Carmen Farina and The Inequality Contradiction

The

Mayor de Blasio's schools chief is a competent steward of the failing status quo.

 Inequality Contradiction

LINK

The Bill de Blasio era begins in New York City on New Year's Day, and the new mayor is saying his main preoccupation will be reducing inequality. No doubt he means it, but his appointment Monday of Carmen Fariña as schools chancellor won't do much for that cause.

Ms. Fariña is by all accounts a competent steward of the education status quo. Known as a fine teacher herself, the 70-year-old served for a time as a deputy chancellor during the Bloomberg era but wasn't a reform leader. Mr. de Blasio made a point in his Monday remarks announcing her selection that she had retired because she was unhappy with the direction of the Bloomberg reforms.

Related Video

New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman on incoming school chancellor Carmen Farina.

Those radical reform ideas included more competition (charter schools) and more accountability (measuring school and teacher performance in part by how well students do on tests). Ms. Fariña is said to favor collaboration, rather than competition, among schools. Collaboration is a nice word, but it will achieve nothing if all it means is accommodating the demands of unions for less school choice and less accountability while demanding more money.

The contradiction of the liberal inequality agenda is that it ignores the single biggest obstacle to upward economic mobility—the failure of inner-city public schools. Mr. de Blasio built his "tale of two cities" mayoral campaign, much as President Obama has built his economic agenda, around income redistribution. Raise taxes and spread the wealth.

But no amount of wealth shifting will raise the lifetime prospects of kids who can't read or can only do 8th-grade math before they drop out of school. The education reform agenda is about reducing income inequality the old-fashioned American way—upward mobility and economic opportunity. By accommodating the education status quo, Mr. de Blasio will make the income gap even larger.

Mayor Bill De Blasio Makes a Huge Error in Choosing Carmen Farina as Chancellor

How soon do politicians forget, hoping that the parents and teachers of New York City public schools do too?
 

Carmen Farina

Carmen Farina is a disaster for individual liberty, freedom of speech, and asking questions about School Leadership Teams and where money flows when it enters a Principal's hands. She rammed TERC math down the throats of everyone at PS 6, and, when my 4th grade daughter wrote an article about how she hated it, Carmen removed her from Math Team:

http://www.parentadvocates.org/nicecontent/dsp_printable.cfm?articleID=4524

Then to please Joel Klein, Carmen became the partner in buying the education-vendor-complex nonsense ("I don't care what the curriculum is, but I have to make money from it or I wont use it").  She replaced disgraced Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam. Elizabeth Carson of NYC HOLD says this:

" Farina was a perfectly aligned replacement for Lam, supportive of her failed education ideology
and universal Children First curricular choices, curricular choices that now even former Chancellor Klein himself admits were a disaster !!!"

Elizabeth sent this to me on facebook (thanks, Elizabeth!):

CLASS ACTION

On the Lam

The mayor wanted basic change in the schools, and Diana Lam provided it—until unsavory tactics proved her undoing. Where does the chancellor turn now?

• By Robert Kolker, 2004

Joel Klein is not the man he was two years ago when Mike Bloomberg asked him to head the nation’s largest public-school system, and much of his evolution—especially his belief that children learn as much reading alone as they do from being taught by teachers—took place at the knee of Diana Lam. In a cabinet of private-sector and think-tank émigrés, Lam, Klein’s deputy for instruction, was the only career educator; while most of his team focused on rejiggering the bureaucracy, Lam introduced the one piece of reform that actually had to do with the way kids are taught. But now that she has left in disgrace—forced out for nepotism, igniting the mayor’s first major personnel scandal—Klein finds himself in an awkward position: He feels the need to defend her as an educator while condemning her sin. And yet, even as the scandal grows, Klein’s condemnation seems halfhearted.

“Some people for ideological reasons disagreed with her about the curriculum,” Klein says. “That became an issue. And in this business, people get polarized. That’s unfortunate. But I think that she was a sound educator, and I have confidence in her educational judgments.”

Klein defended Lam to Bloomberg, too, before the mayor finally persuaded him to get her resignation, which suggests either a certain political myopia or a devotedness to the deputy who became his mentor. In the beginning, Klein had hired her to be a change agent, offering her the job after just a few meetings not because of her educational philosophy but because they clicked. “I liked her style,” he told me last year. Did he know anything about the educational programs she used? “No,” he admitted. But he did know this: Four times, in four different cities, Lam would start up a campaign of parental engagement, introduce a new curriculum, and see test scores bump up a tick or two. And for an education novice whose boss needed the scores to go up before the next election, that seemed like a good deal.

In Lam, Klein had found a fellow anti-incrementalist; in a pedagogical culture of marathoners, she was a sprinter. Revamp the middle schools? No problem. Cut out social promotion in the third grade? Done. Devise a special-ed plan and break up the big high schools? You got it. She was dynamic and uncompromising at a time when managing the educational bureaucracy was at the forefront of the mayor’s thinking about education.

She was also impolitic, a lousy listener. She didn’t mind whom she provoked. The $800,000 buyout in San Antonio. The wacky three-day campaign for mayor in Boston. The bad blood in Dubuque. And the last few months in Providence, where she rigged a bidding war with Portland, Oregon, to boost her salary and then abruptly accepted the job in New York, giving notice by e-mail. In the end, Lam didn’t need any help imploding.

Last summer, newspapers were tipped off that her husband, Peter Plattes, was working in a department that reports directly to her. Lam claimed that Plattes never formally accepted the job, but another tipster revealed this to be a lie. Guessing who whispered to investigators about Lam’s indiscretions has become a parlor game at Tweed Courthouse. “She was done in by people inside the system who work for her,” says one source who sat on a board with Lam. “Not by reporters or teachers.”

In the final act last week, when a report by the schools investigator forced Bloomberg’s hand, Lam made sure she wouldn’t flame out alone: She said she’d been given the blessing of general counsel Chad Vignola, who resigned a few days later. For a mayor who has staked his reelection on cleaning up the schools, this is no time for an accountability crisis. But Klein, claiming all is well, continues to cast himself as a reformer—and Lam as a target of those who opposed reform.

“She didn’t mind whom she provoked. In the end, Lam didn’t need any help imploding.”

Lam’s enemies were ideological and political as well as personal. Phonics fans like Diane Ravitch were appalled by her philosophy of allowing long blocks of unstructured time for children to simply read and write on their own. Liberals hated the pressure the program put on teachers. The joke around Tweed was that for the first time, teachers-union chief Randi Weingarten and Manhattan Institute pundit Sol Stern agreed on something—that Diana Lam was a disaster.

“Wherever she went, the teachers hated her,” says Stern. “Her forte is a tremendous emphasis on top-down staff development. You haul all of the teachers and principals out of the classrooms constantly and pound into them what it is you want done.” Those headlines about how teachers are shocked that they have to keep lessons to less than eleven minutes—Lam took the blame for that. Which is why Weingarten felt comfortable sending Lam off last week with the hope that “we can start making educational decisions based on what works for children rather than on one administrator’s personal ideology.”

In recasting the system in Lam’s image, Klein embraced a curriculum already used in wealthier parts of town like the Upper West and Upper East sides—alarming conservatives who believe poor kids need something more structured, like phonics. Klein and Lam capitulated, making a phonics program available to qualify for federal money, but it’s clear Klein still believes in Lam’s approach. “People want to put adjectives on it instead of understanding the texture and nuance,” Klein says, “which is a much more complicated set of issues about how you not only teach children how to read words but to have an excitement for reading—to share ideas. So I think this is the right solution, and I think people are giving this a bad rap.”

in the last several months, lam had become so disliked that Klein was shielding her from public exposure. “Clearly, she was the lead educational thinker,” says Eva Moskowitz, chair of the City Council’s education committee. “But there was a vacuum when it came to who would be allowed to publicly defend the rationale. I don’t think either Klein or Lam really took seriously the level of dissatisfaction in the system.”

Now that she’s gone, there’s not much of a chance for Klein to exhale. “I think we have the right mix of talent,” he says. “Let’s wait and see if we bring in somebody else to fill that role on a permanent basis.”

If?

“Well, it’ll depend, obviously, on whether we find the right person,” he says.

Much of what people found provocative about Diana Lam—the new curricula, the speed of the reforms—remains in place. But from here on out, Klein will be taking the heat alone. He’s graduated.

and this:

LINK When the New York state legislature voted to dismantle the central board of education in 2002, Michael Bloomberg became the first mayor in thirty-three years with broad control over the largest school system in the world. Soon after, the mayor appointed former antitrust lawyer Joel Klein schools chancellor, and began a radical overhaul of the city's 1200 public schools. Three years later, what has mayoral control meant for the city's 1.1 million students? How has it affected life in the classroom? In this three-part series, NEW YORK VOICES' host Rafael Pi Roman takes an in-depth look at some of the key initiatives in the city's educational reform program. Part 1: A Standard Curriculum (Video at right ») Before mayoral control, public elementary schools were allowed to pick their own curricula, but in September 2003, the NYC Department of Education instituted a new standard reading and math program in every public elementary school in the city except for the top 200. This reform meant that teachers in almost every classroom in the five boroughs were taking the same approach to teaching reading, writing, and math, so that when a student transferred schools, he or she wouldn't have to readjust to a new curriculum. It also allowed the NYC Department of Education to take a more direct role in determining the way that individual schools teach basic subjects. But there has been an ongoing debate over the specific curricula chosen by the city. The English program selected is called "Balanced Literacy," which was paired with a word study approach called "Month by Month Phonics." Critics say these programs don't provide enough direct instruction, and lack a systematic approach to teaching reading through phonics. For its standard math curriculum, the city chose "Everyday Math," which critics say overemphasizes self-discovery learning without spending enough time teaching basic principles. Deputy Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, who is in charge of the curriculum, says that both programs do teach the fundamentals. She also says that Month by Month Phonics is no longer the city's main word study program, and there's now a menu of approaches that principals and teachers can choose from, many of which do take a systematic approach to teaching phonics. While critics of the math curriculum object to the fact that elementary school kids are encouraged to use calculators, Fariña says that the curriculum prepares students for a world in which basic computation skills aren't as necessary as they once were. What are the pros and cons of the standard curricula, and did the NYC Department of Education implement the right programs? An in-depth field report assesses how educators in schools have responded to the changes, and how the teachers union and those close to the classroom assess instruction. Education expert Sol Stern, from the Manhattan Institute, and parent-activist Elizabeth Carson of NYC HOLD lay out criticism of the reading and math programs, while Deputy School Chancellor Carmen Fariña responds. Read more about the participants in this program Part 2: The Small School Initiative (Video at top right ») Since the mayor was given control over the public schools system in 2002, the NYC Department of Education has started 149 new small high schools, while phasing out many of the city's largest schools. The main idea behind this reform is that in a small environment it's much harder for students to slip between the cracks, while teachers and administrators are forced to take responsibility for all of their students, including the ones who are failing. Replacing big schools with small schools is the city's main line of attack in reducing its dismal 54 percent four-year high school graduation rate. And philanthropists have also gotten into the act: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationhas given the city more than $100 million over the past three years to help create new small high schools. But does changing the size of a school really increase its graduation rate? And how is this reform effort different than the small schools initiative carried out in the early 90s, which had mixed results? An in-depth report is followed by a panel of education reporters discussing the small schools initiative and other aspects of education reform since mayoral control. Read more about the participants in this program Part 3: Money, Power, and Public Accountability (Video at top right ») Since 2002, the mayor has held direct control over the public school system. But has mayoral control resulted in substantive reforms and a system that better serves 1.1 million students? And is the new system accountable enough to parents and taxpayers? Read more about the participants in this program

I'm not going to be silent.

Betsy Combier

A Question For Carmen Farina, NYC Chancellor: Where is the Money?

Carmen Farina

Carmen Farina is Appointed Chancellor of the New York City School System.....

so, now you can answer some questions:

1. Where did you put the $225,000 in Annenberg Challenge For The Arts Grant money?

2. Did you try to create paperwork showing that Gloria Buckery, Principal of PS 198, actually got some of this money, when indeed she did not?

3. Why did you and Corporation Counsel Jane Gordon throw the Arts Together Community Partnership at PS 6 into the garbage, and then you lied to District 15 parents that you had found it to be very successful at PS 6, then you set up the "First Tuesdays" program?

4. Did you know that Lee McCaskill could not send his daughter to a District 15 public school without paying tuition because he lived in New Jersey before you placed McCaskill's child in your District for free?

See my prior post which was sent to Bill De Blasio last week:

The Case Against Carmen Farina, Former Bloomberg/Diana Lam Partner in Crime

There is a lot of talk about Carman Farina returning to a position of power over the New York City Department of Education.

This would be, in my informed and personal opinion, a huge error. Carmen invented fear as a way to run a school. She got rid of 80% of the teachers there when she took over, and if a parent or child got in her way, there was no mediation. Retaliation was immediate. I don't now, nor have I ever, bought into the "curry-favor-to-get-where-you-want-to-be", but this is Carmen's weapon. Her allies are the people in power at the moment, her assistants and friends, the people too scared to say no to her.



Carmen Farina

Nothing takes away the fact that Carmen Farina diverted the Annenberg Challenge For the Arts money from the school. Where did it go? I worked with Carmen for more than 2 years, setting up the Arts Together Community Partnership, a great program with a goal to raise arts money from the community for the school. Carmen loved it, until I asked, "Where's the money?" In about 1 day she - Carmen Farina - called me up at home and cursed at me with words I have not heard since. She screamed the curses at me and I listened, then she hung up. I couldn't move or breathe. Carmen then told me and my ATCP committee that she had thrown the entire project into the garbage, and we must never speak of the Arts Together project again. The following February she was removed from PS 6 to become the Superintendent of District 15 in Brooklyn, her home borough.
A source told me that a request was made to PS 198 Principal Gloria Buchery to "create" paperwork on the Annenberg Grant, but she refused.

My youngest daughter entered PS. 6 on the upper east side of Manhattan (81st and Madison Avenue, to be exact), in September 1997. My daughter got accepted into the Gifted and Talented program there. After two years, Carmen ended G&T because "all kids can learn".

None of my other three children had been in public school for kindergarten or any elementary grades, so I was really excited about this new adventure into NYC's finest education. I knew many people who had attended PS 6 when I was at Nightingale Bamford, a private school on 92nd street a few blocks away. My twin sister and I attended Nightingale grades 1-12.

PS 6 was a great school. Before Carmen changed it into a "Do it my way or take the highway".

Sorry, Bill, I'm not with you on this one. She retired because of her complicity in the scandal involving Lee McCaskill, and then there is the un-democratic manner in which she invented teacher terror, parent intimidation, and children's suspensions. See also this article. And then there is Bill De Blasio's reliance on Carmen, and this is the disaster about to happen, if he goes with her to be Chancellor. He is being seriously misinformed if he believes she is a leader worth bringing to the NYC public school system once again.

I fully expect Carmen , her too afraid allies, or her husband Tony to start an immediate retaliation scheme against me. Go ahead!! You will see it on this blog. To the readers of this blog: when you hear that someone is "crazy", a "criminal", everybody hates him/her, or whatever, you should never believe it until there is proof. There is a method to my advocacy that makes them characterize my "madness" this way in order to justify their wrongdoing.

Betsy CombierCarmen Farina: Politics Wins With Her Appointment as Deputy Chancellor in New York City
Parentadvocates.org has spoken to teachers, parents and administrators for more than three years about Mrs. Farina and her actions as she rose in the ranks of the New York City Department of Education. E-Accountability OPINION: unsatisfactory; Recommendation: resignation or termination re-posted from my website, Parentadvocates.org 

It is much too early to tell whether she'll have the job permanently," Bloomberg told the Daily News in March. "But I have not heard one bad word about her."

From the desk of Betsy Combier, former Executive Board member of the PS 6 PTA, who worked closely with Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina for 2 years until May 23, 2000. That afternoon, after finding out that PS 198 did not receive equal part of the $225,000 Annenberg Challenge for the Arts Grant money in partnership with PS 6, (at an Annenberg Conference Ms. Farina sent me to at Riverside Church), I asked "where is the money?", a question that spurred a telephone call from Ms. Farina to my home during which she accused me of hiring/firing all the arts teachers at PS 6, taking the money (I never touched any money, never saw checks, never knew anything about the finances of the school), and speaking for PS 6, my worst crime.

Carmen Farina's appointment as Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education is as clear a message as the the New York City public has received to date that our Mayor simply is not listening to anyone outside of his immediate inner circle.

For the past three years The E-Accountability Foundation has interviewed parents and teachers at PS 6, in District 15 (Brooklyn), and from region 8, where Mrs. Farina was Regional Superintendent before being appointed Acting Deputy Chancellor of the NYC DOE in February, 2004, and then made Deputy Chancellor in May. Her disdain for parents - aside from those who she brings into her closed circle of friends - is legendary, and her School Leadership Team Bylaws at PS 6violate almost every clause in the "Green Book" on SLT Regulations. She was reprimanded by the Director of the Parent Advocacy and Engagement Office, Jamal Young, in a May 2001 letter to me, sent to Carmen, Superintendent Shelley Harwayne, and several other people. Nothing was done about the Bylaws or the SLT at PS 6, but Jamal's aunt Birdie Blake-Reid was found guilty of improper payments of public funds to employees, and fined by the Conflict of Interest Board soon after.

Mrs. Farina is a Master at threatening retaliation for any deed that she does not support, and she follows up her threats quickly and forcibly.

Mrs. Fariña has been given the task of defending the city's work with special education students and the mayor's third-grade retention plan, among all the other items on the Mayor's agenda. She gets an A for spinning information that is false and misleading, making it sound legitimate, and silencing anyone who questions the data or her presentation. She has the power to have people who work for her scream and threaten parents and teachers so that she doesn't have to do all the work herself. This is a Master at work, as we uncover the major disgrace that is special education in New York City. Mrs. Farina gleefully told a packed Hunter College auditorium in May that she completed 12,000 evaluations in the month of March. We did our math, and divided 12,000 by 23, the working days in March. This means that more than 521 children were 'evaluated' every day, and the only way this could happen is if someone was paid to sit in a room, put a signature to a stack of evaluations, and throw the children's needs into the garbage. We do not believe that an in-depth evaluation of all the services and requests for assistive technology for each child was done.

What else do we know about Carmen?

Carmen Farina was the Principal of PS 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for 10 years.During that time she developed a highly efficient teaching group, she kept the scores on standardized testing high, she implemented an almost total "fuzzy math" curriculum, ended the Gifted and Talented Program, kept teachers in their place by instituting fear for speaking out against her in any way, and denied parents who dared to confront her on anything any involvement in the School Leadership Team or on the PTA or any school committees. Parents asked questions about $225,000 for three years' partnership with PS 198 under the Annenberg Challenge for the Arts Grants, but this money was never accounted for. Under the grant guidelines from Annenberg, the Principal was responsible for establishing the evaluation. This, we believe, was a mistake. We wrote letters, tried to reach by telephone, and attended events of, the Center For Arts Education in order to ask questions about the implementation of the arts programs at PS 6 and PS 198, but no one would speak to us. District 2 Superintendent Shelley Harwayne would not speak to us. Ms. Cynthia List, former person in charge of School Leadership Teams, told me that she had "been told not to speak with me." We also wrote the Special Commissioner For Investigations, Mr. Ed Stancik. His office never replied:

Mr. Edward Stancik
Special Investigator
65 Court Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201 May 17, 2001

Dear Mr. Stancik,

I am writing this letter to ask you to investigate Mrs. Carmen Farina, and her actions pertaining to the allocation of money received from the Annenberg Challenge For the Arts Grant.

Mrs. Farina was Principal of PS 6 from 1982 to February 1, 2001. She left in February to become Interim Acting Superintendant of District 15 in Brooklyn. In 1997 the Annenberg Foundation gave PS 6 and PS 198 in Manhattan a grant of $75,000 per year ( thus giving these schools more than $225,000 for performing arts programs ). This partnership between PS 6 and 198 was supposed to be used by both schools in partnership, and was to hire artists and groups for both schools.

I started working with Mrs. Farina at PS 6 on a program called The Arts Together Community Partnership (ATCP) in 1997. This group was designed to follow the Annenberg grant and raise money for the performing arts at both schools after the grant ended. I did not work on the grant itself, and had no knowledge of the money or artists involved with the Annenberg Grant.

In May, 2000, Mrs. Farina called me up and, completely out of the blue, accused me of taking the money from the Annenberg grant, and of hiring and firing all the artists in the school. She threw my work on the ATCP in the garbage, and wrote The Center For Arts Education and ArtsConnection that I was hiring and firing everybody.
Since this time I have found out:

1. No one knows what arts programs PS 198 had, if any. Some people I spoke with said that there seemed to be no partnership at all.

2. The Principal of 198 at the time, Ms. Gloria Buchery, has been removed, and has refused to tell anyone what partnership existed, if any. She has not spoken with anyone about the Annenberg money.

3. The Treasurer for PS 6 has told me that even though all the Annenberg money was kept at PS 6, no one on the Executive Board knew what was being spent, or to whom it was going to. Mrs. Farina had total control over the funds.

4. This year, the 5th Grade at PS 6 did not have arts classes, even though the Grant does not end until June of this year. My daughter, in 3rd Grade, was told that her drama class was cancelled due to lack of money.

We parents at PS 6 and PS 198 want to know where the $225,000 was allocated, when, and to whom. Please investigate this and Mrs. Carmen Farina.

Thank you. Mrs. Farina may be reached at:

District 15
Acting Superintendant
360 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718-330-9300

Home: 29 Tiffany Place #PH3
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Please let me know, as a member of the parent organization desiring this investigation of Carmen Farina, what you find.
Betsy Combier

The Annenberg money was particularly troubling, as there was no accountability for the funds, and indeed the Annenberg Foundation does not consider this a successful program.

In October 1997 I spoke with Carmen about helping her fundraise for the arts. She asked me to help her find a way to raise money for the arts at PS 6 when the Annenberg grant ran out. Over the next several days I thought about a parent-driven project that would be centered around a community association for the arts. Carmen loved the idea, so for the next 8 months I and several other parents discussed what is now known as "The Arts Together Community Partnership".

PS 6's grant from Annenberg was part of the Annenberg Challenge for the Arts, designed to partner two very different schools so that each could provide and share the grant money and arts programs. The Arts Together Community Partnership worked as a parent-driven organization that brought funds into both schools through a membership/community association. In March 2000 Carmen gave us $2000 to produce the ATCP brochure, and we were able to print 1000 copies for $1995. She loved it.

Carmen asked me to speak with the partner school's Principal, Gloria Buckery (former PS 198 Principal, now Region 6 Superintendent). I went over immediately with the brochure, and Gloria joined the Arts Together Community Partnership on the spot, donating $25.00. I brought the check back to PS 6 and left it with Carmen, as one of my rules is to never hold money that belongs in a school bank account.

Then, a strange thing happened. Carmen did not let me know what she would want the parents to do. We were meeting in the school cafeteria, but whenever we had a logistics problem, Carmen just did not answer. Then she told me that she wanted me to attend the Annenberg Conference on how to follow the grant with arts-funding ideas. I went to Riverside Church on May 23, 2000 for the conference, and went to an afternoon session at which I spoke very briefly about the ATCP. Two teachers from 198 told me at the end of the day that they had never heard of The Arts Together Community Partnership! They seemed very surprised to see the logo, with PS 6 on one side, and PS 198 on the other, because they did not know if, indeed, there were any arts programs at 198 funded by Annenberg. I was very concerned. When I returned home I received a telephone call from Carmen Farina, and she was extremely upset. She screamed that I was firing all the Annenberg artists, I was hiring others, I was taking the money, and I would not get away with it. She said, "You have NO right to speak for PS 6". I was stunned.
The next day I did exactly what she wanted, and that was to resign from my lunchtime club - helping 4th and 5th graders learn about charitable organizations - and my position on the PTA Executive Board. A few days later I received a letter in the mail that told me Carmen and Jane Gordan, the PTA President as witness, had thrown all the Arts Together Community Partnership materials into the garbage. Carmen wrote that I would NEVER set this project up at PS 6. Luckily, I had several brochures at home.

In 2003 Carmen spoke at the New York City Council about her new community Organization Program, "First Tuesdays". She said that all the restaurants in 15 were joining this program to supply needed After School money to district schools. The idea was very similar to the ATCP. So, I guess Carmen liked the ATCP after all! Just to make sure, I called Mr. Weiss up at the District 15 office, and asked him about "First Tuesdays". He told me that Carmen had thought up this wonderful program while at PS 6, and had set it up there very successfully. I asked him to send me the information, which he did.

On February 1, 2001 Carmen Farina became Superintendent of District 15 and left PS 6. As many of my friends wanted me to run for PTA President at PS 6, I decided to run. On April 24, 2001 I presented my program to the PS 6 community in the auditorium, and noticed Carmen entering the room. She started screaming that I had maligned her name, that no one should vote for me, that I was suing everyone at PS 6 and should never be allowed to run for any office, and other statements equally defamatory. I did not see anyone in the room breathing. Carmen sat down in the front row and glowered at me. I lost to Jane Gordan, who was removed early into the 2002-2003 school year by her own Board.

Carmen never wanted parents to be involved at PS 6, and was often shutting parents out of the school and the classrooms. She does not like School Leadership Teams, as she told us when the "Green Book" on SLT regulations came out, and she told the Executive Board "we are not going to do this." The SLT Bylaws that she wrote with the help of a few members of the Executive Board stated that there were "4 members of the PS 6 SLT: the Principal, the Assistant Principal, the PTA President and the PTA Vice-President. [The regulations are that SLTs must have between 10-17 members]. Article 6.2 of the SLT Bylaws states that " As Open Meetings Law does not, according to Central Board apply to SLTs,"and that parents would not be allowed to attend SLT meetings unless invited. When we parents questioned this policy, we heard that Carmen told the District 2 office that she had received a waiver from the rules. Ms. Gwen Hopkins, at the Board of Education Parent Engagement Office, thought this was very funny. She called me and told me that she heard the waiver claim, and that the one person who had the only copy of this waiver took it with them when they left the BOE. So no one knew where it was. Teachers we spoke to were very happy to see her leave. Below is an email from a retired special education teacher [parentadvocates.org is protecting her by not posting her name]:

"As the parent of a public school student and a retired special education teacher who worked in District 15 during Ms. Farina's tenure as superintendant, I strongly disagree with your take on her. She was autocratic and a whole language and constructivist math fanatic.She came into schools with a nasty attitude and a clipboard checklist and cared only about bulletin boards, word walls, desk arrangements and book leveling. It was Farina who set up the deliberately misleading introduction of the new curriculum at P.S. 172, claiming their remarkable success was due to "Month-by-Month Phonics" when the school had in fact been using Open Court, a highly structured reading program, at the time of the test results. She brought in Laura Kotch, an even colder, nastier proponent of lock-step whole language, who introduced the insidious Month-by-Month Phonics, designed to shut up those of us concerned with results while failing to teach decoding. [any] praise of Carmen Farina was disheartening to many of us who worked with her."

On April 30, 2004, the NY SUN published our letter:Carmen Farina's Old School:
No one represents, in my opinion, all that is wrong with the New York City Department of Education better than the new acting deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Carmen Farina. ['Farina's Old School Finds It hard To Match Her Results", Julia Levy, Page 1, April 23, 2004]. I am a former PS 6 parent who believes in transparency, accountability, respect for everyone, and honest reporting of statistics and test results. Carmen, unfortunately, seemed to be not interested in any of these.
She did not believe in School Leadership Teams, so she set up the PS 6 Team with 4 appointed people (the minimum allowed are 10, and all members are supposed to be elected) and wrote Bylaws which clearly opposed any parent involvement - Clause 6.2 of the PS 6 SLT Bylaws reads:
"By directive of the Central School Board, "open meetings" laws do not apply to SLTs, therefore uninvited guests will not be permitted to attend or participate in the meetings."
"Univited" guests are, of course, PS 6 parents, teachers, anyone outside the 4 people (who were the Principal, the Assistant Principal, the CSA representative and the PTA President). She pushed these Bylaws through Central by telling everyone that PS 6 had a waiver. No one ever found a copy.
Carmen, as she always does, retaliated. After leaving PS 6 and in the position of Superintendent of District 15, on April 24, 2001attended the PS 6 PTA meeting at which I spoke about running for PTA President. As soon as I finished my campaign speech she screamed that I should not be elected for undermining her, maligning her name, and other equally defamatory remarks to the 70 or so parents in attendance. No one who was in that room that evening ever forgot this outburst.
Carmen never told us where the Annenberg Challenge For the Arts money was. We saw that PS 6 had some arts programs, but our partner school, PS 198, did not seem to have any. She would not answer our questions. When we asked where the funds for PS 198 were, Carmen went on the attack, and threw the Arts Together Community Partnership, a parent-driven organization designed to help fund and publicize the arts at PS 6 when the Annenberg grant ended, into the garbage. She then accused us of interfering in the allocation of the Annenberg money by hiring and firing the dance teachers, a claim that was totally unfounded and ridiculous. We did stop asking questions, in fear of the welfare of our children at the school.
We were told by teachers that Carmen took the brightest kids randomly out of testing rooms to give them as much time as necessary to complete tests. We would compare notes after the tests to find out which children had been moved to another room.
Carmen stopped the PS 6 Gifted and Talented program, and to the present day parents of exceptionally bright children try to move them elsewhere. She implemented policies of "fuzzy" math and whole language to the extent that many teachers told us "their hands were tied",and "get instruction from a tutor". Scores at the school in math have gone down since she left.
Carmen gathers around her a group of loyal supporters who do not allow anyone to say anything uncomplimentary about her. Nothing anyone says outside of this clique is listened to or respected.
When I was in grade school I learned that history repeats itself. Carmen Farina as Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education is a step back into the dark ages of school reform where transparent budgets, people respecting the views and opinions of others, and accountability just dont exist.

Betsy Combier
parentadvocates.org

And those "high scores" that PS 6 reports are not what they seem. Parents compared notes on how many of the brightest kids were taken out of the testing room and tested separately - presumably to give these kids all the time in the world, so that they could get perfect scores? These kids certainly did not have special needs or 504 accommodations. The scores themselves are suspect: this just in from our Math experts:
Keep in mind, Carmen Farina left PS 6 in January, 2001. In 2004 the National Academies reported that there is no scientific basis for Carmen's math programs.

~If one tracks cohorts of PS 6 kids (3rd graders in 1999, 4th graders in
2000 and 5th graders in 2001), the number who score in Level 4 in math drops
precipitously each year.

~In 2000, PS 6 had the greatest decline in District 2 in Performance Level 4
math achievement on the 4th grade test (28% pt drop!) - much greater than
any other schools'. Some schools' 4th grade Level 4 scores actually rose.
Districtwide, 4th grade Level 4 achievement dropped 6% pts that year.
Districtwide, 4th grade passing scores remained flat at 76% passing in 1999
and 2000.

~In 2001, PS 6 had the greatest decline in Performance Level 4 on the city
test (3rd and 5th grades) (23% pt drop!) - greater than any other school's
Level 4 declines, some schools' Level 4 scores rose. Districtwide, Level
4 scores on the city test dropped 6% pts (same as in 4th grade the year
before ) Districtwide city test passing scores dropped 3% pts, 2000: 61.2
2001: 58.3

~ There were nowhere near the precipitous drops out of Level 4 4th grade
scores (state test)that PS 6 showed (1999-2000) in the other TAG schools. In
the same year (2000-2001) PS 6 Level 4 declines were also highest among TAG
schools on the 3,5,6 grade test (citywide test) One TAG school's scores
improved slightly (PS 11) while the others showed some decline (following
the district trend), PS 124 and PS 130 came close to the level of PS 6
decline.

Betsy Combier,
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Founder and President, The E-Accountability Foundation
President, ArtsNexus and The Arts Together Community Partnership (thrown into the garbage by Carmen Farina May, 2000)PS 6 School Leadership Team Bylaws written by Carmen Farina in 2000NYC Deputy Chancellor Rewards Gifted, Privileged Kids in NYC Public Schools by Raising 4 Years of AP Grades

For more on Carmen Farina and District 2, go towww.nychold.com

Related Articles:False Claims of Special Education Successes Cloud the Bloomberg/Klein Reform

Despite Too Many Questions of Improprieties, Carmen Farina is Named Deputy Chancellor For the New York City DOE

Peg Robertson on Teaching and Survival

Monday, October 28, 2013
Peg With a Pen: A Quick Guide to Resisting from Within for Educators

LINK 

I get asked a lot about what it’s like to teach in the public schools while knowing the truths about corporate education reform. Obviously, the two worlds collide. And I have spent many a night trying to figure out how to describe it – and how to write about it - so that you might also know what it feels like.  This is my attempt for those of you who do not teach in the public schools today.

It is surreal. It is so strange to watch the world crumbling down around you with such harshness and such coldness, while inside the walls of the school we continue to carry on, care for the children and fight to give them what every child deserves.  As teachers, we fight to support one another - as human beings and as professionals. We fight to keep it together as we watch the corporate snakes slither in through the cracks and the crevices in our building.  We shudder and hold the children close to us when others open the door wide and let the corporate snakes glide across the floor and make our building their own.

Yet, we must carry on because the children are always watching.

Have you ever had a bad day – a day in which you wanted to cry, or scream, or throw things; yet, you refrained from doing so because the children were watching. That is how it is every day for teachers who know the big picture - within the public schools. Every day we are protecting the children as best we can, without sharing - through our actions, our words, our teaching, our emotions - the horrors of the destruction making its way into our schools. Based on the ages of the children, this looks different - as some things are appropriate to share with older children.  However, it can be like a dysfunctional relationship of the worst kind – in which you must continually find ways to resist and find ways to protect while keeping the snakes at bay – knowing that they will continue to search for ways to manipulate you and the system – in order to get what they want. And that is how it works – they often get what they want because of the mandates in place in our public schools. And in the process, you get harmed, the children get harmed, and much of it is never discussed due to fear, due to retribution, due to fear of what could happen – the unknown.

The unknown keeps many from taking risks. Many believe they have no choices. And so, it only gets worse as the snakes multiply.  More children lose their childhoods. More children view themselves as failures. More children will be trained to obey and comply as they are groomed to be worker bees in a world which is being reshaped to benefit only the .01%. More children head down the school to prison pipeline.

Now that I have attempted to describe it, I want to share how I resist it. I began to make a list some time ago to document the many ways I work to resist the corporate snakes who slither around my feet and try to strangle the love of learning out of my school, leaving my children to starve in a world of tests, test prep and coldness - corporate reform is cold, very cold. The following is simply a quick guide to resisting from within. Because when you know what it feels like – which is very different than just hearing about – you have two choices, give up in some shape or form or find ways to resist. It’s very simple. You have to make a choice.

Here’s my list.  Feel free to add to it. There is much more I am sure, and as teachers we are moving so fast all day, we often don’t take stock, or give ourselves credit, for all that we do to wake up the world and reclaim authentic learning and teaching for our public schools and our children.

1.  Look at where you came from. What is your story? Recognize  and use your strengths.

I am a small town girl from Missouri. My father was a political reporter. My mother was a music teacher. My oldest sister has special needs. I grew up knowing what it was like to be viewed as different. I grew up knowing what it was like to be shunned. I also grew up knowing that the truth speaks. Missouri is, after all, the Show Me State. I grew up watching my mother teach and stay before, after school, for choir practice, performances and more. I watched her spend her own money to become Orff certified. She is the best music teacher I have ever seen and she received little respect for it.  My father is a brilliant writer and served as press secretaries for political candidates, wrote speeches for senators, worked for newspapers, wire services, and more. He played the game of politics which is addictive, full of gambles, full of ego and full of the unknown. We experienced many hardships as a family, as jobs were lost due to political candidates losing, due to one particular  candidate dying in a helicopter crash, due to cuts in UPI when the office was shut down in our little Missouri town, and more. We lost many gambles.  I grew up knowing that stability was a gift and that you needed to look around you and know the big picture and know yourself, because the view right in front of you may change tomorrow and you must know where to turn within and outside yourself when it does. I learned that listening and watching is key to knowing the big picture.This is who I am. I learned that education was important. I learned that writing could change the world. I learned that humanity can be kind and also very cruel. I learned that I had a voice and I had to use it. These are my strengths.

2. Open the door.

I know the teachers reading this have been told again and again to shut the door and do what is right for children. I beg of you, begin to open the door. Open it and let the light burst into the hallways. Let them hear your children laughing, singing, learning and engaging in what is real and true. When the children are not allowed to do so, open the door and let the world see this as well - let them see what corporate education looks like. Invite the parents to come in and help. Let them see the truths – good and bad – the parents will watch, listen and many will act to ferociously protect the children from the dangers that lurk in our buildings.

3.  Be humble.

It is never good to allow ego to lead the way.  Activism can have an ego. Avoid it; it will get you no where and it may lead you down the wrong path. Enough said.

4.  Choose your words carefully.

This one is essential – absolutely essential. We must not use words that confirm or give credit to the corporate education movement. Remember what you know. Look up the words and question what you hear. Words such as rigor, compliant, defiant, punitive have no place in a public school.  When you hear others say these words, gently rephrase them when you respond – this will give you great pleasure as you will begin to see a cultural shift.  If you continue to do this, over time reality will change as language does indeed shape our world.  Choose your words carefully in writing as well; make sure these corporate words do not become the language used inside your students’ homes.

5.  Read.

We must read and educate ourselves. Always. And we must read from sources that are credible, sources who are in the trenches - sources who are not profiting off of public education and our children. There are many books and blogs to read – a few to start with include,www.dianeravitch.net, www.publicschoolshakedown.org , www.atthechalkface.com, theBATS and of course our own site www.unitedoptout.com . Form a book club if you like. Get the Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch immediately.

6.  Align yourself with like-minded folks.

They can be hard to find. However, if you begin to get involved online via Twitter, Facebook and the various sites I listed above, you will begin to find them. Perhaps these friends will not be next door; but this will not matter, you will find that friends far away can offer you support and love even when they are not there.

7.  If you have children, refuse the test for them. If possible, share opt out/refusal information with other parents.

As teachers, we must not allow our children to take these tests. We must be a model for others around us.  I am happy to help anyone with this strategy. Do not allow your own children to labor for the corporations. Share opt out/refusal information with other parents if you can; there are ways to do this without your name being attached to it - find a parent to help you.

8.  Look at your day and the Conditions for Learning.

 

Are you meeting the conditions - for you? For your children? I use it as my barometer. I ask myself daily as I work with children...Will this engage them and further the purpose their lives? 

9.  Create portfolio assessments for your students whether or not it is required.

Children deserve to SEE their growth as it actually occurs over time. Parents deserve to know the strengths, attempts and next steps of their children by viewing authentic student work. Teachers have the right to assess their students in a way that is authentic and supportive in planning for instruction. Do not allow mainstream media to continue to create mass amnesia! I am continually asked, “Without the tests, how will we know if students have learned?” TEACHERS KNOW HOW TO ASSESS. Don’t let them forget (while banging a pan upside their head). Here is a letter for parents who might wish to advocate for portfolio assessment - unbeknownst to you of course - in your school.

10.  Advocate for yourself.

I learned this long ago. If you do not advocate for yourself expect to be trampled on. There is always someone available to trample on you, take advantage of you, and bully you. Learn how to advocate for yourself. I know this can be hard, which is why I love the quote, “Speak the truth even if your voice shakes.”  Reach out to other activists to support you in this process.

11.  Respect colleagues and do not gossip.

Teachers are already bashed enough without us adding to it.  Respect them. Support them and listen to them. Collaborate and have patience. We each have our strengths and we each have our burdens to bear – these are not easy times. Together we are stronger.

12.  Get involved in your union and join if you haven’t.

We must occupy our unions. We are the union. We must reclaim our union and we must not stand by when we see them taking actions which harm our schools, our children and our profession. Find a way to get involved. Read The Future of Our Schools by Lois Weiner.

13.  Analyze actions, not heart.

We cannot get inside the heads of those who are currently hell bent on enforcing mandates and creating avenues to profit off of our children while destroying the public schools and ultimately our democracy. I, myself, find it difficult to do this one. As a teacher, I spend many a day getting to know students so that I can best determine how to support them – it is my nature – I want to see their heart…their passions. However, this is different, I cannot get inside the head of Obama, or Duncan, or Weingarten, or Roekel or Gates. I can simply analyze their actions and determine my next step based on what I see. Do not waste time trying to see what is in their hearts – spend your time analyzing their actions so that you can see patterns and red flags that will allow us to strategize and win this fight.

14.  Be okay with disequilibrium and take risks.

If you grew in a world of disequilibrium, this will not be hard to do. This is one of those examples of utilizing your strengths – this may be a strength for you. If you did not get raised in such an environment, disequilibrium can be difficult. When you feel it, recognize that feeling and look around and see what is happening – are you still alive? Are you breathing ? Of course you are :). Own that feeling and know that disequilibrium is often accompanied by the ability to take risks.  Some risks will be successful, others will not – and being okay with that is essential to moving forward. We must be okay with the unknown at times and trust that the risks we take will allow us to grow and learn from the experiences we have. Love your routines, but also love stepping outside of them to ask …what if?

15. Reflect and ask questions.

Do not assume anything is the truth unless you have had it verified via research or via someone you would trust your life with – I cannot stress this one enough. Perhaps it sounds harsh, but my radar is always on and I do not blindly trust – ever. We have already lost too much by trusting.

16.  Use your own creativity to support your work as you resist from within.

I watch some activists share their truth via statistics. Others share the truth via words. Others sing, rap, dance, write poetry, and make jokes. Some paint. Others create comics. Use your own creative strengths to resist from within. Sometimes I just watch and smile at all these amazing activists whose passions are felt and seen so clearly in the way they express themselves. Remember, we do have heart, and people can see it and feel it – and THIS spurs action.

17.  Use your teacher knowledge to deconstruct the madness of corporate education reform.

For example, here I use the Conditions for Learning to let Obama know how ridiculous and harmful RTTT is. What do you know? How can you use it to debunk the corporate ed. reformers who know nothing about teaching and learning?

18.  Ignore the mandates around you however you can.

This is different for everyone so I cannot advise. I know what works for me. Find out what works for you – there are ways to ignore and refuse to participate in common core, test prep and more. I simply ask myself, at the end of day, did I listen to my students? Did I help engage learners and did they see how their learning will further the purpose of their lives? If I didn’t do that, something has to change. Make changes however you can and do not berate yourself because it wasn’t good enough – or you think you should have done more – you will always wish you could do more. Try again tomorrow. Nothing is forever. Change is always possible.

19. Use social media.

It’s a must. It’s how we have organized thus far. It allows us to reach each other no matter the distance, no matter the schedules of each individual. Tweet it. Facebook it Email it. Youtube it. Vine it. Blog it. Vlog it.  Pick the tool that works for you and do it. Get the information out there. 

20. Listen to the children.

Your students must be heard. The corporate reformers do not listen to them. The mandates ignore their needs. They must be heard. Get to know them. Listen to them and you will find many many ways to resist from within by listening to their passions, their fears, their strengths, their desires and their knowledge. Observe. Listen. And use this knowledge to empower them as learners and as citizens of our democracy. 

21.  Be kind to yourself. 

I know there are many out there who tell you that you should quit and leave the profession rather than stay and be a part of a system that harms children. However, I say, be kind to yourself, and know that your resistance from within protects children and gives them more authentic learning experiences than any teacher as technician ever could.  Your resistance from within helps adults see the need for urgent change – your resistance from within may well indeed be the catalyst to create an uprising to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Just know that no one is going to do it for us.  Just know, that if you do leave they/corp. ed. reformers will applaud you as you walk out the door and will replace you with a teacher as technician who knows nothing about how to support the beautiful children in your building – children who deserve everything the children of the .01% are getting. So, be kind to yourself, stay if at all possible, and know that you are creating change. Know that others, such as myself, are always there in spirit holding your hand.

22. Share.

Share your knowledge as an activist and as a teacher. Do not keep your best kept projects a secret. Do not compete with your colleagues – share. Share this document. Add your own tips for resisting. Collaborate. Together we are stronger. 

Solidarity,

Peg