Sep 4, 2009

Brill, Get the Real Story Straight

What follows is the response TAGNYC sent to the editors of The New Yorker magazine re: Steven Brill's article: "Klein and the NYC Teachers." Of course, TAGNYC's take is that the intent of the article is to enlist the public's acquiescence in the repeal of tenure laws. Brill's article proves that conventional journalism is moot. The real journalists are not the 'talking heads' or those writing for the established newspapers. Real journalism is being done on the blogs. The next Woodward and Bernstein will emerge from a blog expose.

Brill, Get the Real Story Straight.

How to respond to Steven Brill’s article about the ‘bureaucratic stranglehold’ unions have on school boards' abilities to fire teachers? For beginners, by stating that Steven Brill has not done his homework. If he had, he would know that a New York State law requires that all tenured employees, including teachers, be afforded a hearing prior to being disciplined. This due process requirement does not come from a union contract. Also, Brill would have discovered that Klein and his Department of Education are responsible for teachers waiting up to three years to get a hearing and a decision. He would have seen that teachers, once removed from a school, have no control over when hearings are scheduled nor does their union. Brill does sloppy journalistic work.

Secondly,this response is meant to state up front that Brill’s hidden agenda is to vilify the New York City teacher. Brill and 99% of his journalist cronies (Brill et al.) are akin to ‘ambulance chasers”. Like the classic ambulance chaser, Brill et al. have found that the dysfunctional entity known as inner city education is a reliable meal ticket. And like ambulance chasers, Brill et al. don’t have to break a sweat to exercise their profession. Just keep hammering on the usual scapegoats for the plight of the inner city schools- the teachers and their union. Pick up Klein’s press releases. Accept what Klein says. Print the fast story, the sexy story, the untrue story. Journalists are embedded within the military. Why not embed journalists within the schools to report the real reason inner city schools fail? Because it is so much easier for Brill et al. to feed into Bloomberg’s, Klein’s, Rhee’s, Duncan’s mythology that poor teaching is why inner city students do not achieve. Why don’t journalists spend time incognito in the schools and see the fingerprints of institutionalized poverty and the hopelessness it breeds, or witness the absence of effort on the part of too many students and lack of oversight on the part of too many parents, or chronicle the daily consequences of the decades long breakdown of respect for the authority of the teacher, or jot down the number of oversized classes and the number of special needs students interspersed in those classes. Brill et al. might talk to the teachers and record how few of them are aware of the federally mandated services that many of their students are not receiving. Will Brill et al. take note of the teachers’ inability to effectively remove disruptive students? During the school day, Brill et al. could check out the books that teachers are supposed to rely on as aides in the educational process. Do the books and other supplied materials (if there are any) reflect the reading levels of the students? Or will Brill et al. see a 12th grade reading level social studies text, purchased in 2002 by the Chancellors District for use then by students on a 3rd grade and below reading level. Brill et al. can examine the book closets and find evidence of 40 years of false prophets who have milked the educational dollars dry while leaving Johnny no better off academically. That might lead Brill et al. to research the many educational models that have been foisted upon teachers only to be replaced by the next magic bullet, putting teachers on a constant merry go round of professional development that waste teachers’ time and taxpayers’ money. (Whoa, this is getting to be hard journalistic work. Brill et al., are you breaking a sweat yet?) Now, talk to teachers and learn of the great hoax perpetrated by Bloomberg and Klein. Observe how teachers must participate in academic fraud intended to move kids out and lift graduation rates. See the frustration of the elementary and middle school teacher whose days are filled with teaching to the test, giving the test, reviewing the test, just in time to give the next test. While sleuthing within the schools, Brill et al. can observe how competent teachers are subjectively targeted for harassment and eventual placement in Rubber Rooms. Observe how teachers not as good are not hunted and harassed by administration. A real journalist would use journalistic cunning to question and figure out why this might be so. A real journalist would: Investigate the possibility that the Rubber Rooms exists to rid schools of any teacher unwanted by the principal for reasons not related to competence: Investigate the probability that the Rubber Room has been set up by Bloomberg and Klein to destroy tenure and due process rights: Acknowledge the reality that Brill et al. are dupes who, through their 8th grade level of journalistic reporting, are allowing Bloomberg and Klein to realize their goal of destroying teaching as a long term profession.

Oh, Brill et al., there is so much more you could learn and report on if you were only willing to do the work. You would see that Bloomberg and Klein’s eight year control of the schools has demoralized teachers, marginalized parents, taught students to lie by making them participants in the academic fraud rife throughout the system. It’s not about the kids. It is about political ambition and power at any price.

We demand that the press fulfill its role as the objective purveyor of truth. Go into the inner city public schools which are being dismantled for private persons’ political and financial gains. Objectively assess reality. DON'T ACCEPT WHAT WE SAY. Go into the schools and investigate. Go in without your cameras, without being guided to classrooms prepped for your visit. Go in and spend a year working in an inner city classroom and only then, claim the credentials to fulfill your journalistic duty to report the truth about inner city education. Report the truth about who is being sent to Rubber Rooms and WHY. You would then have to acknowledge that for the past many, many years, it is the New York City inner city school teachers who have kept the system going and have done so much for the many beautiful students that triumph despite the past and continued shabby treatment of the inner city school teacher and student by those in power to affect societal change.

Apr 18, 2009

TAGNYC Testimony Mayoral Control Hearings February 6, 2009

The following testimony was transcribed and is part of the public record.

The DOE under Bloomberg and Klein is totally lacking in transparency. There you have the only reason needed for ending mayoral control. The DOE is subject to no law. Its legal department will lie in the face of documents that belie the lie. Its legal department will refuse to provide information requested by citizens under the Freedom of Information Law. Possible criminal charges- 300 last year- are filed against the DOE and these charges are read by only one man-Joel Klein. The DOE holds monthly public meetings. But for the past two years, no transcripts are kept of what transpires during these meetings. Public criticism is not allowed to leave the room. No media attend. No UFT representatives attend.

I am certain that most, if not all, of the New York State legislators know that there has not been a great advance in academic achievement within the inner city schools. I am certain that all of you know that most of any advance in supposed achievement within the NYC schools is the result of lowered performance requirements on state exams and the academic fraud practiced and encouraged by many administrators within the NYC school system. Whose interest is being served by, in Bush’s words, “the soft bigotry of low expectations?” Whose interest has been served by allowing Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein to perpetuate this hoax on the minority population of this City? They say what they do is “for the children.” And the teachers of NYC say, “Get Real.”

The teachers know the real deal. We have serious concerns about our schools and the “education” our students are receiving under the Bloomberg/Klein administration. While the implementation of some of Bloomberg and Klein’s ideas has resulted in cost-effective and perhaps efficient corporate practices, too many of their policies have devastated students, faculty, and parents. Most notable during the Bloomberg-Klein tenure is the oppressive, hostile, abusive work/learning environment created and condoned in many schools across the City. And on the firing line is the NYC teacher- the perennial scapegoat for why children don’t learn. The principals have abused their power to the point where targeted teachers are routinely and shamefully harassed and victimized. And the principals’ tool for ridding themselves of teachers who are too costly or too outspoken is the Temporary Reassignment Centers, also referred to as the ‘rubber rooms.”

The Reassignment Centers are testimony to the high stakes game known as ‘educational reform.” The stakes are higher political office, greater paychecks, the destruction of public education, but mainly, as we believe history will show, the goal is to keep society structured into an elite and a group to serve that elite. How else to explain the passing through of students while calling that progress. The Reassignment Centers are necessary to the success of this game. The Administration pedals these Centers as evidence that finally, finally the roots of inner city school failure, the incompetent teachers, are being ripped out of the system. The Reassignment Centers serve other purposes: They allow unethical and scared principals to selectively, selectively remove teachers; they allow the Bloomberg-Klein Administration to destroy teaching as a long term career, and they rev up the voices against tenure and its due process protections. The Reassignment Centers make possible the continued ignoring of who and what is really responsible for the plight of the inner city school- society and the ills it has perpetuated.

The teachers are not responsible for CFE monies not going to reduce class size or for the failure to build new schools in expanding neighborhoods, or for the lack of creation of adequate school libraries. The teachers are not responsible for the tons of money wasted on consultants, bogus educational programs, inappropriate textbooks, suspect accountability systems; the teachers are not responsible that the future astronauts and architects are in bed and not in their first period classes. The teachers are not responsible for the horrendous abandonment of the special needs students and the ELL students. The teachers are not responsible for the decades long destruction of respect for the teacher and his/her authority within the classroom The teachers are not responsible for segregated housing patterns or for the poverty that breeds the hopelessness and violence that too often show up in the inner city classrooms. But the teacher is always the fall guy.

So a parent who wants his child to have a valid education has to ask: “What is different in the schools today? Why is there such a turn-around in teaching staff?” Teachers functioning as ATRs, teachers pushed into Reassignment Centers, teachers who retire because they can’t take the harassment of score-driven, business model principals, or the non-teaching they are supposed to sign onto.” These are the questions parents must start asking because your children are being cheated royally. When The NY Post reports that 83% of NYC students entering community colleges need remedial training it is past time to challenge the merit of the ‘higher graduation rates’ under Bloomberg-Klein and it is past time to demand an investigation of the smoke and mirrors that champions itself as Michael Bloomberg’s educational reform.

Make no mistake: It is for the politics, not for the children.

Jan 27, 2009

TAGNYC Comments at January 26, 2009 P.E.P. Meeting

The Reassignment Centers are testimony to the high stakes game known as educational reform. The stakes are higher political office, greater paychecks, the destruction of public education, but mainly, as we believe history will eventually show, the goal is to keep society the way we know it. An elite and a group to serve that elite. How else to explain the passing through of students while calling that progress. The Reassignment Centers are necessary to carry out this game. They can be touted by the Administration as evidence that finally, finally the roots of inner city school failure, the incompetent teachers, are being ripped out. Mayor Bloomberg says this and a delicious shudder passes through his audience. Incompetent teachers, Freddie Kruger- they elicit the same response as the Mayor well knows.

The Reassignment Centers serve other purposes: They allow unethical and scared principals to selectively, selectively remove teachers; they allow the Administration to destroy teaching as a long term career, and they rev up the voices against tenure and its due process protections. The Reassignment Centers justify the continued ignoring of who and what is really responsible for the plight of the inner city school - society and the ills it has perpetuated.

The teachers are not responsible for CFE monies not going to reduce class size or for the failure to build new schools in expanding neighborhoods or for lack of creation of adequate school libraries. The teachers are not responsible for the tons of money spent on consultants, bogus educational programs, inappropriate textbooks, suspect accountability systems; the teachers are not responsible that the future astronauts and architects are in bed and not in their first period classes. The teachers are not responsible for the horrendous abandonment of the special needs students and the ELL students. The teachers are not responsible for the decades of destruction of authority and respect for the teacher.

The Teacher Advocacy Group NYC puts out its call but always into the wilderness “Come and investigate.” Come and see what type of teacher is being put into the Reassignment Centers for “serious allegations.” Not just you Chancellor Klein but the entire panel is complicit in these McCarthy-like tactics. Righteousness is not yours. You will never again be able to lament or denounce the age of McCarthyism. You are responsible for destroying comnpetent teachers’ lives and reputations.