Cita-DELs gone

Back from NYC, where stayed just off Union Sq., about six blocks from the old set of tenements that housed me from ’77 to ’79. I rented the left side ground floor railroad flat, four small rooms, bathtub in the kitchen, and the toilet the old hallway jakes, curtained off from the tub, its door to the hall sealed by 2 X 4’s. Cost $150 a month.

Things have definitely changed. Here’s today’s walk up version of the same dump, slightly smaller than what I had, but not much improved other than paint and a decent bathroom. On the market in 2005 (!) for $3750 a month. 25 times more expensive than it was in 1977. Probably goes for $4250 or above in 2013.

Beware, pilgrim, even E. 14^th between B & C is now a part of the elite citadel. Back in ‘77, I made $600 a month as an ESL instructor for a Chinese immigrant vocational program at China Institute in America, Taiwan’s KMT answer to the much better heeled Asia Society.  Equivalent monthly income today would be $2,306. Where do ex-GI humanities major Jersey-fleeing 20-somethings live in NYC today on a pre-tax annual salary of $27K?

Same radical disenfranchisement of place-seekers is true of SF since 1979, certainly of Bernal Heights. Back in ’83 the only thing “artisanal” near Cortland was the crack cooked across the street from us.

Common sense vs. nun-sense

Right-o Sister Mary Paul McCaughey! Yes indeedy, it “…seems just common sense for me…” too, that “…families should be allowed to use the public money to send their children to Catholic schools beyond preschool, just as college students can use federal loans to attend private universities.” I am assuming, of course, that those Catholic schools will abide by public school district policies regarding admissions, retention, suspensions, expulsions, and services for ELL and Special Ed students. I mean, we’re allin this “in common,” right?

It’s one thing for the de-formers to start gobbling up the carcass of public education. It’s another for union-busting religious chumps to gloat over the scraps from the table.

Thank goodness organized labor doesn’t take this stuff sitting down. “Salaries for the school’s preschool teachers are about $30,000 a year…, about two-thirds the starting salary of $49,660 for a public school teacher in the city. Such pay disparities worry teachers’ unions. ‘My concern is whether or not these kids get the quality of teacher they should have,’ said Lynn Cherkasky-Davis, the director of professional learning for the Chicago Teachers Union.”

Laying down to worry is a much more effective position of advocacy, isn’t it?

Do any unions blatantly offer solidarity with un-unionized workers anymore?

One in ten – best of luck

Vacation here in NYC ends tomorrow.  Weather as lovely as it could be, except for the thunderstorm rainout of the Shakespeare in the Parks performance I scored tickets for on-line. An old NWP colleague, teaching here with 30 years tenure, tells me that such a score is rare luck. After a breakfast discussing the interview and selection process used in his current job search, I think  the Shakespeare tickets are the least of my “out of towner” luck. The process used to push me out seems benign in comparison to  the machinations NYDOE uses to demoralize and marginzlize their experienced employees. (I know now for a fact that nothing NYC Educator says is an exaggeration: “… Teachers are in the ATR pool because of a corporate scheme to ‘restructure schools’ and cut the budget by excessing senior teachers who receive higher salaries. Under the new budget formulas, teacher salaries are paid for by each principal, which gives them a financial interest in lowering ‘personnel costs…'”) His stubborn willingness to hang on, though, inspires me to look for ways to stay in the fray.

And in that regard, Diane R. today posted a thoughtful piece by Robert Shepherd re: the CCSS ELA standards. It includes this take-home:

We need to return to reading “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—to focusing on this poem, this essay, this novel, and what it communicates, and we need to retreat from having our students read to practice their inferencing skills or their identifying the main idea or context clues skills. We read because we are interested in Hedda Gabler or Madame Bovery and the plights they are in, not because we wish to hone our understanding of the structure of the novel IN GENERAL. That will come, but it can come ONLY as a result of first READING the novels. In our rush to make ELA education scientific, in our emphasis on abstract form over content, we’ve forgotten why we read. We don’t read to hone our inferencing skills. We don’t read because we are fascinated by where, in this essay, the author has placed the main idea. Our purpose in reading is not to find out how the author organized her story in order to create suspense. We read because we are interested in what the text has to say, and the metacognitive abstraction about the text is incidental.

A clear analysis and argument, though I doubt it will persuade. In 10 years of high school library work, I relentlessly advocated for Stephen Krashen’s Free Voluntary Reading, for the idea that providing choice was the best way to motivate reading. I didn’t argue against any other curricular goals or classroom practices, against NCLB or CCSS; I simply suggested that choice was key. In 10 years, I encountered only one  English teacher who committed to a thorough try-out of the concept. One teacher after 10 years of demonstrating, recruiting, cajoling, cornering, proselytizing, advocating, arguing, and (occassionally) begging.

That one teacher now spends one period a week with 2 of her 4 classes implementing her version of FVR. The students love it. Year-end evaluations inevitably include students’ testimonies to rediscovered (or FINALLY discovered) love of reading. With the library program cut by 40% for next year, with SFUSD’s embrace of CCSS professional development this summer, and with the arrival of the Smarter Balanced Consortium pilot in 2014, there will be greater pressure on that one teacher to lead students “to get what will be measured.” Measures, after all, provide data, and data drawn from CCSS implementation will undoubtedly “…diminish the predictive power of demographics….” [PDF, p. 10] in San Francisco and everywhere else.

Shepherd recognizes the legitmacy of challenges to his lack of outrage, but outraged or calm, argument doesn’t seem to have much effect.  I don’t see how anything can prevent public school teaching from becoming the pursuit of Jack Gerson’s predicted “target work norms.”

Hit the lights on your way out

UFT in NYC agreed to a new evaluation system.  NYC Educator does a good job of describing what the UFT obfuscates. That’s one helluva’ shoddily cobbled-together wooden horse welcomed by the union inside the walls of Troy (and other cities in New York state).

I hear hollow hoofbeats headed toward a district near the bay.

Why worry about VAM junk science when it counts for only a percentage of evaluations? Because incompetent but vindictive principals, and their toadying assistants, will complete the remaining percentage. Such stooges already hold tremendous power to punish workers by manipulating budget lines, directing  favors from unsupervised slush funds, hiding open positions from public posting, jiggering the interview process for new hires , changing work schedules, playing favorites with space allocation, abruptly changing subject area assignments, and increasing the inherent division between classroom and support staff. And even stooges can get downright malevolent in their schemes. Without fierce and unbroken solidarity, no union building committee can win. I know that for sure.

Friday was my last day. As I hit the lights on the way out the door, here’s a final fable to illuminate the problem described above:

 Z,  the very effective and well respected teacher of the high level and Advanced Placement Mandarin language classes, was transferred. Seems there was a drop in student demand for Chinese studies. Odd to find a drop in demand for Mandarin studies in a school with a junior class demographic of approximately 70% Chinese, but hey, the teachers trust their administrative pals to equitably and professionally manage the world language class recruitment system and to transparently report on its results. Mandarin attracting too few students, lowest in seniority  Z had to go.

However, with highly successful Z gone off to work elsewhere, a replacement is needed for those high end Mandarin classes.  The obvious choice is Y, an experienced Advanced Placement instructor whose first language is Mandarin. But wait! Not so fast. In the palace of intrigue, the obvious can impede the necessary.

The Prince_of_Pals explains to the always-most-collaborative world languages department head, “We have determined XX as best replacement for Z.”

Puzzled, the head replies, “XX is not a native speaker of Mandarin, Prince_of_Mine. And just last week you explained to me, again, your great desire to rid our realm of the incompetent but wily veteran XX.”

Noblesse oblige, the Prince explains, “Head, my pet, listen and learn. XX is the worst possible choice for Z’s replacement. XX will fail to teach to the standards expected in such a high profile and academically demanding assignment. I will document that failure at every opportunity available to me – in the formal evaluation process, during informal walk-through visits, in soliciting the opinions of disenchanted students, and most importantly, by encouraging loud and unrelenting complaints from those students’ parents. In this way, I will hasten XX’s departure from the realm.”

Placated, the head dutifully informs XX of the new assignment.