The Worst Person on the Planet

Arne Duncan was the first to say it. He said that Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing that happened" to education in New Orleans. So what, he seemed to be implying, if a bunch of people died? They were mostly poor black people, and it's important to implement your charter school wet dreams no matter what. If some minorities have to drown, well, that's the price ol' Arne was willing to pay.

You'd think everyone would have learned that it isn't a good idea to root for death and destruction in order to implement your "reform" plans. And you'd really think that no one would be stupid enough to echo Arne Duncan's idiocy on the tenth anniversary of Katrina.

Enter Kristen McQueary of the Chicago Tribune, with her knuckles dragging. She wrote an Op Ed for the Tribune that looked wistfully back at Katrina, and wished a similar fate on the residents of Chicago. Here's part of what she said:

I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops...That's what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak.

Nice, huh? And she tips her hand in the next paragraph (italics mine):

An underperforming public school system saw a complete makeover. A new schools chief, Paul Vallas, designed a school system with the flexibility of an entrepreneur. No restrictive mandates from the city or the state. No demands from teacher unions to abide. Instead, he created the nation's first free-market education system.

Yep. That's the giveaway. Katrina was fine--as long as it did away with those nasty teachers' unions and put the "free market" (i.e., hedge fund billionaires) in command.

This is why our unions should not be dealing--ever--with the proponents of "reform", like Duncan, Gates, Eva Moskowitz, or Campbell Brown. They don't give a damn what happens to people, including the kids they claim to be "saving". To them, anything goes as long as they can break the back of the unions and scoop up the lion's share of educational dollars for themselves.

Kristen McQueary offered a non-apology for her tirade, claiming that she was engaging in "metaphor and hyperbole", and basically that the great unwashed really didn't understand the point she was making or how she was making it.

No, Ms. McQueary, we know exactly what you were doing. And the reason you didn't offer an apology for your reprehensible words was that you are not sorry you said them.

That makes you the worst person in the world.

Mr. Talk Predicts: Your Guide To 2013

As many of you are aware, I have an uncanny knack of predicting the future of the NYC public schools. I don't wear this fortune teller's hat because it's a babe magnet, you know.

We have an interesting year ahead of us, with a contract to be negotiated, evaluation talks, an outgoing mayor, a union election, and more. Here are some of my prognostications for the new year:

Despite the fact that "Waiting for Superman" failed to influence anyone and "Won't Back Down" earned less money than I currently have in my couch cushions, the reformers will once again try to use entertainment to sway public opinion. Reformers will pick a new genre, as documentaries and fictional movies have failed to click. To that end, StudentsFirst will present "Rhee-formers on Ice", an entertainment extravaganza starring Michelle Rhee as the Ice Queen, who will skate a bloody figure 8 into a senior teacher's chest in the finale. Kevin Johnson will co-star as the uncle no one will let near their children.

The UFT will continue breaking off large chunks of our contract and handing them over, gratis, to the city. Mulgrew will call each of these events a victory, and talk about how glad he is to have a seat at the table, even as he pulls the chair out from under teachers.

Teacher's Choice will survive, but in a new format. Rather than giving each teacher the current whopping $45 a year for classroom supplies, the city will finally increase that amount to $1000 per teacher. Unfortunately, that money will come directly from teacher salaries. Michael Mulgrew will promote this idea because "teachers already spend more than $1000 dollar a year each, on average. Making it official gives us leverage with companies like Staples, who want our business." The UFT will declare this a victory for teachers.


Despite no contract, a sellout evaluation agreement, and a loss of vacation days due to Sandy, Mulgrew will win re-election as UFT president. Only 25% of UFT members will vote. The other 75% will express surprise that there was even an election. This will be the only victory that the UFT will declare in 2013 that will actually be a victory, albeit not for the teachers themselves.

In a surprise move, Anthony Weiner will throw his hat into the mayoral race. He will immediately grab his hat back when he realizes it was the only thing covering his genitals. His campaign slogan, "Go Big with Weiner!" will be a huge hit with bloggers everywhere. The UFT, in keeping with their history of supporting wieners in elections, grants him an endorsement. Weiner will win the election and Mulgrew will declare that his endorsement gave Weiner the momentum he needed to thrust himself to victory, causing the city to come together.

To no one's surprise, this blog will continue making Weiner jokes in 2013.

Mayor Weiner will choose erstwhile Gotham Schools blogger and celebrated E4E asshat Ruben Brosbe as Chancellor. He will cite Ruben's extensive experience at not achieving tenure as a major plus. "None of our three previous chancellors had any real experience in the classroom," Weiner will say. "Brosbe actually taught and failed to achieve tenure, which will inspire future teachers not to expect tenure, either."

Although there will be no new teacher's contract in 2013, it will be a year of innovative deals, such as giving in on teacher evaluations in exchange for a promise of 'economic credit" in the event a contract is ever signed. This will lead to a pinky swear on the Danielson Framework, a cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die ATR agreement, a hand-to-God paperwork reduction agreement, and a swear-on-my-mom's-life no charter school pledge. Mulgrew will hail all these innovations as a victory for the union. In a shocking turn of events, Mayor Bloomberg will reveal that he had his fingers crossed the whole time. Anthony Weiner's "No Take Backs" pledge will turn the tide in his favor and sweep him into the mayor's office.



Some quick predictions to round things out:

• At least one of your admins will be a dick.
• Cathie Black's emails to Bloomberg will finally be released.  The most damaging revelation will be that she referred to the mayor as "Poopsie".
• Reformers will claim that everything they do is for the kids, even if they propose tying students in potato sacks and beating them with ball peen hammers.
• Eva Moskowitz will begin planting flags in the public schools she wants to take over and claiming them for "The Country of Moskovia".
• Evan Stone and Sydney Morris will marry, but only so they can spawn more members for E$E.
• Diane Ravitch will continue to defend public schools and sound educational policy by typing more on her blog and Twitter feed than seems humanly possible. It will be revealed that she also types with her feet.
• Arne Duncan will bring phonics back to schools, but only after he gets tired of everyone pronouncing his name "Arn" instead of "Arnie".
• Mayor Bloomberg will continue to increase class sizes while pushing a law to reduce the size of a "large fries" to whatever can fit in a urine sample cup. 
• The mayor's push to eliminate guns will take up a larger and larger amount of his time. This will result in dramatic improvement in the schools.
• Michael Mulgrew will declare all of the above a victory for teachers.

Add your own predictions to the comments, and happy new year!

The Best Data Money Can't Buy

Some days, it must suck to be Bill Gates. All those billions, and the one thing he can't change is facts.

As it turns out, Tom Kane, former NJ governor and current member of Gates' education reform team, headed a study called "School Choice, School Quality, and Post-Secondary Attainment".  Even the title of the study would lead you to believe this was a gold mine for ed deformers. Quite the contrary.

As Anthony Cody of EdWeek reported, the study actually supports the status quo that the deformers are attacking. Student who were moved from lower quality to higher quality schools showed almost no difference in performance. It turns out that you can't change student performance just by changing schools and testing, testing, testing. You can, however, improve student performance by starting schooling early and getting kids off to a good start in reading (gee, who'd have thunk it?)

Cody's blog post also points out that the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system, winner of this year's Broad Prize, actually stunk up the joint. The system, much touted by Arne Duncan and his ilk, "...failed dismally in meeting its academic targets for the 2010-2011 school year. Emily Dalesio of the Associated Press wrote on July 21 that “preliminary schoolhouse data show fewer than three of 10 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools met the targets set for them in the academic year that concluded in June.”"


Other than on EdWeek, I haven't seen anyone discuss these revelations. Maybe much of the education media, supported by the largesse of Bill Gates, saw fit not to bite the hand that feeds it. But make no mistake about it--this is big news. Yet another of the deformers magic bullets, school choice, has been shown to be a pipe dream. 


Even Bill Gates, as rich as he is, isn't entitled to his own facts.

Two Teachers and a Microphone

There are no words. Just watch.

Duncan Duh-Nut

People can legitimately disagree on the best way to fix schools. Increasingly, the solutions have been more "nuclear" in nature--closing down schools instead of fixing them, firing teachers, eliminating tenure, and so forth. I agree with none of these solutions, as I believe schools can actually be fixed relatively easily given the political will.

As much as I disagree with the education deformers, none so far has suggested blowing up the schools and starting over. It seems that this is where we might be headed, as Arne Duncan placed his stamp of approval on Hurricaine Katrina as the catalyst of improvement in the New Orleans schools system, saying:

"I've spent a lot of time in New Orleans and this is a tough thing to say but I'm going to be honest. The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better."

Good thing Duncan wasn't education secretary during 9/11, or he might have said that Osama Bin Laden didn't do enough to really wake up the NYC school system. Good ole Arne probably sees the earthquake in Haiti as an opportunity to improve the schools there as well. I'd suggest sending him there but those poor people have suffered enough.

It's time for this clown to go.

Rock / Me \ Hard Place

My child has always gone to NYC public schools. Now that she's getting a little older, I'm seriously considering pulling her out of her zoned school and putting her in private school. I wasn't going to blog about this, but I figure I should in the interest of full disclosure, especially now that Arne Duncan has admitted that he wouldn't send his kids to urban public schools, either. In fact, he chose his neighborhood so that he wouldn't have to send his children to the DC public schools. Yet, you can bet your bottom dollar that Duncan will tout Rhee as the example for the nation to follow while he sends his own children to school in Arlington, VA.

I was really torturing myself over this issue, but if urban public schools aren't good enough for Arne Duncan's children, why should I send mine there?

Now, let me state what should be obvious. As a parent of a public school child for many years, I salute the job the teachers and school have done, especially given Klein's whacked out curriculum, if you can call it that. My child's education has been superlative, primarily because of excellent teachers and (pardon me while I pat my back) caring parents. But as my child gets older, I have several concerns about letting her continue in public school:

• Class size: Her class size has grown all throughout her years and will mushroom next year.
• Lack of Discipline: I hear about what some of the kids in her school get away with, and that's just what she's willing to tell me about. As a teacher, I see worse every day, and I work in what would be considered a very good school.
• Non-stop Test Prep: I want my child to be able to do more than answer increasingly easy questions with a #2 pencil. She is a top reader but she often gets grouped with slower kids and I am tired of it.

Now that I've been in the system a while and am making decent money, I've explored my options, and I found a great private school that I can afford. I hate to do it, but I feel like I have no choice. This scares me because, in truth, my choices are fairly good. Most parents in NYC have no choice at all but to send their kids to their zoned schools.

Don't get me wrong--I am NOT in favor of so-called 'school choice'. I am in favor of fixing every single public school--every single damn one--so that no parent has to be concerned about where his or her kids go to school. Why should anyone, even Arne Duncan, lose a moment's sleep over this?

Trading Time for Money

As you sit there enjoying your well-deserved spring break, don't forget that Arne Duncan wants to take it away from you. Displaying a unique knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong place at the wrong time, Duncan suggested to an audience of 400 kids that they should pretty much go to school all the time. He said:

"I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short, and our school year is too short." He went on: "You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, 11, 12 months a year."

If schools are open seven days a week and twelve months a year, doesn't that rather suggest that they might be open every single day of the year? Perhaps Mr. Duncan, like Mr. Scrooge, will give kids the day off for Christmas, considering that Christmas trees are not allowed in public schools.

The students he was addressing gave a very telling response: Instead of boos, the AP reports, the students offered Duncan "bored stares."

Every teacher knows those stares. They often come after lunch, which can come as early as 10AM at some schools, when students no longer feel like working. Tacking a few more hours on per day and few more days per week is going to send those bored stare statistics through the roof. The fact is that for the vast majority of students, additional school will do absolutely no good. Most students have difficulty staying alert during the school day as it is. For many students who are borderline, additional time will actually have the reverse effect, causing them to decide not to attend school at all.

Mr. Duncan also seems unaware that many inner city children have other obligations besides school. Many work in their parents' business or take care of siblings. And there is something to be said for just letting children be children, and not turning them into miniature Arne Duncans.

To be sure, Mr. Duncan has risen pretty high in the education world. I wonder how many days he went to school per year? I'm betting it's about 180, and yet somehow he managed to become secretary of education. Most of my colleagues and I have master's degrees and we all had summer vacations--I wonder how that could be? Even Barack Obama, who has been brainwashed into believing this garbage, became president of the Harvard Law Review and subsequently POTUS while attending the same type of public schools we have today.

Rather than do the hard work of trying to improve public education and public schools with meaningful reforms that empower teachers and involve parents, Obama and his team think we need to do more--much more--of the same old crap. It won't work.

So all you teachers out there: enjoy your breaks while you still have them. Even though we have a contract that stipulates the number of days we must work, it won't be long before Randi trades time for money in her continuing efforts to appease politicians and grab power. Don't forget the 2005 contract when she sold us out for a measly 6 percent and increased our working day. Me, I hope to retire before that day comes.