED  scores shows an almost universal decline from the sixth through the eighth grade.

For educators with roots in elementary schools the answer is K-8 schools while other educators with roots in high schools call for 6-12 configurations.

The John Hopkins Dropout Study points out that we can accurately predict dropouts in the eighth grade. The Study points to five indicators: English and Math achievement, Attendance, Effort and Discipline, that closely correlate with delayed graduation and dropouts. 

Journalists and policy wonks focus on school structure (K-8, 6-8, 6-12, etc.) rather than what is happening within the school. It is never the school structure – it is always what happens in schools and in classrooms.

What is especially sad is that we know what works …  we can improve schools. The folks at the top want to make their mark: to “buy” that wonderful package that will turn dross to gold. The quest for that magic bullet: either charters, or K-8, or Success for All, or small high schools. After all the “business leader types” at the top want to somehow use the lessons of “management” to improve schools. Outsourcing, union-free environments, Jack Welch-type “carrot and sticks:” if we can “identify” the “proper” management tool we can achieve the equivalent of raising stock prices: raising standardized test scores.

The 90-90-90 Study  investigates schools that are 90% minority students, 90% high poverty and 90% of students have achieved state standards. What do these school have in common? Not a proprietary program! Not a magic bullet! What they have in common is a culture of collaboration and feedback. Schools in which the staff and the supervisors are on the “same side of the table.”

We know what works for those pesky twelve year olds … the issue of not the kids, it’s the electeds and school district leaders who seek that eternally elusive magic bullet.

Teaching is really hard work, it’s day to day, with success and failures. Schools succeed because all the stakeholders: from supervisors to teachers to bus drivers are on the same page, with a laser-like focus on achievement.

In New York City Klein and his high paid acolytes fail to accept that school improvement is a “one school at a time” process: there is no magic bullet. They mask their own ignorance and ineptitude running around the country blaming teacher union contracts and sound a little like those who bemoan the impact of the abolition of slavery.

Joel Dumps Michele: Page 6 Hijinks at the DOE

So here’s the scoop! Michele is brought in to bring creditability to a regime filled with lawyers and public policy folk, and, her passion is the neediest.

The DOE, under her guidance, funds a Study that finds that 138,000 kids are overaged and undercredited – meaning 138,000 kids who entered the ninth grade in 1999 are now at least two years behind in credit accumulation, and half of the kids have already dropped out!! And, Michele takes the Study powerpoint on the road: advocating for more alternative transfer high schools, Young Adult Borough Centers (YABC), GED and Learning to Work programs, advocating for the neediest.

Joel isn’t interested in emphasizing the neediest, the kids who are “failing,” he only wants to laud, his, Joel’s successes.

Michele Cahill is out the door and Chris Cerf, the Edison guy is in her seat. That chair just behind the throne where he can whisper appropriate “messages.” (privatize, privatize privatize)

Joel’s closest advisors are now Upper West Side buddies, (Jim Leibman and Cerf) and colleagues from the Clinton years.

Are you concerned that no one at the “top” has any “hands on” experience, don’t worry – they are loyal! Matt Onek, Joel’s law partner’s son was his Chief of Staff – he has moved on to a Wall Street job, do not fear, his girlfriend, Kristen Kane replaced him.

Sounds like page 6 to me!!

The NYSun keeps beating the band for a Bloomberg presidential run, and, who knows, if McCain and Rudy fall by the wayside maybe Mike is in the wings … with Joel as his Secty of Education …

Two events right before the Christmas break are characteristic of the Klein administration:

* the School Quality Review folk – the Brits from Cambridge Education visit Tilden High School for 2.5 days – they interview staff, review data, talk to kids – and find the school “proficient,” and yes, the Tweed folk also announce the closing of very same school,Tilden, as a “failing” school. (Eh, we have to put these small high schools somewhere)

* Office of Special Investigation head Condon finds blatant cheating at a new small high school on the Erasmus campus: and Tweed is totally silent … mumbling something about “looking into the situation.”

Is Tilden “proficient” or “failing”?

Is cheating in small high schools an aberration, or endemic?

For Joel the rule is simple, ignore bad news and pump up success, leadership by press release.

Maybe page 6 is too good – maybe this belongs on the comics page?