Where Is This Man?

 

This is the President I voted for in 2008, speaking for the power of people to organize. This is the President I've missed for four long years, as he failed to find those comfortable shoes and materialize in Wisconsin, as he failed to support, let alone pass, the Employee Free Choice Act, as he failed to stop the ruinous Bush tax cuts.

Now he has another term, and teachers are saying it's time to dump Arne Duncan, who lacks the sensitivity of a number two pencil, who publicly declared that Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans. Sure, if you're a privatizer, or a corporate shill looking to beef up your portfolio on the backs of helpless schoolchildren. Or if you think drowning low-scoring children is a good way to juke the stats. 

To this, rumors abound. One is this--if Arne Duncan goes, Michelle Rhee will take his place. I presume that is supposed to scare us, so we say, oh no, Mister Obama, PLEASE keep Arne Duncan, because even though he hates us and everything we stand for, he's better than that scary Michelle Rhee! Actually, I see little difference. They are both fanatical "reformers" who can't be bothered with facts. Anything that comes out of Bill Gates' platinum-plated ass is good enough for school children. We can't wait to test the theories, and we must ignore all studies and experiences that say they don't work.

I didn't vote for this, and this isn't hope and change. If I wanted someone who was going to oppose science, I could've voted for Romney, Ryan, Maverick Johny McCain, Sarah Palin, and all the good old boys and girls on Fox.

The AFT and NEA endorsed Obama, and he won by a small margin. For the life of me I have not the foggiest notion why they did not extract concessions from him first. And for the life of me I see no reason whatsoever that he should do us any favors now. I'd love to see that guy in the video above.

That's a man I could support. That's a man who deserves the support of working Americans like you and me.

But again, where is that man?

Act of God No Excuse, Declares Mayor Michael Bloomberg

If your house had ten feet of water rip through it, or if your living room is full of mud, or sand, or locusts, that's no reason for missing work. Michael Bloomberg is the mayor of New York, he has billions of dollars, and if he says so it must be true.

After all, his brownstone is still there, and it was not damaged. Why the hell was your residence damaged? If you had half a brain, you would've bought an east side brownstone rather than a ranch house in a flood area. Then you would've been able to go to work while the storm raged. So what if you were taken up by the wind, and flew around with Dorothy and Toto and a cow? Judy Garland wasn't even five foot tall and she did it. So what's your excuse, pal?

And please, don't give me that line about helping your grandfather dig out of his ruined home. Have you seen Bloomberg helping anyone clean up, or bringing food to people without power? Have you seen him donating food to shelters? Of course not. In fact, he banned donations to food shelters, because who knows whether or not the evil donors will give soft drinks that are too large? After all, who wants those careless refugees drinking too much Pepsi Cola?

Now of course Mayor Bloomberg has made allowances in case the building in which you work happened to have been closed. Were that the case, you simply had to have taken a photograph of yourself in front of the closed building on the day in question. What could be simpler? And just to make things perfectly clear, Mayor Bloomberg made that ruling a week after the fact. So all you need do is travel back through time, take the photo, perhaps with that day's newspaper, and provide absolute proof you didn't do so after the fact. A cinch.

Mayor Bloomberg is not restricted by nature. When we were hit with a crippling snowstorm last year, he just got in his private jet and headed to Bermuda. If you'd had the foresight to do that, you wouldn't have been here bellyaching about how to get your car out of the driveway. And please don't go on about convention and laws. When Mayor Bloomberg saw term limits, twice affirmed by voters, he simply got his pals to pass a new law, spent a hundred million bucks, and bought himself Gracie Mansion, fair and square, for the third time.

So please, New York, enough with the complaints. Man up, and face the situation. Just do what Mayor Bloomberg would do.

Role Reversal

Ad of the Week

Donors Choose Promotes Anti-teacher Propaganda, AFT Promotes Donors Choose

For those unfamiliar with Donors Choose, it's an organization teachers can use to fund classroom projects. Thus all the needed supplies that folks like Mayor Bloomberg fail to provide can come from charity. Can we please have this or that? It only costs 400 bucks, and since I haven't had a raise in four years I can't lay it out myself.

However, Donors Choose does other things, like pay people to watch anti-teacher, anti-union propaganda. In fact, they offered to bribe teachers who would watch it. Personally, I found that repugnant. I would sell things to raise money for my classroom before taking a dime from an organization that supports teacher-bashing.

Furthermore, Donors Choose had no qualms about taking money from the miserable teacher-bashing film Won't Back Down, actually headlining that it supports teachers. This is the sort of nonsense that turns my stomach. While the latest attempt at anti-teacher propaganda bombed at the box office, we really don't need to associate with those who'd strip us of everything for which we've collectively labored for decades.

Therefore I was shocked to get an email from the AFT urging me to contribute to Donors Choose. I won't reproduce it here as I don't wish to drive traffic to their site. But I have a few questions for our leadership.

How many times must they stab us in the back before we get the message? Is twice enough? Or are we breathlessly waiting for yet another attack on our profession and everything we stand for?

Act of God? Contract? Forget it, Says Walcott

NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott will not let natural disasters deter him from his mission. Kids must sit in school as long and as much as possible. Living through a disastrous hurricane never taught anyone anything, he reasons, and kids must make up the time they'd have spent preparing for standardized tests. After all, the more time they spent in school, the more circles will be correct, and the more likely it will be that his boss, Michael Bloomberg, will have achieved his divine mission to get those circles in the right places.

And that is the only thing that matters. If the circles are wrong, they can close schools. They can exile teachers to the ATR. They can undermine neighborhoods by cutting school space and dumping private charters into them. But eventually, if those circles aren't in the right places, someone will blame Bloomberg, and that is absolutely unacceptable. What the hell do those losers expect? He's only been at it for ten years, and it takes time to accomplish these things.

So we'll just order the teachers back to work. After all, they've been having big fun all week, sitting in the dark and freezing with the rest of the bridge and tunnel crowd, in Queens, or Brooklyn, or whatever those places are called. And we gave them a raise three or four years ago. What the hell are they always whining about anyway? So what if all the other city employees got 8% between 2008 and 2010? They deserved it! It's not their fault kids don't know where to put the circles!

So, we will negotiate with the UFT. They're always talking about getting a seat at the table, so we'll give them one. And we're flexible. We're willing to call them back for four days, but if that's not acceptable we'll call them back five or six. That's why we negotiate.

But nothing will stay between us and those circles! If we have to buy another term to get them in the right places, so be it!

The Value of a Good Electrician

With the green tag on our house, our town turned on our electricity. It turns out they really can do it one house at a time. We and three neighbors now have power.

However, our electrician warned us not to use it until he came over. He tested circuits one by one, and it turns out we have quite a few loose wires underwater in our crawl space. We know that because they caused a small fire, which the electrician quickly extinguished. Tomorrow he and a plumber will drain the crawl space and remove or replace the offending wires.

Then they will install a new gas furnace, which apparently can mount to the ceiling rather than sit on the floor so as to wait to be destroyed by the next flood. So if we get that far, we will have not only power, but also that heat stuff I've been hearing so much about.

And if we ever get that far, I'll probably start writing about education again. I'm hoping Wednesday's storm proves far less educational than Sandy did.

Time will tell.

We Passed! (So What?)

It was a great thing, first thing in the morning, to sit in line for three and a half hours waiting for gas. Intrepid daughter and her teddy bear came with me, and weathered the situation with the other hundreds of motorists who shared our predicament. Forty-dollar cash limit was reduced to twenty by the time we hit the front, but I persuaded the guy to go twenty-five and pretty much filled the Prius. Good to have a Prius this week.

Our town has its own electric company, and the mayor's office told me they were turning us back on at 10 AM yesterday. The woman told me it was on us to get things in order, and if we didn't, our house could catch fire or explode. I told her that was insane. If there are a thousand people in our town, at least ten of them are crazy, and when their houses blew up, ours would too. She was not fazed. Power was going on at 10 AM, and that was it.

My neighbor had a genius electrician who changed all his circuit breakers, but he was too busy to help us. My friend, a retired electrician, came out on the condition that I drive him, and told us we would have to change not only the breakers, but also the box, and that we would have to pull the meter to do this. He didn't feel like doing the job, but would do it anyway if we couldn't find anyone else. Fortunately, we did, and he also pulled the meter outside and cleaned it or something. It was pretty hard to buy the box and breakers, and it cost me some gas (and ultimately three and a half hours this AM). There were no breakers or boxes anywhere in my town, but I went to a Home Depot farther from the flood and they had several.

After waiting for gas this AM, we went to our home and found a green sticker on it. Apparently the mayor's office had thought about those houses blowing up, and sent inspectors. The only thing they looked at was the meters, and on my block, my house was one of only four that passed. However, we will not have electricity until every other house on the block passes too. I need not have rushed. After a flood like this, I seriously doubt everyone on my block is in a position to have an electrician come out, and those licensed in my town are very, very busy.

So we're fortunate to be at sister-in-law's house, a few miles north, where we're welcome and there is, thankfully, enough space for us. But I hate, hate being shut out of my home.

And I know very well there are people worse off than we are. I don't care what people say about Christie, Cuomo and Bloomberg. They are a bunch of self-serving thugs, and the good things they do are largely for the sake of publicity (witness blowhard Christie trying to look statesmanlike with the President, whom he's publicly trashed on very recent occasions).

I don't know about you, but I feel like we're living in a third-world country.

Bring a Book

Sitting on a gas line, and the word is they are actually pumping gas in front. Was here last night but they stopped before I hit the front of the line. Line was too short somehow, and seemed too good to be true. Today's line is not nearly too good to be true, and stretches blocks and blocks. Wouldn't be doing this except I have to go to work tomorrow, I had to go to work last Friday, and I had to go to a funeral last Thursday. Have been reading all about how Governor Cuomo has released millions of gallons of gas in a relief effort.

Yesterday, he sent 5,000 gallon trucks to armories around the area. This was a nice gesture, but you couldn't get your car anywhere near the one in my area. The one person I know who got there within moments of the announcement waited seven hours for ten gallons of "free"gas. Shortly thereafter, our munificent governor declared this gas was only for emergency responders--police, fire and such. I certainly don't begrudge them, but from the vantage point of this line, the Governor is not precisely my hero.

There are four major terminals that supply gas, and three are currently out of service. Somehow I haven't been seeing that on the news, but it's here. LIPA, for some reason, has not made that a priority, and does not seem to be discussing it.

I don't know how things are in your neighborhood, but mine looks like Katrina hit it. I usually kind of dress up for work, but what with my clothes in my house, and me elsewhere, I don't see that happening any time soon. I hope that is the extent of my work-related issues, and I honestly wonder how many of my students will be able to show up at all.

In any case, I just got a letter of thanks from Chancellor Walcott. I'd like to thank him. Thanks for denying us the raise you gave everyone else between 2008-2010. Thanks for holding up the crap evaluation system because you think 13% of poorly-rated teachers having fair appeal processes is too much. (That's sincere because one single teacher losing a job due to junk science is one too many.) Most of all, thanks for making me come in Friday. If you hadn't done that, I'd have enough gas to hold out another day.

No gas lines for you or Mayor Bloomberg. I guess your transport is covered by the government even though you effectively serve no one but the 1%.

Good Morning World

I just woke up in a friend's apartment. Even though there is power, I haven't got an alarm clock. I have no idea exactly what time Mayor Bloomberg wants me to report to my school to not teach. It's good I'm not teaching because the only clothes I have are jeans, t-shirts and hoodies. Our town is supposed to get power tomorrow so I may be able to do better by Monday.

But we can't turn the power on until we change the circuit breakers, which got wet. Apparently there's a risk of the house blowing up if you do that. While I'm sure teacher homes blowing up is fine with Mayor Bloomberg, I have to send my wife and daughter to make sure those circuits get changed. It's complicated because everyone who can do this job is pretty busy, but we know someone who's promised to show at ten AM.

Whatever Mayor Bloomberg has in mind today, I will be glued to my cell phone. I don't give a damn about PD and I don't care what it's about.

The other issue, of course, is gas. In my town there is a gas station that has it, but it will take you over two hours to get it. I was able to get a colleague to carpool next week, when we actually have to do something, but she can't make it today, what with no electricity and pressing issues that need her attention.

I have seen the form to ask they don't take days out of your CAR. Pardon me if I have zero faith in the tender mercies of Walcott and Bloomberg, who reject virtually 100% of U-rating appeals, and are outraged that 13% of poorly rated teachers will get fair hearings in the next contract. Oddly, I'm outraged that 87% will not.

In any case, like most teachers, I doubt either of those guys would spit on me if I were on fire. Asking us to come in today was a vindictive and juvenile act from people who have no business in education. In Spanish, being educated implies having good manners. There's a saying, "Tiene doctorado pero no es educado." He has a doctorate but he isn't educated.

These guys don't even have doctorates. On behalf of my 80,000 union brothers and sisters, thanks for nothing, Mayor Bloomberg.

Update: Walcott sent an email at 12:52 AM stating that staff should report at 10 AM.  The lack of consideration and decency this entails is staggering. 80,000 people are getting ready to go to work, and he, apparently, expects them to check their DOE email before doing so.

The Good Life

It's nice to live near the water. People love it. Cities pop up near the water, civilizations begin around it, and a lot of property near water carries a premium.

However, there is a down side, as most of Manhattan knows, and those of us on Long Island's south shore were reminded, with a vengeance, Monday night. We ran away, like chickens, to my sister in law's house. But my stalwart neighbors who remained mostly regret doing so.

My mother in law was pretty freaked out by the prospect of the storm, and spending it with no news or electricity, so she got the bright idea of going to a hotel. My wife then picked up on it, and I said there was no way we would find anything. But within moments I found rooms at the Hampton Inn in Garden City, a little pricey at $199, but what the hell, if we could avert mom-in-law having a heart attack, it seemed worth it.

So on we went, a caravan stuffing into two rooms. Within an hour, the hotel had lost power. Did they have an emergency generator? No. No hotel has one. Except the Hyatt, right next door did, and it was easy to see because their wifi channel never went out. All our hotel had was some way to keep the exit signs lit until it got dark, and then it was on you to wander up and down the stairs if, like me, you were curious and stupid enough to want to see what was outside. Hotel staff kindly provided flashlights when it was finally light out. Almost certainly we'd have been better off staying at a shelter.

Next day, back home, my wife stayed at sister-in-law's house. Intrepid daughter and I decided to try to visit the old home place. We were able to drive right up to the corner you see, where the crazy guy on the motorcycle, our neighbor, had no problem whizzing through the water. I had reservations about my car, so daughter and I went back to get rubber boots, which proved no match for the water.

We met two Newsday reporters who photographed us and told us they were taking picture of family photos in the water. Imagine my surprise when I saw my own baby pictures out there. Apparently we'd had a bag of old photos in the garage, which the storm decided not only to open, but to rip through entirely.

Our neighbors, who hadn't evacuated but wished they had, told us the flood had hit six feet where we were, enough to inundate our ground floor and run a foot of water through the living room, kitchen, and dining room of our split level. Looks like we'll need a new washer, dryer, hot water heater, gas furnace, refrigerator, and perhaps dishwasher and stove. Won't know until electric is turned on, Saturday AM at earliest. Actually our town has its own electric company, which could turn electric on, but is afraid houses may blow up or something if it does.

Meanwhile, we're camped out with sister-in-law, who probably won't get electricity for over a week. I wonder if Mayor Bloombucks will open schools tomorrow. I feel lucky to have bought gas on Sunday, because lines in the handful of gas stations open in our area were all the way down the block at 7:30 AM. I shudder to think what they're like now.

How did you fare? Better than us, I hope.

It's Not All Bad News

For Hurricane Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg Is Putting Children First Again

That wacky DOE is at it again. I just got an email from Dennis Walcott saying that emergency workers should report at 8 AM tomorrow. What are emergency workers? Well, emergency workers are pretty much any city employee who volunteered to be one. I got 4 or 5 calls and several emails asking me to be one.

However, at the bottom of the message was this:

At this time, we expect City government and schools to open on Monday. 

So not only are those teachers who volunteered to help expected to do so--they're also expected to report to their regular jobs. That way, apparently, they can be at two places at once. Pretty impressive feat for people denied the raises all other city workers got between 2008 and 2010.

But that's not the only thing these visionary leaders have planned. If people report to these shelters, they will be there along schools in session. I suppose having dozens, if not hundreds, of strangers milling about while children are supposed to be studying does not pose a potential problem for Mayor Bloomberg. After all, his kid didn't attend a public school anyway, so why should he care?

The other thing that has not crossed Mayor Bloomberg's mind is the unpredictable nature of nature itself. What if everything is fine Monday morning, but the storm picks up later in the day? You know, when the kids are walking or taking public transport home? That, of course assumes there will even be public transport. Does Bloomberg think it's a good idea for students to use their own schools as shelters, grouped with their school friends rather than their families?

Why not? Neither his kids, nor the kids of his rich pals attend public schools.

All agency employees are requested, beginning after 11 p.m. on Sunday night, or on Monday morning, to watch local news, or check nyc.gov or the agency's web site, for the latest information before leaving for work on Monday. 

That's very considerate. As I live in a flood-prone area, I don't even think I'll be home tonight. I don't know whether I'll have electricity, or internet, or the latest information. But like all of New Yorkers, even if I did, I wouldn't be able to plan for what could very well be the most significant storm of our lifetimes.

And neither will the children Mayor Bloomberg puts "first," or any of their families.

Update: MTA will begin shutting down at 7 PM tonight, and will be completely shut down by 3 AM this morning. 

UPDATE: City schools CLOSED tomorrow!

If We Could Put that State of Mind in a Bottle, We'd Be Rich

Yesterday a girl in my class got a 44 on my test. It freaked me out a little, because the test was fairly easy. In fact, it was a multiple choice test, which I don't usually give, and she filled in eight "E" answers, though the options were only A, B, C, and D.

This is the third test I've given this year. She was absent for the first one, and was out for three days in a row. In the rush of beginning the year, I failed to follow up on that. But the second time she missed a test, I got a guidance counselor who spoke her language to call home. Since then, she's been early for class every day and hasn't missed a single moment.

However, I have 34 kids in that class, and being the last one in, she's been happily seated in the back. I walk around and look at the work kids do, and have been correcting her a little more than I should be at this point. My class is level 2 ESL, meaning near-beginners, and I was thinking of moving her down to level one. But when we checked, we found she'd been here for three years. It's remarkable to be a teenager in a country for three years without acquiring the language. Usually it's either someone who was not educated in L1, or someone who was dragged to the US kicking and screaming. Sometimes it's both.

I found she was in an AP's class, and the AP also spoke her language, so I went in and asked how she was doing in his class. She seemed to be doing OK, but he teaches in her native language. He called her in and asked why she marked so many "E" answers on a multiple choice test.

"I was indicating none of the above," she responded, serenely.

I started banging my head against the wall.

"Look," said the AP. "You're giving Mr. Educator a heart attack."

"That's nothing," she replied. "He has heart attacks all the time."

She's right, of course. I am melodramatic from time to time. But the fact that she was so quick to observe that shows me she has a little sense of humor, or irony, or something. I wonder how she manages to keep such a placid demeanor while she's doing so poorly in a basic English class. As I walked her back to class I asked her what she thought she could do here without English. Was she planning a career in dishwashing? No, she was not. How does she maintain that Zenlike composure in the face of such appalling results?

"Maybe she knows something you don't know," commented my supervisor. She certainly must. I wonder what on earth it is.

Who Decided to Have this Meeting?

Article 7, Q, 6 of the UFT Contract reads thusly:

Faculty conference agendas shall be set in consultation with the UFT chapter committee.

When was the last time anyone asked you what you wanted to discuss in a faculty conference? I've been on several chapter committees, and only very rarely did this topic even come up. So is it our fault if we sit through meetings on the vicissitudes of what Good Teaching is this week...

Remember, you must have a motivation. Kids will not do any work unless there is something sexy attached to the assignment. But for goodness sake, don't mention sex, and don't refer to it, even obliquely, or the guys in suits will be here and you'll be up on charges.

...or why students should not be late?

Remember, if they come in late, tell them lateness is very bad. Make sure they know it will affect their grade. Fail them for being late, and tell them that's why you failed them. But for goodness sake, make sure they aren't late, and pass them all no matter what!

So how do these decisions get made? Does the principal sit in his office, thinking about the Next Big Thing in education and how he can get those crazy teachers on board with it? I once had a principal who did nothing but that. He got all excited about every new thing that came down the pike, and somehow his enthusiasm was less than contagious.

Of course, there are always people who will get excited about that sort of thing. And there are a great deal of people who will never object to anything. I suppose that sort of person could become a supervisor by making the right move at the right time. I've even met chapter leaders who aspire to be administrators, and I can only suppose they're the worst possible chapter leaders anyone could have. It's hard to see how someone trying to move up in administration could do a good job representing the staff.

Do you get any say in faculty conferences? Would it make a difference if you did? Or are they a lost cause, another reason to be pointlessly lectured on why kids should not be late every month, every year, every decade, until you retire and take those rumba lessons you've always dreamed of?

It's Not Who You Know. It's Whom You Know

For several weeks now, I've been writing about the new program my school has been using to keep track of student data. It's called Skedula, and it's largely unpopular in my building. It just seems like you always need to do three things instead of one. Furthermore, though most of my colleagues use ipads, there is no ipad app. The rep came to our school several weeks ago, and assured us we'd have one in two weeks. Now I hear the real roll out date is sometime in December.

If that's the case, Skedula ought to refund half of whatever they charged us. If they knew their program wouldn't serve our needs and sold it to us based on an app that wasn't even out yet, shame on them.

But there are other questions I have. For one, I'm hearing schools Mayor Bloombucks tried to close were required to use Skedula. Perhaps this program was seen as having the ability to make ESL students speak English and special ed. students overcome any and all disabilities. Or perhaps someone thought it was a good idea for its parent company, Datacation, to make money. I mean, sure, it's not Eva Moskowitz, but it's always important for The Right People to make money. Of course I'm not talking about educators, the only city employees Mayor Bloomberg did not see fit to give an 8% raise for the 2008-2010 bargaining round.

Another thing I wonder, and this appears verified by Skedula itself, is how on earth they got access to STARS, the DOE database usually open only to administrators. I know for a fact that other programs do not have this access. At my school, in order to use Daedalus, administrators constantly had to do updates within the building. How did Skedula get an automatic connection?

So, with favored treatment, and a seriously flawed system, one wonders whether Skedula is the Next Big Thing. For example, I've read that ARIS, the 80-million dollar boondoggle our financial wizard of a mayor is about to trash in favor of a yet-undetermined state system. Is Skedula as crappy as ARIS? So far, I'd say yes. And were it to be imposed statewide, like an epidemic, I've no doubt Andrew Cuomo, the student lobbyist, and his merry band of hedge fund magnates/ education experts could endeavor to make it even worse.

Because when it comes to pointless nonsense, no one takes a back seat to Cuomo and Bloomberg. That's a good thing, because given their massive egos, there won't be room in the back seat of the largest, ugliest Hummer limo in the great state of New York.

Teacher Union Prez Auditions for NY Post Editorial Board

Joseph Del Grosso, head of the Newark Teachers Union, is endorsing a new contract that entails merit pay, value-added measures, and which is "secretive about financial details," though we know it hinges on $100 mill in Facebook bucks, which we don't know to be renewable.

Del Grosso is portrayed in the article as someone who's moved from a young firebrand to someone with a completely different position-- heroic by the writer's highly uninformed point of view, but questionable at best by mine. More disturbing, perhaps, is this quote:

“The teachers who come in early and stay late, and take the job seriously, are offended by the teachers who don’t,” he says. “They are the silent majority, and I think they will overwhelmingly vote for a contract that involves them in their own destiny.”

Can you imagine the things these offended teachers must be saying?

That damn Ms. Smith, always going home to look after her baby!

I hate Mr. White. Who the hell does he think he is, running to his second job at the carwash at 2:30 every day?

I'm a teacher who comes in early and stays late, but I certainly don't go around telling anyone else to do that. For me, it's a matter of convenience, avoiding traffic, and doing things that are more efficiently done on school grounds. Were I an administrator, I would not presume to judge a teacher by hours in building, quantity, but rather by what's accomplished in the classroom, quality.

It's quite disturbing to see a union head suggest that teachers ought to work for free, and that whether or not they choose to do so is indicative of the quality of their work. It's further disturbing to see Nixon invoked in his use of the term "silent majority." This was a rationale used by a criminal to support clearly failed policies.

Also disturbing is the possibility that teacher pay will be linked to whether or not they are "effective," and that their degree of effectiveness will be determined by something as inane as value-added, which has proven disastrous in other venues, most recently Florida. The article writer, apparently unaware of the difference between reporting and editorializing, offers this tidbit:

Workers in the private sector take it for granted that their performance will affect their pay, and that if they screw up badly, they will be fired. Teachers, like many other public employees, have been protected against that harsh, real-world stuff.

This, of course, assumes that teachers are never fired, an utter fallacy. It also fails to consider that value-added has no validity whatsoever. There is a lot of talk about teachers having "a seat at the table," but I heard that talk before the UFT got involved with Bill Gates' MET project, notions of which have been imposed on most of the country well before there was sufficient evidence to do so.

This contract has the "blessing of Gov. Chris Christie." If anyone reading this thinks Christie has the interests of teachers, students, or parents at heart, I can give you a very good price on a bridge in Brooklyn.

Our Hero

Man vs. Machine--Further Adventures with Skedula

Yesterday I had a big problem contacting a student's home. A girl walked in 20 minutes late, like she owned the place, after having arrived just before the ending bell rang two days ago. She had a big smile, looking as though she was expecting to win a prize. At least two times I caught her fussing with makeup rather than paying attention. This was fairly easy for her to do as the only seat in my 34-person class was one in the back.

The girl had written a contact number on the card I gave her, but there was another one on Skedula. I went up to her and asked whether the number she gave me was her mom's number. She assured me it was. But it wasn't. And neither was the number on Skedula.

Personally, I hate when kids come late to my class. My feeling is this--if I have to be on time, so do they. So I went to her guidance counselor, hoping she might have the magic number to send this girl's behavior home with her. The counselor remembered seeing it somewhere, and opened up our old program Daedalus, where she found a note someone had written with the correct phone number.

I struggled on my iPad to make a similar note in Skedula. I clicked and prodded. After several false starts, I finally found the anecdotal, which, by default, is academic negative. I tried to change it, but it wasn't all that responsive. Is it negative to leave a current phone number? Well, it would be today. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I touched the window, my iPad keyboard would not appear. So that particular mission failed.

"It's the iPad," said the counselor. "It works better on my computer." So she made the note and then cursed herself because she'd forgotten to change the default academic negative category. Is that the most popular thing we do? Write negative things about kids? When I write about kids on venues like those I try to describe only behavior and let others decide whether it's negative or positive.

Then the counselor told me this girl has been having issues for a few years. I pushed several buttons on Skedula trying to pull up her previous report cards, but had no luck at all. It's very hard for me to fathom what is worthwhile about this program, though I will grant that one member of our faculty had nice things to say about it the other day. Still, the overwhelming number of comments I get are about time wasted trying to do things.

No one ever talked about Daedalus. I never wrote about it. We just used it. It was a handy tool. Teachers can always use handy tools. It's remarkable what we get are arcane, overblown, convoluted programs like Skedula--programs that cost schools up to 40 grand a year. To me, that's potentially the price of an additional teacher, and perhaps fewer classes of 34.

City Employees Working Together in Mayor Bloomberg's New York

We have a very good relationship with our local precinct. They send a guy to our school who faithfully tickets absolutely everyone the day their registrations or inspections expire, and he comes to meetings and lectures us on all the things we can possibly do wrong, like parking more than 12 inches from the curb on days the streets are hopelessly covered with snow. Naturally, everyone adores this great work.

However, when students hang on the street in front of our school, often creating dangerous conditions, there's not much that can be done. The DOT cannot lay out whatever it would take to put one of those speed signs near our school. They are needed elsewhere, and one single horrific accident over the last few years is not sufficient for them to be stretching much-needed resources. Perhaps they need it in front of Mayor Bloomberg's house. Who's to say?

Our school is on the border of two precincts. A block away from our school is a shop many of us know to be dealing drugs, but the other precinct can't send valuable officers to deal with that. Apparently that's too far away and not enough of a crisis, so they can't send vital officers to deal with that.

What they can do, though, is dispatch officers right in front of that shop to make sure no one makes an improper left turn. Several members of our staff have been ticketed for that offense, which is far more egregious than people dealing drugs near a school. I know this because when the officer was writing me a ticket, I said to him, "You know, they're dealing drugs right behind you, and you're coming after me." The officer had a response. "We've got an undercover operation over there."

It must be a very effective undercover operation, because this officer has enough confidence to tell complete strangers about it. Also, none of us have heard word one about it, though I know there've been complaints about that shop for over a year. The important thing, I suppose, is to raise revenue to support the undercover operations that are publicly discussed, the results of which are apparent to no one whatsoever.