Letter To The Editor

If only the media knew what we knew, about what really goes on in schools and how certain schools manage to keep their top ratings.  True, these schools are better than most but they are still far, very far from how they portray themselves.

Teachers Win



The title of this post is from the headline of today's AM New York. It is referring to teacher evaluations. And, in smaller print underneath:  State votes to keep evaluations closed-to most NYers.

The politicians sell and the media buys. There is no privacy anymore. Many parents with access to this misleading report will be more than happy to share the information with friends, neighbors, the guy waiting behind them in the supermarket and the media. No one will keep these evaluations private and why should they? As a parent I know I would try to do what was best for my child and if seeing these reports might get my son a better teacher I will find the people that know and get that information. Most parents already know the teachers they want and do not want their children to have. Phones ring off the hook in the guidance office to get kids out of certain classes all the time. Counselors are bombarded now with requests for specific teachers. Imagine how this will go down once these evaluations are released and children come home with teachers whose data says they are not highly effective.

The media says teachers win. Nobody wins. The headline is just another line in the long list of things to blame the teacher for.

Thought On AP Classes



I just finished reading this article about AP classes and, for once, found myself in total agreement with something in the media.

AP classes are something I feel qualified to write about.  I began teaching AP calculus at Packemin in 1995 and did so until the day I retired.  I attended week long workshops and day long seminars whenever I could.  While I am not the brightest person around, teaching AP made me a better teacher.  Over the years, I learned how to get my students to not only learn the material, pass the exam but to apply these thinking skills to other academic areas and to real life.

Here are a few things from the article I feel pertinent that I would like to comment on.

If math teacher Jaime Escalante could lead low-income Los Angeles students to AP calculus glory in the story that became the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," why not others?

This is a sentence I have been saying for years.  True, none of us are going to dedicate our lives like Mr. Escalante did, but we can succeed with more if work with an adminstration ready and willing to help.  Mr. Escante was able to weed out students who were not motivated and did not belong.  Another problem is that we don't start early enough with our students.  I always felt  ninth graders should be nurtured, especially when they come to high school showing some ability to succeed. At Packemin, too many minority students are relegated to four term (slow) algebra classes.  Too many are branded early on because of a placement test that does not accurately show their ability.  Because of this sequence, they never have time to move up to AP level.  These classes are riddled with kids who have behavior problems and severe academic issues.  There are too many kids in classes like these who are held back.  With the proper help they could make it too.

Passing an AP exam means demonstrating college-level skill, so a high failure rate isn't necessarily surprising or alarming. Many educators insist the AP coursework preceding those exams is valuable regardless.

I have to agree with this one as well.  Former students who did not do well in AP have written to me about their success in college calculus and pre-calculus and credit the AP class they took in high school for their success.  They got "A's" easily and watched classmates who had not taken AP struggle and fail.  The AP class gave them a much needed foundation and prepared them for college, something their other courses failed to do.  So, while the failure rate demonstrates that students are not performing at college level, the course has more than succeeded in preparing them for college level which is, after all, the job of high school.  One teacher wrote that taking AP kept his students out of remedial classes in college.

Sean Martin, who helped start an AP literature program at Heritage High School in Baltimore before moving this year to another school, said some of his AP students read at a seventh-grade level.
"I knew for a lot of them ... it was going to be very difficult to get them even to the level of a 2," he said. Still, he said, simply putting students who want to push themselves together in a class with a goal is valuable.
"We set a higher bar and we could do things a little differently, and really have meaningful class discussions," he said. Classes "take on a different feel when every student in the room is success-oriented."

My sentiments exactly and one of the reasons I fought so hard to let kids who wanted to take the class in, even if their grades were not up to Mr. AP's standards.

"It's kind of an easy reform — plunk in an AP course," said University of Northern Colorado scholar Kristin Klopfenstein, who edited a recent collection of studies on the AP program. But without accompanying steps, it's not clear AP does much good, especially for students scoring 1s and 2s. "What I've observed in a lot of cases is AP programs being helicopter-dropped in with the hope that the high standards themselves would generate results."

Another valid point.  Without the proper background and support system, AP classes are useless.

For many years, Newsweek Magazine used the number of AP exams a school takes as the basis of judging the best American  high schools.  A new formula counts these exams 40 percent for this category.  It costs the schools lots of money to offer AP classes.  Packemin restricted the number of kids eligible to take math because of money.  But, every kid is required to take government and English so it cost nothing to put students in AP classes in these areas whether they were prepared or not and these classes became dumping grounds.

AP classes will help many, but not all.  Kids who can't multiply or can't write a coherent sentence belong in high school readiness classes, not AP classes.  Standards are needed and more kids need access but this alone will not solve the problems many high school graduates are facing today.

Good luck to all students taking AP exams now.  I know their teachers will breath a sigh of relief now that they are over. 

Media Accountablilty Needed

The News has been busy for the last few days reading Eric's blog and learning the true facts.  Too bad these individuals who call themselves reporters don't bother to check facts and report the real news before they go and print stuff that is not true and has the potential to ruin a person's life.

The News is quick to call for teacher accountability.  Where is there accountability when it comes to reporting the facts?

I apologize for the orginal post.  I guess I didn't read the article carefully enough.

After Thought

I never met a teacher who defended bad teachers.  I certainly never met a teacher who defended a sexual predator in the classroom.  Teachers want these low lifes gone as much and maybe more than everyone else does.

Shouldn't this say something to Eric's character?  Not only was he exonerated of charges, the people that know him and have worked with him are all pushing for him and trying to expose the vicious lies he has been subjected to.  Walcott never met him.  The reporters at the News and the Times don't know him.  Our words mean something, theirs don't.

The media needs to print the truth.  Unfortunately no one can talk to them.  They lie and distort and turn our words against us.

Damned If You Care, Damned If You Don't



If you are a teacher in New York City there are times you just can't win.  Take Eric Chasanoff, for example.  Eric is a warm, caring teacher who had a young woman in his class who was not doing well.  He could have taken the easy way out and ignored her and let her fail.  Instead, he talked to her, encouraged her and did the unspeakable, HE PRAISED HER.  She passed exams and for this he was punished and eventually exonerated.  The Daily News and the NY Times are keeping the punishment alive.

Another teacher I know takes the opposite approach.  He feels kids should do well, or not, on their own so, when he has a child who is not performing well, he leaves that child alone.  He was recently observed by his Principal and written up for not involving this young man in the lesson.  This teacher, while still in the classroom, is also worried about eventually getting that ineffective rating.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.  There is no answer to the right way to hold on to your job.  There is an answer to the right way of doing it and Eric has that answer.  I worked with this man and know that while he might have used an inappropriate phrase and let's face it, who hasn't--even the almighty education mayor and his poodle have done so, he is not a sexual pervert or a danger to students in the classroom.  I would have been thrilled if he had taught one of my children.

Not only is Eric and the other teachers being punished with these so called news articles, but every teacher in the system is being put on notice.  A teacher has a major job not only teaching, following ridiculous common core standards and now must censor every word and deed before it is actually said or done.  Robotic teachers and videos might be the wave of the future.  At least these things can't make the mistakes these educators made. 

(No reason for the picture except that I love these old wooden escalators in Macy's.  I hope they keep them in spite of all the renovations.)

Farce Exposed

The Post finally printed an op ed piece that got it right.  Improved graduation rates are nothing to be proud of.  The majority of students getting diplomas today are not ready for college or career.

My remedial class in the college started with 28 students.  We are down to 20.  Out of he 20, six own books and seven hand in homework.  Many come in late and leave early.  Attendance is atrocious.  They don't know multiplication tables and tell me they" don't do fractions or decimals."  They certainly don't study.  The last test I gave had grades ranging from 0 to 71 and 0 was not even an outlier.  The majority of the grades were below 50.  It is impossible to remediate in 4 months topics that should have been studied and learned in 12 years.  It is impossible to get through to kids who see no reason to ever open a book.

The college is trying to help these kids through a special mentoring program.  They are offered extra help and counselors.  At a recent pizza lunch, the students were asked how many hours a week outside of class were spent on school work.  The majority answered two to three hours.  Homework interefered with jobs, televison, Facebook and friends.  Most are taking 12 credits, some more.  The "freak" of this group admitted to studying eight hours had close to a 4.0 index.  The mentors tried to explain why studying worked.  The students either didn't get it or didn't care.  They survived elementary school, middle school and high school without doing any work and saw no reason to start now.  Most will be gone as soon as their financial aid is used up.

This editorial in the Post is only a small start, but it is a start.  If it is truly the goal of the government to keep our country strong, something has got to give.  We did better as a nation when not everyone was pushed into college.  Even drop outs did better than the kids we are turning out today.  At least they knew they didn't get something for nothing.

Into The Shredder



My husband, a product of the private sector, keeps insisting teachers should not be exempt from evaluations (the stuff the media is hyping teachers want) as everyone gets evaluated.  I've tried zillions of times to explain that it is not an exemption from evaluations we want, it is a valid evaluation. 

TEACHERS DO NOT WANT BAD TEACHERS IN THE CLASSROOM.

He doesn't get the invalidity of using test scores because he doesn't know how invalid they are.  He doesn't get stacking classes because he has never had to deal with an administrator who does this year after year.  And, he has seen me take the lowest kids in the school term after term, get many to pass and still have the worst statistics and he thinks this is valid because the schools will know the population I worked with.
He claims teachers haven't come up with a better system than the one being offered, but he is wrong there too.  Years ago, when Principals and Assistant Principals were real master teachers they could judge who was good and who wasn't.  Now, most of these people wouldn't know a good teacher if they feel on one.  They mistake noise for group work and chalk and talk, often necessary, for non student involvement.  My first AP was one of the nastiest, most hated people in the school.  But, she knew how to teach and she rarely went after someone who was good.  She is the one that taught me and countless others how to teach.  Data wasn't her motivator, learning was.  My husband claims that private industry has lots of newbies and incompetents in charge too.  It is the wave of the future.  I don't understand why, instead of trying to change this, he wants to see it accepted and spread around. 

Perhaps he is right and it is too late to go back and get people who actually know something to be in charge.  But, it is not too late to change the evaluation system.  If it was up to me, I would survey parents and children and find out what they think of their teachers.  Good surveys could be worded in a way to get honest answers.  When the majority come out good, or bad, that should say something.  Administrators should also have a say.  I would even go so far as to let security guards and school aides chime in.  They often know more about what is going on than the people in charge.  There should also be peer evaluations.  Put all these together and you will get a well rounded picture of teacher.   And then, the evaluation could be made.

No system is perfect.  Every industry has people in it that don't belong.  My husband is wrong.  Teachers want and need evaluations.  The evaluations are what make us better.  They point out or strengths and our weakness and show us the areas we need to improve upon.  Showing me test scores does nothing.  They can't tell me where I feel short, only that I might have.

Cuomo is doing the public a major disservice pushing his agenda as it will do nothing to help the children of New York State.  Spending Democratic Party contributions to air his harmful commercials is wrong.  Contributions were not meant for this and these commercials should stop.  I just got a letter asking for my donation.  It went straight into the shredder.

Question: Where is the justice?



The XXX department of a certain high school has at least five new hires this term.  Many are brand new teachers, straight out of college.

What happened to placing ATRs before new teachers were hired?

Can these youngsters, still wet behind the ears be so superior to every ATR out there?

Will the media keep berating ATRs because they haven't found classrooms when in truth, no one will even give them a chance?


Answer:  There is none.

Stop Focusing On Stupidity



I'm not an Obama fan, but these headlines are ridiculous:

Sasha Obama Wears a Malia Hand-Me-Down for Easter

The economy is bad.  The Obama family is setting a good example by passing down a dress that was probably only worn once or twice.

Or this one,

Donald Trump: Barack Obama was a bad student

Maybe he was a bad student, but that has nothing to do with what he is doing today.  Trump should run on his merits if he has any, which he probably does not have.

I Know This Administrator!

South Bronx and I work in different schools, but the administrator he is describing sounds vaguely familiar.  Read his post here.         

Today's Newsday is still blaming teachers for all the woes of the schools.   When will the media open their eyes to administrators who fall into this category?