The Chaos School

Personally, I think that if you are a paid op-ed columnist for a newspaper, one's columns should demonstrate at least a passing familiarity with stories published in that paper.

Apparently David Brooks disagrees, since this week he wrote a very silly column about the New American Academy.  He finds its plan - sixty students per class in an entirely open space, and teachers loop with students - incredibly novel and exciting.

So did his employer, The New York Times.  However, they found it the kind of novel excitement that a trainwreck offers.  What with the overwhelmed, under-experienced teachers, the lack of student work or progress, and the pithy quotes from students ("We don't know what we are supposed to be doing, but we are learning about math"), they seemed less positive that this model was anything but a way to make absolutely certain children learned nothing.

Well, maybe Brooks did skim the piece - he notes that the school's lack of structures "was a problem at first" and notes the principal stating that they had "better control" over the students now.  Brooks is impressed by the "subtle tricks" the school uses - lining students up at transitions, making them enter a new open classroom together, greeting the teacher.

David Brooks had better not be planning to visit any regular public school classes anytime soon, because the "subtle tricks" he finds there are likely to amaze him into cardiac arrest.  Seriously, this kind of stuff is Remedial Classroom Management!  If the New American Academy staff didn't have these procedures down on day one, they have no business working in elementary education.

Mr. Brooks is also impressed by the $120,000 annual salary provided to master teachers.  I'm not: each master teacher is ultimately responsible for sixty kids and training/deploying some number of under-teachers (who aren't paid so well).  Moreover, something tells me that if Brooks were offered a $120,000 annual salary, he would primly refuse such penurious compensation as offensive to a man of his talents.

Of course, Brooks and the New Academy gang share a tendency to casual racism; Brooks notes that the teachers demand "proper diction" (by which I assume he means codeswitching to Mainstream Academic English from AAL or similar).  The school's founder and principal refers to the first graders as coming to the school "in a state of nature...[with] no civilization".  Oh, and many of these kids apparently will have "familylike" relationships for the first time with their looping teachers.  It may come as a surprise to Mr. Brooks, but poor families - even poor families headed by single parents - do not exist in solitude.  There are other family relationships than marriage, and despite Ruby Payne's unresearched nonsense, poverty is not a Hobbesian state.

But mostly the column lauds something disturbing.  Brooks notes the founder was inspired by expensive boarding schools; I am quite certain Phillips Exeter does not have classes of sixty students.  He notes the school serves "poor minority kids"; he neglects to mention that the school took less than a quarter to remove three high needs first graders to "more structured environments" and lost at least seven more to withdrawal.  He admires the master teachers, but fails to mention the rest of the teachers are "novice early childhood teachers".  He's excited by the "interdisciplinary" approach, but that approach includes no art instruction.

The New American Academy is indeed an experiment, but it's one that is presently responsible for "educating" two hundred and forty children this year.  Brooks' "great experiment" is a gamble that sacrifices the education of those kids if (when) it fails.  So amazed is he by the school's "guerilla" leadership and its innovations that he ignores the real problems with the model.  So incapable of basic research is he that he can't even read his own paper before publishing such a PR piece.

Unsent Letters: Take It to the Top

Superintendent Garcia:

Given the size of the public relations office and its well-compensated staff, it's unfortunate that you don't run your comments past them before speaking to the media.

Because when you tell schools slated to lose almost 50% of their teachers that the skip order you want "won't tilt the Earth on its orbit", those schools are disgusted with you, your lack of concern for their students, and your blatant disregard for the actual, on-the-ground implications of protecting intern credentialed teachers over fully-credentialed teachers with experience.


Which is, by the way, a key point.  The "special skills and competencies" of some fifty-eight protected teachers do not include a real, renewable California teaching credential.   I'd say that puts kind of a low bar on whatever it is that sets "zone" schools apart from equally-challenged schools in other neighborhoods.

Let's face it.  Union-busting is all the rage with soon-to-retire and retired Superintendents looking for lucrative speaking gigs in the future.  And if you can union-bust in the name of the children, even better!

The problem is that you're going to knock the Earth off its orbit entirely at some schools that have bigger challenges than some of the arbitrary zone sites.  And that it's hard to argue you have an elite and highly-trained, heavily-recruited teaching force at these arbitrary sites when some of them have credentials that are only controversially designated acceptable under NCLB.

Actually, maybe it's better that the PR office didn't catch you before you called the Chronicle.  It's always good to know how little we schools matter for the top brass in our District.

I Can Shower and Dress in Seven Minutes.

That is an important skill for whenever the New York Times goes in for one of its "Room for Debates" on teachers.  The questions they debate are always rather, um...loaded.  You know, things like "Bad Teachers: Just About Twenty Percent or All of Them?"  or "Teacher Pay: Is It Way Too High, or Just Too High?"

Today's question is "High-stakes Testing: Let's Fire More Teachers", and they recruited my very favorite Pacific Research Institute anti-unionist Lance Izumi to opine ("Teachers Are Union-Loving, Children-Hating Demons").

I managed to control the snideness for the most part, but I did have to provide my learned thoughts on the issue.  And now I'm a wee bit behind.  Oops.

Unsent Letters

Dear Mikey One Percent,

Frankly?  I doubt you attended Kindergarten with forty three of your peers.  And I know - I know, with absolute certainty - that when it comes to academic performance, that Kindergarten class didn't get the results that my students meet by the end of August.  (Things have changed since you went to Kindergarten, dude, and it's not just the terrible union teachers and their tiny little classes.  The standards are years higher, too.)

But as always, I have to tell you that if you intend to double my students and my pay, I want to see you do it first.  Mikey, it might sound like a generous offer, but compare it to your income, and think hard about this offer.  (It's worth remembering that while, say, $125,000 may sound like an awesome amount of money for a teacher, the people proposing it make more than ten times as much.  And their pensions, insurance and so on are better than teachers', too.)

Given my typical class load, the forty four students you'll have will present some serious classroom issues, Mike.  At least six will have IEPs upon Kindergarten entry.  Eighteen to twenty will be on the young side - late October and November birthdays.  Thirty will not speak English, so start planning those ELD lessons now.

Four children will be in foster care; at least six more will be in kinship placements.  Two will be homeless; almost all of the rest will live in decrepit, violent and under-resourced public housing.  Eighteen will have witnessed or been personally involved in serious violence.  Twelve will have chronic asthma or other major health problems.

Forty three of them will qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and half will face food insecurity at home.  Twenty five will live in homes where no adult is able to find work.  Start stocking up on the snacks and school supplies, Mike: you'll need to use that excellent salary to supplement what your school and your families can't afford.

Based on your breezy comments, despite the challenges, you'll have no trouble ensuring all forty four read fluently by the end of the year.  They'll whip through their fifty sight words spelling test in five minutes before finishing twenty addition and subtraction problems.  Then they'll write a five sentence story before making a map of their neighborhood and creating a Venn diagram to compare insects and isopods.

And then you'll have the credibility you need to lecture me about school success, ineffective teachers and the good old days of fifty kids to a room.

Until then: shut up.

Not So Cordially,

E. Rat

Bill Gates and His Laboratory.

Oakland Unified wants to close some schools.  It's planning to close thirteen schools, most of them small schools.  Small schools are very expensive to run - in particular, they increase administrative costs.

Bill Gates and his eponymous foundation were huge drivers of small schools - they sent a functionary to a staff meeting at the school were I was teaching to try to find teachers to support such an effort.  (They failed; we had seven hundred and fifty K-6 students and a mess of portables, sure, but things were good.)  I asked the functionary what would happen after the three years of Gates cash; he admitted that the costs would fall to districts - and that the costs existed.

Gates didn't spend any foundation cash on research, and ended up pulling small schools cash early when the schools ended up making no real difference (except for the added costs).

Gates now has a new solution for the districts he's burdened: cut pensions, raise class sizes and institute performance pay.  Apparently, the financial issue isn't the additional administrators on the payroll thanks to small schools, or the increased building costs small schools require, or the costs associated with school closings, or falling school budgets.  No, it's the teachers.

Needless to say, Gates has put as much research into this as he did small schools.  I'm sure the effects will be predictably similar, if not worse.

It's time to stop allowing big pocketbooks to experiment on our public institutions.  They aren't even willing to clean up after themselves, and they want to punish us all for their messes.

It's time to stop allowing Bill Gates opportunity after opportunity to destroy public education.  Yes, he made a lot of money by taking A prompt out of the public domain and selling it as his own program.  Yes, he has a great deal of interest in public education although not so much that his children attend public schools or anything.  Yes, we often learn from our mistakes.

But Gates shows no learning: he's still jumping in with both feet and a blindfold.  When it ends up he's landed on concrete, he demands public money for his hospital bills.  He's unwilling to research first: it's all urgent urgency, and it's better to fail a few years of children than look at any data beforehand.

OUSD should bill the Gates Foundation.  Once Bill's cleaned up after himself, it might be possible to start taking him seriously.

More Unsent Letters

Dear Christian Science Monitor,

How nice of you to send me a teaser magazine suggesting I subscribe to your publication.  The contents of that teaser were exceptionally instructive, particularly when you explained how money doesn't matter to school success.

As you see it in your center-right, two-sides-to-every-issue faux contrarianism, some schools are making it work without a penny extra.  Apparently they do this through merit pay.  Since my understanding is that merit pay would, in fact, lead to higher salaries, I must assume money is being cut elsewhere - either through destroying retirement funds or cutting student programs, I suppose.

Despite there being not one datum that supports merit pay in any way, I have to tell you you're missing the obvious:

Money Does Too Matter.

Money matters for my students, who annually get more crowded classrooms with fewer resources.  It matters to their families, many of whom live in poverty with all of its deleterious effects on school success (bad health, trauma, poor nutrition, food insecurity, housing insecurity...).  It matters to me, because I am on track to spend more than my "Hard to Staff" bonus on the school supplies California won't buy this year.

It matters to the many, many upper-middle class parents - some of whom undoubtedly work for the Monitor - as they willingly pay five and six and seven times more than California's per-pupil allocation in search of well-funded, low-poverty private schools.


And it definitely matters to you, editors of the Christian Science Monitor.  What underlies all this "school success has nothing to do with cash" nonsense is selfishness.  "Public schools take too much of our hard-earned tax dollars," you huff and puff.  "We need that money for other things, like tax breaks for the wealthy.  After all, private school tuition is higher than ever!"


Your teaser made it abundantly clear that your publication is not to my tastes, and I'm not the kind of reader you want.  In the future, to save on paper and postage, I recommend that you cross-check your purchased mailing lists with public teacher credential databases.


All the Best,


E. Rat


 

Self-Exposure

From the New York Times:


“Let’s hope the fiscal crisis doesn’t get better too soon. It’ll slow down reform,” said Tom Watkins, the former superintendent for the Michigan schools, and now a consultant to businesses in the education sector.


The fiscal crisis is harming students.  Case in point: the Arizona district profiled has more students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch with no demographic change: it's the same kids, just living in more poverty.  Closer case in point: the San Francisco Food Bank isn't providing snacks to low-income schools this year.  They don't have the resources.


That's just food.  Higher poverty means worse housing conditions: we have more homeless or insecurely-housed students than ever at our school.  There are fewer programs for children outside of school.  Adults are under more stress, and higher stress rarely leads to good outcomes for children.


I could go on, but I don't want to take the focus off the education deformers.  Ultimately, they are so tied to their agenda that they cheer for conditions that are bad for children.  Mr. Watkins hopes that more children suffer so that his profitable, private concerns get more public cash.  Rarely do reformers state their purpose so clearly.  They're about anything but the children.  The harm children experience is second - if that - to the profit motive.


We need to take these revolting folks seriously, but we must refuse to cede them even an inch.  There is no moral value, no ethics, and no care for children or our future in their position.  We must call out their lies.

Accountability

I really hate the "teachers need to be held accountable" argument.

To what, exactly, are you planning to hold me accountable?

You see, I go to work every day and spend at least eight hours in close contact with children.

Do you really think so little of teachers that, despite that close contact and all the empathy it requires, we don't hold ourselves accountable to those children and their families?

Are you really willing to say that I don't care and refuse to take responsibility for the children in my class whose needs keep me up at night?  Who make me laugh and laugh and laugh?  Who have heart palpitations over the awesomeness of snails?  Who memorize the Hog-Eye spell* and pore over Zeralda's ogre's herald (baby crying, crossed by fork and knife) just like I did when I was a kid?  On whom I will spend in excess of a thousand dollars this year because you won't?

Because if you really believe that - if you really believe that teachers don't care about what their students learn - there's no argument to have.

Anyone who really and truly believes that really and truly believes that teachers are some evil ogre organization, unionized to destroy children.

There's no debating with someone who refuses your essential humanity, and if you think I don't care about my students' progress, you refuse mine.

In the end, every teacher I know holds him or herself to higher standards than John Arnold, Lloyd Blankfein, John Paulson or the capitalist of your choice.  And no matter how bad you think the schools are (and you're wrong on that anyway), teachers have done far less to harm children than any derivative or collateralized debt obligation has.

*Hog-Eye, Hog-Eye, magic stare/Make him itchy everywhere/on his nose and in his hair/even in his underwear!  Fetch me a Goldman managing director and we'll see if it works!

Where Are These Eager Replacements?

Gary Rubinstein, a far bigger person than I am, has been writing a series of posts that are a "debate" (by email) with Whitney Tilson.

Having ADHD, I lack the patience and impulse control to deal with such people.  I don't approve of Mr. Tilson's profession, which I believe is morally suspect and bad for public schools.  And I definitely don't like his attitude, his inability to take data seriously, or his utter lack of reflection.

This, though, BEGS a challenge:

My bottom line: deliver results in the classroom for kids, or go find another profession. There is no shortage of college-educated adults who would be grateful for that job, especially in this economy! 


Mr. Tilson.

Get over yourself.

I personally teach at what is, for the third year in a row, an offically-designated "Hard to Staff School".  That's right.  There's something about my school such that people - college-educated adults who are "delivering results in the classroom for kids"* - leave.  Indeed, they leave without the prospect of future job.  They leave even though they're not beholden to a now-ended two year commitment.

I suppose it could be the terrible, child-hating veterans like myself scaring away these eager young educators.  But ancedata suggest otherwise: my Resident Teacher just signed on, so I didn't drive her away.  She'll be joining my long-time classroom volunteer, who moved back to the Bay Area to take a job at our school.

I suspect that it's the annual pink slip, the lack of supply money, the ongoing march of ten-hour days and weekends at school, the endless need to write another grant, attend another IEP or make another home visit, the relentless drain of media and education reformers denigrating your work, and secondary trauma visited by hands-on work with seriously traumatized children, families and communities.

Or it could be the worker's compensation-covered allergic reaction from mold, asthma aggravated by vermin infestations, and the prospect of yet another 15% pay cut if state revenues don't meet projections.

Whatever the case, Mr. Tilson, there aren't a whole lot of eager-beaver unemployed persons - even unemployed teachers - lining up to take the jobs at my school.  The District even chucks a little extra money at us as an enticement to take the job and stay.  It doesn't seem to have had a big impact, since we haven't cleared that list of hard-to-staff schools.

But there sure is a shortage of adults clamoring for my job.  And you're certainly unwilling to take it, no?


*As opposed to delivering results in the classroom for America's DVD producers or something.  I think that at Ed Reform School, they teach you to tack a "for the children" sentiment to every sentence you piously pronounce.

Running Out the Clock on AB 114

(I do not link to the Huffington Post, which is the source for this quote.)

[SFUSD Superintendent Carlos] Garcia said he thinks AB 114 might end up in court.

"Some people would claim ... that seems like an unfunded mandate by the state," he said. "There will be some legal challenges to that question. If you're not allowed to have some flexibility on laying off people, you could bankrupt a school district."

Oh, cry me a river, Superintendent.  "Flexibility" in SFUSD means "teacher layoffs that disproportionately impact high-needs schools".  If the Superintendent really and truly needed to lay off people to make the budget balance, there are all those administrators who got noticed but not laid off - all but seventeen of them. Not to mention the ever-growing cast of administrators and "teachers on special assignment" and so on cluttering up the Bayview and Superintendents' zones.

I think it's more than fair to read "I think" for "Some people would claim", and as far as "unfunded mandates" go, I'd like to draw the Superintendent's attention to federal and state school budgeting in general.

This is going to be a pretty immediate court case, if it begins at all.  15 August is the hard and final deadline for teacher layoffs - a particularly ugly one for SFUSD, since that means our Superintendent is considering laying off teachers (court battles depending) on the first day of school.

Maybe he can get the Mercury News to do it for him.

The Mercury News is Maaaaaaaad.

Usually, the Mercury News blames school problems on teachers' unions or a lack of adequate charter schools (true fact: I got an obscenity-laden email from one of their ed reporters a few years back after I wrote (calmly and politely) to refute some pro-charter silliness).


Now, Jerry Brown is just as bad.  Let's look at their ire.


Every year, the Legislature passes a budget - perhaps in June, perhaps in October - and the public waits to find out what's actually in it. And every year there are some appalling provisions that should not be allowed to stand. But for pure chutzpah, it's hard to top Assembly Bill 114.


The so-called education trailer bill contains giveaways to teachers unions

Nooooooo!  At least some editorial policies never change.  Remember: teachers' unions are not collective bodies of teachers.  They are unparalleled evil aimed at the heart of corporate reform.

...and outrageous restrictions on school districts' ability to manage their finances, making a mockery of Gov. Jerry Brown's commitment to local control. It was passed in the dark of night with nary a committee hearing - probably because it could not have survived public scrutiny. No wonder voters distrust lawmakers. These provisions must be repealed.

...Because voters would prefer proactive 40:1 classrooms?

AB 114 bars further teacher layoffs in the coming school year due to state budget cuts, and it requires districts to assume funding will remain at its current level next year; they can't cut programs. Yet everyone knows state funding for schools could well be slashed in January, since tax revenue may not meet the optimistic projections in the budget. This bill essentially requires districts to budget recklessly.

Let's be honest.  California's pitiable school funding has required reckless budgeting for years.  It's a different kind of reckless, but reckless all the same.  Is the Mercury News not familiar with the ever-growing watch lists of school districts teetering on the edge?

It also means that if revenue doesn't materialize in January, school officials' hands will be tied. Their only real option for closing a big gap will be up to seven furlough days, but those must be negotiated in each of more than 1,000 districts. With layoffs off the table, districts will have no leverage in those talks. Cuts could instead fall heavily on those who are not teachers.  That, frankly, may be the point.

Because all right-thinking people know that teachers must take the brunt of cuts.  Look at all the cuts we've already refused.  Heck, I've only taken a $2000 annual pay cut (not including the contracted bonus I lose this year on top of my salary cut).  And I didn't even get a pink slip this year!  Indeed, a mere half of the teaching staff at my school did!  Clearly, I am a goldbricking union worker.  I mean, look at all the cuts to the SFUSD Central Office!


...Oh wait, don't.  You won't find any.  A mere seventeen non-renewal notices went out.  The redesign has led to ever-growing administrative forces in the Bayview and Superintendent's zones.  And as always, among the district officials incapable of taking any extra hit in the name of sharing the pain is the Superintendent.


ETA: It's not clear how the Mercury News thinks those negotiations should work, anyway.  The rider closes the late layoff window, which would close anyway on 15 August.  After that date, you can't lay off teachers (unless you pass a rider allowing that).  So is the Mercury advocating districts go into negotiations now?  And where would bargaining power reside in that case?  Or does the paper really think we need another rider, allowing for teacher layoffs...oh, whenever?

This editorial is revolting because of its nasty assumption that union negotiations are always out to destroy school districts with their unreasonable demands and love of striking.  How many teachers' strikes have occurred in San Jose over the last ten years?  I'm pretty sure the answer is zero.

I know this is hard for the Mercury News to understand, but as a union member, I want the best for children and schools.  Unlike the Mercury editorial board, I actually do the job.  And I'm good at it.

I have given up pay, time and resources to make sure my students have what California won't give them.  I've already spent $350 on my classroom this year and school doesn't start for a month.  I spent four days after my contract ended doing the cleaning jobs the District won't pay for and will be in three weeks early for unpaid professional development, carpet cleaning and basic repair.  I have spent time taking my students to the park, library and informal tutoring sessions this summer.  Needless to say, these aren't paid pursuits.

It is beyond offensive of the Mercury News to cast such aspersions on my motivations.  And given that the largest school district in their city has a very specific contract that has required major teacher salary and benefit cuts, I don't know that they even have the basic understanding that having an opinion requires.

I'm in a District that has laid off relatively few teachers.  The state is something like 30,000 teachers short from a couple years back, and there are more students than ever.  Class-size reduction is over.  Furloughs are everywhere.  And teachers keep on trucking to meet those standards.  Shame on you for expecting pay, teachers!

No one, least of all superintendents and school boards, wants to lay off more teachers. But for some districts, it might be preferable to a disruptive furlough or cuts to already decimated libraries or counseling programs.

That's debatable.  We are all entitled to our own opinions, of course.  But opinions should be based on a healthy foundation of facts, and I don't know that the Mercury News can marshal any here.

Moreover, who told the Mercury News how the late window works?  I'm pretty sure it was me, actually.  I had to write repeatedly to their education reporter, who spent lots of ink observing how lucky teachers have to get 15 March letters and man, don't they complain a lot.

Decisions on how to cut costs should be made by districts and communities - not Sacramento. That's what Brown himself touted in his campaign, promising to "return more decision-making to local school districts." Yet he signed this bill Thursday.

But wait. It gets worse. The bill suspends the law requiring county superintendents to ensure district budgets are balanced in the current year and in the future, identifying problems before they become crises. As of mid-June, there were 143 districts on the state's financial watch list, including six in Santa Clara County.

Wait!  They DO know about the watch list!  Do they know how it's grown as the state refuses to fund schools adequately?  No offense, editorial board, but the balanced budget demand has been tossing districts onto the watch list for years now.

Ron Bennett, CEO of School Services, is an adviser to districts. In a letter to Brown, obtained by journalist John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Bennett warns: "Stripping the county superintendents of their oversight responsibilities in 2011-12 will almost certainly bring dozens, if not hundreds, of school districts to the state's door for emergency loans."

Ron, that's happening already.  How nice of John "Charters RAWK" Fensterwald to share with his former employers.  I really should find those emails he sent me, because they are pretty classic.  In the way a train wreck is classic, but classic all the same.

The California School Boards Association on Thursday asked Brown to support repeal of these troubling provisions, saying "the state should not be substituting its judgment for that of those who live in the communities affected."

The communities affected haven't had anyone listening to them in ages.

The California Teachers Association is one of Brown's and the Democrats' biggest backers. But Brown's reputation as a straight shooter is at stake. Having signed the trailer bills in a hurry, he should go back to the Legislature and ask that these provisions be repealed. School officials and good government advocates should keep up the pressure until he does.

So apparently the Mercury News, given their huge fear of what that terrible CTA will do, would prefer to weaken it by mass teacher layoffs right now, effective on the first day of school.  That would certainly be great for education, wouldn't it?

Not that I expect better from a paper that publishes Dan "Bipartisan Man" Walters or has never seen a charter school it didn't like.  I hope that their not-very-august advice goes into the same circular bin as their demands for tax extensions and reasonable GOP members evidently did.

In the unlikely event Mercury News reporters read this, I'd like to ask them to refrain from using bad language in any comments they would like to leave.  I am aware - personally! - of what creative swearing they can do, but I am a Kindergarten teacher.  Assume I am wearing a Pooh Bear jumper and charm bracelet* and respond accordingly.

*Okay, technically I am wearing a sharp little dress from a local designer, heels and earrings I bought at the Met.  But pretend.  Speaking of which: crossing my fingers for fog on the first day of school, because I have the BEST dress to wear on its way to me.

Why Selection Matters

I've been reading a lot of material online about charter schools and selection.  Some points should be unquestionable at this point:

• Charter schools use a variety of methods to self-select incoming students;
• Charter schools generally have free, far-reaching expulsion policies;
• Charter school attrition is more severe and more lasting than public school attrition;
• Charter schools enroll a student group not like surrounding regular public schools.

Given this, the focus of articles is generally on exposing the lie: in the end, KIPP and its ilk probably aren't that exciting.  (Full disclosure: given the low-quality, test-first KIPP pedagogy and their long hours, their test scores don't surprise me.  I find it interesting that their actual rollout is so poor they can't "transform" SIGgy schools.  I have to assume this is due to their extraordinarily low teacher retention.)

What you don't see is attention paid to the schools that take everyone else: the regular public schools.  I teach at one of those schools.  And the charter school enrollment problem negatively impacts us.  It isn't okay to say that the charter schools are helping a self-selecting bunch of kids, because they are actively making good education harder for everyone else:

• Those kids expelled go somewhere, like my school.  Not only do they bring whatever challenges their charter chose not to deal with, they have suffered real emotional harm from the expulsion experience.  I don't care how tough that eleven year old looks: it's still an ELEVEN year old child who's just been told that he or she is not good enough to stay.
• Cherry-picking high performing students with motivated parents means the students left behind are a more concentrated bunch of high-needs children.  Our class loads become more challenging because there are more high-needs students.
• Those very high-needs students tend not to test well, and there are lots and lots of sticks associated with bad test results.
• Nor do we receive more money, in general, because we now have a more difficult student population.  Even the Weighted Student Formula SFUSD uses doesn't have metrics that cope well with this.

What I'm saying is that what KIPP does harms the schools around it.  This isn't even "for the greater good", it's "for the good of a very few with lots of hot press...at the expense of everyone else."

Hell hath no hincty like a charter school advocated questioned.

Hello, I am whining:

So it ends up if you wonder how charter schools are budgeting themselves into reduced class sizes, increased arts programs, more expensive food programs and better benefit packages on a regular school budget, you are totally anti-child.

Also, you may not be a teacher.  And any time you take off over the summer means you are a lousy teacher.

Additionally, if you ask about a school's changing demographics, this means you are racist, because you are inadequately colorblind.  If you suggest that colorblindness is a disease of privilege, you are mean.

So let me make myself abundantly clear in my own sandbox: I have yet to receive answers to any of my questions about Edison Charter School's financing.

I am over bothering to comment on the article, although I was intending to post this one but I think the site is broken:


You're inadvertently getting at the problem: if a charter - which is not a regular public school - has its arts program intact and the regular public schools don't, there is some kind of funding issue going on.


(The SF Weekly article suggested, by the way, that the difference in student services was entirely due to a slightly lower starting teacher salary.  That's not possible; it adds up to about $40,000 total and if Edison also offers better benefits is entirely offset.  I'm wondering if charter schools are exempt from paying the average teacher cost, because that would be a big pile of money if they have a young, low-seniority teaching staff.  For instance, although I am a high-salary teacher, I do not take benefits from SFUSD and therefore my school loses $25,000 annually by having to pay an average - just on me.)


It is almost always a funding inequity, since school finance in California works to provide charter schools with additional per-student dollars.


(This is true; there's a recent study out about it.)


That's unfair and inequitable to the vast majority of children in California who DON'T attend charter schools - which, AGAIN, have been shown to be no better than regular public schools.


(This is true, repeatedly demonstrated and reported.  Yet somehow it doesn't seem to catch on.)


We need an equitable school funding situation, not one that prioritizes some learners over others.  And minding one's own business in such a scenario doesn't help anyone; it condones inequality.  That's fine if you don't agree, and you're quite welcome to cast aspersions on my character and profession.  However, I am entitled to my opinion, and it is based on actual facts.  None of us are entitled to our own facts.


(Charter school advocates are hincty hinky!  Uppity and suspicious.  They're like a bunch of Birchers seeing socialism in the hissing of a gas grill - the best ever image in a New York Times story, by the way.)

Suuuuuuuuuuuure they did.

I've read half of Joel Klein's Save-Our-Schools proposal in The Atlantic.  So far, I understand that we will save schools by value-added teacher performance pay and, um, not complaining about poverty.

I can tell I will have a lot of things to say about this piece, but briefly:

1. Hey, Joel!  BOO! Based on my read of the article, Klein just had a heart attack because a scary teacher from the scary teachers' union just scared him.
2. Joel claims a whole mess of teachers have told him how they hate their jobs and don't do any work but are just hanging on for their pensions.  LIE.  Like any teacher in his or her right mind is going to tell their Chancellor - who spent years itching to cut teacher pensions - that.
3. Joel neglected to mention that teacher salaries are capped.  He suggests that some teachers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars.  They aren't.  He was, though!
4. Joel claims he has a proprietary secret NYPS study that shows teachers don't work very much.  He is citing a secret data source you can't see.  I'm going to call that another LIE.  If you have those data, prove it.
5. Joel doesn't really get state-level funding AT ALL, but the way he heard it I will be rolling around in my pile of state money as I always do come August.
6. Hey, Joel?  Even Bill Gates has had to publicly take back the teachers-more-important-than-anything-else claim.  That would be because it's WRONG.
7. Erik Hanushek is at the Hoover Institute, which is located at, but not actually part of Stanford University.  It is a notorious right-wing think tank, Joel, which frankly is pretty obvious from the name.  Of course, you cite several pundit party organizations without mentioning their bias.
8. There are some real acts of targeted bad statistics in the article, but I'll get into that when I finish the piece.

Superintendents Can't Fail

During the first week of professional development before I started my first year of teaching, the Superintendent of the District came to do a meet-and-greet with Kindergarten teachers.  He mumbled genially about how boys and girls are different even in Kindergarten to a room packed with slack-jawed, horrified educators.

Within two months, he was out.  There were five different Superintendents (counting interims) that year.

The guy they finally hired came to my classroom on the second day of school the next year.  Our school had had massive renovations.  We were hoping to show him that these renovations had not included fixing a badly-leaking wet wall that would, along with a large hole in the roof, lead to the utter destruction of the Kindergarten storage room.  That did not happen, since this Superintendent arrived surrounded by a large entourage of educrats, all of whom apparently had critical things that had to be said while I was teaching.  Such was the affect of the Superintendent, coupled with the noise, that three children immediately burst into tears.

That guy didn't finish the year either, although before he left he was chased across the school lawn by our school secretary, bearing the (newly deceased) black widow that had occupied the lock mechanism of the Kindergarten bathroom.  (Really.)

None of these folks went into retirement, though: they just went on to new jobs.  Usually, they brought golden parachutes with them as thanks from their old Districts.  Those parachutes cushioned them from the fall of their eventual post-retirement pensions, which often were as much as fifty thousand dollars less than the several hundred thousand they were used to earning annually (not counting post-retirement consulting fees, of course).

Nor do they typically leave a long record of success behind.  I outlasted nine Superintendents in my old school District; none of them presided over increased achievement.  Rod Paige's "Texas Cheat-a-Thon Miracle" took him all the way to national office.  Chicago hasn't seen much from its Renaissance, but Arne Duncan sure did.  Jean-Claude Brizard left behind angry teachers and unhappy parents in Rochester to take on CPS.  And let's not start on ex-Chancellor Rhee.

These Superintendents like to talk about accountability, but they themselves are accountable for nothing. They're ever eager to introduce various value-added schemes for teachers, but never for themselves.  They criticize teacher pensions, but do not fail to take their own in full.  They preside over layoffs and budget cuts but find no reason to take any pay cuts themselves.  In short, they are far too often hypocrisy in action.

KIPP: Not For Everyone

And specifically, not for African American boys.

So, Those Administrators Got Their Contracts Yet?

Teacher layoff notices went out.  At least 40% of our staff is getting noticed.

I'll go ahead and predict that will put us toward the top of the list of most heavily affected schools.

I'll go one step further and predict that all of those top schools will be located on the southeast side.

It's not even a step to predict that those top southeast side schools would all qualify as "high needs".

Of course, this has no implication for equity and equal opportunity AT ALL.

And by making this an annual course of action, SFUSD does not in any way question its real commitment to radical, "Beyond the Talk" change.

...oh wait.  No, it actually IS inequitable and worsens the systemic problem of high teacher turnover at high needs schools.  And again, we receive annual proof that when it comes to the real tough decisions - the kind that take more than a press release and are unlikely to provide awards to Superintendents - are so far Beyond the Talk that we can't even talk about them (SFUSD Legal said so!  And they've never been wrong, nor has any other lawyer or court ever disagreed...which is why we don't actually need a judicial system.).

I haven't personally received a letter (or communication from the union, which is typically what I get first - I haven't actually picked up or signed for a layoff letter in the last couple of years.  I leave them at the post office to rot sullenly in a miasma of wasted certificated mail fees).  Looking at the numbers, I have to figure I finally have enough seniority to not get laid off until the 60 day window (hee hee).  Of course, if I'm not getting one, then I need devote less time to personal worry and more time to raising Cain for those committed to equity administrators leading our District in these sad times.

In other news, I have created a monster.  I have a student whose name has the same letter twice in order.  One day that kid spelled it with three of the letter and I commented on that, which the child found hilarious.  The student now always spells the name with five of the letter.  We occasionally pronounce it accordingly.   Now that kid's best friend's name, which has its own doubled letter, is growing exponentially too.

We are big into fish printing right now.  The girls who are in after school are mad at me presently.  They snuck away from the program and came in the room to find me testing out a craft project.  Sneaking away from after school to explore The School By Late Afternoon is not allowed, so I sent them out, thereby selfishly hoarding all the good toys and games for myself.  As they see it.

I have an official request to make west African-inspired masks to go with the maracas and tambourines that will accompany our promotion performance.  I need to think on this one for a little bit.

Brief Flu Thoughts

1. If Michelle Rhee doesn't want uppity bloggers casting aspersions on her students' results, maybe she shouldn't have offered so many contrary reports of same.
2. And if she just now noticed those uppity bloggers, she really needs a better Google alert on her name.  I think the Daily Howler commented on the issue four or five years ago.
3. We need to move away from the idea that diagnosis is in itself a negative.  Locally, maybe the move toward inclusion will do this.  But right now, we are ignoring students' needs in the name of not labeling learners.  Given the dark and racist history of SFUSD's special education referrals, it's an admirable impulse.  But some students have real needs.  These needs can often be ameliorated in the classroom, but they won't be if they aren't named and teachers aren't given support in doing so.
4. For instance, I know some things about sensory processing issues.  I can generally offer support to students who need tactile feedback, proprioceptive development, etc.  But there is far more I don't know and therefore can't support.  When we can't assess students who are struggling for special needs, how can I serve those students well?
5. In short: learning differences are differences, and differences are good.  Diversity makes us richer, not poorer.
6. Ms. Rhee's Cult of the Teacher plays into this, too.  If the teacher is the driver of all student achievement or lack thereof, then he or she - if truly motivated - needs no support or guidance to reach all learners.  If he or she would just work harder, everything would be easier.
7. Of course, the thoughts of anyone who duct-taped students' mouths closed on any issue in education should be taken with a veritable Bonneville of salt.

I am not at work today because I have the flu.  I am very thankful we celebrated Valentine's Day Friday because a rainy celebration day on my poor Resident Teacher would be a truly terrible thing.  Today is the first day I have been awake for more than three hours in a row since Friday afternoon.  This is a big achievement.

It is link day.

I have issues with KIPP.  If I could get over their issues with student and teacher attrition, I'd still have problems with their boot camp discipline - the kind of discipline that KIPP's overlords would never allow for their own kids, but are fine using on poor children of color.  Were I able to come to terms with the punitive management, the anti-union sentiment would get me, and even if I hadn't been raised by union laborers, I'd have to question the lack of cultural competence and remedial pedagogy that KIPP supports.

In short: not a fan.  I don't buy the hype, I find their rhetoric offensive and their theory of change racist and repugnant.

This is a report on the shenanigans at KIPP Fresno:

Notice to Cure and Correct

Perhaps, like me, you're curious as to what Mr. Tschang is up to these days.  I think I may have seen an update on Schools Matter, but couldn't find it.  However, a quick Google search presents this charter school network blog.  He's a "Regional Superintendent".

I don't believe bad conduct in one job should mean one is doomed for life.  I believe in redemption and righting wrongs.  It's possible that Mr. Tschang no longer believes starving children, cheating on federal programs and state tests, and the humiliation of kids in the name of discipline are acceptable policies.

The fact that he highlights his KIPP experience with nary a mention of the circumstances that led to his resignation, coupled with his denials and denigrations of those who spoke against him suggest to me that he has not had a change of heart.

You know, it gets tiresome hearing about the innovative innovations at those unfettered and fancy-free charter schools - particularly as they use their extra private money for heavy administrative chains like Achievement First has while I can look forward to my fourth annual pink slip as I total the hundreds of dollars I've spent this year on enabling creative, multimodal learning experiences in my classroom.

But when those innovations are abusive to children, it's appalling.

I'd Rather Be Broke.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

In return for the cash, the district was required to replace the school's principal and come up with a plan to turn test scores around. Former Starr King Elementary School Principal Christopher Rosenberg took the job.'

His plan was simple: Keep a laser-like focus on literacy. That's it.

That means no extra art, no additional science and no feel-good programs that can complicate the core mission.

That is the most short-sighted, depressing view of education that I have read recently.  If this truly describes what Muir is up to, then it's in thrall to the anti-child, anti-research forces.  All studies suggest, and strongly, that the best way to teach reading - particularly to poor students and students of color, like those at Muir - is to teach reading broadly.  Kids need reading across the content areas.  Kids need multiple, relevant access points to reading.  Kids need art and music.

And as a society, we need scientists, mathematicians and artists.  We need kids who enjoy reading and read broadly, with a critical eye.

The core mission is education, not test scores.  As described, this is an approach that will bring higher test scores.  It won't bring success.  I know that I can teach kids to read AND have plenty of time for painting.  There are pedagogical issues associated with this (mostly around management, for time issues, and around lesson planning, for layering one's content objectives), but it's possible and it works.  It just demands that you put your time and energy into teaching and learning, not cutting out the "extras".

...class sizes as small as ten students sounds really good, though.