Category Archives: Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times

The Limits of Business Writers Writing about School Reform

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Back when I was a teacher at the Lower Manhattan Outreach Center, an alternative program for dropouts and near dropouts that existed for years until it was “reformed” out of business — we had to experience “Principal for a Day.”  Our guest principal was some Wall Street investment type who suggested that students who’d been overly talkative in class should be made to pound chalk erasers.

When he was out of the room, the school coordinator (technically an assistant principal, but she ran the site), rolled her eyes, and said to me, “Can you imagine if I went to Wall Street and volunteered to be an investment banker for a day?”

Joe Nocera, a business writer, known to be quite good at his job, today takes on “school reform” in a New Times Op/Ed piece entitled,  The Limits of School Reform. He gets it spectacularly wrong.  Are there no education editors who could have kept him from embarrassing himself?

First, he writes about the article in the Times Magazine two weeks ago about Principal Ramon Gonzalez of MS 223 in the Bronx and Gonzalez’s skepticism of Joel Klein and “school reform.”  What Nocera seems to miss is that Gonzalez is a true reformer, trying to make his school, responsive to the community it serves, mentoring his teachers with an awareness of best practices and encouraging them through his example of leadership to go above and beyond.

Nocera, who probably saw Waiting for Superman, buys into the idea of Klein and other corporate types as the “reformers” and places “social scientists” and of course “teacher’s unions” as the enemy of school reform.

He seems completely oblivious to the notion that there is a battle for the mantle of “reform.”  Teacher unions don’t just fight for “tenure” and higher salaries for teachers.  They fight for smaller class size, more professional development, and teacher mentoring.  The fight for the type of reforms that help keep teachers in the profession because as even Geoffrey Canada admits in Superman, no one is a great teacher their first year in the profession.  To classify “teacher unions” as being anti-reform while lauding corporate types who believe that all that is required to run public schools is business style “management” is disingenuous at best, and Orwellian at worst.

Bloomberg’s school control has led to the opening of charters often by people with a corporate business background and little knowledge of education.  Often these schools take away resources from public schools, including their buildings.   The charter movement is not pro-reform.  It presupposes that public schools are simply bad and must be destroyed.  It is a privatization movement, but one eerily similar to the prison industry in that it must depend on public funding as it grows.  True reform is about creating better public schools, the kind that even families that could somehow scrape together the money for private school would want to send their kids to.  The charter movement, however, is about creating schools for poor kids that would ultimately cost less than public schools.  Their superficial success not only owes much to the way they are funded, but also to the fact that they can remove students who are not doing well or are disruptive — an option not open to public schools.

Nocera seems unaware of these facts or even that there’s any dispute.   He takes the corporate-reformers at their word — the only impediment to true reform is those teachers and their salary and tenure demands.  His only quibble with the corporate-reformers seems to be his interpretation that the core of their argument is that better teachers will lead to better outcomes.  He buys into the idea that unions are somehow anti-reform. He’s dead wrong in his assumption that unions are NOT also in favor of best practices for teachers or that they disagree with the idea that teachers make a difference in student achievement.  Teacher unions in fact support professional development, teacher mentoring programs, and other initiatives that help keep teachers in the classroom.  Smaller class size and placing more experienced teachers in the classroom are just two of the reforms that unions promote.

Nocera points to the case of Saquan Townsend, mentioned in the article on Gonzalez’ school.  Saquan, who was living with his mother at a homeless center, was at first disruptive at his new school, but then after his teacher reached out to him — something good teachers have always done and not something the UFT is fighting against — he began to thrive.  Nocera writes that his mother “seemed indifferent.”  This was a mother who had left Brooklyn and her home because her life and the lives of her children were in danger.  Her choice was saving her sons’ lives or disrupting their education.  How is that indifferent?   She eventually found permanent living space, but it was back in Brooklyn.  Nocera seems to think this was a selfish choice on her part since it meant Shaquan would have a long commute if he stayed at his Bronx school.  He seems to be unaware that for people within the shelter system, you don’t exactly have the option of holding out for an apartment in your school district of choice.  He misses entirely that many kids in the city have ridiculously long commutes to school.  These include kids traveling over ninety minutes to the city’s elite and specialized high schools, kids whose families consider themselves lucky, because for many these schools represent their best chance of escaping poverty.

Nocera uses Saquan as evidence that perhaps the noble corporate reformers are naive in believing that their initiatives can overcome the effects of poverty.  In this he concedes that the teacher unions may have a point though of course he gets the point wrong. He ends more or less there, with the idea that the “reformers” can only do so much and need perhaps a bit of humility.  In other words, the poor we will always have with us, more or less.

But Joe, here’s something to think about: What if the true reformers weren’t just out to create some model charters for lucky lottery winners?  What if more principals in public schools were like Gonzalez?  Not corporate types looking for another career, but real leaders who devoted their lives to education?  And what if there were more  teachers like Saquan’s?  What if public schools actually supported outreach efforts like the ones made by her by making it part of the teachers’ workday?  What if moving back to Brooklyn wasn’t an educational disaster for Saquan because ALL public schools were as good as MS 223?  What if reform meant making schools more accountable to the communities which they served, making sure that they worked collaboratively with local institutions and organizations including businesses, hospitals, etc. to make learning a community endeavor with mentoring, internships and experiential learning that engaged students not only in school but in their neighborhoods?  Engagement by the way, is something that helps prevent kids from dropping out.  What if schools opened their doors to parents not just for meetings, but also for adult education, inter-generational activities, and community events?  What if the schools were so good that even middle-class parents would send their kids there as they used to once upon a time?

That’s school reform, Joe.  The real deal.  It’s about equity in education, not lotteries, or choosing between staying in a shelter or being housed.

(Marion Stein is a former New York City school teacher who has also worked as an administrator in college-high school collaboration programs, and currently works as a grant writer, specializing in education-related grants.)

Debating Education: The Narrative is the Message

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Think back to the 2008 presidential campaigns.  Between the candidates and their running mates, there were four compelling and uniquely American narratives to capture the public’s imagination:

  • John McCain, who as a callow young soldier learned the true meaning of courage during his imprisonment behind enemy lines.
  • Sarah Palin, the soccer-mom plucked from near obscurity with an uncanny ability to connect with small town voters.
  • Joe Biden, the senator whose destiny changed in an instant when a tragic accident took his wife and daughter and almost killed his son.
  • Barak Obama, the culmination of our hopes and dreams.

One of these narratives was of course stronger and more compelling than the others.  It involved race, class, immigration, American dreamers who couldn’t be stopped by an ocean, and the idea that Americans could rise above and overcome the tragedy of history.

Back during that campaign, before the Citizens United decision, before the word “tea-party” became associated with elderly white people in comical hats demanding the government get it’s paws off Medicare, it wasn’t always clear what the ideological differences were between the parties.  Many on the left and right would argue there wasn’t much difference. If you listened to the rhetoric of both sides, both would tell you the same things:  they love their country, war is not a good thing, people need money to live, systems are broken, things used to better once upon a time . . .

We are now in the midst of a debate about the nature and future of public education in which the word “reform” is used by both sides.  Both argue that they have only the best interests of children in mind and both want to wear the mantle of “progress.”  But which side is the right side?  Or for that matter the left?

In the popular film Waiting for Superman, we are told that “reformers” are people like Geoffrey Canada or Michelle Rhee who want to push past the entrenched and all powerful teacher’s unions that are acting out of their own self-interest and not the interests of children.  Reformers are billionaires like Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg, people who would never consider sending their own children to a public school.  We are told that the problem with education is that bad teachers can’t be fired, and the only hope is a charter school system where schools aren’t tied to neighborhoods, but parents, even poor parents, can choose the best schools to send their kids to.  Questions about the charter schools aren’t discussed; they aren’t even raised.  The film is an uncritical love letter to those who bravely fight the power:  teacher unions.

While the filmmakers did give one union leader a chance to speak, it didn’t allow her to directly answer the particular charges leveled against unions by the filmmakers.  It didn’t talk about resources being taken away from good public schools in order to support the growth of these semi-private institutions, or about public education success stories, the advantages of building strong community-based schools and the way that innovative public schools are working in collaboration with  neighborhood organizations  to strengthen entire communities and engage young people.

Instead, by focusing on the lottery for spots at a few particular charters, and telling the story of a small group of kids going through the selection process, the film presents a simplistic, but compelling narrative.  It builds a story around the idea that if these individual youngsters “win,” they will get into a charter school and have a positive future.  If they “lose” and wind up in public school, they will not.  We can’t help but get caught up in the story and the myth it creates, to the point where even an alert viewer doesn’t have much time to formulate the unasked questions: What are the attrition rates for these schools? What happens to kids who can’t make it in a charter?  What about parental involvement and input?  Are the teachers actually better trained?  What’s teacher attrition like?  What are the procedures and protections if a parent has a concern?  How does allocating resources for these schools impact on local public schools in the districts in which they are located?

A new film is coming which does examine these issues.  The Grassroots Education Movement a group of public school parents and teachers, has put together its own film which is still in its final editing stages, but has already been screened at some community gatherings, and is called, called, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. The film takes a clear stand in discussing “real” reform versus the corporate idea of reform (the privatization of the school system).  It shows the ways in which resources have been taken from community public schools and given over to charters.  The filmmakers hammer home their main points about what encompasses true reform and what has actually been shown to make a difference for kids.  They point out that the two “reforms” consistently shown to increase student achievement are smaller class size and more experienced teachers.  These are reforms that unions push for.  They  inform us that the states with the lowest public school achievement happen to be the ones that don’t allow collective bargaining for teachers.   They point out that Finland, often lauded by the corporate reformers as an example of a working school system, is a unionized one.

Ideologically, the film is not simply “pro-union,” but pro-child, community and parent as well, defining true reform as an equitable system in which parents don’t need to arrange hour or longer commutes for their young children in order to secure a good education for them.  It’s a short film, and one devoted to answering the attack on public schools, rather than showing examples of the best ones, or the many ways in which “community” schools not only educate children, but help revitalize communities. (For a decent article about the difficulties of trying to run a great school under the a regime that has been consistently working to undermine and politicize public education, see this article on a Bronx middle school.)

Both Waiting for Superman and The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman are polemics.   The difference is that Waiting for Superman is a slick Hollywood production that manages downplay its bias, while The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman is an impassioned answer to some of the questions the first film doesn’t even raise. In Waiting the narrative is front and center, the ideology covert.  It doesn’t seem like its attacking public school, but the only alternative it offers is a charter system.  Truth is much less narrative driven.  In answering the charges against teachers and unions, the tone can’t help being defensive.  It’s pro-union, pro-grassroots rhetoric while stirring to its constituency, at times feels anachronistic, as though one is listening to a special on the Pacifica Radio network.  Many people tune out when they hear the words “corporate interests” even if, in fact, the battle is about corporate versus public needs.

What Truth, which was not made by a Hollywood director, or even a professional one, fails to do is create the kind of narrative suspense of Waiting.   I watched Waiting at home.  My better-half got bored about half way through and went to sleep.  The next morning he asked, “Who won the lottery?”  He remembered the individual stories and how much seemed to be at stake.  What’s needed is an answer to Superman, that doesn’t just lay out the case and the facts, but tells us a story equally as powerful.  Sometimes the narrative is the message, and in this case, The Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, though valiant in its attempt, fails to capture the narrative.

Sarah Palin — Whiney Victim

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According to certain opinion-makers, anyone who suggests that Palin (and others) might consider toning down their rhetoric a bit, is now guilty of “blood libel.” Yes, it’s a pogrom being waged against Sarah — a virtual holocaust of blame for this Princess of Peace. She should lock up her daughters before the Cossacks beat down the doors.

As the wagons circle around the little lady from Alaska, I keep coming back to this clip from those long-ago days when the only Palin we’d heard of was the one who sold dead parrots:

Back then Sarah was tough. She felt women should learn to take the heat, and it did nobody any good for them to whine about the press.

Isn’t it kind of sexist that her honor is being defended so gallantly by male pundits while she hardly says a word? Shouldn’t the lady herself issue a statement? A direct one, not an aside to Glenn Beck as though she’s now too fragile to speak to everyone at once. Why she’d just die! Faint dead away! Delicate flower that she is…

Of course the national conversation shouldn’t even be about Palin, or Beck.  There shouldn’t even be a conversation about turning down the volume or taking away offensive graphics.   The volume part should have happened organically on both sides. Everyone should have just shut up for a while, followed by a few bowed heads and contrite statements about doing better in the future.

After that, the opinion makers should have started talking about the necessary steps to prevent something like this from happening again, and the lawmakers should have gotten busy drafting proposals to that effect. Imagine if Boehner and Pelosi announced bipartisan support for bringing back an automatic weapons ban or at least a plan that would keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill?   Can’t you see John and Nancy walking up to a podium together to make an announcement?  They’re calling it Christina’s Bill for the youngest victim.

I’m sorry, I must have been conscious dreaming for a moment.

Wouldn’t it be terrific if instead of trying to repeal the health care bill that finally passed, Congress looked at the laws regarding community mental health organizations and strengthened them?  Came up with consistent policies to be administered on a state and county level for dealing with the people suffering from mental illness? Imagine if we had had guidelines so that Loughner would have been subject to an outreach visit and emergency evaluation back when he was exhibiting bizarre behavior at the community college?  Even follow up care and treatment?

Oh, did I fall asleep at the keyboard again?

Palin may or may not be running for President in 2012. My guess is, that she’s not. She may realize that it’s dangerous out there. But wouldn’t now be the time for anyone who wants to lead, to begin?

UPDATE 1/12/2011 — This post and the previous one were both written during Palin’s time of silent reflection before she released her video in which she herself accused her detractors of “blood libel.” Of course her statement was issued after the conversation had pretty much turned away from her and moved on to more relevant topics such as gun laws, mental health and the political climate in general. Her use of the phrase in this context must be taken as deliberate, incendiary and desperate. It once again propels her onto center stage.

Second UPDATE: It now appears that after statements from the ADL and other Jewish organizations, Sarah has now removed the blood libel video. This is truly perplexing. Clearly, whoever wrote her speech knew what he or she was doing. How could her handlers not have expected this reaction?  Unless of course they did expect it.  The plot thickens, and sickens.

Third Update:  She’s re-realised the video.  Newly edited,  but with the “blood libel” still left in.  And now with what sounds like more references to God.  I officially give up and will leave tracking this woman’s every utterance to the pundits who get paid to do it.

Sarah Palin’s Brave New World

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A few weeks ago while still feeling the sting of Obama’s “tax compromise” with the Republicans*, I made this comment over at Wonkette:

If only it were possible for someone, a persuasive speech-maker perhaps, someone with the type of communication and narrative skills that would propel him or her to high office, to explain to the American people over some kind mass communication device that they are being royally screwed by the Republicans who are clearly working in the best interest of billionaires and not those of millions of working people. Perhaps they could hire Sarah Palin to do the job?

My tongue was of course firmly planted in my cheek.  No one on the left will ever come up with enough cash to equal Palin’s compensation as a right-wing demagogue.   But I wasn’t kidding about her communication skilz.  It doesn’t matter that she makes up words and can’t string a sentence together.  She’s like a bestselling author whose trashy tales are bought by millions of people who don’t normally read books.  Obama might give “better” speeches, but more people read Dan Brown than Cormac McCarthy.

The gunman may be a lone nut with no Tea Party affiliation, but he certainly has absorbed the messages put out by the lunatic-right  —  (1) we are being taken over by the forces of darkness (2) there are plans to change the currency and the only true currency is the gold standard (3) the government take over includes “Death Panels” (4) Obama is a foreign usurper, not a natural born citizen; thus the entire government has no legitimate claim.

Not only have right wing politicians and pundits put these ideas into the air, they have also offered solutions, such as failed-Senate candidate Sharon Angle’s suggestion that “second amendment remedies” are a possibility if the ballot box doesn’t do the trick.  Sarah Palin infamous “crosshairs” map “targeted” Congressional districts including Gifford’s.  Palin’s spokesperson, Rebecca Mansour has stated that there was no connection to guns in the use of crosshairs, but to “surveyor’s maps,” an assertion that is not only absurd on its face, but contradicted by Palin’s own words to her followers, “Don’t retreat. Reload.”

People have the right to put out these messages, but usually it was people on the fringe talking this craziness.  These were not ideas endorsed by former major party candidates for the vice presidency  The fact that a major television network on which political leaders often appear promotes these ideas as well,  is also something we haven’t seen before.

To pretend that this isn’t a change, is naive.  To believe that this isn’t a deliberate attempt to mislead and frighten people is to bury one’s head in the sand.  To think that putting all this in the air won’t lead a few of the more frightened and less rational to act violently is to deny reality and history.  This wasn’t the first event of its kind over the past year, simply the most dramatic.**

Rallies will not restore sanity.  If responsible leaders in the conservative movement had the courage to speak up, maybe they could help. The new Speaker of The House refuses to deal with the “birthers” in his own delegation, insisting he has no right to tell people what to think.  So they will continue to say aloud that the President is a foreign usurper who stole his office, and so will television personalities on Fox News.  Eventually, of course some lunatic who has listened and absorbed the message, will attempt a “second amendment remedy,” while Palin, Beck and all the birthers will deny that their words had any impact.

Some people are proclaiming that the “smoking gun” of the crosshairs map, has finished Palin.  They are wrong.  She’s far from finished.  TLC may have cancelled Palin’s reality show and the map has disappeared, but her supporters are now playing the victim card, accusing liberals and the “gotcha” media of viciously attacking her by linking her to Saturday’s events.  Any rational debate on whether or not words are dangerous is now considered a left-wing attempt to malign a true American.  Her Faceback supporters comment on the liberal haters who are trying to “politicize” a tragedy.  The Wall Street Journal*** has weighed in with an opinion piece in which the writer labels criticism of Palin “blood libel.”  So the mere suggestion that Palin might want to rethink her rhetoric, is akin to medieval Christian villagers killing Jews who they accused of sacrificing Christian children?

Palin was never going to have enough popular support to win a general election, but with Rupert Murdoch’s behind her, her power and influence will continue to grow.  She is a raging fire, burning everything in her path.

_______________________________________________________
*This was before the lame-duck Congress managed to get a lot of stuff done and it became apparent that the administration did in fact have a strategy, even if it involved skyrocketing the deficit.  Why does Obama always make me feel like an abused spouse who gets flowers the day after a smack down?

**Last August during the height of the anti-mosque rhetoric, a Moslem taxi driver was slashed by a drunken passenger.  Other incidents happened in mosques throughout the country.  Gifford’s office had previously had a window busted in.  Other congressional representatives and senators have also received threats due to votes on “Obamacare.”

***The Wall Street Journal is now under the ownership of Rubert Murdoch who also owns the right-wing cable station Fox News which features her as a pundit.  Murdoch also controls Harper Collins, her publisher

John Boehner — Man of Principle

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In a recent interview, the newly appointed Speaker of the House, John Boehner took a brave and courageous stand for all of us who believe in the sanctity of the fundamental rights handed down to us by the blessed Founders in their infinite wisdom.

When asked about the strong Birther-faith expressed by twelve in the Congressional delegation of the party he leads, Boehner made clear that he does not share their beliefs, yet he upholds their right to believe as they choose.

He sees them as a “slice of America” like apple pie and guns, a part of “the melting pot” — not just elected officials, but men and women entitled to maintain their own values and traditions. He stands up for principle, telling the reporter, “It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.”

It made me weep. (There’s a lot of that going around these days). Like any good student of the USS Constitution, I’m sure Congressman Boehner was inspired by the Flushing Remonstrance written in 1657 to advocate for the rights of Quakers in the New Amsterdam colony. The signers of the Remonstrance, who were not themselves Quakers, were willing to risk punishment to defend the rights of others. Many historians look at the Remonstrance as helping to pave the way for our own sacred Bill of Rights, much the same way that Moses paved the way for Jesus.

Like the signers of the Remonstrance, some of whom were jailed or deported, Boehner may face consequences for his brave stance. I’m sure he will handle himself with the utmost dignity in the face of criticism and ridicule by the iron-fisted media lapdogs of liberalism.

I wonder if Boehner will go even further in supporting tax-exempt status for Birther organizations and allowing Birthers the same rights and protections that other such believers enjoy. There is no room for religious discrimination in these United States! Those of us who practice other faiths can learn from the Birthers, who have held fast to their beliefs even when logic and reason pointed in other directions. Perhaps Boehner will propose a pardon for the Birther army physician now in jail for refusing to deploy because it was against the tenants of his faith.  Or maybe he could lead the way by nominating Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire, as our first openly-Birther federal judge.

Like Boehner, I do not share the Birther’s Creed, yet I too understand that none of us are free until we all are, and we must join in their struggle. If you wouldn’t want a Birther buying the house next door to you, or don’t support equal pay for Birthers, or their right to marry —  I would ask you to examine your beliefs, look into your heart,  and ask yourself, “What would John Boehner do?”

To put it another way — if you can’t imagine voting someday for a Birther President, then you are not a true American.