video: Occupy Wall St. as sung by Frank Sinatra

Inspirational and brutal; this brilliant video by Casey Neistat with a soundtrack of the classic Kander and Ebb theme shows one side of the story. Hopefully I will figure out how to edit my less violent footage and post it this weekend!

Josh Karan on the DOE's new Parent University

Chancellor Wolcott has announced that in the next half year he will be establishing an NYC public school parent training program which he calls Parent University. 

Ostensibly, this is his attempt to fulfill the promise made by the DOE two years ago in return for the NYS legislature renewing Mayoral Control of the NYC school system.

Little information about the content of the training has been disclosed, but there has been some description about helping parents learn how they can help their children with homework, navigating the escalating number of available middle and high school choices, and knowing HS graduation requirements.  I believe all of these are important matters for parents to know about.

However, all of these address contending with a system that increasingly diminishes the possibility of most families in this city to obtain a meaningful education for their children.

Matters pertaining to funding, curricula, teacher and administrator preparation, school lunch, having not been mentioned, seemingly are not areas that parents attending Parent University will be exposed to.  Therefore, the diploma received by these parents is likely to be as vacuous as the diploma that those of their children who graduate NYC high schools receive.

Why is it that the content of this University's courses is being left up to the DOE without involvement by parents and the community which it is supposed to serve?

Who will be making the decisions about this content, its structure, and where the program will be offered? Why is it being done in secret?

As a matter that was legislated by the New York State Senate and Assembly, should not there be a mandate that a broader grouping be involved in such decisions?  One of the holdouts for the Parent Training Program, who was reluctant to totally endorse reauthorization of Mayoral Control without what seemed to be a vehicle for increasing parent involvement, was then State Senator, now Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. 

Since the establishment of the Parent Training Program is New York State law, could not the now Attorney General issue guidelines on the implementation of that program, asserting that it is contrary to the legislation that he helped pass to leave such decisions wholly in the hands of the DOE?

I wish to generate a discussion about these questions, and begin to attract a working group that will seek to present alternative proposals about what an officially created and funded parent training program should include.  This is not the DOE's program; Chancellor Klein fought against this proposal.  This is the program that our communities demanded as a rock bottom minimum for the retention of Mayoral Control.

It is occurring 3 years after it was promised.  We should now be part of the planning for its establishment.

I would like to bring together anyone else who would like to work on this issue, so that in the next 2-3 months we can create an outline that we can organize around to be the basis for a NYC Public School Parent University.

Please contact me if you wish to participate in this effort. --   Josh Karan; joshkaran2@mac.com, 917-923-2584

-------------------------------

For the second year in northern Manhattan, Josh Karan is conducting a District 6 Parent Advocacy Training Program, with funding from the offices of New York City Council members Robert Jackson & Ydanis Rodriguez.

The Time is now: occupy the DOE! Join us on the steps of Tweed on Thursday, Nov. 17th!

Friends:  There is a total assault being conducted on our first amendment rights to assembly, speech and the press in NYC. If you doubt what I am saying, please watch this.

And then remind yourself of this, our First Amendment right: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What happened this morning and today is  appalling. The city’s move to prevent people from peaceful assembly in protest of profound economic injustice is another instance of Bloomberg’s remarkable disdain for the human and constitutional rights that we – THE people – hold very dear.  In defending this right, NYC council member Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested, beaten up and is still in police custody as I write.  In response, we are organizing an uptown contingent of public school parents and concerned citizens to protest these events and all that gave rise to it on Thursday, November 17.

This Thursday though is not just about our basic freedoms; it is about how both the growing economic inequality that characterizes our country and what drives it are affecting our public school children – your children and my children.

We have a governor that, after slashing education funding, refuses to maintain an existing tax on the richest New Yorkers, and compares this position to a principled stand against the death penalty? This governor denied that last year’s cuts would hurt our children and yet we all know that they have; our children live it everyday.  Further the pain has been distributed inequitably; our poorest children are suffering the most.  (See this AQE report, which shows that state education aid to poor districts was cut two to three times as much per student as wealthy districts over the last two years.)

We have a PUBLIC education system that is being bent to the profit motives of PRIVATE corporations, under the guise of “accountability” through testing, testing and more testing.  I am pretty sure that Pearson does not have the best interests of my son at heart; on the other hand, after one of the best parent-teacher conferences at my child’s school, I’m pretty sure that most of our teachers do.  The new tests being created are an attempt to do what good teachers do all the time, assess the process of academic performance.  The costs associated with creating, administering and grading these new tests, to be done several times a year in ALL subjects including the arts, are going to be astronomical.  Why do we do this? Because "we" do not trust teachers.  How will we pay for this?  Cutting more teachers I am quite sure.  

In so doing, the corporate forces that run our schools will continue to turn them into test-prep academies, where teaching to the “new and improved test” will guarantee narrowed curricula in the arts and humanities, and the production of more (and mere) technical worker bees, incapable of original thought or dissent – just cogs in the corporate machine.  

Say NO to this corporatization of public education, please. 

Come and join us as we Occupythe DOE on Thursday. 

First we will be occupying education at 4:30 PM on the steps of Tweed (52 Chambers; north side of City Hall Park, behind City Hall, between Centre Street and Broadway, map here).  Then we will be marching across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Bring your children; bring your signs; bring your courage and conviction.

Thanks, Tory Frye, parent District 6

This year's class size data released today; unforgivable!

The DOE released this year's class size data today here.

Class sizes increased citywide this year again for the 4^th year in a row.  In the early grades, the increase was sharper than in any year since records have been kept – at least  since 1998.

This year, there were as many Kindergarten children in classes LARGER than 25 (the union contractual maximum) as were in classes of 20 or less –the goal that Bloomberg promised to achieve when he first  ran for office.

These extremely large classes are especially unforgivable, given that the city has received more than $2 billion since 2007, in return for a promise to reduce class sizes in all grades, as part of the Contracts for Excellence law.

This  law was passed to settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.  This school year (2011-2012) was supposed to be the final  year of the city’s five year C4E plan, and yet classes are far larger than before the law was passed.

If you have trouble reading the below, a more readable verOur power point with detailed class size trends and discussion of what went wrong with C4E is posted here. 

C4E for Citywide

Video of arrests this morning of Occupy Wall St. protesters

I was filming the arrests this morning at park/empty lot owned by Trinity Church on 6th avenue and Canal; I stuck my little Flip camera through a slat in the fence. 

10 Point Education Platform for NYC Public Schools: What We Demand!

A group of NYC high school activists called The Resistance from The DreamYard A.C.T.I.O.N Project in the Bronx showed up at the People's University teach-in in Washington Sq. Park today. These young people were a big hit at Occupy DOE on the steps of Tweed last week.  Go like their FB page now!

Their demands are listed under the video below.



1. We demand free quality education as a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.

2. We demand the dismantling of Bloomberg's Panel for Educational Policy. We demand a new 13 member community board to run our public schools (comprised of parents, educators, education experts, community members, and a minimum of 5 student representatives).

3. We demand quality instruction. Teachers should ethnically, culturally, and racially reflect the student body. We demand experienced teachers who have a history of teaching students well. Teacher training should be intensive and include an apprenticeship with master teachers as well as experiences with the communities where the school is located.

4. We demand stronger extra-curricular activities to help stimulate and spark interest in students. Students should have options, opportunities, and choice in their education.

5. We demand a healthy, safe environment that does not expect our failure or anticipate our criminality. We demand a school culture that acknowledges our humanity (free of metal detectors, untrained and underpaid security guards, and abusive tactics).

6. We demand that all NYC public school communities foster structured and programmatic community building so that students, teachers, and staff learn in an environment that is respectful and safe for all.

7. We demand small classes. Class sizes should be humane and productive. We demand that the student to teacher ratio for a mainstream classroom should be no more than 15:1.

8. We demand student assessments and evaluations that reflect the variety of ways that we learn and think (portfolio assessments, thesis defenses, anecdotal evaluations, written exams). Student success should not depend solely on high stakes testing.

9. We demand a stop to the attack on our schools. If a school is deemed "failing", we demand a team of qualified and diverse experts to assess how such schools can improve and the resources to improve them.

10. We demand fiscal equity for NYC public schools: as stated in the Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007 by the NY State Legislature, NYC public schools have been inadequately and inequitably funded. We demand the legislatively mandated $7 billion dollars in increased annual state education aid to be delivered to our schools now!

Dennis Walcott infuriates parents once again, this time in District 6

On Thursday November 10, the Community Education Council in Northern Manhattan hosted a Town Hall meeting with Chancellor Dennis Walcott.  The CEC prepared an excellent power point containing key data about the district, along with specific questions for the Chancellor.  It was a contentious meeting, according to all reports; see the Gotham Schools story.  Unfortunately, despite lots of PR spin about "partnering with parents," there is no evidence that Walcott is willing to listen to parents and shift away from the wrong-headed and damaging policies of his predecessor, Joel Klein, including repeated budget cuts, class size increases, worsening overcrowding, preferential treatment of charter schools with continued co-locations , and incessant testing. Here is the account of the meeting from Victoria Frye, CEC 6 member and public school parent: 

We described the issues facing our schools: too little resources to provide a quality education; overcrowded schools; disgraceful school conditions; budget cuts; co-locations; THE LIST GOES ON!

With each, Dennis Walcott got up and...spouted the party line: 

"The reality is that in this economy there will be mid-year budget cuts."

"With shrinking budgets, leaders must be creative."

"By creating school choice we are allowing the market place to drive the issues."

"I respect Joel Klein tremendously. I think the world of Joel Klein."

"There are no plans in our capital budget for a new facility for Mott Hall" [the only program for gifted D6 IS students and a national model].

And then something along the lines of: "your D6 schools are so bad that we will not replicate or grow them; we will simply bring in [charters] that really know how to educate your D6 children."

What to say?

OCCUPY EDUCATION. IT IS THE ONLY WAY.

-- Victoria (Tory) Frye, CEC 6 member.

NY Charter schools join the pushback vs. teacher evaluation and data systems promoted by the corp reformers

Today the NY Charter Schools Association sent a letter to the state’s charter schools, rejecting the demand from the State Education Department that they provide information that can link teachers to student test score to enable the creation of a statewide data system designed to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

It is ironic that the charter school lobby, which has been strengthened and supported by Arne Duncan and Gates and the rest of the corporate reformers, is resisting  the sort of reductionist teacher evaluation system that was required for states to compete for federal Race to the Top funds, at the very same time that RTTT led to an increase in the numbers of charters.

Thus, charters could grow to significant part of the overall school system but remain exempt from the damaging prescriptions that the corp reformers want to impose on our public schools, and their teachers, no matter how “ineffective”, could continue teaching in charters indefinitely. 

Here, the NY charter school community joins the growing pushback vs. the rush to adopt deficient teacher evaluation systems being pushed by the US DOE and Gates Foundation,  joining the NY state teachers union, hundreds of Long Island principals, and the educators of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, the California State Education Department has estimated that adopting a new teacher evaluation system, along with the Common Core standards, would cost the state $3.1 billion; funds it clearly doesn't have, as school budgets have been scraped to the bone.

I believe charters also consider themselves free from having to adopt the Common Core standards, developed by the Gates Foundation and promoted by Race to the Top. I guess what’s good for the goose is NOT good for the gander. 

Last night on the steps of Tweed, we occupied DOE again!

Occupy Wall St. on the attack on public education; & Santos Crespo asks, where's the money?

See this video from Occupy Wall St. about the attack on public education in NYC with testimony from laid-off DC37 school aide Cliftonia Johnson and investigative journalist Chris Hedges.  For more on Ms. Johnson and some of the other nearly 700 school aides who were fired this year, and who performed valuable services to our kids, see this NYT article.  The entire Occupy Wall St. session, a people's trial of Goldman Sachs, took place on Nov. 3 at Zuccotti Park, is here. 

Also, see the letter that DC37 labor leader Santos Crespo sent to Mayor Bloomberg last week below, showing how the budget cuts to education have disproportionately hit the classroom and hurt our children as well as the lowest paid school workers.


Where’s the Money Mayor Bloomberg?

            Due to the exuberant contracting out waste in the Bloomberg Administration, school budgets have been slashed and cut to the bone.  On Wednesday, November 2, 2011 the Daily News printed an article titled, “Doing less with less: Budgets and choices shrink at city schools”.

            Department of Education spokesperson Natalie Ravitz stated that “Mayor Bloomberg had actually increased the city’s spending on public schools this year by 2 billion.” REALLY Ms. Ravitz?  The over 2000 Local 372 members that have been laid off in the past few years have a question for you, WHERE’S THE MONEY?

            Did you use it to lower class sizes? NO, since 74% of elementary schools have larger classes.  Did you spend it on tutoring to better prepare our children in schools? NO, since 56% of elementary schools have reduced tutoring. Did you spend it on text books? NO. Extracurricular activities? NO. Teachers? NO. And obviously NOT to add support services to the schools since Local 372 members are always first on the chopping block.

            So where did the $2 billion increase go Mr. Mayor? Did it go to your high priced consultants and out of control contract spending?  Every day it seems the City Council and Comptroller Liu are finding crooks robbing the city to line their pockets with contracting money, which the mayor seems to condone.

            Our schools are suffering Mr. Mayor, the community is suffering and our children will be the ones that pay. This is not about balancing the books, it’s about lowering gun violence and drug abuse in our neighborhoods, it’s about making sure our high school students are academically prepared for college and it’s about making sure our children grow up to be contributing members of society.

-- Santos Crespo, Jr., President, Local 372, DC 37, AFSCME

Occupy the DOE! Join us on the steps of Tweed on Monday, Nov. 7th!

Parents, Educators, and Students of

 New York City

cordially request your presence at the

People’s General Assembly On

 Public Education

Date:  Monday, the Seventh of November,

Two Thousand and Eleven

Time:  Five p.m.

Location: Steps of Tweed Hall, 52 Chambers St.

Please join us for the exercise of democracy, the raising of silenced voices, outrage at the lack of public representation in decisions of educational policy, and

 the creation of a People’s Agenda for our schools!

Hosted by Occupy the Department of Education; please visit us on Facebook!

Eva Occupies OWS

November 2, 2011 (GBN News): NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes he has found a sure-fire way of evicting those nettlesome Occupy Wall Street protesters, GBN News has learned. According to City Hall sources, the Mayor will employ the same methods he uses in the public schools, and will dislodge the protesters by siting a charter school in Zuccotti Park.

The Mayor is said to have had no trouble bringing the head of the Success Charter Network, Eva Moskowitz, on board with his plan. Ms. Moskowitz has already ordered desks, chairs, whiteboards, and other school equipment to be delivered to the park at midnight, and her staff will immediately remove all tents, signs, and other paraphernalia and toss them out onto the street.

When reached for comment, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott denied that the protesters will necessarily have to leave the park. “They can apply to the charter school same as anyone else in the city," Mr. Walcott told GBN News. “As long as they get in through the lottery, they can stay as long as they follow the rules.”

But critics were skeptical. “Eva’s got a history of expelling people who she considers ‘disruptive’," said one protester who is familiar with Ms. Moskowitz’ methods. “By the second week, there may be none of us left.”

“On the other hand,” she continued, “if we can stand our ground, maybe it will inspire the parents in the public schools she’s moving in on to resist her by occupying their own schools. Maybe this time, she’s gone too far.”

Today's scorecard on our schools: the news ain't pretty & the diagnosis bizarre

We have had nine long years during which NY state and city education officials have relentlessly focused on  high stakes testing, with school closings, grade retention, and teacher bonuses all linked to test scores.  So according to data released today, what have been the results?

• Test score tampering allegations are way up;

• So are suspensions;

• So are class sizes;

•  Meanwhile, our test scores on the most reliable national assessments are flat or declining.

So what do we need, according to NY education officials ?  Better tests.  Read it and weep.

The amazing Justin Wedes!

Justin Wedes has emerged as one of the key spokespeople behind the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Justin, a 27 year old former NYC teacher, was on WNYC radio a couple of weeks ago, and  on the Colbert report last night (see video below), the first of a two part segment, the second of which will air tonight.

Though the reach and success of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been tremendous, Justin’s role doesn’t surprise me, since over the last year he has done some amazingly creative and compelling advocacy work, in addition to consulting with Class Size Matters and Parents Across America on our social media.

Among Justin’s accomplishments over the past year:

• He collected more than 11,000 signatures on a petition in a few weeks against the appointment of Cathie Black as Chancellor;

•           As part of the Yes Men, he helped put together a hoax that convinced the AP, among others, that General Electric had agreed to voluntarily pay back  to the government its 2010 tax write off of $3.2 billion, simply by issuing a convincing press release linked to a fake GE website, which Columbia Journalism Review called "the most amazing corporate press release in history."
  

     But my personal  favorite Justin moment was his hilarious appearance at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting last year, pretending to be Jason Wharton, Chicken of the Sea’s quality assurance representative, and giving out free tuna sandwiches to protest Bloomberg’s remarks that the PCBs in one tuna sandwich were more dangerous than the PCB-leaking lights in our public schools.

Two videos below:  Justin at the PEP last year and on the Colbert show last night. 

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Colbert Super PAC - Occupy Wall Street Co-Optportunity - Stephen On Location
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Hearings on the city's technology contracts; with hundreds of millions lost through waste and fraud

Today the NYC Council Contracts and Technology Committees held hearings about a new bill,  Int. 521A, that would require the city to report any contract whose cost has overrun by more than $500,000 or ten percent.

Of course, the city, in the person of Deputy Mayor Cass Holloway opposed the legislation, and claimed that it was unnecessary. [UPDATE: according to today's NY Times, the city doesn't oppose the goal of the legislation, but the amount of overruns that would trigger the report.]  Numerous city contracts, particularly those involving technology projects, that have run over into the billions of dollars. (See this excellent summary from Gotham Gazette.) Holloway also claimed to know nothing about the controversial $120 million Verizon contract, and why it was renewed this summer, despite the company's complicity in fraud against the DOE.

Henry Garrido of DC 37 gave powerful testimony as to how the city now had at least 521 contracts with consulting companies; fifty more than when (former) Deputy Mayor Goldsmith said they would bring more of this work in-house, after the huge CityTime scandal involving $80 million of stolen funds.  Garrido also said that he had a list of 1300 individual consultants who make an average of $400,000 per year off the city.  He revealed that the city had a new contract with a company called ChaCha Communications, for $28,000 per month for text messaging through 311; last month the city sent approximately 410 messages on the system, at $61 each.  But his most incisive point was how the city had abandoned a project that started in 2004 to train  city employees in technology skills, and instead is spending millions in federal grants training consultants instead.

Chris Shelton, Vice President of CWA District 1 testified on the $120 million Verizon contract; approved by the PEP in August even though Verizon had been found to have participated in fraud against the DOE, and had refused to pay back any of the money it took.  A few academic experts (I didn't catch their names) spoke about how to minimize waste and fraud by, among other things, avoiding huge projects and breaking them into smaller pieces as much as possible.

This is exactly the opposite of what the city did with the fraudulent Future Technology Associates contract, as Patrick Sullivan pointed out in 2009, and instead DOE officials appear to have purposely bundled lots of separate technology projects into one, facilitating the company's overcharging the city by millions of dollars, as later confirmed by Special Investigator Condon.

For more on this, and how the 2009 state legislation that revised school governance and that was supposed to bring more transparency and accountability to the DOE contracting process has completely failed, see my testimony below. It ends this way:

Mayoral control was widely justified as a result of a handful of Community School Boards that had embezzled funds or had hired relatives or friends to positions in schools.  Never mind that years before the adoption of mayoral control in 2002, these boards had already lost any power to hire staff or spend funds.  In any case, the profligacy, waste and fraud that has occurred in recent years under mayoral control have now far surpassed any two-bit corruption in past eras of NYC history.

Chancellors Klein, Walcott and other DOE officials have failed in their fiduciary responsibilities to taxpayers and our children; as have most of the members of the PEP.  But in a system of mayoral control, Mayor Bloomberg is the one individual ultimately responsible, by hiring incompetent and heedless administrators, and failing to ensure that there are robust mechanisms in place to prevent the theft of millions of dollars from our children’s schools, and from their futures.

Testimony on Contracts 10.31.11

Free film Screening and discussion of Success Academy charter co-locations

Eva Moskowitz wants to bring her Success Charter Schools to District 15.  What does that mean for our neighborhood public schools?

What happens when charter schools are given space in
public school buildings?  Why is the DOE supporting charter schools and cutting the budgets for public schools?

Learn more by joining us for a screening of “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman”, produced by The Grassroots Education Movement.   Followed by a panel discussion featuring:  

• Becky Alford, NEST program teacher & parent, PS 32; 

•  Ina Pannell-St. Surin, MS 447 PTA Co-Vice President; 

•  Khem Irby, 1st Vice President, District 13 CEC & co-founder of The MANY;  

•  Leonie Haimson, parent & director of Class Size Matters;   

•  Brian Jones, teacher at PS 261 & member of GEM

WHEN: Wednesday, Nov 9, 2011, 6:00 PM

WHERE: PS 261 Auditorium, 314 Pacific Street (between Smith & Hoyt), Brooklyn, NY

Here is a flyer you can post in your school. Sponsored by PS 261 Unite; contact 261Unite@gmail.com for more information

Last night at the Panel for Educational Policy, we occupied the DOE!

Last night was inspiring as, for once, the 99% had their say at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting. 

The meeting, supposed to be a presentation of the Common Core standards, was very quickly taken over by teachers, parents, students and education activists, some of them from Occupy Wall Street.  We used the "people's mic" to drown out the speeches of Chancellor Walcott and David Coleman, who soon exited the stage to give their lessons upstairs.

Most of us remained in the auditorium for another hour and a half, talking about the rising class sizes, the overemphasis on high stakes testing, the way real learning is being squeezed out of the classroom because of the repeated budget cuts and damaging priorities of the  1% , including Bloomberg, Bill Gates and the Walton family, who are setting policies for our schools against the priorities of the 99% and the needs of our kids.

And the rest of the country and the world were able to watch, via Live Stream Occupy Wall St.  See below.

Join us at the next Occupy DOE event: a People’s General Assembly on Public Education on Monday, Nov. 7th at Tweed at 5 PM, when we will create a People's Agenda for our Schools!

And please leave a comment about some of your favorite speakers.  I loved the little girl at about 16 minutes in.

occupynyc on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Lynne Winderbaum on the destruction of large Bronx High Schools

Five major high schools in the Bronx received "Fs" today from the DOE; including the last remaining large schools in the borough.  Here is Glenn Tepper's story of the decline of Jane Addams Vocational High School, which was once the second highest performing school in the borough, but which was brought down by the Bloomberg administration's preferential treatment of the new small schools. Below is the account of the foreordained demise of DeWitt Clinton High School, another once excellent school, in the words of Lynne Winderbaum,  former UFT Bronx district leader:

I know you need no reminder of how the relentless march of high school closings in the Bronx have created higher concentrations of need in the remaining schools, setting them up for certain failure under the DOE's ice-cold matrix.

As the sadness of the phasing out of perfect examples of this systemic destruction such as Jamaica and Columbus begins to fade, now we see DeWitt Clinton on the list. Clinton is the last remaining intact comprehensive high school in the Bronx. It has been the last school to serve large populations of categories underserved in the new small high schools such as special education and ELL students. 

The demoralization that comes with this letter grade should be seen by a hard working, dedicated, and competent staff through the lens of a system that is determined to close all large high schools by giving them a disproportionately high-needs proportion of students, comparing them to arbitrary and unfair peer groups, declaring them failures, and creating a formula to justify their decision. 

They should hold their heads high (at least until they are thrown into the ATR pool) for the outcome was foreordained. Clinton has been severely overcrowded by the city's policies and suffered the largest budget cuts in the Bronx. They struggled valiantly to deal with all the city could throw at them while still doing their best to offer quality education and programs.

Clinton has worked diligently to provide services for their students and opportunities that small schools cannot. The principal, Geraldine Ambrosio, is one of the best in the borough. She is experienced, caring, knowledgeable, and guided by a drive to do what is best for her students and her school.  She has fought all the adversity that comes with being the last undivided comprehensive high school but the effort seems to be lost in what has become an inevitability--that all large high schools are in jeopardy. Ambrosio strove to keep a veteran faculty and hired excellent ATR's as the surrounding schools shed teachers. That made her a dinosaur. She will go, Clinton will close, and the story of "What will happen to the children this school served that will not receive the same services in the small schools?" will be written yet again. When they closed Monroe, Morris, Taft, Roosevelt, Evander, Stevenson, Walton, Columbus, and Kennedy, the displaced high needs students could find a home at Clinton. No more.

I know the time will come when the city will regret this--maybe after all of our students are in schools run by corporate board rooms. But right now the march to close all large high schools and ignore the voice of the communities they serve (just watch the faces of the PEP members as they vote on this issue) seems inexorable.

---Lynne Winderbaum

Video: Yong Zhao on how high-stakes testing is damaging our schools

Check out Yong Zhao's terrific (and funny!) presentation on October 12, along with the question and answer session, co-sponsored by Class Size Matters, GEM, Time out From Testing, and Parents Across America.

Prof. Zhao is the nation's most eloquent critic of high-stakes testing and discusses how the current education reform agenda is taking our nation's schools in entirely wrong direction.



Dr. Yong Zhao speaks at "It's Time to Change the Stakes With Testing" from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo.


Dr. Yong Zhao QandA Oct. 12, 2011 from Grassroots Education Movement on Vimeo.

The Kick-off of "Parents as Partners Week": Who is David Coleman and why should we care?

DOE officials are working hard, trying to persuade us that they now have a different attitude towards parents.  Next week is called “Parents as Partners” week, starting off with a meeting on Tuesday at Seward Park High School.  Though today’s DOE press release calls this “a conversation” with the Chancellor, the prescribed topic is the new Common Core standards, and parents will only be “allowed” to submit their questions on index cards.  Clearly, this will be no “conversation”.

In reality, the Common Core standards are being imposed from above, pushed by the Gates Foundation and others, with no proof of efficacy and no input from parents.

David Coleman, who is going to give a presentation on the CC, gave one last April to “educational leaders” hosted by SED; here are  videos and transcripts .  As reported in EdWeek: 

Working under a contract with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an avid backer of the standards, David Coleman and Susan Pimentel wrote a pair of documents highlighting the key ideas of the standards and describing the qualities of instructional materials they consider a faithful reflection of them.

As of  August 2011, 44 states and the District of Columbus adopted the Common Core, in exchange for the promise of being considered for Duncan’s Race to the Top funds – though by law, the federal government is supposed to stay out of the business of prescribing curriculum.

While Coleman is credited as one of the primary authors of the ELA standards for grades K-8, he apparently has no experience of teaching students either in elementary or middle schools, though he does brag that he once attended PS 41 in Manhattan.  Here is his bio from the SED website:

Mr. Coleman's most recent initiative is Student Achievement Partners, LLC, an organization which assembles leading thinkers and researchers to design actions to substantially improve student achievement. In this process, rigorous policy analysis, research, and design are integrated to focus on the most significant outcomes for students. Student Achievement Partners serves foundations and school districts. Previously, Mr. Coleman founded the Grow Network ‐ acquired by McGraw‐Hill in 2005 ‐ which has become the nation’s leader in assessment reporting and customized instructional materials. Mr. Coleman was a lecturer at the University of London before going to work in the pro bono education area of McKinsey & Company. He is a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale University, Oxford University and Cambridge University.

Coleman is also listed as on the board of The Equity Project, Zeke Vanderhoek’s hugely hyped but underperforming charter school; Vanderhoek bragged on 60 Minutes about firing teachers that the year before, he had gone to great lengths to recruit.  His mother is Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College, who eliminated tenure in 1994 and fired one third of the faculty.

The details of the Common Core are beyond my level of expertise, but one fact stands out:  Coleman has rigidly prescribed that in grades K-5, at least half of the material read by students must be non-fiction, or what he calls “informational text”. 

 As pointed out by Susan Ohanian, he also disparaged the writing of personal narratives in his speech hosted by SED:

“Do people know the two most popular forms of writing in the American high school today? …It is either the exposition of a personal opinion or it is the presentation of a personal matter. The only problem, forgive me for saying this so bluntly, the only problem with those two forms of writing is as you grow up in this world you realize people really don't give a sheet  about what you feel or what you think.” 

 Only the video shows that he pronounced the word “sheet” differently from the way SED chose to spell it.

Similarly, one could say the same about the attitude of DOE and SED towards parents.  Like so much else of they do, they want to inculcate us with the value of the CC, though they never bothered to ask us what we thought of it before adopting it.