Follow Me On Twitter!

I've been getting more active on Twitter lately, especially in light of Campbell Brown's assault on due process. If you'd like to follow me--and who wouldn't?--my Twitter name is @accountabletalk. I promise to stick it to the ed deformers, and you're invited to watch!

Alleged Perv Walks

For an excellent point of view on the Randi Weingarten/Campbell Brown duel on Twitter, you should read NYC Educator's piece on the dust-up. If you haven't been following it, what happened, briefly, was this:

Campbell Brown, formerly of CNN, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, basically accusing teachers unions of protecting sexual predators. Randi Weingarten jumped into the fray to defend teachers, claiming that even teachers who are accused of sexual infractions are entitled to due process, and can certainly be removed if arrested or if an arbitrator rules the against a teacher. Ms. Brown claims that due process is "protecting" sexual predators, and that teachers should be summarily fired if accused in order to protect children.

One issue that came up in the debate is that Campbell Brown failed to disclose in her piece that her husband, Dan Senor, is on the board of StudentsFirstNY--an organization run by Michelle Rhee.

A cynic might believe that Ms. Brown has an agenda here because of her conflict of interest, but she eventually came clean and admitted that she should have disclosed her close ties to such an staunchly anti-teacher group.

So, who is right? Normally, I would side with Randi on this one, as I believe everyone deserves due process. But recently I heard a case of perverted behavior with a child that can not be ignored in a discussion such as this. This kind of sick behavior must be punished, and I am sure Ms. Brown and Ms. Rhee would agree.

The case involves a teacher who allegedly groped a 16 year old girl. The police recorded a phone call from this teacher apologizing to the girl for what happened. The case was investigated by the police, who declined to prosecute. In the end, the teacher reportedly paid a settlement to the girl to end the matter. As bad as this case was, yet another accusation surfaced against this teacher. A student again complained of inappropriate behavior by this teacher, although she later recanted. Nevertheless, in light of the first settlement paid, coupled with a subsequent allegation of similar misconduct, we should in this case agree with Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown that this teacher needs to lose his job and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near young girls.

Oh, wait. My bad. It wasn't a teacher against whom these allegations were leveled. It was a politician, namely Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento.

The husband of Michelle Rhee.

I'm sure that any moment now, we can expect Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown to call for the ouster of Kevin Johnson as mayor. After all, although none of the charges were substantiated and no charges filed, I'm sure they would agree that we can't allow a little thing like due process stand in the way of protecting our children.

Right, Michelle and Campbell?

Hello?

Note to Lori Wheal: Teaching is its own Career Path

Lori Wheal, member of Asshats for Education (A4E), regaled us today with the sorrowful tale of why she is leaving the classroom. In typical Asshat style, she tells her tale of woe while informing us--repeatedly--what a wonderful teacher she is and what a shame it is to lose her. She tells us she is a great teacher "by all measures". She lumps herself in with the "irreplaceable" teachers the city loses every year. She talks about being in the Master Teacher program, and refers to herself as a Master Teacher at every conceivable opportunity. No, really. She uses the title on LinkedIn and on Twitter. She even got NY1 to refer to her that way.

I don't know Ms. Wheal at all, but I do know that people who feel the need to toot their own horns all the time are usually the weakest and most insecure teachers.

So what's causing Ms. Wheal to leave and put the entire NYC school system in jeopardy of imminent collapse? Well, she was (as you may have heard) a Master Teacher at a turnaround school, and now that position has been eliminated because those schools will not be closed. This has left poor Master Teacher Wheal hopeless, as her precious "career ladder" has been yanked out from under her. Clearly, she has no option but to leave the system, because despite her Master Teacher credentials, she no longer has any intention of teaching children and wants to turn to education policy.

Maybe there's a way to introduce Master Teacher Wheal to Ruben Brosbe, another Asshat who had no trouble telling everyone else how to teach but headed for the hills when there was real teaching to be done.

I've got news for the boo-hoo-ing Asshats like Master Teacher Wheal: Teaching is its own career path. If you have gone into teaching because you hope one day to run a school district, you are in the wrong profession. If telling other teachers how wonderful you are is more important to you than getting in front of kids and doing the day in, day out work of actually educating children, you are in the wrong profession.

I may not know as much as Master Teacher Wheal; after all, I have only been teaching for more than twice as long as she has. But I do know that getting a gig in a turnaround school with a nifty title doesn't make you a master teacher.

What makes you a master teacher is dedication to those children in the classroom. It's sticking it out even when the going gets tough. It's being dedicated to teaching as a career and not looking at it as a stepping stone to greater things for your own advancement. It's knowing that every year in the classroom teaches you something you can use the next year, and the next.

If you go into education with the view that being a classroom teacher is the bottom rung of the ladder, you are a disgrace to the profession and you should leave.

That means you, Master Teacher Wheal.

Don't let the door hit you on the asshat on the way out.

A New Alternative to Merit Pay

In keeping with current trends, a writer for the Atlantic, who is not an educator, wrote about an idea hatched by a bunch of professors (who teach students who want to be in attendance) to increase teacher performance.

In short, the idea is this: Merit pay doesn't work, so let's punish teachers who don't "perform" (i.e., get the test scores the government wants) by giving them incentives at the beginning of the year and taking them back if students don't perform on standardized tests.

You can see how brilliant this is. The study, run by a co-author of Freakonomics and others, offered teachers either $8000 up front, or $4000 up front with the promise of more money if their students excelled and (here's the brilliant part) a promise that the 4k would have to be paid back if the students didn't do as well as hoped. The idea is that teachers would respond better to the fear of losing money than they would to merit pay. This is called "loss aversion". The authors claim this will work based upon their exhaustive study of a whopping 150 teachers whom they claim did better when threatened with the loss of income. The study is referenced in the article, but unfortunately the link leads not to the promised study, but a NY Times article on layoffs. One can assume that the author lost some pay for that boneheaded move.

Of course, if this works, loss aversion could be the new thing in ed reform. Why stop at money, though? Sure, teachers would hate losing salary, but bigger incentives would surely lead to bigger increases. Perhaps we should start lopping off the fingers of teachers who do poorly on standardized exams. Score in the upper quartile, and you get to keep your digits. Scoring in the middle would cost you, let's say, a pinky. The bottom quartile could lose a thumb or two (if I recall, this type of loss aversion has been successful in getting gamblers to repay their debts, as well). Not only would this incentivize teachers to work harder, but it would serve the dual purpose of giving parents a way to judge the effectiveness of teachers. ("What do you mean, Johnny, that everyone calls Mr. Talk 'Lefty'"?)

Of course, NYC and the UFT are already ahead of the curve. They're working on implementing a new "loss aversion" system based upon the value-added methodology. In this, if you score poorly for two consecutive years, you will lose not 4000 dollars, but your career, your salary, and a good portion of whatever pension you might have earned over decades of service.

In many ways, losing fingers seems like quite the bargain in comparison, so I hope we implement that instead. But even if we do, I'll resign before I lose all my fingers. I want to make sure I keep at least one to give to the mayor, Michael Mulgrew, and that idiot from Freakonomics.

Making "Stupid" Official Education Policy

When you read the Texas GOP's platform, you might understandably think you are reading a piece from the satirical website "The Onion". Sadly, you would be mistaken.

The Daily Kos points out that the platform promotes some of the more common but wacky GOP talking points, such as privatizing Social Security and gay bashing. But they also slipped in something that even the GOP has yet dared to broach.

They want schools to stop teaching kids to think.

Yep...it's right there:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

In other words, the Texas GOP is saying, "We gotta keep them durn schools from edumacatin' our children. If we let the young'uns learn how to think, next thing you know they might believe Adam and Eve didn't ride dinosaurs!"

We shouldn't be surprised, really. The entire education "reform" movement has, as its primary unspoken goal, an eventual dumbing down of our kids. Teach them literature? Screw that--we have the Common Core! Teach them to analyze what they read? No way---we have tests to bubble in and they'd better get those bubbles right or teachers will get fired!

Is this kind of institutionalized stupidity coming our way? Don't kid yourself--it's already here. Charter schools are mostly test prep mills, and our public schools are not far behind (yes, I know the charters claim to be public schools, but I have the critical thinking skills to know they are not). The Common Core wants our kids to read almost nothing other than boring non-fiction because literature contains ideas. Writing portions of exams reward students who simply regurgitate what they have read and penalize original thought because it can't be found "in the text".

While Barack Obama is no friend of teachers, I shudder to think what will happen to education should the republicans gain control of the White House. Texas has long "led the way" in education because of the stranglehold they've gained over textbook publishers. Would Mitt Romney make stupidity official education policy? I have no doubt of it. The GOP has long been a party that embraces stupidity--think G.W. Bush, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin.

"Stupid" would be the new smart. On the plus side, you could ride a government subsidized T Rex in a Jesus themed amusement park. The choice is yours.

How To Spend Your Teachers Choice Bonanza

This blog (i.e., me) has always had a bug up its ass about Teacher's Choice. I hate the program. I won't rehash all my arguments here; if you are interested, you can read my past rantings about this ridiculous program here. Suffice it to say that my main argument against TC is that classrooms should be adequately supplied at all times--Mayor4Life would never dream of running any of his businesses without supplies, so why would he run schools that way?

Of course, this is a mayor who is trying to install a room air conditioner in his chauffeured SUV because he hates getting into a hot vehicle, while teachers and 1.1 million students sweat out a prolonged heat wave.

As you are probably aware, Teacher's Choice went from $260 a year at its high point, down to $150, then $110, until it was finally eliminated. At its height, the program was woefully inadequate; at its low point, it was a slap in the face to teachers and students alike.

Now, according to Gotham Schools, Teacher's Choice is making a comeback. The City Council is going to give NYC teachers a whopping $40 a year to supply our classrooms. So if you have 100 students a year, as I typically have, you will receive 40 cents per child.

I spent more than that on candy for my students for the last day of school.

The total spent on this failed program will be 3.75 million. Compare that to the 900 million that the city spent on computer contractors last year. Obviously, what this city cares about is making sure that the pockets of business people are lined with cash, while teachers' pockets remain empty. 

Here's what I plan to do with the money, and I urge you to do the same. Buy a ream of paper, a box of envelopes, some mailing labels, and 40 stamps. Then write a letter to Mayor4Life telling him how insulting it is that he refuses to support public schools with proper supplies. Print 40 copies and 40 mailing labels, and send one copy of the letter to City Hall every week starting in September and every week for the 40 weeks of the school year. If every teacher did this, we could dump 75,000 letters on the mayor's desk every week for a year.

I can't think of a better way to thank him.

School's Out