Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Common Core Faces New Critics - New York Times
Al Baker
The Common Core has been applauded by education leaders and promoted by the Obama administration as a way to replace a hodgepodge of state standards with one set of rigorous learning goals. Though 45 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to them since 2010, resistance came quickly, mostly from right-leaning states, where some leaders and political action groups have protested what they see as a federal takeover of local classrooms.
But the newest chorus of complaints is coming from one of the most liberal states, and one of the earliest champions of the standards: New York. And that is causing supporters of the Common Core to shudder.
Carol Burris, an acclaimed high school principal on Long Island, calls the Common Core a “disaster.”
“We see kids,” she said, “they don’t want to go to school anymore.”
The Common Core has been applauded by education leaders and promoted by the Obama administration as a way to replace a hodgepodge of state standards with one set of rigorous learning goals. Though 45 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to them since 2010, resistance came quickly, mostly from right-leaning states, where some leaders and political action groups have protested what they see as a federal takeover of local classrooms.
But the newest chorus of complaints is coming from one of the most liberal states, and one of the earliest champions of the standards: New York. And that is causing supporters of the Common Core to shudder.
Carol Burris, an acclaimed high school principal on Long Island, calls the Common Core a “disaster.”
“We see kids,” she said, “they don’t want to go to school anymore.”
Friday, July 12, 2013
Taking the Caring Out of Teaching
From In These
Times.
It's not like tests themselves are
inherently evil. Almost every teacher gives some kind of test or assessment.
But when you place so much, so many outcomes on that edifice it's too much
weight for that instrument to bear. It distorts and warps the whole teaching
and learning process.
“Teaching is a caring profession–a humane
profession about human beings engaging with one another,” says Brian Jones, a
former New York City public-school teacher now pursuing a PhD in urban
education. “Relationships between the teachers and the learners are an important
part of the whole process.”
Jones and other teachers worry that the new
system of teacher evaluations slated to be implemented this fall in New York's
public schools will take caring out of the equation.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Joe Klien Educator (Right) !
In an irony typical of the New York Times' tin ear for democracy, a recent article (May 22) on New York Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein carried the headline "Big Thinking and Radical Dreaming." In a puff piece passing as news, Susan Dominus gave us this choice in thinking about the diktat-obsessed, top-down lawyer-bureaucrat who helped impose Mayor Bloomberg's iron will on the New York school system: Klein must either be a "passionate reformer" or a "driven zealot".
How about an imperial ignoramus? A grandstanding bureaucrat? A union-busting bully? Klein advocates "reforms" like compelling kids before they finish fifth grade to visit colleges (you know, so they will understand the joys of higher ed and be motivated to succeed!); like preventing parents from sending their kids to neighborhood primary schools (there's a great way to keep the middle class in the public school system); like empowering principals at the expense of teachers; and like making "remote" education via the web a surrogate for live teachers in the classroom (hey, you can reduce the teacher corps by 30%, Klein boasts, and increase the size of classes at the same time).
In this last bureaucrat-speak idea he is aping the social science wisdom of Terry Moe and John Chubb (Chubb runs that wondrous for-profit outfit called Edison Learning). Moe envisions a world in which "kids can work it out on their own" while schools become a "place where they go and have clubs and sports activities and drama," doing all their course work online.
I've done remote teaching and it is a far cry (remote indeed) from real teaching. But coincidentally it is a whole lot cheaper since one virtual teacher can instruct hundreds while the rest of the real teachers can join the fast food service industry.
Susan Dominus acknowledges in her piece that Klein "can be hard on the people who educate the city's children," but thinks we should give him "credit for holding his tongue most of the time."
Truth is, Klein is a perfect clone of a Mayor who seized control of the schools and vowed to put his stamp on them (just as he overturned the two term limit standing in the way of his running again for Mayor later this year). His "big thinking" means bureaucrats and their business-inspired management schemes come first, principals with tough top down controls come second, while teachers and parents come last. Children, the pupils, they don't rate at all, except as the subjects for Klein's "radical dreaming" - which is inspired neither by reformist pedagogy nor democratic inclusion but by the corporate management nightmare of totally controlling the "customers" it pretends to serve.
(By the way, I am not sniping from the sanctuary of private school privilege: my daughter graduates next month from a New York public high school and has spent her entire K-12 education in public school).
Benjamin Barber
How about an imperial ignoramus? A grandstanding bureaucrat? A union-busting bully? Klein advocates "reforms" like compelling kids before they finish fifth grade to visit colleges (you know, so they will understand the joys of higher ed and be motivated to succeed!); like preventing parents from sending their kids to neighborhood primary schools (there's a great way to keep the middle class in the public school system); like empowering principals at the expense of teachers; and like making "remote" education via the web a surrogate for live teachers in the classroom (hey, you can reduce the teacher corps by 30%, Klein boasts, and increase the size of classes at the same time).
In this last bureaucrat-speak idea he is aping the social science wisdom of Terry Moe and John Chubb (Chubb runs that wondrous for-profit outfit called Edison Learning). Moe envisions a world in which "kids can work it out on their own" while schools become a "place where they go and have clubs and sports activities and drama," doing all their course work online.
I've done remote teaching and it is a far cry (remote indeed) from real teaching. But coincidentally it is a whole lot cheaper since one virtual teacher can instruct hundreds while the rest of the real teachers can join the fast food service industry.
Susan Dominus acknowledges in her piece that Klein "can be hard on the people who educate the city's children," but thinks we should give him "credit for holding his tongue most of the time."
Truth is, Klein is a perfect clone of a Mayor who seized control of the schools and vowed to put his stamp on them (just as he overturned the two term limit standing in the way of his running again for Mayor later this year). His "big thinking" means bureaucrats and their business-inspired management schemes come first, principals with tough top down controls come second, while teachers and parents come last. Children, the pupils, they don't rate at all, except as the subjects for Klein's "radical dreaming" - which is inspired neither by reformist pedagogy nor democratic inclusion but by the corporate management nightmare of totally controlling the "customers" it pretends to serve.
(By the way, I am not sniping from the sanctuary of private school privilege: my daughter graduates next month from a New York public high school and has spent her entire K-12 education in public school).
Benjamin Barber
Sunday, December 14, 2008
More Pay to Play: this time New York
THE RECKONING
A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits
By ERIC LIPTON and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
“We are not going to rest until we change the rules, change the laws and make sure New York remains No. 1 for decades on into the future.”
— Senator Charles E. Schumer, referring to financial regulations, Jan. 22, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.
The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.
“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”
The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.
A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits
By ERIC LIPTON and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
“We are not going to rest until we change the rules, change the laws and make sure New York remains No. 1 for decades on into the future.”
— Senator Charles E. Schumer, referring to financial regulations, Jan. 22, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.
The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.
“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”
The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.
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