It seems that "bad" teachers are still the new welfare Cadillac. The propaganda films and media attacks continue as does the vouchering of everything American. As long as these attacks are political and not about better education, as long as these attacks are about turning over public education to profiteers and not about children there can be no dialog. Tenure is an educational tradition not a business one, and I am not aware of any elementary school that put our country into a recession.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Well I'm not the only one!--from the Chicago Reader
Blogger Fred Klonsky's crusade against public education reform
Klonsky's is a voice from the classroom that's oft overlooked
By Ben Joravsky
In the last few weeks, Fred Klonsky has been the Paul Revere of the school blogging world, writing post after post on his education blog warning readers that, in as many words, "The reformers are coming! The reformers are coming!"
In particular, Klonsky is talking about the zealots, backed by multimillionaires, who are crusading against teachers' unions as they claim to fight for the "reform" of public education.
It was Klonsky, as much as anyone, who was responsible for shining a light on the now-infamous I'm-the-king-of-the-universe talk Jonah Edelman gave last month at a think-tank gathering in Aspen, Colorado.
That's the one where Edelman, CEO of the education group Stand for Children, explained how he and his cohorts had effectively bamboozled house speaker Michael Madigan—and just about everyone else in Illinois—into passing Senate Bill 7. Among other things, the bill waters down seniority and tenure for public school teachers.
On July 7 he posted a link to footage of Edelman's talk. Within a few days, he had more than 25,000 hits. That's a lot of hits for a little-known education blog—appropriately named Fred Klonsky's blog—that doesn't feature nude pictures of drunken celebrities. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
On July 10, Edelman felt compelled to eat crow and issue an apology on Klonsky's blog, assuring readers that he and Stand for Children really do "share a common commitment with teachers and teacher's unions."
Apparently they just have a funny way of showing it.
True to form, Klonsky—an elementary school art teacher and union activist in suburban Park Ridge—has been having a field day ever since. "I don't know why Edelman apologized," Klonsky says. "He was only telling the truth."
With his wry, sardonic manner, Klonsky represents the voice from the classroom that's generally overlooked in mainstream coverage of public education.
Yes, I know—many of us have been subjected to boring or ineffectual teachers who might be better off doing something—anything—else.
But as Klonsky points out, the pendulum has swung too far in the antiteacher direction. He argues that groups like Stand for Children have dedicated themselves to the erroneous proposition that much of the evil in public education stems from bad teachers—as opposed to poverty, dysfunctional families, crime, vast economic disparities, misguided reformers, and autocratic administrators. By this logic, if we can get rid of tenure and seniority so that it's easier to fire bad teachers—assuming we figure out who they are—then all children will perform as well as the highest achievers.
To remedy the wrongs, Stand for Children has raised more than $3 million over the last year from 23 donors, including various Pritzkers and Crowns as well as Sam Zell (as if he didn't have enough to do as he deals with the bankrupt Tribune). In other words, we have some of the world's richest people teaming up to make life miserable for middle-class teachers. And who said class warfare is dead?
As Edelman almost gleefully explained in his talk, he used that money to shower donations on legislators who might otherwise go to the evil side—i.e., the teachers' unions.
The end result was the aforementioned SB 7, which, among other things, requires school districts to develop performance benchmarks, most likely based on test scores, to determine which teachers are good and which ones are bad. The bad ones will then be the first to go if a district has to make budget cuts.
Seeing that it was going to pass with or without them, the leaders of the teachers' unions jumped aboard, part of their larger strategy of trying to go with the flow rather than end up drowned. Klonsky, by the way, is even harder on union officials than he is on Edelman, accusing them of caving to the "reformers" on everything from pensions to tenure.
In April, the senate passed the bill by a margin of 54 to nothing. In May, the House passed it 112 to 1 (state rep Monique Davis was the holdout—you go, girl!). And in June, Governor Pat Quinn signed it into law.
Just about everyone from the Tribune editorial board to President Obama has been orgiastically jubilant ever since. In July, some of the law's backers—including state senator Kimberly Lightford, its chief legislative sponsor—schlepped to an education symposium in Washington, D.C., to trumpet it as a model other states might follow.
Word of advice to other states: it's generally not a good idea to emulate anything coming out of Illinois politics, the land of Blagojevich and various other convicted elected officials.
Look, I hate to be the party pooper, but I agree with Klonsky—there's been far too much hype over SB 7, which will have very little substantive inpact on public education, at least in Chicago.
Thanks to Mayor Daley and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman, the district effectively did away with teacher seniority and tenure last year with something called redefinition. That's bureaucratic jargon for arbitrarily changing teachers' job titles so they can be unceremoniously dumped no matter how long they've been teaching. In fact, more than 1,300 teachers were redefined out of their jobs last year in Chicago. It was as if the bosses of an accounting firm told a bunch of accountants that their jobs had been redefined to include juggling. Anyone who couldn't juggle three balls in the air would be replaced by someone who could—preferably someone younger and cheaper.
So effectively the biggest impact of SB 7 is that it eradicated a right that CPS had already eradicated—a point Edelman probably didn't mention to any of Stand's donors, if he knew it himself.
If I'm Sam Zell, I want my money back.
"You're right that SB 7 won't have a big impact on Chicago," says Klonsky. "But it will have an impact on districts outside Chicago, especially some of the poor districts downstate and in the south suburbs."
Fair enough. And Klonsky notes that it will even have an impact on high-achieving districts like New Trier high school in Wilmette, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's alma mater.
"When I used to go to dinner parties and people asked me what I did, I'd say I'm an elementary school art teacher and they'd say, 'Oh, that's nice,'" Klonsky says. "Now they say, 'What's the deal with unions?' and 'Why can't we get rid of bad teachers?'"
Klonsky says that such conversations always turn to the subject of teacher tenure. "And I say, 'Oh really? They have tenure at New Trier and those kids are doing the best in the state. So if we're going to blame tenure for kids doing poorly in some schools, why don't we credit tenure for kids doing well at New Trier?'"
For that matter, teacher seniority and tenure have had no discernible impact at students at North Side College Prep, Walter Payton, Whitney Young, or any of the other high-scoring CPS schools.
So maybe, just maybe, there are other more significant factors at play to explain why students at New Trier—did I mention that it was the mayor's alma mater?—perform so much better than students at, say, Marshall high school on the west side.
Speaking of which, last year CPS unilaterally fired a whole bunch of tenured teachers at Marshall because the students weren't doing well enough. And nobody needed SB 7 to do it.
Joravsky discusses his reporting weekly with journalist Dave Glowacz at mrradio.org/benj. Subscribe to their podcast at the iTunes Store.
In particular, Klonsky is talking about the zealots, backed by multimillionaires, who are crusading against teachers' unions as they claim to fight for the "reform" of public education.
It was Klonsky, as much as anyone, who was responsible for shining a light on the now-infamous I'm-the-king-of-the-universe talk Jonah Edelman gave last month at a think-tank gathering in Aspen, Colorado.
That's the one where Edelman, CEO of the education group Stand for Children, explained how he and his cohorts had effectively bamboozled house speaker Michael Madigan—and just about everyone else in Illinois—into passing Senate Bill 7. Among other things, the bill waters down seniority and tenure for public school teachers.
On July 7 he posted a link to footage of Edelman's talk. Within a few days, he had more than 25,000 hits. That's a lot of hits for a little-known education blog—appropriately named Fred Klonsky's blog—that doesn't feature nude pictures of drunken celebrities. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
On July 10, Edelman felt compelled to eat crow and issue an apology on Klonsky's blog, assuring readers that he and Stand for Children really do "share a common commitment with teachers and teacher's unions."
Apparently they just have a funny way of showing it.
True to form, Klonsky—an elementary school art teacher and union activist in suburban Park Ridge—has been having a field day ever since. "I don't know why Edelman apologized," Klonsky says. "He was only telling the truth."
With his wry, sardonic manner, Klonsky represents the voice from the classroom that's generally overlooked in mainstream coverage of public education.
Yes, I know—many of us have been subjected to boring or ineffectual teachers who might be better off doing something—anything—else.
But as Klonsky points out, the pendulum has swung too far in the antiteacher direction. He argues that groups like Stand for Children have dedicated themselves to the erroneous proposition that much of the evil in public education stems from bad teachers—as opposed to poverty, dysfunctional families, crime, vast economic disparities, misguided reformers, and autocratic administrators. By this logic, if we can get rid of tenure and seniority so that it's easier to fire bad teachers—assuming we figure out who they are—then all children will perform as well as the highest achievers.
To remedy the wrongs, Stand for Children has raised more than $3 million over the last year from 23 donors, including various Pritzkers and Crowns as well as Sam Zell (as if he didn't have enough to do as he deals with the bankrupt Tribune). In other words, we have some of the world's richest people teaming up to make life miserable for middle-class teachers. And who said class warfare is dead?
As Edelman almost gleefully explained in his talk, he used that money to shower donations on legislators who might otherwise go to the evil side—i.e., the teachers' unions.
The end result was the aforementioned SB 7, which, among other things, requires school districts to develop performance benchmarks, most likely based on test scores, to determine which teachers are good and which ones are bad. The bad ones will then be the first to go if a district has to make budget cuts.
Seeing that it was going to pass with or without them, the leaders of the teachers' unions jumped aboard, part of their larger strategy of trying to go with the flow rather than end up drowned. Klonsky, by the way, is even harder on union officials than he is on Edelman, accusing them of caving to the "reformers" on everything from pensions to tenure.
In April, the senate passed the bill by a margin of 54 to nothing. In May, the House passed it 112 to 1 (state rep Monique Davis was the holdout—you go, girl!). And in June, Governor Pat Quinn signed it into law.
Just about everyone from the Tribune editorial board to President Obama has been orgiastically jubilant ever since. In July, some of the law's backers—including state senator Kimberly Lightford, its chief legislative sponsor—schlepped to an education symposium in Washington, D.C., to trumpet it as a model other states might follow.
Word of advice to other states: it's generally not a good idea to emulate anything coming out of Illinois politics, the land of Blagojevich and various other convicted elected officials.
Look, I hate to be the party pooper, but I agree with Klonsky—there's been far too much hype over SB 7, which will have very little substantive inpact on public education, at least in Chicago.
Thanks to Mayor Daley and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman, the district effectively did away with teacher seniority and tenure last year with something called redefinition. That's bureaucratic jargon for arbitrarily changing teachers' job titles so they can be unceremoniously dumped no matter how long they've been teaching. In fact, more than 1,300 teachers were redefined out of their jobs last year in Chicago. It was as if the bosses of an accounting firm told a bunch of accountants that their jobs had been redefined to include juggling. Anyone who couldn't juggle three balls in the air would be replaced by someone who could—preferably someone younger and cheaper.
So effectively the biggest impact of SB 7 is that it eradicated a right that CPS had already eradicated—a point Edelman probably didn't mention to any of Stand's donors, if he knew it himself.
If I'm Sam Zell, I want my money back.
"You're right that SB 7 won't have a big impact on Chicago," says Klonsky. "But it will have an impact on districts outside Chicago, especially some of the poor districts downstate and in the south suburbs."
Fair enough. And Klonsky notes that it will even have an impact on high-achieving districts like New Trier high school in Wilmette, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's alma mater.
"When I used to go to dinner parties and people asked me what I did, I'd say I'm an elementary school art teacher and they'd say, 'Oh, that's nice,'" Klonsky says. "Now they say, 'What's the deal with unions?' and 'Why can't we get rid of bad teachers?'"
Klonsky says that such conversations always turn to the subject of teacher tenure. "And I say, 'Oh really? They have tenure at New Trier and those kids are doing the best in the state. So if we're going to blame tenure for kids doing poorly in some schools, why don't we credit tenure for kids doing well at New Trier?'"
For that matter, teacher seniority and tenure have had no discernible impact at students at North Side College Prep, Walter Payton, Whitney Young, or any of the other high-scoring CPS schools.
So maybe, just maybe, there are other more significant factors at play to explain why students at New Trier—did I mention that it was the mayor's alma mater?—perform so much better than students at, say, Marshall high school on the west side.
Speaking of which, last year CPS unilaterally fired a whole bunch of tenured teachers at Marshall because the students weren't doing well enough. And nobody needed SB 7 to do it.
Joravsky discusses his reporting weekly with journalist Dave Glowacz at mrradio.org/benj. Subscribe to their podcast at the iTunes Store.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The exclusive private school college drop-out gets his revenge!
Mr. Gates is the richest marketeer of our century. Though a philanthropist, he has gone on record stating that he will never support the arts. The arts are useless. How can anyone interested in education and the health of our culture have such an attitude? This reveals that his philanthropy has a design just like his marketeering.
It is no surprise that a man who knows how to sell and how to put his competitors out of business would do something like this; set up stealth and false grass roots organizations.
Objective: to make the teachers work for less. The bottom line is that an experienced teacher costs more. New teachers are cheap so all the bad teachers are experienced. Even though experienced teachers do better than newbies. Union busting anyone?
The business model almost bankrupted our country. It seems that they want to do the same to education.
What do I mean?
To spend tens of millions of dollars to undermine organizations that work but are in financial difficulty and replace them with untried methods just so he can claim to be the savior of education. That same money could be used to improve education in a thousand ways.
Then again it would not be Mr. Gates initiatives would it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?_r=1&hp
It is no surprise that a man who knows how to sell and how to put his competitors out of business would do something like this; set up stealth and false grass roots organizations.
Objective: to make the teachers work for less. The bottom line is that an experienced teacher costs more. New teachers are cheap so all the bad teachers are experienced. Even though experienced teachers do better than newbies. Union busting anyone?
The business model almost bankrupted our country. It seems that they want to do the same to education.
What do I mean?
To spend tens of millions of dollars to undermine organizations that work but are in financial difficulty and replace them with untried methods just so he can claim to be the savior of education. That same money could be used to improve education in a thousand ways.
Then again it would not be Mr. Gates initiatives would it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?_r=1&hp
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Cultural Revolution - American Style
It seems so long ago when Mao called on the intelligentsia to become one with the people or else.
Well I just heard an American elected politician say on MPR (and read) that public school teachers had jobs that pay and many folks in their State don't have jobs so lets fire the teachers, cut their pay and benefits and even the playing field! It is so bizarre that the right wing has taken the road of class and age warfare more associated with the left That is hate the smart and experienced bad teachers, but not the "cool" novice young people who will replace them at a third the initial cost.
The move to pay teachers merit pay is really an attempt to bring politics back into schools. The fact is schools are communities and that time is finite. A teacher does not work in isolation. Even so a teacher who demands and succeeds in getting more of a students time might have better scores for themselves but at the expense of other teachers. Schools know this and that is why music and the arts and non test subjects are being dropped from the schools. More time for test prep. Turning our schools into factories.
I though that American education was being walmarted. Rather than cut to the bone for profits only and low prices schools are cut to the bone for higher test scores. But I was wrong. Rather the move is to completely dismantle our trusted institutions for someones power grab.
Look to China instead.
PS
I was wondering just how much money the States spend to oversee and assess charter schools.How much of that money might be used for students themselves?
Well I just heard an American elected politician say on MPR (and read) that public school teachers had jobs that pay and many folks in their State don't have jobs so lets fire the teachers, cut their pay and benefits and even the playing field! It is so bizarre that the right wing has taken the road of class and age warfare more associated with the left That is hate the smart and experienced bad teachers, but not the "cool" novice young people who will replace them at a third the initial cost.
The move to pay teachers merit pay is really an attempt to bring politics back into schools. The fact is schools are communities and that time is finite. A teacher does not work in isolation. Even so a teacher who demands and succeeds in getting more of a students time might have better scores for themselves but at the expense of other teachers. Schools know this and that is why music and the arts and non test subjects are being dropped from the schools. More time for test prep. Turning our schools into factories.
I though that American education was being walmarted. Rather than cut to the bone for profits only and low prices schools are cut to the bone for higher test scores. But I was wrong. Rather the move is to completely dismantle our trusted institutions for someones power grab.
Look to China instead.
PS
I was wondering just how much money the States spend to oversee and assess charter schools.How much of that money might be used for students themselves?
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Why I love Diane Ravich and why college drop outs like Bill Gates should stay out of Education
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
"..I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."
"..I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."
Monday, January 24, 2011
Everybody's an expert everybody has a solution but who is they?
http://www.startribune.com/local/114486594.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl
Who do these people represent? Who is paying for their advocacy?
Who created this "group" and hired a former SPPS board member as spokesperson?
It seems that with education reform the cash comes first.
By the way their report has some statistics that seem a little out of proportion, that is to say that comparisons with other states are used to show MN in the worst light.
See Here:
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/19.pdf
______________________________________
Further this scree from their report (below) seems to leave out the messy political details about why this happened--not to mention who is doing the ranking or the context.
In the Race to the Top federal grant competition, we earned a D− for our
teacher policies and a D for our failure to come together to support education
reform. We ranked 20th overall, far behind the national leaders and
out of the running for tens of millions of dollars in federal aid.
No mention of whether its a good idea for states to compete for school funds. That might require a different kind of advocacy.
Who do these people represent? Who is paying for their advocacy?
Who created this "group" and hired a former SPPS board member as spokesperson?
It seems that with education reform the cash comes first.
By the way their report has some statistics that seem a little out of proportion, that is to say that comparisons with other states are used to show MN in the worst light.
See Here:
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/19.pdf
______________________________________
Further this scree from their report (below) seems to leave out the messy political details about why this happened--not to mention who is doing the ranking or the context.
In the Race to the Top federal grant competition, we earned a D− for our
teacher policies and a D for our failure to come together to support education
reform. We ranked 20th overall, far behind the national leaders and
out of the running for tens of millions of dollars in federal aid.
No mention of whether its a good idea for states to compete for school funds. That might require a different kind of advocacy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)