Black on Education

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Has the Reform Movement Jumped the Shark?

You might think it's just wishful thinking, but I believe the "reform" movement may have shot its bolt. There have been not one, but two, Oprah shows in one week lauding the deform movement. The long awaited (or dreaded) propaganda flick "Waiting for Superman" finally arrived in theaters, accompanied by countless sound bytes about how sad it all was on the nightly news. The Education Nation programming pimping the deform movement ran for a week on MSNBC, with follow-up shows on the Sunday news programs.

You'd think that with all the bad press teachers have gotten lately, we'd be sprinting down the streets a step ahead of angry mobs of parents with dripping knives. But for the most part, nothing has changed. Most people are still happy with their local schools. Voters in DC ousted Mayor Fenty, which virtually guarantees that Michelle Rhee will soon be picked up by the slack of her pants and sent skidding down the pavement by Vincent Gray. Charters have underperformed public schools both in NYC and nationally, and they even got lower scores on their progress reports despite the fact that Joel Klein, deformer extraordinaire, put his stamp of approval on those evaluations.

So, have the deformers jumped the shark? If Oprah, movies, unprecedented press coverage, and tens of millions of dollars haven't swayed public opinion, what will? The deformers have created a lot of sound and fury. Let's see whether it signifies anything.

Ow, Canada

Charter schools are the answer. Joel Klein says so. Mayor4Life says so. Arne Duncan says so. Heck, even Oprah says so, so you know it must be true.

Except it isn't. Most charter schools fare about the same as public schools, and 37 percent of them are worse. Klein and Bloomberg have always wriggled around this statistic (didn't these guys used to love data?) by claiming that charters in NYC were a different story. When the revised test scores came out a while back, NYC charters dropped more than public schools. And now, charter schools have fared worse than public schools on the city's very own measure of quality--progress reports. It seems charters scored ten points lower than public schools on a scale of 100 points. It's going to be awfully hard for BloomKlein to put a positive spin on these numbers, considering they created the system themselves.

But surely there were bright lights among the charters, weren't there? Perhaps, but I decided to take a look at the Harlem Children's Zone schools, run by Geoffrey Canada, hero of the film Waiting for Superman. Surely these schools escaped the carnage, with their smaller class sizes and multi-million dollar facilities?

The Promise Academy Charter School got a B.
The Promise Academy II got a C.

My school got a A. And we're one of those nasty "traditional" public schools.

Ow, Canada.

Your Crazy Aunt and Charters

If you watched Education Nation at all, you heard the term "public school" bandied around quite a bit. Charter schools went to great lengths to say that they were, by golly, public schools after all. That they wanted the mantle of the word "public" but not the responsibility was implicit in their clear separation of charters and "traditional" public schools. They used the word "traditional" in the same way your family uses the word "special" to describe your crazy aunt who lives in the attic and thinks she's a goat.

Let's get it right. Charter schools are NOT public in any real sense. About the only way in which they could be considered public is the fact that they drain public money with their construction and lavish salaries for the likes of Eva Moskowitz.

Libraries are true public institutions. They are paid for by public monies, like charters, but that's where the similarities end. To get into a public library, you don't have to be selected in a lottery. Your mother doesn't have to apply. You don't even have to know how to read. Compare that to the Harlem Children's Zone, where you not only have to apply, but if you can't read well enough, they can kick out an entire grade.

Public buildings, like the stadiums Mayor4Life spent billions on (except not his billions) are more like charters. Take Citifield. It was paid for largely with public money. And while you have to win a lottery to get into a charter, you may need to win the lottery to afford a ticket to see the Mets. Yet, despite charging exorbitant rates, it is true that when you buy a ticket to see a ballgame, you are entitled to get in. It matters not whether you speak English, or whether you are considered disabled. That ticket guarantees you a spot.

Now for charters. They are paid for by public money, true, but most students can't get in. You can't buy a ticket to gain entrance. If you can't speak English or you have some learning disability, they rarely will take you. Imagine the lawsuit if the New York Public Library or Citifield refused entrance to non-English speakers or the learning disabled. People would be outraged if such a thing happened in a taxpayer supported institution. Nevertheless, charters manage to get away with such blatant discrimination.

I teach in a real public school. Students from everywhere are welcome regardless of what language they speak or what obstacles they face. No ticket needed. Not even a lottery ticket.

Perhaps it's time we started looking at charters as the "special" aunt of public education. But let's not tell them that they're not goats. We could use the milk.

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An Ex-Hooker Makes the Case for Tenure

By now you've probably read about Melissa Petro, the teacher who used to be a hooker. Mayor Bloomberg is trying to use this case as another opportunity to attack tenure by trying to yank it from this teacher. Oddly, he actually makes the case for tenure in doing so.

Most of us find prostitution morally wrong, and it certainly is illegal in New York. Still, here we have the case of a woman who climbed out of that sordid life and earned her way into the teaching profession. Nevertheless, Mayor4Life would seemingly prefer to fire her and perhaps cause her to return to that profession rather than starve. I'm sure the mayor feels she deserves it; after all, he himself has never done anything wrong. For example, when he was accused of sexual remarks toward a co-worker, he settled the suit without having to admit guilt, so we know his hands were clean even if his mouth may have needed washing out with soap. And of course, Bloomberg's company was accused of discriminating against 80 women as well, but none of that is his fault, either. Accountability is for the little folk.

What we have here is the case of a woman who had a sketchy past, but who managed to get her life together and turn in at least three satisfactory years for the DOE. As such, she earned tenure. Now Bloomberg wants to take it away. Let's imagine what will happen if he succeeds.

Have you ever smoked pot in the past? Had a beer while underage? Those things are just as illegal as prostitution, and if Bloomberg somehow gets the right to pull tenure from teachers who may have engaged in some illegal activity in the past, then the floodgates are open.

Where does it stop? Can you lose tenure because you once got a speeding ticket? How about if you got arrested at a peaceful protest of the Iraq war? Failed to curb your dog? Smoked a cigarette in a public place? Worn too short a skirt? Cheated on your third grade spelling test?

Without tenure, the mayor, chancellor, or your principal would be able to fire you for any of those reasons, or for no reason at all. That is why tenure is needed.

Ms. Petro was certainly unwise for letting her past become public. But if her tenure is taken away for her past behavior--if she is denied due process--then everyone becomes a target. Except the mayor, of course. He has the money to bury his past.

Let he who is without sin, or sexual harassment lawsuits, cast the first stone.

The Other Shoes Drop

You saw this coming, didn't you? After a week long orgy of teacher bashing, including the Oprah show, Waiting for Superman, and the ridiculous Education Nation hate fest on MSNBC, the other shoes have finally dropped. Having made education a "crisis", politicians are salivating at the opportunity of turning all that ill will to their benefit.

Barack Obama announced his desire to extend the school year by a month. Then Mayor4Life Bloomberg, who doesn't believe in lifetime jobs except for himself, announced that he wants an end to seniority based layoffs and to make getting tenure tougher.

I have a few questions. First, for Obama: Extending the school year immediately adds an extra ten percent to the work year. Does you expect us to work for free, or will you take the money from food stamps like you did when funding Race to the Top?

Now for Bloomberg: You failed miserably last time when trying to change seniority rules, so what makes you think you'll succeed this time? And why all the posturing on tenure when you know damn well that untenured teachers can be fired for any reason as the system now stands?

Obama and Mayor4Life are trotting out the old shock doctrine again. They're trying to manufacture a crisis in education and then propose the "solutions" that they wanted in the first place. Bush used the shock doctrine after 9-11 to invade Iraq despite the fact that they had no WMDs. Now the president and the job-for-life mayor are using a phony educational crisis to implement the "reforms" they wanted all along.

This was predictable. They've used the shock doctrine against us before. See here, here, and here. Fortunately, it has been a failure in the case of seniority, and I think it will fail again.

But that's not enough. It's time to make politicians pay when they try to ruin careers. That includes any politician who would even consider a change to last in first out, as well as Obama himself when 2012 rolls around. We've seen what happens when the union stands on the sidelines as in the last mayoral election. The UFT should urge all teachers to stay home from the polls in 2012 if Obama doesn't change his tune pronto, and to actively oppose state legislators who support a change in either tenure or seniority.

Stats on the Oprah Infomercials

If you watched the two Oprah infomercials for Waiting for Superman this week, you might have noticed the following stats. If not, I'll lay them out for you.

• Total number of teachers on the panel: 0
• Total number of public school parents on the panel: 0
• Total number of billionaires on the panel: 3
• Total number of billions of the panelists: 60
• Total years of teaching experience of all the "experts": 2
• Total minutes devoted to defending unions: 1
• Total minutes devoted to humping charter schools: 119

I think that says it all.