Again, this is an important message. I'm still waiting to see whether it resonates with the public, already stuffed up to its eyeballs with six years of Tweed PR.
Great post- sad that the media will continue to teacher bash and not acknowledge what those of us in the classroom see daily- that things haven't really changed for most of these kids.
I'm sick of data being shoved down our throats. I can't say it's unimportant, but as a colleague said to me recently, "When I'm asked by a parent why Johnny got a 55, I'm not going to pull out my data binder. I'm going to say that Johnny doesn't do his damn homework."
Or worse: Johnny doesn't know how to take tests or needs special attention. Unfortunately, with all the tests we're being forced to give (not the ones we have to make but the ones they make for us), when are we going to have time to teach? I'm already starting to see a disturbing trend of removing the soul from teaching.
Great post.
The Quality Review is back this week at my school. Last year we received a "well-developed" designation (as well as an "A" for the report card grade), but this year the principal and the admin are afraid that we won't be showing enough "progress" - so we have a meeting tomorrow in which we will learn about how the school has set benchmarks for every student in every grade in every class and is pushing everybody to meet these benchmarks.
Now the reality is my school is a good school where students actually learn and graduate with a Regents diploma in a reasonable amount of time. But to make believe that we have "data specialist" (as the AP in charge of testing and scheduling is now called) or can spend half our time collecting and analyzing data is ludicrous. If we spent as much time collecting and running data as the morons running the DOE want us to do even at the teacher level, there would be no time to actually teach.
As it is, between the Regents, the Quality Review, the school report card, the PSAT, and the 8-10 additional standardized tests being added in February, there is precious little time for me as an ELA teacher to actually teach literature anyway.
Which is, you know, why I went into teaching English in the first place.
That's a heckuva job the education reformers are doing at Bloomberg LP, I mean the NYCDOE, are doing.
Wonderful analysis and commentary. I find myself continually dismayed at how student achievement continues to remain stagnant when so much money is being spent, and so much effort devoted, to matters that don't directly impact the development of effective schools.
The latest reorganization is another recipe for failure and a total waste of funds.
As always, NYC Educator, you hit the nail on the head.
Bloomklein never even did the Jack Welch thing right. True Welch wanted an atmosphere of creative anxiety in his offices and many people were demoted or dismissed, but for those who measured up there were bonuses and stock options aplenty. Not some measly 3 grand, but end of year packages that matched salariesfor the year. Bloomklein is all stick, no carrot.Not exactly the succesful business model.
Hey RBE,
I see you are spending most your time over here now. Are you dumping the old site?
Great post by the way.
Jack Welch made General Electric #! or #2 in every business it owned (except NBC) and made money for the company and it's stockholders. Kleinberg, on the other hand, has not improved student scores since taking control of the sysgtem. Maybe they should follow Jack Welch's style and fire the bad managers, including themselves!
By the way I was not a fan of Jack Welch's style. They did call him neutron Jack for a reason.
Excellent post - one of the best summing up of the BloomKlein era I've seen.
On JacK Welch, read Mary Hoffman's piece from 2 years ago "Jack Welch is my daddy" at the ICE web site.
http://ice-uft.org/daddy.htm
Mary and I worked in the same elementary school which ended up with a Leadership Acad. Principal - with the result that most of the experienced teachers who had spent their careers in the school despite it being in a tough neighborhood in Williamsburg have left the school. Even their replacements have started to leave. But, hey, it did get an A, but teacher turnover is a positive thing in the world of BloomKlein.
See the video I posted of Patrick Sullivan raising this issue with Christopher Cerf at the Sept. PEP meeting. It is link from my blog and at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N...h?
v=NuT0ePlToR8
Mary does an excellent analysis from her first hand experience with a principal who was featured in a channel 13 program on the Lead Acad and the impact of the Jack Welch philosophy when applied to one school.
PT, I haven't canned the old site - I've just been busy lately and haven't been able to get too much up on it. But as things start to slow down, I think I'll roll out the all-new reality-based educator.blogspot.com. NYC Educator's invitation to blog over here for a bit has reinvigorated my interest in blogging the education issue, so I think I may go back to that, with a touch of politics, economics, and social commentary.
"yes Mrs. Johnny's parent, your son did get a 55. But let me tell you about the good I see in this number. When reviewing the data we found that your son bubbled in every answer perfectly. No pencil marks outside the lines and perfectly round circles. In addition he used a #2 pencil. Not every child uses a #2 pencil, there were 3 or 4 students across the city who didn't. That put's him in the highest percentile of students who used #2 pencils! So you see Mrs. Johnny's parent your son is actually doing quite well!"
Unitymustgo!
Bloomklein too!
And where's the High Priestess of municipal labor unions in all this?
Fixated on loftier goals, maybe. Like playing in the nationals.
an absolutely masterful job of analysis
you rock RBE!
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