The same goes for my school - we received an A on our report card, a "well-developed" rating on our Quality Review, our test scores are excellent, and we don't have to run 10 hour school days to do it.
My nephew works for a Wall Street firm.
Last year the boss took them to Vale on his private jet. Work or discussing work was forbidden.
There is a time to work, and a time to play. It's unfair to dangle paradise in front of a hard worker and tell them they can only spend part of the day enjoying it. A reward should be a reward. If you want real staff development, take them to a casino where you can have meetings during the day and fun at night as most businesses do.
As for you being anti-teacher, what a disgrace. If a person can't make a good argument, let's go to name calling. You have always defended teachers, and defended Eduwonk even when you disagreed with them.
I think Eduwonk owes you a personal apology for their disparaging you and your post. (It's so Leo) Your post used an article and quoted the article. KIPP's accounting is under investigation, and you had every right to let the masses know.
btw, our district used to take the science teachers to the Hall of Science for staff development until the powers that be took that funding away. They also took away MERC,(located in all 5 boroughs) a one-day science staff development for all city teachers. It was a day filled with exciting ways to incorporate science into all aspects of the curriculum and still be "hands on". It was fun and informative at the same time and we left with materials. We had that program for so many years until Klein dumped it. Now he is once again putting money into science. This is a guy who looks at bottom line rather than the actual programs.
My point is it's unfair to put NYCEd down for the type of staff development NYC educators get. It deflects from the fact that KIPP is not only using funds in a way that needs to be investigated, but that those KIPP teachers should have been rewarded with an actual vacation, but weren't.
Great point about MERC. I will personally put out a great big thanks to Ed Denecke and Cliff Fee- without them during my first year of teaching, I can tell you right now that I would long since have left the profession. Where my administration basically left me to fend for myself, Ed and Cliff taught me how to teach science. What a travesty that Bloomklein cut funding, because Science PD in this city has never been, and probably never will be, the same. They can dump all the money they want into science, it's the GREAT PD that helps teachers become better teachers.
Dear NYCEducator,
Since you personally called me out in your blog (I was the "very first commenter" on the Eduwonk post) I thought I would return the favor here: http://thecommonschool.blogspot.com/
You should feel honored; I resurrected a dead blog purely for the purpose of explaining why you are wrong.
Commenting by HaloScan
