Threats and Intimidation versus Collegiality: The DOE Fails Management 101

Everybody knows the dice are loaded.  

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.  

Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody

knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows

the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich

get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.

Leonard Cohen 

It’s a cold, cruel world out there … the plutocracy has seemingly endless resources and their attacks are unrelenting. It’s discouraging when Steve Jobs, the Apple guy, blames teacher unions  for all the ills of the school systems. A New York Sun op ed  piece lauds Jobs and bemoans the power of teachers unions. Democracy is a bitch!

As reported in Edwize  many states prohibit teacher union collective bargaining or place sharp constraints on public employee unions. Needless to say those states don’t have better test scores.

Klein and company agree with Jobs but are restrained by the reality of politics. When the “newspaper of record,” the NYTimes  challenges Joel’s newest makeovers he decides to change his persona: from the tough, unyielding ideologue to the softer, kinder Chancellor.

The Department has not backed away from it’s views that the “carrot and the stick” will produce higher tests scores. The newly imposed School Progress Report  is based on the premise that the “threats” of unsatisfactory ratings as a result of a poor grade will somehow make for better principals and “threats” of denying tenure will make for better teachers.

The scions of education in the Apple ignore a wealth of evidence from experts. You don’t improve performance through fear and intimidation: you create successful organizations by building strong cultures. Deal and Kent write:

     Beneath the conscious awareness of everyday life in schools, there is a stream of thought and activity. The underground flow of feelings and folkways wends its within schools, dragging people, programs and ideas toward often unstated purposes: ‘This invisible taken-for-granted flow of beliefs and assumptions give meaning to what people say and do. It shapes how they interpret hundreds of daily transactions. This deeper structure of life in organizations is reflected and transmitted through symbolic language and expressive action. Culture consists of the stable, underlying meaning that shapes beliefs and behavior over time.” (Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson. Shaping School Culture: The Heart of Leadership, p.3.)

 

When Klein taps principals on both shoulders with the holy sword he does not pass along leadership skills. It is the led who determine the skills of the leader. In the “real” world leadership is acquired incrementally, step by step, either through a rigorous selection process combined with frequent assessments and promotions. It is only at the Department of Education that leaders with little or no supervisory experience are promoted to school leadership.

In too many schools the Department seems to encourage cultures of “us versus them,” teachers versus the school administration. On a citywide level “Klein” has become world of denigration.

They just don’t get it!

The “beatings will continue until morale improves” mantra is still chiseled above the den of thieves. As parents and teachers continue “calling out” Tweed Klein and company have tried to make amends – adding bus routes and backing off putting housing high schools in elementary school buildings.

The key to individual school and systemwide success of not which reading program you use: it is collaboration. It is a culture of city, Department and school leaders working together with parents, union leaders and teachers in a culture of collaboration.

Revolutions Begin in the Streets, Not the Castles: Parents and Teachers Fight Back!

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Shakespeare, Henry IV

I am increasingly of the opinion that Dick’s comments in Henry IV are valid. Joel Klein, Jim Leibman, Bob Gordon and Chris Cerf are attorneys who are attempting to remake the face of education in New York City – not through the courts but by edict and mandate. The Star Chamber, Tweed, simply believes they can run roughshod over the plebeians: parents, teachers and kids; and create a “Brave New World,” really more like a “1984.” In Tweed “newspeak” punishing schools with senior teachers is called “fair funding.”

At the meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee (CPAC), Chris Cerf, a lawyer in the Clinton administration, who jumped from Edison CEO, to consulting, (aka, whispering in Joel’s ear) to a Deputy Chancellor responded to a question about owning Edison stock. Using what he learned from Bill (the “I never had sex with that woman” approach) Cerf replied:

“I’d be delighted to do that, I have no financial interest in Edison of any kind, zero.”

As reported by the NYTimes Cerf had divested himself the previous day and had also withdrawn a waiver application from the Conflict of Interest Board.

In the “they know no shame” category Cerf’s deputy, Joel Rose, was the general manager of Newton Learning, a subsidiary of Edison and a DOE contracted provider of student tutoring services. The Office of Special Investigations sharply reprimanded Newton for a range of improprieties. Of course, the DOE spokesperson mumbled, “…the investigation into Newton’s business practices was minor …”

Should these people be leading our school system?

The lawyers who deserve to be lauded as heroes are the Campaign for Fiscal Equity  pro bono attorneys, Joseph Wayland and Richard Beattie from Simpson, Thatcher and Barlett, who spent years and the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars to win billions of dollars for the New York City school children.

I was in a high achieving, high salary, Title 1 school and I asked staff members:

“Would you consider leaving this school and moving to a low achieving school if the class size was low and the school had significantly greater support services?

A deafening silence …

“If as a result of the change in funding formula your school had to increase class size and decrease services what would you do …?”

“We’d organize with our parents and fight back … we’d appeal to our elected leaders, we’d demonstrate … we’d find other schools to fight with us … the union would help us … these are our kids.”

I asked a principal in an Empowerment School how the new School Progress Report (A to F grade that each school will receive) would impact how he functions.

“This is not politically correct, but, I have to spend more time recruiting higher achieving kids and discouraging lower achieving kids … we can’t work any harder … we just have to be nimble.”

Is this what education has come to …?

The crones at Tweed have had no influence at the “impact point,” the teacher standing in from of kids. Initiative after initiative swirls about the corridors of the castle, in schools teachers work as hard as they can in spite of the whims of these lawyers.

Smart principals will “game” the system, the ”inexperienced” and “less able” will flounder and the least able kids will suffer, and, Klein and Company will move on to foundations and universities to explain why their great ideas were derailed …  blaming teachers and their union.

How Will History Remember Klein: An “Innovator” or a “Barbarian”?

The crocus, although shivering, are weeks away from flowering. The days are getting longer and daylight savings time is a bare month away. Pitchers and catcher are days away. It is a time of rebirth, renewal and hope.

For teachers, the reading test is done and the math tests looming. We pour over children’s work, individually and with colleagues. What concepts didn’t they grasp? What specific skills are lacking? How can we alter our instructional strategies? How can we work more effectively with other teachers, parents and staff members? We are data-driven, the past informs the future: except in the hallways of Tweed. Tweed has rejected and swept away the past and anointed themselves as the future: ignoring the lessons of history.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

                                                          George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

With the sunset clock ticking, the mayoral control statute terminates on 6/30/09, Tweed is rushing to sweep away all that preceded them. Their philosophical guru, Sir Michael Barber,  is a former Tony Blair education advisor. He preaches going to “scale” with “speed” and being “totally unapologetic” for your actions. Unfortunately Klein seems so much in the thrall of Barber that he fails to see that Great Britain and  New York City are somewhat different, and he conveniently ignores a key facet of Barber’s advice: collaboration. 

Education reforms have come and gone for over a century, and most have risen, peaked and washed away. As a nation, we are grappling with an educational crisis. In 1983 A Nation At Risk averred “for the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents.”  In a rapidly changing world we must continue to upgrade the quality of our schools. 

Why have reform effort after reform effort failed?

David Tyack and Larry Cuban  are among the most thoughtful writers on educational reform. They fear that current accountability-driven, “testing” reform efforts “turn teachers into professional accountants instead of people who are held professionally accountable.” They proffer that the key issue in reform is keeping good teachers in teaching, and they wonder whether the current accountability rage is an “affront to their dignity,” and is driving away those “good teachers.”

Governors, and business leaders, and, yes, mayors espouse top to bottom reforms driven from the top, that always wane, and fade away.

Innovators outside the schools who wanted to reinvent education were often skilled in publicity and in the politics of promising and claimed to use the latest models of rational planning. But they rarely factored into their plans a sophisticated understanding of the school as an institution or insight in the culture of teachers.

Change, Tyack and Cuban remind us, must work from the inside out, “by enlisting the support and skills of teachers as the key actors in reform.”

Decentralization was the “magic bullet” of the decade of the sixties, and after a painful teacher strike the politicians and sociologists won – and we suffered through twenty-five years of ethnic, racial and venal educational policies. A generation when children suffered as adults divided up their “spoils”.

Once again, politicians more concerned with their own image than the children they serve are imposing an ill-conceived reform initiative. A plan that excludes parents and teachers.

These “barbarians,” who have learned nothing from history, will fail.

Teachers, and their union, in collaboration with parents and public school advocates are fighting off the attacks of these political “savages.” While Bloomberg and Klein dream of seeing their faces on Mt Rushmore their clock is ticking … and  their ideas will soon turn into pumpkins, rotting in the streets of the Apple.

Is Joel Klein a “Closet” Marxist? Will Weighted School Funding Drive “Talented” Teachers to “Challenging” Schools?

I hear a rumor that before he came to the Department of Ed Joel Klein worked for the Car Guys  law firm, Murky and Lawless.

His plan for equitable school funding is based on the “Robin Hood” principle, take dollars away from higher achieving schools and giving the money to lower achieving schools. Remember the Prairie Home Companion  village of Lake Woebegone, where all children are above average, seems Klein wants to make all schools average, including those who are currently above average.

A very brief school funding primer: dollars come to schools in two bundles, tax levy and reimbursable. Tax levy dollars come from the City coffers, although they may have originated at the State level. Most of State school funding flows into the city and is co-mingled with City tax dollars and are passed along to schools. The second bundle is called reimbursable: either dollars that came through a grant or Federal Title 1 dollars. A school is designated Title 1 if it is a high poverty school, defined by a percentage of families that indicate they are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The percentage of students required to meet the cutoff point varies from year to year.

The formula that drives tax levy dollars to schools is complex and has been bent and twisted and manipulated time after time. Some non-Title 1 schools in eastern Queens, Brookllyn, Riverdale and Staten Island receive higher levels of tax levy dollars. Other very high poverty, low achieving schools, namely former Chancellor’s District Schools, also receive receive higher levels of tax levy funding. This is not a “rich” versus “poor” issue, it is complex pattern.

Should the formula be reviewed in a transparent public forum? Of course.

The Kleinberg imperium  is confident that no one knows how to manage anything except them. Since they are the only ones who know how to “manage” it would be a waste of time to involve parents, or teachers, or, heaven forbid, legislators.

Their Weight School Folly , excuse me, Funding Plan is two fold:

* drive funds to schools based on a “weighting” of indivudual students. Special Ed, ELL, low achieving students would receive higher “weightings,” the tax levy pot would be the sum of “weighted” dollars.

* currently the schools are held “save-harmless” for teacher salaries, whether a school has senior, more expensive teachers or junior less expensive teachers is irrelevant to the school allocation. Under the Klein Plan teachers would be charged at “actual” teacher salaries. Schools would have to decide whether they could afford to hire a senior, more expensive teacher.

Why is Klein advocating this Plan? To quote our leader …

 “The civil service system that forms the basis of public employment is deeply entrenched and resistant to change.  The basic pillars of that system—life tenure, lock-step pay, and seniority—essentially mean that, whether you are good or bad or whether you work in a more challenging or less challenging school or whether your are qualified to teach in a hard-to-fill position like math or science or a not-so-hard to fill position you get paid the same, with differentiation based on your length of service. This structure not only undermines the meritocracy that we need to create and support in public education, it also means that talent tends to gravitate toward the higher-performing schools and away from the more challenging ones.  If you get paid the same, why take on the harder challenge? The resulting maldistribution of human resources has real consequences for our students in high-needs communities”

Our Uber-Leader will drive “talent” to “more challenging,” aka low achieving, schools. Since he cannot impose a merit pay scheme he believes he’ll do it by  tweaking the funding formula: a cohort of schools will not be able to afford “talented” teachers, aka, senior, higher salaried teachers, and they will be driven to “more challenging” schools.

Teachers move to schools, either high or low poverty schools, and remain, because they are comfortable and successful. Frequently the reason is an effective school leader. The kids may be tough, the neighborhood poor, but if you enjoy your colleagues and have a school leader that respects his staff – you remain. Low salary schools, schools in which staff doesn’t stay, and constantly has to hire new teachers are usually poorly run.

If Klein thinks his Funding scheme will drive “talented,” higher salary teachers to poorly run schools he is sorely mistaken. Unless, of course, Bloomberg repeals the Thirteenth Amendment or “legalizes” rendition .

James Madison Was Right! The Public Deserves a Transparent Department of Education.

Schadenfreude: German, from Schaden damage + Freude joy
: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

I must admit that I have a moral failing, I took pleasure in the “busing troubles“  of the Kleinberg cabal. As the week progressed Bloomberg, speaking ex cathedra, chastised parents for calling the press rather than “311,” as their kids froze on street corners waiting for the elusive school bus. Klein cried out mea culpa, mea culpa, and bragged of the $50 million, or, $12 million, or is it $5 million in savings. The $450 dollar an hour buddhas, the consultants , seemed bereft of knowledge, they dispatched the Department head of busing on vacation while they whirled their computers and created chaos. Once again, treating kids like widgets.

Tweed has been effectively purged of the “old timers,” after all they’re part of the problem, not the solution.

The Master Sergeant is the core of the Army, officers, even generals come and go, but it is the Master Sergeants that make the Army run. The Master Sergeants in the Board and the Department are gone.

Jim Stein was the Personnel maven – he knew all the “answers,” heard all the grievances, could be tough, or humane, or both … and resolved dozens of issues each day. A high school guidance question: call Larry Edwards, he knew everything and was always patient and caring. Kevin Gill was smart, and profane, and ran the PSAL and a host of other programs … they were the Master Sergeants of the Board of Education. With Rose De Pinto gone, only Eric Nadelstern remains … and I hope he takes good care of himself …

We live in an era of the imperial, and imperious Mayor. There is no discussion, no debate and no countervailing legislative or public voice. James Madison in The Federalist # 51  wrote: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition … If men were angels, no government would be necessary” Bloomberg and Klein are far from angels.

Decisions are made by consultants behind the opaque shutters of Tweed. There is no transparency, no public debate, to paraphrase Madison no countervailing “ambitions.”

Where is the public engagement, the public hearings, the voices of the consumers, the parents and the teachers? Consultants spin their webs, claim credit for successes and blame the implementers for their failures.

So, forgive me if I take pleasure in watching the Chancellor twist in the winds of bus routes and react to the anger of plain ordinary parents of public schools kids.

(Note: A commenter reminds us that Kevin Gill left the DOE “under a cloud,” although some accusations of the Special Investigator are more political than real)

The Big Yard Sale: Is the DOE “Selling Off” Schools?

Do you have the feeling that the wheels are coming off the DOE bus? The school bus catastrophe , the weighted school funding enigma, the next “top to bottom” reorganization.

The “newspaper of record,” the New York Times in a Sunday editorial is equally confused and asks the Department to back off … it asks whether major changes should be based on “consultant’s hunches,” and asks the Legislature and the City Council to intervene.

What is behind this flurry at Tweed? What are they trying to accomplish? Is the “clock” ticking and they fear that their reign will expire before they can transform the system? Or, do they think that reform is impossible and they want to “offshore” schools?

There is no question that “reforming” inner schools has resisted efforts around the country. The Los Angeles schools  are swirling in controversy … mayoral control, charter schools, teacher union contracts and an upcoming school board election.

What is Tweed up too?

If “we” (Tweed) cannot come up with a publically applauded plan to improve schools maybe, just maybe we should follow the corporate approach: the equivelant of moving a business “offshore.”

Parcel out the “core” responsibility – teaching and learning – to organizations outside the Department. The range of “products” (AUSSIE, America’s Choice, Lucie Calkins, etc.) that schools have been using and the “not for profits” (Urban Assembly, New Visons, etc.) that have been providing support for schools.

“Charterize” schools in the public sector by freeing them of all controls but hold the principal accountable for results.

The job of the “new” Tweed: monitor the “performance contracts,” streamline human resources and negotiate with labor unions.

If a school fails, if a contractor doesn’t meet goals, change the contractor or change the principal.

It’ll never be the fault of Tweed.

And, if the politics is right we can actually create a system of “real” charter schools and vouchers. The Mayor could worry about picking up the garbage, plowing the snow and fighting crime and not have to worry about the abyss of the schools.

Reality-based paranoia: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t plotting against you!