Edwize

[Editor’s note: miss brave is the pseudonym for a second-year elementary school reading teacher. She blogs at miss brave teaches nyc, where this post originally appeared.]

This morning, I did it. The thing I had been dreading and putting off all summer. I opened my hall closet, climbed up on my little stepladder, and hauled down the shopping bags of crap school supplies I had heaved up there in a giddy fit of summer fever in June.

I weeded through the stacks of papers I had unceremoniously dumped together in a desperate attempt to empty out my office in a timely fashion. I pulled out some binders and checklists I thought I would need for the first few days of school and piled them next to my all-purpose Carol School Supply bag, filled with the behavior charts and “Great Work” tickets and “Super Reader” pencils I bought back when I thought I would still be getting $260 worth of Teacher’s Choice money. I unearthed my new planner and filled in September’s dates. Then I put the essentials in my brand-new school bag.

It wasn’t so bad.

Then I went out for a run. It was already almost 9 am, but the air was cool and crisp. It felt like fall. And that’s when I remembered: I like fall. I’m running the New York City marathon this fall. I’m getting married next fall. The fall is nothing to be afraid of.

There are two things I know for sure: (1) There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the start of this school year can be as overwhelming or nerve-racking as last year; and (2) Even if it is, I can handle it.

It’s almost time to go back. And even though I may not want the summer to end, I’ll be ready when it does. Bring it on, second grade.

Ever since Socrates, teachers have this habit of mind: we think in the form of questions. The Democratic National Convention has posed a few questions for us.

Why would someone who “is working independently on the campaign of Senator Obama” turn his blog over to McCain’s educational advisors the very week of the Democratic National Convention, when the Obama campaign is so focused on establishing their message for the pivotal weeks of the fall campaign? The logic of neo-liberal educational politics is a bit hard to fathom at times, and this appears to be one of those occasions.

And speaking of the blogging of McCain’s educational advisors, why is their discourse indistinguishable from the teacher-bashing and anti-union rhetoric of the Education Challenge Event sponsored by the Wall Street  financed and led “Democrats for Education Reform” and the Joel Klein-Al Sharpton Education Equality project? But perhaps this is not all that surprising, in light of this reality, not to mention this one.

In an interview with Education Week shortly after her Aug. 25 speech at the DNC, Randi Weingarten reiterated her support for Barack Obama, and said she hoped people understood that teachers “just want to make a difference in the lives of kids. And the thing that makes them so angry sometimes is that they don’t get the help that they need to help kids; they get bashed instead”—by administrators, officials, and John McCain.

Click through for the video.

AFT and UFT President Randi Weingarten addressed the Democratic National Convention on Monday evening. Below is the text of her speech. If you want to see the video, C-SPAN has it archived.

I am honored to be here representing the American Federation of Teachers’ more than 1.4 million members. We work in your schools and colleges, in your hospitals and your governmental agencies. And we believe that access to an excellent education is a basic civil right.

For the children who are denied the education they need to fulfill their God-given potential, it is a personal tragedy, and an inexcusable injustice. It is also an affront to American values, and a threat to America’s role as an incubator of innovation.

This must change.

And that requires leadership, not demagoguery. That is why we need to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the White House. And why they need all of us working with them.

The American Federation of Teachers is ready. Our number-one priority is, as it has always been, strengthening our public schools to better serve our students. Let’s do what we do in our best schools in all of our schools. Barack Obama knows that teachers must be partners, not pawns in federal education policy. And federal education policy must be about a lot more than testing.

So I ask you to join us in this quest. Because you believe that strong public schools are cornerstones of our democracy. Because our aging population depends on future generations growing the economy. Because today’s students will be the caretakers of tomorrow’s environment, the sparks igniting our innovations, the tenders of our global relationships, the guardians of our prosperity and the creators of our arts. Or simply because every child has a right to a fair and hopeful start in life.

When those children walk through the doors of our classrooms, they bring us their dreams, their potential, and their trust. And sometimes, they bring their empty stomachs, untreated ailments, and life experiences that can chill you to your core. America’s teachers take them in all their fullness, and we do all we can to help them reach great heights.

Good things are happening in our public schools—teachers and paraprofessionals who work tirelessly to inspire their students; students who struggle, yet strive and succeed; communities that value education and ensure students have what they need. I can’t tell you how proud I am when I visit those schools.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will champion and challenge the people entrusted with our children’s well-being. And we welcome it. We are ready to work together to usher in a new era of excellence in America’s public schools. We can do this—we must do this—and it starts with electing Barack Obama as the next president of the United States of America.

Thank you.

“Do it right the first time 100% on time all the time or hit the road!”

Who’s talking and who does she think she’s talking to?

Is she the owner of a diner barking out orders to her busboys who are forced, though not resigned, to heed and to heel because otherwise there may be no bread on their families’ tables or roofs over their heads?

Or is it from the mouth of one of the unbred new breed of “CEO” cloned principals on whose uneasy head, by virtue of some unknown virtue, the DOE has tried to confer absolute power, including the prerogative to abuse against which only the UFT contract stands in potent defiance?

When a principal bullies his professional staff, is it indeed a sign that he has met the challenge of rising to make choices based on raw executive privilege? One of the few hard and fast rules of quality leadership is avoidance of the temptation to be a cad.

Whether a principal has a stone-aged or an enlightened mentality is not automatically a reflection of how much experience she’s had or how (or whether) she’s come up through the system. But no honorable character will turn bestial even if the DOE gives her its blessing to do so.

Principals who want progress for their schools and serenity for themselves will desire, if for no other reason than the self-serving, practical expedient of having a smooth-running school, an earned reputation for decency. Whether they are a new-age “CEO” or an old-fashioned garden-variety principal from the pre-”reform” days when collaboration and shared decision-making were not only endorsed in attitude, but also codified in DOE regulations, they realize that positive human relations skills translate into greater productivity and loyalty in the workplace. What have they to gain by succumbing to the false lure of being a brute, simply because the DOE gives them the green light?

Head games, power plays, and guilt trips are not in the playbook of any secure and worthy leader.

A strong principal will indeed run a “tight ship,” but it is the “tightness” of her grip on facts and creative ideas, rather than her compression of the throats of her staff that leads to defining moments and finest hours of stewardship. After all, a school with 100 staff members with an average of 10 years of service, represents 1,000 years of aggregate inspiration and evolved teaching strategies. Given that recently appointed principals are, for the most part, much younger and far less experienced than frontline educators of any pre-Klein era, you’d think that every principal would welcome input from diffuse sources, especially since they would not sacrifice the coveted trappings of their Henry the Eighth-like authority. Instead, some principals (one can argue over the percentage) seem to view themselves as a human antibody crusading against the infection embodied by a faculty that presumes it has something meaningful to contribute.

Although the DOE will practically always side with any principal in any skirmish with any educator on most school-related issues, even when their position would be unanimously found legally wrong and ethically reprehensible by a panel of a thousand attorneys (ones that are not touched by the bristly brush of a relationship with Tweed ), the DOE substantially abandons its “CEO”s not only when these principals are besieged by crisis, but even when everyday situations, become a bit sticky. Most principals will admit this, although those in active service or with designs on a sweetheart retirement gig, feel the hardly exaggerated pressure to be accepted into a witness protection program as a buffer against the DOE’s retaliation.

It is no secret. The Department of Education is a staunch fair weather friend. But when the clouds thicken and darken and there is a storm of events, even when caused solely by the DOE’s mandated policies, it’s as though the bedrock has shifted and the individual school discovers it is an island and is exposed to the harsh elements. And it’s the principal who the DOE will scramble to sandbag, not the beach!

Another metaphor, this one more mixed than is the record of the chancellor’s publicity office.

The DOE is a sprawling sheltering oak tree and its schools, particularly its principals, are its vital limbs for as long as here are no bitter frosts or howling winds to uproot it. Should a gale of bad publicity blow in the form of test scores or other inconvenient and often undeservingly embarassing statistics or incidents, that DOE “tree”sheds the school “limb” in the same way as some lizards(especially those that eat their offspring) break off their tails to escape a grim accounting.

In their hearts’ core and in their minds’ eye, nearly every principal realizes that they must depend on their staff, not the DOE, not only for vindication but for survival. For this reason many principals are maturing beyond the temporary and illusory thrill of being an autocrat.

But there are still many principals who have bought into the “my way or the highway” fantasy. They think such recklessness is the new “safe.” But my courting disaster they shall end up married to ruin.

Just as I was getting ready to write about the utter lack of graduation-rate information from the city, a new 276-page report popped up on the DOE’s website. At long last, the Class of 2007 Four-Year Longitudinal Report.

Really long last. This is the data for the class that graduated not this year but the year before. It’s old, but it’s welcome. This is the report DOE/BOE has issued every year since 1986, but which was superceded when the city agreed to let the state count graduates its way this year. The state’s report, which was released (scandalously late) on August 11, gave some but not all NYC data.

Herewith, some highlights that were missing from the state account, calculated the city’s traditional way:

62% of the Class of 2007 (who entered high school as freshmen in 2003) graduated in four years, a record-high on-time graduation rate. This figure was reported earlier by the DOE.

24.2% remained enrolled for a fifth year (versus 25.6% for the Class of 2006).

13.8% dropped out, a record-low dropout rate. Over 65% of those dropouts entered high school overage for grade.

Of the four-year graduates, just over 65% received Regents diplomas, up from 60.7% in 2006. Of the rest, 29.7% got local diplomas and 4.1% got GEDs. For special ed students, 0.9% received IEP diplomas–a slight uptick from the previous two years.

67% of students in Career and Technical Education Schools graduated on time, up from 65.1% of the Class of 2006 CTE schools

There’s plenty more data, on ELLs, special ed students, students by race and gender. And the appendix includes all the data for each individual high school.

…and tray tables to their upright and locked positions for takeoff… It’s the start of a new school year and familiar mantras seem to come to mind when blastoff is imminent.

This morning, the Department of Education hosted a new teacher welcoming event at Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center and invited the UFT to be part of the program. Once again the school year sounded full of possibilities. Even the parts of the speeches about how well the DOE and the UFT cooperate sounded plausible. It’s one of the great things about teaching–the chance to start fresh in September.

UFT President Randi Weingarten was (very unhappily) unable to attend as she had to get to Denver to give a speech at the Democratic Convention! (There was quite a murmur through the audience when that was announced.) In her place, UFT Secretary Michael Mendel welcomed the 450 or so new teachers who attended, urged them to get in touch with the union and reassured them that both the union and the department want them to succeed. “You hear the union and the DOE are fighting. That’s the nature of labor-management relations. But we all agree on this: we want you to succeed, because if you succeed our children learn. “

Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Education, followed Michael and told them, “Don’t listen to Michael. The DOE and UFT get along famously.” Then Chancellor Klein got up and said “Let the games begin.” When the audience laughed he said, “You think it’s funny?” How soon the gloves come off!

He also said he was “so proud of the fact that Randi Weingarten will be representing us at the Democratic National Committee,” though some folks thought that seemed unlikely. He moved to an even more bellicose metaphor at the end of his talk, telling the new teachers, “I hope you will become a warrior for educational change in New York.”

There were performances by some extraordinary city school kids. A fifth-grade chorus from PS22 in Staten Island sang three songs (”Hey Now,” Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” and one other) that were just beautiful. Stan’s Pepper Steppers, who won first-place in a double-Dutch jump-rope championship, performed such feats it felt like sitting in a stadium in Beijing. (Double-Dutch is going to become a PSAL high school sport this year.) And The Dancing Classrooms presented student exhibitions of the foxtrot, swing dance and mambo (a la “Mad Hot Ballroom.”)

The ride will soon enough become rough. But the arrival of 4,500 great new teachers is indeed a welcome thing. It’s testament to New York’s magnetic power, our students’ desire to succeed and to these new teachers’ tremendous passion. As the Chancellor said, “Let the games begin.” The union will be ready.

Eduwonkette has outed herself. Columbia Univeristy Sociology grad student Jennifer Jennings is the woman behind the mask.

Now that she has gone public, the defenders of Tweed might actually have to think up an argument to reply to her, rather than resort to their usual refrain about her anonymity — especially since it is now clear that far from having some horse in the race of New York City educational policy, she just calls them as she sees them.

Ever since A Nation At Risk, education commentators on the right have been fixated on the international standing of American students. Given Checker Finn’s intimate relationship with that document, the Fordham Foundation has begun its own “education olympics” to highlight the continuing “educational unilateral disarmament” of the United States.

But before you rush off to volunteer in Fordham’s army, consider the following passage, from Fareed Zakaria’s Post-American World [hat tip: Edudiva]:

But even if the U.S. scores in math and science fall well below leaders like Singapore and Hong Kong, the aggregate scores hide deep regional, racial, and socioeconomic variation. [...] The difference between average science scores in poor and wealthy school districts within the United States, for instance, is four to five times greater than the difference between the U.S. and Singaporean national averages. In other words, America is a large and diverse country with a real inequality problem.

We have met the educational enemy, and he is us.

Jay Greene and his ideological camp followers may not want to take a vacation from “cherry picking” education research, but I am on vacation with my family, and they could care less about Greene’s toiling in the fields of research in search of cherries, so this reply will be quick and to the point. His latest contribution involves textbook examples of the research “cherry picking” we identified in our original post.

Case One: Hank Levin’s research

Greene quotes a couple of Levin’s lines about education competition in general and suggests that this means he approves of vouchers. There is, of course, a considerable difference between a discussion of competition in a general way [which may include such phenomenon as charter schools and public school choice within a district] and a specific discussion of vouchers. Hank Levin has stated his assessment of vouchers directly in numerous forums, many of which are readily available on the Internet. Perhaps none is more definitive than an article in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management entitled “Educational Vouchers: Effectiveness, Choice, and Costs.” Levin’s précis:

Most of the policy discussion on the effects of educational vouchers has been premised on theoretical or ideological positions rather than evidence. This article analyzes a substantial body of recent empirical evidence on achievement differences between public and private schools; on who chooses and its probable impact on educational equity; and on the comparative costs of public and private schools and an overall voucher system. The findings indicate that: (1) results among numerous studies suggest no difference or only a slight advantage for private schools over public schools in student achievement for a given student, but evidence of substantially higher rates of graduation, college attendance, and college graduation for Catholic high school students; (2) evidence is consistent that educational choice leads to greater socioeconomic (SES) and racial segregation of students; and (3) evidence does not support the contention that costs of private schools are considerably lower than those of public schools, but the costs of an overall voucher infrastructure appear to exceed those of the present system.

Bottom line: Levin’s view of vouchers is quite critical, rather different than what Greene suggests.

Case Two: Cecilia Rouse’s research on the Milwaukee voucher experiment

Cecilia Rouse’s research on the Milwaukee voucher experiment is critical of a publication making a claim of strong achievement gains for students using vouchers. You would never know by reading his account, but the publication making these claims was written by Jay Greene. Rouse argues that his account of improvements in reading could not be sustained, as the test score differentials were as often negative as positive when students using vouchers were compared with students who did not use vouchers. In math, Rouse found a modest advantage for students using the vouchers. She notes that the database was deficient, with a significant number of missing students, but believes the results are still valid, based on two statistical and econometric methods she uses to verify them. In her conclusions, she offers three caveats concerning the reliability and robustness of her findings in math, and specifically cautions against using them to conclude that vouchers work.

Bottom Line: Greene’s claim that Rouse’s analysis is supportive of his pro-vouchers position is strongly misleading.

The New York Times reports that an experiment in New York City public schools to pay students for their test scores on Advanced Placement exams has resulted in a small decline in those scores.

A little more than a year ago, the organization sponsoring this experiment, REACH, met with a group of UFT leaders, including President Randi Weingarten and myself. The REACH delegation included Executive Director Eddie Rodriguez and Wall Street hedge fund operator and Democrats for Education Reform honcho Whitney Tilson, both of whom are quoted in the Times article. REACH wanted our support of this effort, and our agreement to extend their bonuses to the teachers of Advanced Placement classes.

Between Randi and myself, we had close to fifteen years of actual experience teaching Advanced Placement classes on our side of the room. The Clara Barton High School AP class in American Politics we taught had participated in the We The People national civics competition, winning the New York City and States championships many years and placing as high as fourth in the nation on a number of occasions. There was no classroom experience, let alone experience teaching AP classes, on the REACH delegation.

We told Rodriguez and Tilson that they did not understand the motivations of teachers teaching AP classes and students taking them. AP classes are much more work for teachers, but the best teachers seek out opportunities to teach them, because they thrive on the challenge of teaching college level material. Students took AP classes because they understood that the work in those classes better prepared them for college, and that college admission offices look favorably on applicants who have successfully completed them.

If REACH really wanted to make a difference, we told them, they should be working to expand the opportunities for students of color and poor students to take AP classes. They could be providing support for the extra expenses – costly college textbooks, additional class time or tutoring and professional development for teachers new to the classes – schools incur when they sponsor AP classes. They should be working with the Department of Education to have small high schools on campuses create consortiums which could provide more AP classes than each school could ever do alone.

But REACH was firmly wedded to the dogma of market fundamentalism: monetary incentives would make all the difference. Experience with real world AP classes was immaterial.

Faced with this reality, the UFT declined to support the experiment and to allow the inclusion of teachers.

Now we have the results of this experiment with pay for performance, and they speak for themselves.

Education International, the largest global union federation, representing teachers and education workers around the world, has released an urgent appeal on behalf of an Iranian teacher and trade unionist sentenced to death after an unfair trial. The AFT is a constituent member of EI.

According to EI, Farzad Kamangar, a 33-year-old teacher and human rights activist from Iran’s Kurdistan Province, was convicted in February of “endangering national security” and “enmity against God.” The death penalty, handed down by the Tehran Revolutionary Court, was later confirmed by the Iranian Supreme Court. Farzad was not allowed to speak at his trial, nor was his lawyer allowed to defend him against the charges, which stemmed from his alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

There are reports that Farzad has been tortured during his detention, and colleagues who have come to his defense have been intimidated or jailed.

To learn more about Farzad’s plight, and to find out how you can help an educator victimized by an anti-union regime, go to the Urgent Action Appeal section of the Education International site.

Jay Greene needs a union. Anyone who works as hard as he does at cherry picking education research — a white collar version of uncreative, gritty farm work — could use the collective power of an organization that unites all cherry pickers in common cause. Just picture it: a picket line of Greene, Hoxby, Moe and Peterson, marching in line outside of an AERA convention, with signs declaring “Unfair To Educational Research Cherry Pickers” — all carefully written on oak tag paper bought at Wal-Mart.

How could life as an educational research cherry picker be so tough, the reader might ask, that Greene would have to resort to the usurious rent seeking of nefarious monopoly power? How could he end up hitchhiking on the road to serfdom?

Here’s how: Serious research conducted by respected scholars without an ideological axe to grind has consistently found every major voucher experiment in the United States wanting. John Witte’s and Cecilia Rouse’s definitive analyses of the Milwaukee voucher program and the Indiana University studies of the Cleveland voucher program have shown no meaningful educational performance advantage for students in those two high profile, large scale voucher programs. The US Department of Education studies of the Washington DC voucher program [here and here] show no significant educational performance benefits. An overview of the current state of research on vouchers can be found here.

All of this just makes Jay Greene and his comrades in the United Cherry Pickers work harder and harder, on a desperate search through the bountiful fruit of educational research for something, anything that can be cherry picked to support vouchers. Just look at what Greene has been reduced to: glittering generalities that repeat the same tired misrepresentations, again and again, in the most unimaginative way. [He even cites research that is not on the subject of vouchers: Hank Levin will be most surprised to learn that his research "supports" vouchers.]

When the research that is there doesn’t do the job, the “have laptop, will produce junk science on demand” crowd at the United Cherry Pickers make up their own, ‘refined’ versions. In the heat of the 2000 presidential election campaign, Paul Peterson announced a “Harvard study” that found African-American students participating in private voucher programs in New York City, Dayton, Ohio and Princeton, New Jersey had significantly better results on a standardized test. Peterson’s claims went so far beyond what the actual evidence demonstrated that one of his partners in the research, the firm Mathematica, went public with its repudiation. Further research by Princeton University’s Alan Krueger and Pei Zhu cast even more doubt on the results. If you wonder what is at stake is the seemingly ‘inside baseball’ fight over peer review of research [see here and here], it is precisely this misuse of the reputation and currency of the academy to promote a policy agenda with “research” that fails to meet minimal academic standards.

So in the interests of union solidarity, let us provide the following recommendation to Jay Greene and the United Cherry Pickers: you are working too hard, take a vacation. Labor Day is coming up — we won that one for you.

The Democratic National Convention Committee has released its list of speakers for the party’s convention in Denver from August 25-28. AFT and UFT President Randi Weingarten will take the stage on Monday, August 25, as will Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and headliner Michelle Obama.

Hillary Clinton will address the convention on Tuesday, August 26, and Barack Obama’s to-be-determined running mate will headline the following night.

On the final night of the convention, Thursday, August 28, Obama will accept his party’s nomination with a speech to supporters at INVESCO Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos.

[Editor’s note: Peter Goodman blogs at Ed in the Apple, where this post originally appeared.]

“Betraying a whole generation of immigrant kids who are struggling to succeed.”

The New York State Education Department, pointing out the “pluses” and “minuses,” released the high school graduation data from the 2003 cohort (students graduating in June/August 2007). The SED reports that 25.2 % of ELL students enrolling in 2003 graduated, 29.4% dropped out, and 40% are still enrolled. The percentage of ELL students who are graduating is declining.

The percentage of ELL students graduating declined by 5% between the 2001 and 2003 cohorts.

The NYC Department of Education, in a gloating PowerPoint, reported a rise in the graduation rate for ELL students.

The graduation rate among English Language Learners rose 3.1 points to 23.5 in 2007, after falling from 26.5 percent in 2005 to 20.4 percent in 2006.

The disparity in the state and the city numbers is distressing, especially since 76% of ELL students are in New York City.

The Immigrant Coalition slammed the low ELL graduation rates in an article in Gotham Gazette.

Who are English Language Learners (ELL)?

* The U.S. Department of Education defines the term limited English proficient child as an individual

(A) who is aged 3 through 21;

(B) who is enrolled or preparing to enroll in an elementary school or secondary school;

(C) (i) who was not born in the United States or whose native language is a language other than English; (ii) (I) who is a Native American or Alaska Native, or a native resident of the outlying areas; and (II) who comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a significant impact on the individual’s level of English language proficiency; or (iii) who is migratory, whose native language is a language other than English, and who comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant; and

(D) whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual– (i) the ability to meet the state’s proficient level of achievement on state assessments described in section 1111(b)(3); (ii) the ability to successfully achieve in classrooms where the language of instruction is English; or (iii) the opportunity to participate fully in society.

[Source: Federal PL 107-110, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Title IX, General Provisions, Part A Definitions, Section 9101(25)]

Looking at the same data, the city applauds itself while the state sees serious inequities.

An acquaintance was visiting the city for the first time in over a decade, staying in, believe it or not, a bed and breakfast in Brooklyn. She strolled through a South Asian neighborhood along Coney Island Avenue to an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood along Avenue J to a Caribbean neighborhood through a Chinese neighborhood. Ethnic diversity is at the core of this wonderful city. Families from around the world, hardworking, conscientious, seeking what is best for their children; repeating the experiences of our ancestors who fled the bigotry and poverty of the old world.

What is so troubling is that we know what works. For example, the International High Schools, a network of nine public high schools serving 2700 ELL students around the City, has an outstanding record of serving the immigrant community.

Under the current organization, principals are measured solely by the Progress Report grade, and, unfortunately, too many schools have no idea how to provide appropriate instruction for ELL students. No one monitors anything, and pushing aside ELL kids is not uncommon.

The 140,000 ELL students in the NYC school system (13.4% of all students) are entitled to the best instruction and this administration has failed them.

A committee can represent 200,000 people, as does the UFT, or a committee can speak for a single individual, such as Tom Golisano, the upstate billionaire. According to the New York Public Interest Group, the war chests of the political action committee (PAC) of the teachers union and that of the Rochester business man (who insists his PAC is not really a PAC but rather an “Independent Unauthorized Committee) are not very different at all.

Mr. Golisano is a persistent critic of what he regards as the damaging impact of public employee (especially teacher) unions and other “special interests” on New York State government’s “ability to affect real reform.” So principled is Golisano’s opposition to “special interests” that he has fashioned one of his own, avoiding the designation by altering the guise. He calls his group “Responsible New York,” and keeps it in the blush of solvency through contributions solicited from elements of the public that share his quixotic view of a “responsible” government free of a hint of social contract.

“Responsible New York” exists to bankroll candidates for public office who have committed themselves to executing Golisano’s private political and economic philosophy. (To his credit, his efforts have included some unrelated, serious philanthropy.)

Golisano claims that dozens of prospective legislators have already sought his endorsement (and material resources!) in anticipation of November balloting.

Although it is ironic that a proponent of participatory democracy would be critical of the voluntary voice of 200,000 folks playing their rightful part in a legitimate process, and that he would then organize his own relatively tiny group with lopsided funding, it is inarguable that Golisano is acting within the prerogatives of any citizen, including those not overbearingly rich. The point is not what he conceives as his sacred duty. The point is his “holier than thou” attitude towards political action committees, a culture in which he aspires to be a major player.

PACs are not only a viable component of democracy in action, they are essential to it. Elected officials, being beholden to people who have the duty to try to persuade their leaders to make enlightened choices, need to know what people think so that decisions in their interest can be made. It is a fundamental belief rooted in our system that there must be, within reason, a cause and effect relationship between those who govern and those who have, by their consent, entrusted them with power.

That is not sinister; it is redemptive, and no apology is in order.

Elected officials have the option of heeding or not fulfilling the wants of those to whom they are beholden. But they need not risk a clash between ambition and conscience so long as the positions being advocated are not merely benign but are truly immaculate, such as fair funding and justice for our state’s school kids. And that right there is the lion’s share of the UFT’s portfolio.

How ironic! Although knowledge is achieved largely through research and has expanded exponentially in almost all fields coinciding with the advent of personal computers, hand-held devices and other outrageously convenient tools for learning (or at least getting by), the academic research skills of “average” students are less than in the days when they had to trek to a library, sift through periodicals, muddle through card catalogs, and blow off dust from stacks of books, just to access potential material for a term paper.

What has replaced this exhilarating drudgery?

Too often a student will go online, key in, say, “Shakespeare,” double click, and then muster the energy for one more click so that their ready-made dissertation will be printing while they split to check out YouTube or to surf some video channel. At the next commercial break they will scoop up their term paper from the tray, sandwich it between colored covers, and adorn it with some Photoshop work and computer graphics. They may also type a preface to the teacher along the lines of “I hope you like this. Have a nice day!” and add the finishing touch of an “emoticon” smiley-face.

They don’t mean to be deceitful. They’re not usually into chicanery or necessarily laziness. It’s not their fault that hard labor has been witlessly reduced to a cakewalk. They have taken the path of least resistance, which is human nature (more or less). Their goal is not to “put one over” on the teacher (although this temptation may be too tantalizing to ignore in some cases). They’re just so used to the mindless, legless approach that they’re just doing what comes naturally. Maybe nobody impressed on them the insatiable thrill of self-improvement.

Isn’t it true that many senior students are still clueless not only about how to format a footnote and a bibliography, but are even ignorant of what these indispensable elements of research are and what purposes they serve? Do you disagree that these students, regardless of the size or type of school they attend anywhere in this nation, tend not to be adept at isolating information, compartmentalizing facts and ideas, and processing direct quotations so that they, the student, can re-work it into a paraphrase that can possibly be used to support their own original contribution to the topic at hand?

Are the teaching methods that are being countenanced, in fact mandated in some instances, meeting the challenge of showing students how to organize related ideas into paragraphs with precision and power? Are kids learning the shades of meaning of words and the “tricks of the trade” of self-expression?

Everyone professes a passionate belief in the importance of teaching students “critical thinking,” but generally it’s left at that. The ability to think critically is not a secondary sexual characteristic that happens involuntarily. Nor does it materialize from the study of a non-existent curriculum. It is, rather, the product of many years of literal note-taking (sometimes a lonely endeavor) and reflection. Without a modicum of mastery the new generation of adults will play right into the hands of false advertisers and false prophets in industry and government. Democracy is not sustained by an easily suckered population.

When students care about their grades but lack the basic research techniques applicable to term papers regardless of subject area, and then realize that they can’t legitimately meet the standards demanded by instructors who refuse to bend to the winds by surrendering their traditional expectations, both students and teachers may be driven to panic by different pressures: the devils of plagiarism and grade inflation.

One absolutely insane idea.

In an op-ed in today’s Daily News, AFT and UFT President Randi Weingarten takes on the teacher-bashing of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and explains why American education needs political leaders, such as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who will work with — rather than against — our nation’s educators.

Under the title “Say What You Mean,” Kevin Carey writes that

Every school reform advocate I know — and I know my share — absolutely wants better social and economic environments for children, and thinks that doing so would help their education. You’d have to be dead stupid to believe otherwise.

Indeed, he continues, the advocates of the Broader, Bolder Approach are contending with “a phantom” when they make the argument that such measures are essential for improving the educational opportunities, as well as the overall quality of life, of students living in poverty.

Funny thing is, we keep running into this phantom in the edu-blogosphere. Take, for example, here and here where the claim is made that there is no evidence to support the proposition that only the “dead stupid” deny, even in the face of comments that provide that evidence again and again. The phantom has even taken the form of Jay Greene, who not only endorses the claim that there is no evidence for the proposition that only the “dead stupid” deny, but invokes images of totalitarianism — posters from the Stalinist Soviet Union and the use of a Hobbesian term [Behemoth] most famous as the title of a classic text analyzing Nazi Germany — in his commentary on the issue. Given the quality of the argument and the tone of the rhetoric that defines the interventions of this phantom, we can understand why reasonable folks like Kevin might want to separate themselves from it. But separation seems to us a tad bit different from pretending that it doesn’t exist.

So before Kevin suggests that the advocates of the Broader, Bolder Approach must have some hidden, ulterior motivation for taking the position they do, since they are arguing against some sort of ’straw man’ phantom, he might actually venture a comment or two about the arguments of that phantom. In this case, the admonition “say what you mean” invites the rejoinder, “physician, heal thyself.”