Rubik’s Cube: How Can Superintendents, Support Organizations, ISCs, CFNs, etc. Provide a Value-Added Fully Integrated Support to Children and Teachers?

 

 

Many hands were involved in seasoning the stew that became the amended extension of the school governance/mayoral control law. Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver was the chef, but Mayor Bloomberg and Randi Weingarten and Steve Sanders and Merryl Tisch and some key Assembly members added a little salt and a little spice. 

 

Former Assembly Ed Chair Sanders said the 2002 mayoral control law never anticipated the virtual elimination of Community Superintendents and the new law restores them with clearly enunciated functions and mandates, and, an office within the district and a staff.

 

The newly amended school governance law requires that Community Superintendents,

  

(1) To provide assistance and direct support to parents in accessing information, addressing concerns and responding to complaints relating to their children’s education that cannot be resolved at the school level.

  

(2) …. The Community Superintendent shall establish a central office within the district and hire and supervise sufficient staff to directly interact with parents, respond to information requests, receive input and comments, assist the community superintendent in resolving complaints in a timely manner, and work to develop a cooperative relationship with parents and the school community.

 

Will the Chancellor acknowledge the changes in the law by complying and creating structures mandated in the law?

  

I decided to construct a number of diagrams tracing the evolution of the Joel Klein management structures, it began to look like a Jackson Pollack painting!

 

The management guru, William Ouchi, and his 2003 book, Making Schools Work, drives the current structure of the Department of Education. All revolves around accountability at the school level, and, the principal as the responsibility center.

 

In the Ouchi model the role of the educational superstructure is to support, not supervise principals, to provide universal principles, and clear and transparent measurements.

 

Think of 1450 franchises (aka schools), the central office provides advise, does national advertising, pre-screens prospective employees, carefully recruits and trains potential franchise owners (aka Principals), recommends consultants to assist at the local franchise level, no deviation permissible from the core organizational principles, and revokes franchises from sites that do not earn sufficient profits, and the term “sufficient profits” is clearly defined with periodic transparent data (aka, Progress Reports and Quality Reviews).

 

The fallacy is twofold: we are dealing with children and families, not selling hamburgers, and, we don’t chose neighborhoods in which to locate our franchises.

 

Research tells us that turning around schools is more easily said than done, and, closing dysfunctional schools and opening new schools at the same site is not producing the dramatic results that Gates and company presaged.

 

Studies show us that even before they walk or enter preschool, children from poor families trail behind their more advantaged peers, and the older they get the wider the gaps.

 

We know that drawing parents into schools as early as possible, listening to and responding to parent concerns, creating teams of parents, teachers and school leaders, is the one intervention that study after study supports.

 

The original Klein model, the regional model, created regionally based Offices of Student Placement, Youth and Family Support Services (SPYFFS), the office supported school safety and suspension, all guidance functions, parent support services, attendance, community organizations, children in shelters: apart from “teaching and learning,” the arenas that are so critical to delivering effective classroom instruction. In the devolution to Support Organizations SPYFFS was disbanded, most of their services disappeared and others morphed to the Integrated Service Centers (ISC) and are treated as compliance functions. The current Parent Office at Tweed, lead by Martine Guerrier should be disbanded, it exacerbates rather than resolve problems. Support services must be as close to classrooms as possible.

 

What should the “central office within the district” look like? What types of services should the office provide?

 

I would humbly suggest,

 

1. Director of School Leadership Team Training, Planning and Support.

 

At the core of the amended law is the support of School Leadership Teams (SLT), that role must fall to the Superintendent … requiring/assisting school SLTs in the creation of bylaws, attending and supporting SLT meetings, training teams in crafting Comprehensive Education Plans that drive school budgets, analyzing school data, assisting in dispute resolution and generally creating effective learning teams:, the key to achievement.

 

2. Director of Parent Coordinators and Parent Information Services.

 

School Leadership Teams (SLT) should decide whether the position of parent coordinator is required at their school site. The new district-based “office” must be able to answer parent and community inquiries. Currently if a parent is dissatisfied with an answer at a school the next step is a call to “311,” the call bounces back to the principal, an endless feedback loop. Parents may not be satisfied with an answer, however, they are entitled to a timely response with specific information.

 

3. Director of School Safety, Student Discipline and Suspensions.

 

The major bitch in any school is student behavior, or lack thereof. Frequently student discipline is punitive. Principals concentrate on Inquiry Team work, teaching and learning, and commonly assign the “discipline” function to an assistant principal or a dean. School Safety Agents work for the police department and commonly have tense relationships with principals and school staffs. Local police precincts, school safety personnel, deans, and assistant principals must coordinate efforts, and undergo regular training to create positive rewards and climates, not simply punishments, after all, discipline begins in classrooms..

 

4. Director of Guidance.

 

The elimination of the SPYFFS offices abandoned guidance counselors and school social workers. Rather than providing services to children and families their jobs have evolved to compliance. So many of our children confront issues that impede classroom success: gang infested projects, single or no parent households, health and psychiatric issues, homelessness, substance and physical abuse, etc.

 

The current function of the ISC is to make sure mandated IEP counseling takes place … the core of counseling has been abandoned, left totally to each individual counselor, who is usually overwhelmed. The current management scheme is a dismal failure, and it’s the children and their families who suffer.

 

5. Director of Community Support Services.

 

Schools are not islands, they exist in neighborhoods with a range of organizations that impact schools. Faith-based organizations, whether churches or mosques or storefronts attract the very same families that attend our schools. Precinct councils, fire houses, community organizations, offices of elected officials, housing projects, advocacy organizations, all and more are involved in the lives of the children and families that we teach. A score of Community Schools attempts to coordinate these services. The Office of the Superintendent must act to coordinate these services.

 

There are, however, serious caveats: the creation of the new district-based Office of the Superintendent bears a significant cost, especially in this difficult budget year. Secondly, the Rubik’s Cube that is the current management structure appears to overlap the services anticipated in the yet to be created Office of the Superintendent.

 

Should the devolved ISCs, the Children First Networks (CFN) work under the supervision/guidance of the Superintendent, rather than as currently designed, the Support Organization?

 

But, then again, if the CFN is under the direction of the Superintendent aren’t we beginning to re-create the former overstaffed Superintendent’s office?

 

Whoever said this was going to be easy … any ideas? recommendations?

 

 

 

 

 

A Shot Across the Bow: Who Will Prevail in the Upcoming UFT-DOE Negotiations? The Klein Take No Prisoners Approach or the Mike Bloomberg Win-Win Deal-Making?

 In Klein’s view, tenure is ‘ridiculous.’ ‘You cannot run a school system

that way,’ he says. ‘The three principles that govern our system are

lockstep compensation, seniority and tenure. All three are not right

for our children.’

  

Anthony Lombardi, the principal of an …elementary school …

Randi Weingarten would protect a dead body in the classroom.

That’s her job.

 

The Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, Klein wants to

rescind it, but only for teachers.

a senior teacher.

 

On the eve of the opening of school and the commencement of  contract negotiations the New Yorker, in a scathing article entitled, “Rubber Rooms: The Battle Over New York City’s Worst Teachers,” has joined the fray, pillorying the UFT, the NYC teacher union, for their defense of teachers.

 

Quoting Joel Klein and Dan Weisberg, former head of labor relations for the Department and currently general counsel and vice-president for policy at The New Teacher Project, formerly lead by Michelle Rhee, the writer Steven Brill portrays the union as defending teacher incompetence at all costs.

 

The timing of the article is not random, as UFT-Department negotiations begin Mike and Joel have fired the first shot across the union bow. 

 

The Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool is portrayed as filled with burned out teachers who can’t or won’t look for jobs and are perfectly happy to collect their checks. “Klein told me (the author) that he plans to push for a time limit of nine months or a year for reserve teachers to find new positions, after which they would be removed from payroll.”

 

The article conducts lengthy interviews, quite unflattering, with two tenured teachers involved in the dismissal process, and attended one of the hearings, at the invitation of the teacher.

 

 Brill gloats over a case dealing with a teacher suffering from alcoholism issues, who was defended by the union, and, eventually was discharged. BTW, the Board once had an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) lead by Jim Ahearn. Jim did an exemplary job in guiding teachers to programs or to other professions. The EAP program is long gone …

 

Why does the union defend/represent all teachers?

 

As a union rep I provided the best representation possible … the union doesn’t hire teachers and we don’t judge teachers, and, unfortunately too many teachers are victims of principals. Hundreds of “rubber room” cases  are “resolved,” the teachers pays a meager fine and is returned to school. Disagreeing with one’s principal has become a capital crime. 

 

State law allows public employees to be represented by labor unions and clearly delineates the “duty of fair representation” (DFR) of the union.

 

The duty applies to virtually every action that a union might take in dealing with an employer as the representative of employees, from its negotiation of the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, to its handling of grievances arising under that agreement …  the courts have held that a union only breaches its duty if it acts arbitrarily, in bad faith or discriminatorily.

 

Each borough maintains a grievance committee, before a grievance is filed with the Chancellor the committee must approve the grievance. If the union turns down the grievance the member is informed and can appeal, first to the union staff director and ultimately to the union officers. Probationary teacher and paraprofessional discharge cases fall under the contract. The Union takes great care in making grievance representation decisions,

 

In order to state a prima facie breach of the duty of fair representation, a charging party must show that the exclusive representative’s conduct was arbitrary, discriminatory or in bad faith.

In order to state a prima facie case of arbitrary conduct violating the duty of fair representation, a charging party:

. . . must at a minimum include an assertion of sufficient facts from which it becomes apparent how or in what manner the exclusive representative’s action or inaction was without a rational basis or devoid of honest judgment. (Emphasis added.) [Reed District Teachers Association, CTA/NEA (Reyes) (1983) PERB Decision No. 332, p. 9, citing Rocklin Teachers Professional Association (Romero) (1980) PERB Decision No. 124.]

 

Tenured teacher discharge procedures fall under State law. In almost all cases the union provides legal representation. The Union and the Department have negotiated a range of provisions intended to expedite the process, unfortunately the Department has not hired sufficient attorneys and the cases take years instead off months.

 

The contract is a living document, at each set of negotiations the parties have negotiated significant changes:

 

* letter in the file grievances . Teachers may no longer file grievances asking that letters in the file, the most common grievance, be removed. They may respond to letters and, after three years, if the letter does not result in disciplinary action the letter is removed from the file at the request of the teacher.

* professional conciliation. UFT chapters may request conciliation for disputes arising out of curriculum mandates, textbook selections, program offerings and scheduling, instructional strategies.

* school-based options. The UFT Chapter, with a 55% positive vote, with the approval of the principal and the UFT and the Department may modify a number of sections of the contract.

 

Rubber rooms and ATR pools exist not because of the union contract, they exist because they serve a cynical political purpose for the Department, with children as pawns. Steven Brill is also a tool, carrying water for the Department. The battle, as Joel Klein states, is over tenure, teacher pay for performance (what Klein now calls lockstep compensation) and seniority. Joel wants an “at will” system, a school system in which principals hire and fire and pay is based on results as measured by test scores.

 

Bloomberg, on the other hand, has been much more willing to deal with the union, as the compromise over school governance shows. In exchange for the Mayor retaining full control of the Central Board (PEP) the law makes sweeping changes that challenge the current management structure.

 

The current round of negotiations, in which Bloomberg, not Klein plays the core role can resolve the outstanding issues.

 

Strictly enforced timelines, limiting the arbitration process to a specific number of dates for each side, requiring the Department, the charging party to move forward or dismiss the charges would expedite the process.

 

Excessed teachers (the ATR pool) should be assigned to a school for regular teaching duties at a budget “discount” for the receiving school, at the end of the school year the principal has the option of “absorbing” the teacher.

 

The teacher “buy-out” clause, aka voluntary severance, has not been implemented … if both sides cannot negotiate specific terms it should be decided by an arbitrator.

 

Joel Klein takes pride in his “take no prisoners” approach and basks in the adulation of his acolytes. Wasting hundreds of millions, teachers twiddling their thumbs in offices, may, to Joel, be worth the cost to achieve his ends. Nobody elected Joel.

 

Bloomberg, whether you like him or not, or intend to vote for him or not, is a nimble politician, and will see longer term benefit in standing at a podium with Mike Mulgrew praising a win-win contract then facing picket lines and a million enraged parents.

Bloomberg as James Madison: Is Mayor Bloomberg an Originalist, Fending Off the Passions of the Unreflecting Multitudes for the Benefit of the Masses?

 “… our right & property are now the sport

of ignorant unprincipled State legislatures.”

William Plummer, 1787

 

The debate over local versus mayoral control of schools has spawned a number of tomes (Ken Wong, The Education Mayor, and Joseph Viteritti, When Mayors Take Charge, seemingly endless panels, and, I am sure numerous doctoral dissertations are in progress.

 

In the 1780’s a similar battle was taking place: debtors, farmers, small taxpayers, the overwhelming majority of voters, many of whom behind in their taxes, pressured local legislators for relief from their tax/debt burdens, with considerable success.

 

Today, Mayor Bloomberg sees discontent among parents, advocates, stakeholders, and legislators as interfering with his attempts to reform a “failed” school system.

 

Woody Holton, in his prize winning book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, 2007, paints the founders, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Governeur Morris and John Adams, as seeing the constitutional convention as an opportunity to challenge “…the thirteen legislatures that had ridden to the farmers’ rescue … allowed debtors to satisfy their creditors with property … even pine barrens and old horses … instead of hard money.”

 

In a private letter to Thomas Jefferson, a month before penning Federalist # 10, Madison wrote, “”Divide et impera (divide and conquer), the reprobated axiom of tyranny is under certain circumstances, the only policy by which a republic can be administered on just principles.”

 

Holton sees the Framers as believing that the major problem of the 1780’s was an excess of democracy.

 

For Madison, cracking down on the political power of debtors and taxpayers would end the terrible recession that had followed the Revolutionary War. He “…spoke for many of his contemporaries when he asserted that in any given society ‘the most enlightened and impartial people would be outnumbered by the unreflecting multitude’”

 

James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution agreed, “Bad elections proceed from the smallness of their districts which give an opportunity to bad men to intrigue themselves into office.”

 

Some may see Michael Bloomberg as acting in the spirit of Madison, in the spirit of the founders.

 

The urban sociology of the 60’s, a decade stricken by inner city riots proffered the “answer” was empowerment, empowering inner city communities by granting to them control over city services, especially the public schools. In New York City, the laboratory of change, the Ford Foundation funded a study (“Reconnection for Learning“) that evolved from three demonstration districts to a decentralized school system, thirty-two independent, self-governed districts, lead by elected school boards with wide ranging fiscal and personnel powers.

 

The State legislators that created the law dominated the election of school board members. In the poorest communities of color, and a few middle class communities, school boards became the dispensers of political patronage, including pay for jobs and the support of local political machines. (a Bronx political club with tentacles into schools was “affectionately” called the “Ali Baba” Democratic Club).

 

In spite of scandal after scandal the law remained unchanged from 1970 to 1997, when all personnel decisions were removed from boards and vested solely in the superintendents.

 

The seven member Central Board members were appointed, one by each borough president and two by the mayor. Esmerelda Simmons, a Dinkens appointee paints a bleak picture of a board  riven by petty politics.

 

Bloomberg’s seizure of the control of schools can be compared with the stealthy conversion of the unwieldy Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, the document that created our federal system, and according to Woody Holton, seized power from the State legislatures.

 

The New York Post relates that Shirley Huntley, a State Senator from Queens, offered to trade her vote to support mayoral control if the principal of the school where her daughter worked as a Parent Coordinator, was fired. A classic example of the politics that echoed throughout the system in the days of decentralization.

 

Detroit schools are in total meltdown, the elected school board is at war with a State appointed fiscal monitor and an outside consultant is planning a massive school reorganization. Philadelphia schools are embarking on school closings and and the creation of many charter schools. California Governor Schwarzenegger is proposing a range of legislation to comply with the Obama/Duncan initiatives, vigorously opposed by teacher unions.

 

Louis Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, in a Wall Street Journal op ed called for the collapsing of the 16,000 elected school boards into seventy mega boards. 

 

Is Michael Bloomberg, and mayors and governors across the nation, in the spirit of James Madison and the founders, marginalizing elected school boards and elected officials by creating school management systems free of the passions of the local prejudices, and formerly powerful unions, eliminating divisive opinions, and imposing their views?  Is Bloomberg acting in the spirit of Madison?

 

The Obama/Duncan/Bloomberg seizure of the direction of America’s schools will be dissected for years to come.  Those of us who toil in classrooms see this coup d’etat as tragic, ignoring children, parents and teachers, and imposing an ill fated philosophy of data, impersonal and arrogant.

 

The dissertations will muse over the data, the politics, and ultimately write the history of today.

An Honest Broker: Can the Independent Budget Office Resolve the Debate Over Department of Education Data? and, Resolve, “How Am I Doin’?”

 In the year plus preceding the amending and final passage of the Mayoral Control law one of the only issues that was uniformly accepted by all sides was an “outside” organization to review educational data. This blog , independent scholars Sol Stern and Diane Ravitch have been loudly calling for an independent review of Department data for a few years.

 

On June 4th testimony Ronnie Lowenstein, the Director of the Independent Budget Office referred  to the office as an “honest broker,” and looked forward to the passage of the bill and their new role.

 

The law vests specific authority, and an independent funding stream, to the Independent Budget Office (IBO).

 

 

S  2590-U.  NEW  YORK  CITY INDEPENDENT BUDGET OFFICE REPORTS  1.  THE
     INDEPENDENT BUDGET OFFICE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK SHALL BE AUTHORIZED TO
     PROVIDE ANALYSIS AND ISSUE PUBLIC REPORTS REGARDING FINANCIAL AND EDUCA-
     TIONAL MATTERS OF THE CITY DISTRICT,  TO  ENHANCE  OFFICIAL  AND  PUBLIC
     UNDERSTANDING OF SUCH MATTERS INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO:
       (A) STUDENT GRADUATION AND DROPOUT DATA;
       (B) STUDENT ENROLLMENT PROJECTIONS;
       (C) SCHOOL UTILIZATION, CLASS SIZES AND PUPIL-TO-TEACHER RATIOS;
       (D) STUDENT ASSESSMENT DATA;
       (E)  THE  DELIVERY  OF  SERVICES  TO  STUDENTS WHO ARE IN BILINGUAL OR
     ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE PROGRAMS;
       (F) THE  DELIVERY OF SERVICES TO STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES;
       (G) THE UTILIZATION OF FEDERAL FUNDS INCLUDING FUNDS PURSUANT TO TITLE I
      OF THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY  EDUCATION  ACT  OF  NINETEEN  HUNDRED
       (H) MATTERS RELATING TO CITY DISTRICT FINANCES.

 

I would urge the IBO to begin a number of audits:

 

* Graduations Rates and Credit Recovery.

  

Neither NYS Education Department (SED) or NYC Department of Education make any reference to credit recovery. The SED regulations are quite specific – one credit for each 54 hours of seat time, a total of 44 credits in specific areas plus five regents examinations. Schools, without the approval or scrutiny of anyone routinely allows students to “make-up” work for failed courses. Anecdotally the work may be a book review, even though the student missed all or most of the classroom sessions. Credit recovery does NOT appear on a student transcript, the school simply reverses the failing grade to a passing grade. However, any grade that is reversed more than a term after the failing grade is credit recovery.

 

* How many students earned credits in this manner?

* Have the students complied with the 54 hour seat time requirement?

* Are the credit recovery “standards-based” and are they an equivalent of classroom work?

* How has credit recovery impacted graduation rates?

 

* ARIS and MAXIMUS.

 

ARIS is the $85 million program to build a data warehouse that will enable teachers and schools to use student data to drive instructional practice. The program is one year old. MAXIMUS is the $58 million program to build a data/information warehouse for children designated as Special Education.

 

* Do these contracts comply with standard City contracting requirements?

* Did the vendors comply with the provisions of the contracts?

* Has ARIS increased the use of data in schools/classrooms (“clicks per school”), and have “high click” schools shown improved student achievement data?

 

* Student Enrollment Projections, Available Classroom Space, Planned Construction and the Charter School Use of Public School Buildings.

 

The Department has seriously miscalculated seats in a number of areas of the city, especially in Manhattan. After scrambling for months, maybe they have found seats and averted “waiting lists” for kindergarten classes.

 

* Does the Department have a systematic and accurate mechanism for predicting the need for new seats?

* Is there space in the pipeline?

* Is there a transparent procedure for considering zoning adjustments/changes?

* How has the placement of charter schools in public schools impacted public school space requirements? Costs to the city? Long term policy?

 

Charter Schools, Special Education and English Language Learners

 

* Have charter schools complied with the law by registering “at least” the same number of Special Education and English Language Learners as are registered in the surrounding district?

* Are Special Education and English Language Learner children receiving mandated services? If not, why not? Is there a compliance mechanism within the Department? Is there an accessible parent complaint mechanism?

 

The scoreboard for mayoral control is the data. Have the policies of this administration, the administration of Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein positively impacted student achievement for all categories of children? The reputation of the Independent Budget Office is unchallenged, they are the “honest broker” we need to provide the public, parents and taxpayers, with transparent data we so desperately need.

The Dance of the Mikes: Can New UFT President Michael Mulgrew and Mayor Mike Bloomberg Thrash Out a “Win-Win” Contract?

 We used to call teaching summer school “blood money,” but this summer, with day after day of cool weather it has been almost pleasant. A couple of teachers were sitting around a table in a teachers room filling out their “negotiations surveys,” others bitched that it was a waste of time, all the decisions were already made. Others bemoaned the lack of an electronic survey. Closing date for submission of the survey was August 13th.

 

The 300 or so self-selected members of the negotiating team will pore through the surveys, or, at least a summary of the survey findings, and with the guidance of union higher ups, come up with a set of “demands,” that can be amended, first by the executive board, and, finally by the delegate assembly (members of the delegate assembly are the 1450 chapters leaders plus one delegate per sixty members or major fraction, elected at schools)

 

The “demands” have two functions, one is to satisfy the members. However, if the demands are too aggressive and unachievable any contract will be perceived as a bad contract. It is a delicate balance. The 1995 contract was a five year contract, with “0″ increases in the first two years, in spite of her efforts union president Sandy Feldman could not sell the contract, it was defeated in the required membership vote. Five months later almost the same contract was approved.

 

Decades ago the union demands ran into the many hundreds, at a delegate assembly to endorse the demands someone asked what it cost if we got everything. Al Shanker mused for a while, and answered, “A gold ball the size of the Earth.”

 

How will the September 15th mayoral primary and November 3rd general election impact the negotiations?

 

A very ticklish issue! The overwhelming percent of teachers despise Klein, and dislike Bloomberg. In local elections the union has clout, union members don’t know the candidates and usually vote the union endorsements. It’s another story at the top of the ticket. Will a contract, a week or so before the November election convince members to vote for Bloomberg?

 

In spite of the DC 37 endorsement of Thompson it is unlikely that the UFT will endorse Thompson … and Mulgrew risks getting spanked by his members if he even hinted at a pro-Bloomberg stance. Mulgrew has to run in the winter/spring union elections for a full term.

 

Has “pattern bargaining” fixed the percent increase in the next contract?

  

Probably yes. Prior arbitrations have accepted pattern bargaining as the model, although “ability to pay” also has weight in the process. Other City public employee unions have received 4% increases, the just completed Metropolitan Transit Authority/Transport Workers Union arbitration recommended an 11.3% raise over three years with some improvement in the health plan … effectively a 4% per year increase, and, the NY Post reports that NYC Labor Commissioner Hanley testified that the city assumed  4% + 4% increases for the UFT.

 

Will the contract contain “time for money swaps,” or any “givebacks”?

  

The only way to “break the pattern” is “time for money” swaps or “benefit swaps.” Both sides, the union and the city, have to appear to be within the pattern. Unions “piggyback” on each others settlements.  The city justified the 44% increases over the last two contracts by computing a dollar value for the 150 minute a week extended time and the two additional days at the beginning of the school year.

 

Perception is reality: the union and the city have to “sell” the contract to their constituents, for the union, its members,who have to approve the contract in a secret ballot process;  for the city, the voters and the editorial boards of the major dailies.

 

How can the union and the city “break the pattern”?

  

The new pension tier for prospective employees (“newbies”) will save the city many millions, the union can ”claim” these dollars as a justification for breaking the pattern. The city may quietly go along and agree with the union, or, claim the dollars are necessary to fund a pattern increase of 4% in these dire times. All depends upon the “dance” up to election day. A series of pro-union, pro-school announcements by the mayor, the two Mikes (Mulgrew and Bloomberg) arms draped over each others shoulders days before the election, or, a frosty silence …?  Politics makes for strange bedfellows (and strange bedfellows makes for interesting politics … as we have seen!!)

 

Will the contract restrain the powers of the chancellor?

  

Both sides have much to gain and lose … the 2000+ ATR pool is not sustainable in these fiscal times, and the hiring freeze is not contracting the pool fast enough as principals withdraw vacancies and try to wait out the freeze. There are hundreds of teachers in the ATR pool who have not applied for any permanent jobs, or have applied for scores of jobs and have not been hired. The current contract contains a no-layoff clause for pedagogical titles which under the Triborough Doctrine, remains in effect even if the contract expires.  See here  for a detailed discussion of the rules of negotiations.

 

If the city negotiates an end to the “no layoff” clause it will be the newest teachers, not the teachers in the ATR pool who will be laid off … can both sides shrink or eliminate the ATR pool, can the Department retain the power of principals to hire who they please, and can the Union retain the “no layoff” clause? Complex issues that will require skilled negotiators.

 

The Teacher Reassignment Centers, aka rubber rooms, are a thorn in the Union side, and, an embarrassment to the Department … many hundreds of teachers spend months, ocassionally years awaiting the resolution of their cases. A number of “agreements” between the Union and the Department to shorten the process have not achieved their purpose. City Councilman Charles Barron complains that “too many” of the rubber room teachers are black and Hispanic and have been removed without charges, a potential huge embarrassment, especially in this election season.

 

Can the union and the chancellor create a “win-win,” changes in the contract that satisfy union members and also appear to leave the powers of the chancellor in place?

 

What happens upon the expiration of the contract – October 31?

 

Nothing … under Public Employment Relations Board regs the old contract remains in full force and effect.

 

What happens if no contract is negotiated before the mayoral election – November 3rd?

 

The union loses a bargaining chip … it could result in a lengthy, acrimonious process. If the parties cannot reach a settlement PERB rules apply: mediation, impasse, fact-finding, a process that can take many, many months, with substantial risks for both sides. And, the fact-finding process is not binding.

 

The mayor loses a piece of his reputation as a skilled manager and risks the crumbling of his “mayoral control” education edifice and four years of a very public fight with the teacher union, and an increasingly suspicious public.

 

I expect that on a lovely fall day in late October the Mikes, Mulgrew and Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Dennis Walcott and some other pols will be standing on the steps of City Hall praising an “enlightened” settlement that benefits kids, teachers and the city. Then again, didn’t the pundits predict the Mets would be in the World Series?

The Race to the Top, Tenure and Politics, An Opportunity to Improve Pre Service Teacher Education and Professional Development, or, Weakening Unions and Alienating Classroom Teachers?

  One of the strange byproducts of the current economic duress is the huge pot of dollars, totally at the discretion of Secretary of Education Duncan. The regulations for the disbursement of the billions of dollars are in the comment period and the public discussion of the regs are concentrated on whether or not California and New York will be eligible for the funding.

 

The regulations require applicants, namely States, to allow data to be used for the evaluation of teachers and principals,

 

we propose that to be eligible under this program, a State
must not have any legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking
student achievement or student growth data to teachers for the purpose
of teacher and principal evaluation.

  

Current law in a number of States presents an obstacle to efforts to
improve teacher quality by prohibiting data regarding student achievement.

  

See the regs here.

 

New York State law, Section 3012b allows the use of data in teacher tenure determinations, but not the use of student performance data. The law is silent re the evaluation of tenured teachers.

 

  2. The regents shall, prescribe rules for  the  manner  in  which  the
  process  for  evaluation  of  a candidate for tenure is to be conducted.
  Such  rules  shall  include  a  combination  of  the  following  minimum
  standards:
    a. evaluation of the extent to which the teacher successfully utilized
  analysis  of  available  student  performance  data  and  other relevant
  information when providing instruction but  the  teacher  shall  not  be
  granted or denied tenure based on student performance data;
    b. peer review by other teachers, as far as practicable; and
    c.  an  assessment  of  the  teacher’s  performance  by  the teacher’s
  building principal or other building  administrator  in  charge  of  the
  school or program.

  

See text of law here.

 

Education Week speculates that New York State may not qualify under the federal regulations.

 

The draft regs emphasize the importance of teacher quality and accept the notion that value-added must be part of a teacher/principal evaluation process.

 

 Research indicates that teacher
quality is a critical contributor to student learning and that there is
dramatic variation in teacher quality.\2\ Yet it is difficult to
predict teacher quality based on the qualifications that teachers bring
to the job. Indeed, measures such as certification, master’s degrees,
and years of teaching experience have limited predictive power on this
point.\3\ Therefore, one of the most effective ways to accurately
assess teacher quality is to measure the growth in achievement of a
teacher’s students;\4\ \5\ and by aggregating the performance of
students across teachers within a school, to assess principal quality

  

The Department regs are not based upon research, they make a political statement. Teacher pre-service exams do correlate with pupil achievement.

  

The core problem is that the regs jump ahead of the research, we do not have widely accepted, valid and reliable tools to assess teacher value-added, although there is considerable research in progress..

 

The New York City Department of Education has recently contracted with the Wisconsin Education Center for Research to explore a value-added tool. The Value-Added Research Center, part of the Wisconsin Center, is in the final phase of a study in the Milwaukee Public School system. The repercussions of this research may change the face of education, tools for teacher evaluation as well as pay for performance may evolve.

 

Rather than using pupil achievement, value added, to evaluate individual teachers we should use value added to identify successful teachers and investigate what make them successful. A particular reading or math program? race or class of the teacher? gender? If we can use value added to identify the skills and behaviors of highly successful teachers we can both improve teacher education programs and provide targeted professional development.

 

The stimulus dollars will be expended in a few years …what will be left? If all that is left is a set of state rules that evaluate teachers by student performance we will have wasted resources that we may never see again.

Teacher Quality: Have the Lessons of Bloomberg LP Been Transferred to Klein LP, aka the Department of Education?

 

 Obama/Duncan and Bloomberg/Klein understand that the key to higher achievement is teacher quality.

 

We forget that Mike Bloomberg created an innovative and effective deliverer of financial news and information services: Bloomberg L. P. , worth more than 20 billion dollars and with more than 10,000 employees.

 

At Bloomberg L. P., and in the school system that the key to success

is employing and retaining the “best and the brightest” and providing them with the tools, the supports, to succeed. The six years of Children’s First, with successes and glaring failures, has been a campaign to increase teacher quality

 

*  recruitment: teachers and principals (Teaching Fellows, TFA, Leadership Academy)

  

In 1997 17% of teachers were uncertified, vacant classrooms filled with a revolving door of teachers populated the lowest achieving schools across the city.

 

44% in salary increases coupled with highly selective teacher recruitment programs (i. e., Teaching Fellows and Teacher for America) and the upgraded teacher education programs at CUNY has resulted in many qualified applicants for each position.

 

The Leadership Academy, and the less well known principal training programs (New Leaders for New Schools and the Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM)) have been far less successful. Accepting candidates without highly successful teaching careers and without evidence of on-site leadership skills has produced too many principals who stumble.

 

*  retention: (Open Market)

 

Open Market has allowed schools to be staffed solely by teachers selected by a principal. The exclusion of teachers from the hiring process is a mistake (“participation reduces resistance”). Teachers participating in the selection of colleagues strengthens morale and builds teams.

 

Under Open Market thousands of teachers, mostly relatively new teachers, skip from school to school. The ability to “vote with your feet” allows teachers to move to schools at which they are a “better fit,” and, flee schools lead by ineffective, non-collegial principals. The Department should look carefully at schools with large numbers of teachers choosing to leave. The deteriorating economy will probably increase teacher retention.

 

*  upgrading skills of  teachers and principals(Support Organization)

 

Empowerment, over 500 schools divided into networks of about 25 schools each, and a range of other Support Organizations, some with hundreds of schools and others with only a handful, provide the ill-defined term, “support.”

 

Each Support Organization has a different approach, it is a complex and difficult to assess model. The organizations are congruent in that they all support schools in their inquiry work, and, work with schools to increase Progress Report grades … are they improving schools ability to manipulate data or are they improving instruction?  I fear the former.

 

*  site-based decision-making (Principal as CEO)

 

The principal as CEO model is deeply flawed, schools are complex organizations, leadership and team-building are the keys to success. The CEO model discourages collaboration. Especially in schools with newer principals who lack staff respect and leadership ability. In too many schools principals threaten and teachers, through their union push back. School leaders are carefully selected by Tweed, the former C-30 process is a charade. Are the new principals exemplary teachers? Have they exhibited leadership in prior school positions? The DOE “measurement” of potential principals is whether they understand data and are totally committed to the current DOE inquiry data systems. Simon Legree should not be a supervisory role model.

 

*  site decisions based upon data (ARIS, Inquiry Team)

 

Each and every school is required to have an Inquiry Team, a number of teachers who take a deep look at a group of low achieving students, using data available through ARIS, the DOE data warehouse. The results of the research are theoretically shared with the staff and will result in changes in practice. Taking a really close look at student data, achievement data, is always worthwhile. What are the decisions that result from an exploration of the data? Unfortunately I have not seen this process resulting in a change in teacher practice. In too many schools it has become a compliance exercise. This is a classic example of how top down ukase rarely result in change. The second data initiative, non-inferential teacher observations, now called transcription, is generally ignored. It is unwieldy. Unfortunately the Department should encourage schools to use the range of video tools that have proven effective around the country (see Flanders Interaction Analysis and Cognitive Coaching.

 

*  individual and site evaluation (TDI and Progress Reports)

 

How do we measure individual teacher input? now called “value-added.” The Department started a Teacher Data Initiative (TDI), however the output is not encouraging. The Department recently contracted with a highly regarded research institution to further investigate this question. It is highly controversial, teachers are suspicious, and, the result could have enormous consequences on teacher evaluation and teacher remuneration.

 

Progress Reports drive schools, are the Report resulting in the improvement of instruction or are schools getting better at manipulating data …?  The wide disparity between Report cards grades, State NCLB status and NAEP scores make me highly suspect.

 

 

*  “pruning,” upgrading staff through dismissals (Accelerated U Ratings, Rubber Rooms)

 

Care must be taken in hiring teachers, and, even more care in making tenure decisions. Unfortunately the Department, with Joel Klein in the lead, seems to be gloating about the increased number of U ratings and probationary discontinuances. Are greater numbers of inadequate teachers receiving U rating? or, are principals punishing teachers who “disagree” with them? Hundreds and hundreds of teachers are sitting in Teacher Reassignment Centers, rubber rooms, and only a small percent will actually be brought up on charges of incompetence. Some aver that that “rubber rooms,” filled with teachers, are a negotiating ploy rather than a discipline procedure.

 

Teacher quality is at the core of school excellence, unfortunately the lessons of Bloomberg LP have not transferred to Klein LP, aka, the Department of Education.

Are State Test Scores Inflated? Are the Tests “Valid and Reliable” Measurements of Achievement and Progress? A Totally Unscientfic Theory.

 

On a muggy, unbearably hot June day we marked paper after paper for hours upon hours: that regents marking chore. One group trudged down to an office and waited their turn to feed the bubble sheets into the Scantron. The rest of us marked hundreds of papers, the same essay in each blue booklet. The last group added up the scores and entered the grades into the database.

 

It’s a nerve wracking time for teachers … how will “your kids” do? After all, in a way you are the coach of the team, you didn’t take the exam, but your “players” did!  All those hours preparing lessons, urging, cajoling, pleading, even occasionally threatening students, and now the culmination of all those efforts.

 

It’s the same in elementary schools, except the time lag from the test to the release of the scores is many months.

 

The NY Times raised the question of the accuracy of NYS testing  and re-ignited the embers.

 

Critics have averred that the tests do not accurately measure student achievement and progress. From scholars: Diane Ravitch, Aaron Pallas and Jennifer Jennings, to journalists: Sol Stern and Andy Wolf, to parent advocates: Leonie Haimson, who sharply criticized the NY Times article, calling out the writers for their falsely “balanced approach,” and ignoring many glaring errors.

 

The dissenters point to the NYS 2003 testing gains, before the Klein Children First initiative, are “claimed” by Bloomberg/Klein and, remind us of the disparity between the National Assessment of Student Progress (NAEP) scores and the NYS tests.

 

Gotham Schools finds that calls for an investigation of NYS testing are unanswered.

 

State Board of Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch is calling for state exams to be more “defensible,” but a study investigating test score credibility requested a year ago by the state’s testing oversight board has still not received a go-ahead.

  

The defenders of the faith, actually Howard Wolfson, the leader of the mayor’s re-election campaign, no expert on testing, has raced to the support of the mayor.

 

I am not a testing expert.

 

I would urge Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner-elect Steiner to order an investigation.

 

However, I have another theory re the increase in scores: the ready availability of technology to schools and teachers.

 

As soon as the state tests scores are announced a school leader can download the scores from the NYSTART, the SED testing site. Downloading the results into an Excel format, disaggregating the items and creating an error matrix. The school leader can look at “errors” by whole school, by grade, by class, by gender, by “group,” share the data with the staff, and urge the staff to create lessons to address the student “weaknesses.”

 

Is the school leader “gaming the test” or using “data to drive instruction”?

 

We used to call it “test sophistication,” student familiarity with the types of questions they will face on the state tests.

 

Athletic teams win due to talent and coaching. Coaches can recruit talented players, for teachers, the “players” are who walks in the door, its the coaching that counts.

 

We would hope that the tests are “valid” and “reliable,” and accurately measure student achievement and progress, however, we do what we have to do with our kids, giving them the skills to succeed on the tests.

 

The Tisch/Steiner Partnership: Will They Restore NYS to the Platinum Standard, Or, Have They Learned the “Manipulate the Data” Lessons of the Klein Years?

On a muggy, hot June day a bureaucrat from an obscure division of the State Ed Department meets with Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner Steiner.

 

Steiner asks, “What’s the purpose of this meeting?”

 

The bureaucrat responds, “Where do you want us to set the scale scores on the Regents exams and the State ELA/Math test?”

 

Steiner, “What do you mean?”

 

The bureaucrat, “We design the exams but over the last few years we’ve learned from New York City … the State Ed Department decides how many correct answers are necessary for a passing grade on the Regents and we set proficiency levels on the State tests … I would suggest setting the scores and proficiency slightly below last years … we’ll show progress and we can escalate the gains every year.”

 

For the last two years scores on  ELA and Math exams have jumped, Joel Klein crowed, however the scores jumped across the entire state. Are teachers teaching better? Have we added “something” to the NYS air? Or, has the State set the scale scores, aka, the “passing rate” at a lower level?

 

The New York State high school diploma was once the platinum standard, capped by rigorous subject area regents exams, and, a state-wide competition, an exam for high school seniors, the students with the highest grades received scholarships … as the world morphed to open enrollment, “good intentions” to increase the number of graduates of students of color … we knew where the road to good intentions leads.

 

Chancellors of the Board of Regents were anonymous, ofttimes a businessman from upstate, and the commissioner was an education insider. The combination of newly selected Chancellor Merryl Tisch, the scion of a real estate empire, and on a first name basis with Joel, Randi and Mike, and Commissioner David Steiner, an academic with a long list of scholarly papers, and no public school experience. is intriguing.

 

Andy Wolf, a harsh critic of the Klein years is quite optimistic that David Steiner is an excellent choice. Merryl Tisch has been quite outspoken, supports “higher standards,” and, at a Center for NYC Affairs panel on Mayoral Control in the spring of 2008 called Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf “arrogant.”

 

For reasons only known deep within the portals of the majestic State Education building in Albany, New York City has been allowed to operate as a quasi independent entity. The redesign of a school required the filing and approval of a detailed plan, with the participation of the bargaining agent (i.e., the union), until the Klein years. If these detailed reports are filed they remain a mystery, the current DOE appears to have carte blanche re which schools are closed.

 

Will the new leadership of the SED continue to allow the DOE freedom to run themselves, apart from state regs?

 

The first test will come this fall … will the state issue rigorous regulations for credit recovery?

 

Pre-Klein every school was required to maintain a course accreditation committee, the committee, approved all new and alternative courses, with the approval of the superintendent. Credit recovery is not mentioned in state regs … school leaders decide how students make up failed courses. In some schools a student can skip all of their classes, a term, or a few years later, complete a “report,” with no standards whatsoever, and “earns” credits. In the spring of 08 the SED chided the department, it took a year, for the DOE and the state to agree upon draft regs ,,, regs that basically condone the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

 

Chancellor Tisch has taken a strong position,

 

“The days of driving Mack trucks through this policy are officially over,” Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the State Board of Regents, said in a recent interview. “We are going to put real teeth on this.”

 

 

The draft regs are posted on Gotham Schools, and I have offered the State Ed ”guidance.”

 

Will the dynamic duo, Tisch/Steiner, begin to restore the “platinum” reputation of New York State, or the “manipulate the data” lessons of the Klein years?

 

We’re keeping our fingers crossed.