Joe Williams' Blog
Merrow On The Great NY Tenure Debacle of '08
I was traveling for most of last week, so I'm catching up on stuff I clipped from my free hotel newspapers. A bunch of other bloggers like Eduwonk and Russo already jumped on this one, but John Merrow certainly opened up a can of something spicy with this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
Some highlights after the jump for those who are too lazy/depressed to click through or who (and I totally understand this) don't want to give Rupert Murdoch the click-through:
Continue reading "Merrow On The Great NY Tenure Debacle of '08"....
Posted by Joe Williams on May 12, 2008 1:58 PM
May 7, 2008
Isn't There A Deal Here Somewhere?
The NY Daily News has the latest on the finger-pointing in the $81 million teacher reserve mess in Gotham. For those of you not keeping score, a firestorm erupted recently after The New Teacher Project released a report showing that the city is paying $81 million for teachers who lose their positions in schools for various reasons but are not selected for other jobs by principals.
The idea is that principals, tasked with building successful school cultures, shouldn't be required to take any teacher who isn't a good fit with the school. Under previous contractural arrangements, teachers leaving one school could "bump" a less-senior teacher out of another school.
So to make that happen, we're supposed to pay the unwanted teachers who sit in a reserve pool their full salaries until they either find work in a city school, quit their job to work elsewhere, or retire, even if we're talking about years and years of paychecks for not teaching.
The teachers union disputes some of the numbers that are being thrown around, but the fact that they are blaming the city and the city is blaming the union suggests that both sides at least agree that this is a mess. That's a good thing, at least if your main concern is not who wins or loses but how we solve this problem.
So look at the extremes:
-- The cash-strapped city continues to pay non-teaching teachers forever.
-- We go back to the old way where we allow older teachers to bump the living crap out of younger teachers, disrupting staffing at most schools in the city.
It would seem there is enough room for a compromise to drive a truck through, no? Surely there is some magic number of months to pay unwanted teachers that meets some sort of fairness test, even by public education's bizarre standards of fairness for big people. Surely there is some way to keep unwanted teachers in the pipeline so they could get tapped sometime in the future if they are needed/wanted. And surely there is a way to do this that doesn't take so much cash out of our kids' classrooms right now.
This seems to be a question of leadership. Who will emerge as the real leader here, Mayor Bloomberg or Randi Weingarten?
Posted by Joe Williams on May 7, 2008 10:55 AM
May 6, 2008
Play 'Spot The Blogger,' Win A Book
Loyal blog reader JK of Baltimore, MD, came up to me at the big Renaissance 2010 pow-wow in Chicago today and did one of those "You're the guy with the blog, right?"
Made me think this blog needs an ongoing contest or something. So, the next time one of you spots me at an ed reform conference/panel/etc, and says "You're that blog guy, ainah?" you win a signed copy of my book Cheating Our Kids.
Yours is on the way JK.
For the rest of you, blog dude will be back in New York tomorrow morning at the big Civic Builder's breakfast/kegger and then back to Detroit on Thursday for the Schools That Can confab.
Posted by Joe Williams on May 6, 2008 8:32 PM
April 29, 2008
Mayor Bloomberg and The Teacher Contract That Got Away...
A couple of years ago I took considerable ribbing from some NYC teacher friends following an op-ed I wrote in the NY Daily News which argued that a recent contract settlement with the United Federation of Teachers wasn't as great a victory/reform tool as Mayor Bloomberg had declared.
I think the headlines in the NYC newspapers this morning are the latest example of what I was talking about.
Imagine we stepped back in time just a few years to when Mayor Bloomberg gained control of NYC's 1.1 million student school system. Imagine if we were belly-up at the bar and throwing out all sorts of fanciful possibilities.
Imagine one of our drinking companions suggesting the possibility that Mayor Bloomberg would offer the city's 80,000 teachers 43% pay increases over the next few years.
Continue reading "Mayor Bloomberg and The Teacher Contract That Got Away..."....
Posted by Joe Williams on April 29, 2008 10:44 AM
Sheldon Silver on Teacher Tenure Debacle: There Were No Winners (Which Means Everyone Was A Winner)
Remember a few weeks ago when the New York teachers union threatened to scrotum-squeeze members of the New York State Legislature if they didn't pass legislative language banning the use of student performance in decisions about whether or not teachers should be granted lifetime tenure after three years?
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gives an honest assessment to the New York School Boards Association about how the whole thing played out -- it was a good piece of legislation because EVERYONE got screwed. Civics 101!
Silver: It’s not a question of how powerful the teachers’ union is, it’s also a question of what’s right and wrong, and I think we wound up with a good compromise on that particular issue. I think we crafted a solution that didn’t satisfy anybody. But that’s usually a good solution, when all the parties aren’t that happy with it.
You gotta love "lose-lose" and the kind of leadership that cherishes it so. The Speaker went on to admit that many legislators are scared to death of retired teachers who get in their grill and yell and scream and spit and stuff:
Silver: There’s no question about it. The teachers’ unions are politically powerful. They have a large membership. They have a large retiree base and their people are located all across the state. They impact many school districts, many elections areas – Assembly districts and Senate districts – as a result. They tend to be more active politically than most other professions in the state.
Posted by Joe Williams on April 29, 2008 9:57 AM
April 28, 2008
Newark: Whole Lotta Edu-Action At Exit 14
Big news late last week with the unveiling of a $25 million fund to boost public charter schools in Newark, N.J. As many readers of this blog are well aware, Newark's public schools are among the highest-spending of any schools in the galaxy, yet they have been absolutely decimated over the years by corruption, incompetence, and indiffernce about the needs of school kids in New Jersey's largest city.
The teaming up of local foundations and heavy-hitters like Gates, Robertson, Walton and Fisher suggests this could be an impressive last-stab at actually saving public education in Newark by providing more high-quality public school options for parents and educators.
Kudos to Gov. John Corzine and Mayor Cory Booker - both good Dems - for their involvement with this one. Disclosure: Mayor Booker is on the DFER advisory board.
Also over the weekend, the NY Times looked at the larger issue of philanthropy in Newark. The story mentions the work of Bill Ackman and Boykin Curry. More disclosure: Curry is a founding board member of DFER, and Ackman is on the DFER advisory board.
Posted by Joe Williams on April 28, 2008 11:33 AM
April 22, 2008
Mo' Money 2008
I just spit up a mouthful of icy-cold natural spring water (it's Earth Day!) when I read this line in the New York Times story on school budgets this year. Can someone please tell me why this was so funny, because I'm not entirely certain:
“This is not one of those years when you’re going to hear people complaining that they didn’t get enough state aid,” said David Albert, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association.
But what about all the people whose job descriptions require them to repeatedly complain that their schools didn't get enough state aid? It's an entire subset of the education industry, no? Forced sabbatical til next year?
Posted by Joe Williams on April 22, 2008 3:30 PM
