Diane Ravitch Brings Sanity to the Clinton vs. Sanders Debate

If you care about education, you should vote for the Democratic nominee. If you care about the future of the United States, you should vote for the Democratic nominee. If you care about children, income inequality, the environment, the rights of women and LGBT people, sensible gun control, Roe v. Wade, expanded health care, keeping nuclear weapons out of North Korea and other nations, and other issues issues that have moved this country forward, you should vote for the Democratic nominee.

If you care about unions, including your own, you should vote for the Democratic nominee. If you have any doubt that Trump will eviscerate unions, just remember his call to eliminate the federal minimum wage.

I have said numerous times on this blog that I support Clinton, but should Bernie win, I will support him.

Unfortunately, there are few vocal Bernie supporters who feel the same way (I speak here only about the most vocal--already, 72% of Bernie supporters say they will vote for Clinton. That will increase should she win the nomination, just as Hillary supporters moved to Obama in 2008).

Look at the list of Supreme Court nominees that Trump has put forth. Nan Aron, of the Alliance for Justice Action Council, said: “Their opinions demonstrate open hostility to Americans’ rights and liberties, including reproductive justice and environmental, consumer and worker protections. They have ruled consistently in favor of the powerful over everyone else. They would move the needle even further to the right on the Supreme Court.”

Is there any doubt they would destroy unions and teaching as we know it?

Diane Ravitch has emerged as a voice of reason in this debate. She has questions about both candidates and their positions on education, but she clearly understands what is at stake here. While refusing to endorse either candidate, she said:

The overwhelming majority of denunciations are directed at Hillary. Some of our readers are as vicious towards her as Donald Trump is. If you read the comments, you would think that Donald Trump is much to be preferred over Hillary because she is allegedly dishonest, corrupt, a war-monger, a tool of Wall Street, etc. The demonization of Hillary is often times over-the-top, angry, and hateful.  

This internecine warfare is not admirable. It should stop. It helps Trump. One candidate will emerge from the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. It will be the candidate who gets the requisite number of delegates. It will be either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. When the convention chooses the candidate, I will support that candidate.

Amen to that. Neither candidate is perfect, but either is far, far preferable to Trump, on virtually every issue important to the 99%. 

Sure, you can vote for whomever you please. Or you can choose not to vote at all. That is your right. But the reality is that there will be only two nominees with a chance to in the presidency. Voting third party, sitting out the election, or voting for Trump as some kind of twisted "protest" vote will only decrease the mandate of the Democratic candidate should he or she win. 

This isn't about voting for "the lesser or two evils". It is about voting for the candidate who will better defend the rights we have struggled for over the last 50 years. That this will be the Democratic nominee should be without question for anyone who values liberal ideals.

This isn't about "ideological purity". There's nothing pure or noble in refusing to vote for the nominee who best represents progressive ideals and has a realistic shot at the presidency.

Diane Ravitch gets it. I hope you do, too.

Reign of Error: A Short Review

Diane Ravitch was kind enough to send me and a number of my fellow education bloggers an advance copy of her outstanding new book, "Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools". My review of the book should appear shortly in another, far larger venue under my real name.

Rather than rehash what I said there, I'd like to just briefly recommend this book to teachers everywhere. The book is a thorough excoriation of the reform movement. Starting with who the major players are and how they stand to benefit financially from their "reforms", Ms. Ravitch unravels, one by one, all the myths spun by the corporate raiders looking to cash in on public education dollars. She lays bare the truth about all the favorite tropes of the reform movement, such as test scores, the achievement gap, PISA, high school and college graduation rates,
merit pay, and many others.

Readers of this blog will likely delight in a chapter dedicated to the self-aggrandizing Michelle Rhee. Ms. Ravitch dubs her the "face of corporate reform" and then proceeds to slap that face with a broad hand. She exposes Rhee's deceptions about her alleged test score triumphs and the devastation wreaked by Rhee's IMPACT teacher evaluation system.

Perhaps even more important than her expose of the reformers themselves, Ravitch points the way forward. She devotes 100 pages to proposed solutions to what ails public schools, all of which make perfect sense. From pre-natal care to wraparound services, Ms. Ravitch offers common sense solutions that move us away from the blame game so beloved by reformers. She clearly sees teachers as part of the solution, rather than the problem.

I love the fact that his book is coming out at the same time that Bill de Blasio seems poised to become mayor of NYC as the "anti-Bloomberg". It may just be that the pendulum, which has so long swung towards the reformers, may at last be swinging its way back to teachers, students, parents, and other real stakeholders in the education system.

If the reform movement sputters and dies, as most teachers hope it will, we will have no one to thank more than Ms. Ravitch, who has stood up for teachers when most others, including so called democrats such as Obama, have willingly abandoned us in favor of the elite.

You should buy her book, read her blog, and thank your lucky stars that someone of her stature is on our side and the side of the children we teach.

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!

A Response to Anti-Union Teacher, Matt Polazzo

Matt Polazzo, a teacher at Stuyvesant, recently appeared in the Daily News promoting the Success Charter run by Eva Moskowitz. I blogged about it here. Mr. Polazzo is also the person who suggested that we should rip up the union contract in an opinion piece in the same Daily News. He emailed me his side of this issue. I will not post his email here, but I have chosen to post my response to him, which follows below. The first paragraph refers to Mr. Polazzo's dismay that I blog anonymously while calling myself Accountable:


The irony in my anonymity, if any, lies in the fact that I am a tenured teacher whose views might end up getting him fired if his name became known. I have told the truth about Bloomberg, Klein, Black, Walcott, and other power brokers in the DOE. They do monitor my blog, and it would be foolish for me to disclose my identity. Tenure is supposed to protect me and give me the freedom of speech that an educator should have, but it does not. I have heard of at least one blogger who was U rated after her identity became known. She is now out of the system. You would have it that tenured teachers can not be removed. That is nonsense. I know outstanding teachers who have run afoul of admins and were fired for their troubles. This includes union leaders who were fired for their involvement with the UFT.

You took a poke at this blog, alleging that few people read it. While "few" is subjective, you can see that I have 72 followers, and I have received more than a half a million hits. One post of mine reached 150,000 readers. Quite a few of your own students have been here, if you care to read the comments in the posts that feature you as their subject. Perhaps you're just hoping that no one hears how real teachers feel about your blatant betrayal of your colleagues and your union?

You asked me quite a few questions about my personal life, which I decline to answer, once again for the sake of anonymity. You seem to think using your name makes you more courageous than me, but followers of Kim Jong-un who praise their dear leader aren't showing courage. You are likewise showing no courage by sticking up for the billionaires who would steal the jobs and pensions of hard working teachers.

In your letter, you claim to be anti-union. Don't you find it in the least hypocritical that you rake in the benefits of union protection while trying to tear it down? As a 14 year teacher, presumably with a master's plus 30, you earn at least $80K a year. Do you think anyone would be paying you that without your union negotiating on your behalf? When you go to the doctor, are you thankful for the health benefits that the contract affords you, or do you wish you could rip up the contract and pay your medical bills yourself?

Exactly how much do you think Eva Moskowitz would be paying you? What job protections would you have? Do you think you'd perform as well teaching poor inner city children as you seem to teaching the brightest kids in NY at Stuyvesant? If you are so anti-union, quit it and go work for Eva. You want to talk the talk, then walk the walk. Then I'd have respect for your position, if not agreement.

Speaking of which, it's extremely easy for you to ask for the contract to be ripped up when you teach at a school like Stuyvesant. Those kids are self motivated, and even if you sucked as a teacher, they would still do quite well. Why don't you try teaching in a high poverty, gang-riddled neighborhood as I did for 20 years and see how well you do. Perhaps that experience might make you more aware of the issues involved in good teaching. Perhaps then you might appreciate the job protections that your union affords you, especially when your class is NOT a group of Harvard bound seniors, but a bunch of kids who are lucky if they manage to scrape through high school.

You claim that the article in the News, in which you vilify your union and your fellow teachers, was not submitted by you. So what? You clearly gave your consent once you found out that they wanted to publish the piece. Was your 15 minutes of fame worth selling out your colleagues?

Regarding your daughter winning the lottery for Eva's school: You claim it was fortuitous that the reporter for the Daily News just happened to be there when you were and just happened to ask you questions that showed Eva in a good light. Perhaps so, but this is the same newspaper that used you once before to strike out at your colleagues. It's entirely reasonable for anyone to be suspicious when you suddenly appear in the same paper, lauding a charter school while you work for the public schools.

What concerns me most about your efforts to sabotage the UFT is that you have no skin in the game, and that you offer no solutions. Your skin is safe in Stuyvesant--as I said, whether you are a good teacher or not, your students will perform. More concerning is your lack of solutions. You advocate throwing out the UFT contract but say nothing about what would take its place (if anything). How many teachers might lose their jobs unjustly if the contract disappeared tomorrow? How many excellent teachers would be fired because they could be replaced by two newbies? Maybe if your job was at stake, as well as your ability to provide for your daughter, you might think twice before advocating that others be fired without due process.

Finally, you claim that education is in "crisis" and that we need to do something. I suggest you read Diane Ravitch, who knows more about this than anyone else in America. She would tell you that American students are actually doing better than ever in the PISA tests, and that if we adjust for poverty of our students, we perform as well as any nation in the world. So the "crisis" is a crisis of poverty, and you will never solve it by attacking teachers, any more than Bush solved the problem of terrorism attacking Iraq. You solve a problem by attacking the things that cause it, and not by randomly attacking the easiest target.

Your attack on the union was Bush-like, and bush league. If you really want to help children, you'll advocate for an end to poverty, and not take a sledge hammer to your colleagues.

I will be posting this letter (but not your letter to me) on my blog, in the hopes that my tiny audience will read it. I once again extend you an offer to guest blog and attempt to refute anything I have said here.

I do appreciate you writing to me, and I hope you decide that you would like to respond publicly.

Yours,

He who shall remain nameless

Bloomberg's Alter-Ego

As if Mayor4life's ego wasn't large enough already, he created "Bloomberg View", because as you know, the world simply couldn't revolve without getting more of the midget mayor's opinions shoved down its throat. Initiating this week's gag reflex is Jonathan Alter, an ostensibly independent writer who just happens to echo every major talking point of Bloomberg's education deform agenda. It's quite fortuitous that Alter holds all the same beliefs as the man who writes his paychecks. Who'd have thunk it.

I don't know what Alter's price was for attacking teachers, but I'd say whatever it was, Bloomie got rooked, because Alter's anti-Diane Ravitch diatribe is an exercise in sloppy writing and faulty logic.

First, Alter regurgitates Bloomberg's mantra on seniority:

Amid grim news about budget cuts, the year brought new awareness that relying on seniority alone in determining teacher layoffs is mindless. It’s like saying that if the Chicago Bulls wanted to cut costs, they should start by releasing Derrick Rose, the NBA’s MVP, because he has only been in the league for three years.

This is stupid on the face of it. If the Bulls wanted to cut costs, they wouldn't do it by eliminating their players. They want the best team possible, because they know that produces results. Good teams are always a mixture of great veterans and promising rookies. What Bloomberg wants to do is eliminate a good percentage of the players. The correct analogy would be if the Bulls cut 8% of their players to save money and expected the same results as teams playing at full strength.

Alter attacks Ravitch's critique of the Bruce Randolph School in Denver. Its middle school, Ravitch noted, was in the 5th percentile in math and the first percentile in reading and writing. Its ACT scores were well below the state average. Yet Alter claims we should laud this school because it boasts a 97% graduation rate. Apparently, in Alter's world, success is measured by the number of diplomas issued, not by whether those diplomas were earned. Following this logic, we can solve all the education problems in America simply by issuing diplomas to every child, much as the Scarecrow's IQ increased when the Wizard gave him his sheepskin. Pay no attention to the illiterate students behind the curtain.

Alter also claims that "No education reformer has ever challenged the idea that conditions in the home and in the larger society are hugely important." Is he kidding? Just about every education reformer has said that in some form or another. They constantly claim that a great teacher is the most important factor in a child's education, while all the evidence shows that performance is directly linked to a child's circumstances.

Alter claims that Ravitch creates a strawman when she ...'charge(s) that political leaders are trying to prove that “poverty doesn’t matter.”' Actually, I've heard a number of politicians, including Alter's new employer, make that claim. The "no excuses" mantra is the embodiment of that idea. Alter then goes on the create a pretty impressive strawman of his own:

It’s a gross distortion to claim that reformers think charter schools -- a tiny fraction of all public schools -- are the only solution for all the ills of the education system.

I have never heard Ms. Ravitch make that claim. She knows, as we all do, that charters are just one chunk of the wrecking ball aimed at public education. Education deformers have lots of solutions to public eduation: demonizing teachers, busting unions, destroying seniority, closing schools, firing teachers, creating fake grassroots organizations, and controlling the media itself, much as Bloomberg is trying to do by hiring Alter.

Finally, Alter accuses Ravitch of using "selective data to punch holes in the work of good schools and turn reformers into cartoonish right-wingers." In fact, Ravitch was one of the few who acknowledged what teachers already knew was true: That the test scores in states like NY were cooked by a combination of easier, more repetitive tests and lowering of the cut scores. That data is undeniable, as the state itself admitted that the scores were false and re-calibrated them. When they did, it became immediately clear that critics of the reform movement, like Diane Ravitch, were actually correct. The scores in schools that had been held up as models of education reform, such as Geoffrey Canada's HSA, plummeted.

I don't know how much Bloomberg paid to get Alter on his team, but I'd say whatever it was, he got screwed.

Natalie Ravitz Needs SAT Test Prep

I'm not a big fan of test prep, but the new Mistress of Propaganda at the DOE, Natalie Ravitz, may have changed my mind. In her diatribe against Diane Ravitch, Natalie makes the following analogy:

Have our students made enough progress? No. But under our critics' logic, the State's decision to make it harder to achieve a grade of "proficient" means all of the progress City students have made over the years is bogus.
That's like saying Phil Mickelson is a bad golfer if they make the 8th hole at Pebble Beach 50 yards longer, change it from a Par 4 to a Par 3, and he only scores a 4. Oh, and no one told him they were changing it until after he finished his swing, so he's stuck with his Bogey and the label of sub-par.

What actually happened is that the state made their tests easier, not harder as in Ravitz's golf analogy. The state also lowered the number of questions students had to get right to score a 3. So to create an accurate analogy between the state tests and golf, we'd have to say the following:

It's as if they made all the holes at Pebble Beach 50 yards shorter, and added one stoke to par on every hole. That made Phil Mickelsons out of the average duffer.

See, Natalie? It's not so difficult. It's like falling off a sturdy flat surface! No...a log! I meant a log!

The Business Model Files for Chapter 11

I've been meaning to blog about Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, for a while now, but truth be told, I haven't had time to finish it yet. I will say, however, that it is a great read and a real eye opener. You can purchase it here, and I can assure you it's worth the price. In fact, I would have bought the book for Chapter 5 alone. The unassuming chapter title, The Business Model in New York City, hardly does justice to the contents. In it, Ravitch ravages the BloomKlein years, taking us on a misstep by misstep chronological journey through the decline of education in NYC as the Education Mayor attempted to replicate the business model in our schools. I knew most of the things in the chapter, but somehow seeing the litany of mistakes detailed all in one place brought home to me how thoroughly the BloomKlein years have sucked the life out of the public school system.

I bring it up today because two more missteps, largely based on the business model, have taken center stage today. First, it's been reported that the experiment to pay students for better grades has been a colossal failure. The idea was based on the assumption that children would work harder if offered money to do so. It works for all those Wall Street types doesn't it--you know, the ones who get miltimillion dollar bonuses while teachers have to buy #2 pencils so their students can take practice tests? As it turns out, those Wall Street guys got bonuses even when they fared worse than a monkey throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal, and kids did about the same.

In a related business model story, it appears that merit pay for teachers is a bust, too. Despite the fact that merit pay has been pushed since the 1950s, Vanderbilt University's Matthew Springer says, "I think the jury is still out." I don't know about you, but it seems to me that if you can't prove that something works after 50 years, it probably doesn't. Nevertheless, states are scrambling to include merit pay in their Race to the Top applications because they want to snatch up some of the money that Obama has thrown in the air.

The business model doesn't work in a school environment. I know it, Diane Ravitch knows it, and most people with common sense can figure it out. It's time the business model filed for bankruptcy already.

Guessing and Gibberish

Diane Ravitch keeps pounding out the same point about the state tests being dumbed down in order for NY (and other states) to meet the impossible standards of NCLB. Considering that just about everything George Bush did was wrong and stupid, you'd think that NCLB would be revisited. Just sayin'. Anyway, Ravitch thinks that David Steiner, the new state ed. commisioner, will toughen standards. I'm not quite as sanguine. No one wants to be the person in charge when test scores plummet.

As the new school year looms before us, I started thinking of all the crap we have to do to get ready for the quality review and the administration. It reminded me that it will soon be time to do the dreaded DRAs. In case you're not an English teacher (and count yourself lucky if you are not), the DRAs are a means of assessing a student's reading level so they can be placed into those appropriate reading groups that no one actually does (no teacher in their right mind would group all the bottom students together without a suit of armor and ear plugs). Anyway, my point, which I saw somewhere around here a moment ago, is that English teachers one again will have to administer those long, boring assessments to determine reading level.

Here's how the DRAs went for me last year. I administered them to my bottom group in September, and determined that most of them were several years below grade level in reading. When I say several, I mean three or more. I worked hard with them, and a few of them returned the favor by working hard for me. Most repeated the pattern that caused them to be years below grade level in the first place--they did next to nothing. I did the DRAs twice more, with moderate improvement.

Here's the kicker--when the ELA results came back, only TWO of those kids had scored a level 2. The rest of the class were level 3s. That means they were considered to have met state standards in reading and writing proficiency.

I think I'm a pretty good teacher, but I'm not that good. The tests were just plain easy. As it turns out, students can score a level 2 just by guessing on the multiple choice and leaving the written part blank. Like most teachers, I had trained my students never to leave anything blank. They knew to write topic sentences and quote passages of text. As I learned when scoring the ELA, a topic sentence followed by gibberish rated at least a 2 of 5. That's why most of my kids "achieved" threes despite scoring well below level on the DRAs.

In the end, all of this means that the data that Klein and his ilk worship as the holy grail of education is pretty much meaningless. But it's out of my hands, now. Whoever inherits my kids next year will administer the DRA and find that most of the students are still several years behind grade level. That teacher will have a hell of a time convincing those students that they need to work hard. After all, why work hard when guessing and gibberish will earn you a three?

Taking the Mayor to School

Diane Ravitch in the Times. 'Nuff said.