New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision to fire State Education Commissioner Brett Schundler over the state’s failure to win a spot in the Race to the Top competition is reminiscent of the late Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s serial firings of manager Billy Martin: you keep looking for a way to root against both bullies.* Certainly, there is enough blame to share over New Jersey’s runner-up status.  Schundler’s embarrassing faux pas of failing to submit an up-to-date budget was in part the result of a hasty rewrite of the state’s application, an act necessitated by Christie’s last minute decision to pull the rug out from underneath the state education commissioner’s efforts to gain district and union support. And New Jersey lost far more points — more than enough to finish in the money — from Christie’s scorched earth refusal to seek common ground than from the budgetary gaffe. But Christie is the portly Queen of Hearts, much like the late Steinbrenner, so it’s off with Schundler’s head. More »

There is an old myth that vampires cannot be seen in a mirror. A vampire has no real substance, the story goes, so light simply travels through him, rather than bouncing back and creating a reflection. That myth came to mind when Tim Daly of the New Teacher Project recently asked “who’s a member of the ‘blame the teacher’ crowd?” and could not find a single person. Apparently Daly cannot see himself in a mirror.

If there was ever a question about the existence of the ‘blame the teacher’ crowd, it was surely put to rest by the response of many in the self-identified ‘education reform’ community to the prospect of a wave of teacher layoffs as schools re-opened for the 2010-11 school year. More »

At a “town hall” meeting perched on the airwaves of Sirius XM Radio earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan acknowledged the “need to do a much better job of listening to and empowering teachers.”

The tone and wording of that confession suspiciously lacks that Agency’s familiar ring of omniscience. Have they really reached the point of admitting that they don’t have all the answers?  Teachers are, with good reason, wary of freely-given deference to their expertise emanating from those non-professionals, whether high profile or behind the scenes, who agitate and set crucial education policy. More »

The State Public Employment Relations Board of New York will petition the State Supreme Court for an injunction to prevent last month’s mass-firing of 11 Merrick Academy Charter School staff members, counsel to PERB notified the UFT and the school today.

After being petitioned by the UFT in July, PERB has reached the conclusion that “there is reasonable cause to believe that an improper practice has occurred and it appears that immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage will result.” PERB will seek an injunction prohibiting Merrick from implementing its decision to discontinue the Merrick Teachers pending a full hearing and final disposition.

Last month the Queens charter school delivered termination notices to eight teachers and three teaching assistants, representing approximately one-third of the professional staff, via FedEx. Employees received no prior notice.

“The State Public Employment Relations Board’s decision to seek an injunction against the mass-firing of Merrick’s staff is an important step in vindicating the right of these educators to organize a union and bargain collectively without fear of retaliation,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. More »

The following open letter to elected officials and community leaders was signed by over 200 Merrick Academy teachers, parents and community members.

Merrick Academy Charter School is in a state of crisis which threatens the education of its students and the very future of the school. In the recent past, a Board member was convicted of stealing half a million dollars of public money, the founding principal suddenly departed, and now nearly one-third of the teaching staff have been summarily and illegally fired for exercising their rights to unionize and bargain collectively. The scandals caused by the Board’s behavior are undermining the hard work of the staff, students and destroying the school.

We believe that the current Board at Merrick is now made up of individuals who have shown that they are unprepared and unwilling to make sound educational decisions on behalf of the school and its students. Perhaps nothing illustrates this more than the Board’s firing of nearly a third of the school’s teaching staff, including many of the best and most experienced teachers from a staff that has consistently obtained excellent test scores for the school’s students. The firings were done by Fed Ex notices sent to teachers’ homes, and none included even the most minimal explanation for their abrupt dismissal.

Why, one might ask, would a Board make such an educationally inexplicable and indefensible decision? More »

An appalling act of public humiliation and shaming: that it the only honest way to describe the decision of the Los Angeles Times to publish the names and pictures of teachers who scored poorly on a “value added” statistic derived from their students’ standardized test scores. Even if “value added” measures were completely reliable and accurate measures of an individual teacher’s performance — and the best research indicates that in their current state of development and with the current flawed regimen of standardized tests, they are not — the decision to publish the names of teachers would still be indefensible. It submits to public disapprobation individuals who had committed no crime and engaged in no professional misconduct, and issues a summary judgment, for which there is no appeal, on their careers of many years. The decision of the Times to publish names tells us more about its distorted sense of journalistic ethics than it does about the performance of the teachers in question. And the rush of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to cheer lead the Times action, telling its reporters in grand Orwellian fashion that “in education, we’ve been scared to talk about success,” puts to rest any hope that the Duncan who recklessly embraced the mass firings of all the teachers in Bedford Falls, irrespective of their actual classroom performance, was an aberration of that moment.

There are many historical analogies for this action, but one with remarkable resonance is Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. More »

The large bold font of the headline of what may have been an advertorial passing as a news story in the “Religious Schools Section” of at least one prominent community newspaper in Queens not long ago caught my attention and wouldn’t let go. Can you read it and break free of its implications?

The headline reads “Why Do Private Schools Not Have To Teach To (the) Test?” The last paragraph is most revelatory.

“Private schools don’t teach to the test. More »

Some additional thoughts, responding to the comments below.

1. It seems that a number of the comments on Bill Gates simply reassert, without logical argument or supporting evidence, what is actually put into question by my original blog post — that Gates and Sam Walton of Wal-Mart are both of the same cloth, the sworn enemies of teachers, unions and public education who seek our destruction. More »

In the classic text Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, the renowned cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas examines how a society’s behavioral norms and taboos are constructed around notions of impurity and pollutants. Some societies have more fluid concepts of  purity and impurity, while others develop more rigid and inflexible conceptions. Douglas found that societies which have more rigid and inflexible conceptions develop elaborate rituals and practices, and devote considerable cultural energy, to the policing of these boundaries.

Douglas’ cultural anthropology provides an important insight into education politics. More »

In a post on the Education Week blog Inside School Research, veteran reporter Debra Viadero cites some intriguing conclusions and issues raised by Duke University researcher Helen F. Ladd’s new study of the relationship between teacher credentials (both traditional and alternative) and student performance.

Noting that most studies of this topic are old and concentrate on the elementary school level, she examined mandated end-of-course tests given to high school students in North Carolina.

Among her findings, quoted by Viadero, are that “measurable teacher credentials do indeed matter and have an… impact on student achievement… Teachers with an alternative license were slightly less effective than teachers with traditional licenses.”

It was also observed that “getting a high score on the subject-matter tests that teachers take for certification was linked to greater student learning gains… Teachers who were certified in the subject they taught were found to be more effective than those who were not.”

Some critics might argue that these conclusions are themselves inconclusive, were taken out of context or lend themselves to contradictory interpretations. But there is no rational cause for doubt. More »

“Balanced literacy,” as any literate person exposed to it realizes, is neither “balanced” nor is it “literacy.” The entrepreneurs and contractors who coined the phrase, concocted the notions, launched the fad and marketed the hoax, parlaying it into an empire of a thousand cash cows and classroom straitjacketing schemes, are minor-league mischief makers compared to the peddlers of “Balanced Education for Everyone.”

According to the Denver Post, “Balanced Education for Everyone” is a “national campaign linked to an unsuccessful effort to remove the teaching of man-made global warming.” Its advocates are convinced that global warming, if it exists at all, is totally unrelated to any human behavior. More »

Labor Arts’ most recent online exhibit is a pair of photo galleries documenting District 75 schools.

This exhibit features two series of revealing photographs taken by long time documentary photographer Gary Schoichet. The photographs depict New York City teachers who may have the most difficult jobs in the city: in Bayside, Queens they teach children and teens recovering from traumatic brain injuries; in East Harlem they teach children who are “medically fragile” — one label among many which is inadequate to describe their truly overpowering disabilities.

Many of these photographs originally appeared in two articles written by New York Teacher reporter Ellie Spielberg.

City workers speak about how the mayor’s proposed budget cuts will affect our kids and our communities.

Additional videos after the jump.

More »

Rumor has it that the Daily News editorial page is under orders — when called by City Hall or Tweed — to ask only “how high” they need to jump, particularly if it gives the editorialists a chance to pursue their rabid anti-union agenda. But the editorial page apparently got its signals crossed over two issues that the UFT helped negotiate in Albany — a new teacher evaluation system and a charter school reform measure.

On May 27 the editorial page praised the approval of “a breakthrough plan to identify and weed out subpar teachers.” Then on May 29 the DN editorialists described the passage of the charter reform legislation backed by the the UFT and other groups as “a major victory” in “the battle for education reform.”

But just as the headlines in Pravda and Izvestia, the former Soviet newspapers, could easily be reversed to reflect changes in Russian policy, someone apparently decided that a mistake had been made. More »

Congratulations to the PS 22 Chorus of Graniteville, Staten Island, for being named Webby Artist of the Year.

The group officially broke into the mainstream this year, with their YouTube channel passing the 17 million viewer mark and the children appearing on Oprah, performing with Common and Queen Latifah on Good Morning America, and singing at the White House’s National Tree Lighting ceremony in December. They also became recording stars, singing on a new album by indie-rock darlings Passion Pit.

“With their talent, grace, and warmth, the kids of P.S. 22 Chorus have won the hearts of millions of fans worldwide,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “We’re thrilled to honor these outstanding young men and women for reminding us all about the joy and power of music.”

The chorus and their director, Gregg Breinberg, will be honored at the 14th Annual Webby Awards Celebration on June 14 in New York City.