The Education Wars: Oh, Isn't THIS Lovely?

Corruption, they name is BloomKlein:

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein often lauds a small
group of Harlem charter schools founded by former
City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

But few New Yorkers are aware of the access
Moskowitz has to the chancellor or the special
support he has bestowed on her program, whose
four schools enroll just 1,300 of the city's more
than 1 million public school students.

...

- Secured the chancellor's help last year in landing
a $1 million donation from a private Los Angeles
foundation.

- Got Klein to intervene on her behalf in clashes
she had with his subordinates.

- Boasted to him of organizing parent "armies" to
advocate for Mayor Bloomberg's educational
policies - and of flooding politicians with
thousands of pro-charter school postcards.

Public education is SO screwed in this country.

The Education Wars: BloomKlein's War Against Teachers

If NYC teachers lose their job protections, NO teacher in the United States is safe from capricious or frivolous firings, as what yours truly went through:

Citing a Post story about a rogue Queens teacher who manages his real-estate empire from a Department of Education "rubber room," schools chief Joel Klein pleaded with lawmakers yesterday to ease limits on the firing of educators.

The chancellor, in Albany to testify against proposed budget cuts, said the "absurd" restrictions on firing teachers devoured precious resources at a time when the city can least afford it.

"On Sunday, the New York Post ran a front-page story about a teacher who has been reassigned to the rubber room for more than seven years," Klein said.


"In the event of layoffs, I wouldn't be able to get rid of this teacher. Instead, I'd be forced to lay off other teachers so this reassigned teacher can continue showing up each day to a rubber room," Klein said.

Teachers deemed unfit for classrooms are sent to such "reassignment centers" while the city crawls through the lengthy termination process.

Dishonesty by Klein, as usual. This isn't about the rare bad egg but about getting rid of older, more expensive teachers and replacing them with young cheapies who last only two or three years at most.

The Education Wars II: The Sickening Joel Klein

In this link, NYC Chancellor and Bloomberg hack Joel Klein tries to make excuses for charter schools, which are being peddled in order to dismantle public education entirely.

It's a scary, barf-inducing interview.

The Education Wars

Dumbass editorial writers really need to quit bloviating about something they know absolutely nothing about, i.e., schools in general, including New York City's.

This blogger has some ideas on what needs to be done.

My ideas for nationwide education reform I think would go to the core of what the problem in public ed is, and it's not with the teachers. It's with the administrators who have unlimited power.

The Education Wars

Everybody should pay close attention to what is happening in NYC schools and Joel Klein and worry like hell what is or what will be happening in every single school district in the United States.

Running schools on a business model, whether it is New York City or Washoe County School District, is the rot that will kill the system once and for all. And that's what the privatizers want.

Ohanian:

Working in private industry, three months after receiving the highest employee rating ever, I was forced out because a new boss perceived me as a threat. Anyone who has ever worked in private industry has similar tales to tell.

Corporate politicos like Welch and Klein can pooh-pooh seniority all they want, but there is no question that years of experience season a teacher. After five years, she begins to have a real grasp of what teaching is all about, and by ten years she's probably standing on solid ground. But even then, every day is a new day with new challenges. Teaching, when practiced by a professional, is never static, never just bean counting--or test training.

Yes, some teachers "get it" more quickly and some few teachers never do get it. But to let the corporate politicos scrap the seniority system, turning teaching into one more competitive rat race for test scores would be destroy any semblance of teaching as a profession.

Here's Klein's view of teachers: Most people who came to public education think that if you show up on day one and just stay out of trouble, you can be there forever.

She writes about the UFT being scared to confront this crook, but he should be sent packing.

The Education Wars

It's time to sack NYC schools chief Joel Klein, which means he will stay on indefinitely.

There is no question it is the worst, most corrupt school system in the country. However, what is going on there is or will be going on in every single one of the 13,000 public school districts in the country, thanks to "reformers" like Arne Duncan and Eli Broad.
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Teach for America might be a good idea for resume building, but from a cynical standpoint this is just another tool for unscrupulous administrators to undermine current teachers or refusing to hire qualified teachers in order to save a few bucks.

No retirement to pay out, either.
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The Education Wars

With despots like Joel I. Klein running NYC schools, it is little wonder teachers have no input at all.

They don't have any real input at all, regardless of school district.
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Yep, termination meetings are interesting, but I am surprised anybody would be surprised these are taped. Hell, my sham arbitration hearing was taped; however, I was not allowed to tape the "investigatory hearing." What a goddamned joke. If these people didn't have anything to hide, they wouldn't mind being taped.

What IS unusual is that a media person was allowed in. Usually these meetings are closed to the public. That's why there is so much abuse and false termination of teachers--there is no accountability.

You hear an awful lot about how hard it is to terminate a tenured teacher and how much it costs. You only get the horror stories from the perspective of the anti-tenure crowd. What is often neglected is the issue of why a school system would choose to take a route to terminate in spite of the costs. The David Pakter case is a prime exhibit. I dropped in on David's 3020a hearing yesterday. You could write a book.

The reason they do is because they have unlimited funds to dispose of a teacher, just as they did with me. Never mind they knew in my case they had no case and knew they were caught when they realized I wasn't faking any illness at all, and hiring the lawyers and arbitrator would cost tens of thousands of dollars; it was taxpayer money, there is no bottom line to worry about, unlike business, so why NOT get rid of a "troublesome" teacher?