Philadelphia Teacher Wins Her First Amendment Lawsuit With the Help of The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers

Hope Moffett, second from right

Hope Moffett in Philadelphia exercised her First Amendment right to speak out, and the Philadelphia School District quickly suspended her - "rubberized her" as I call this process - and put her on the road to termination.

Not. Philadelphia Federation of Teachers' President Jerry Jordan filed a lawsuit to stop the school district, and won. See the lawsuit below.

How I wish Mr. Jordan would come to New York City and replace the current leadership of the United Federation of Teachers! He has it right about rights, and we need him here to save our teachers from the abuse of the NYC Department of Education and the neglect of the UFT/NYSUT.

Philadelphia Teacher Hope Moffet Wins Her First Amendment Lawsuit Against the Philadelphia School District
Parentadvocates.org, Betsy Combier, Editor
LINK

The PFT filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia asking for injunctive relief in the case of Hope Moffett, an Audenried High School English teacher who has been outspoken about the conversion of Audenried to a charter school. The school district tried to fire her for giving tokens to students so that they could travel to a protest rally. “The suit is being filed on behalf of all PFT members to protect their right to speak freely, without fear of retaliation or intimidation by the district,” PFT President Jerry Jordan said. The school district agreed on March 18 to re-instate Ms. Moffett to her position on March 21. Hooray to the PFT for doing the right thing and putting at least the New York Teacher Union, the UFT, to shame. That's my opinion, Betsy Combier

Hope Moffett heading back to Audenried classroom
By JOSH CORNFIELD, Philadelphia Daily News, cornfij@phillynews.com 215-854-2893
LINK

The Philadelphia School District's fight against Hope came to a surprisingly happy ending yesterday.

Hope Moffett, the Audenried High School English teacher who was exiled from her classroom for the last 19 school days and expected to be fired, will be back in front of her students on Monday.

Moffett, 25, will receive a five-day suspension after acknowledging that she didn't notify Audenried's principal on Feb. 14 that students planned to leave school to attend a rally on Feb. 15 "even though no parental permission had been submitted to the school," the district said in a statement.

"I stand by all of the things that I've done and I feel really happy that it worked out really well in the end," Moffett said after the arrangement was hammered out in front of a federal magistrate yesterday. "But I was prepared to go down all the way to termination. . . . I took a position I believed in, so I never really worried about what was going to happen."

The district had moved to fire her earlier this month after Moffett spoke out against plans to turn Audenried into a charter school, leading the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to file a federal civil-rights lawsuit seeking an injunction.

An administrator recommended that she be fired after the district charged her with endangering the welfare of children after she gave a student SEPTA tokens to attend the rally. She was also charged with publicly discussing her removal from the classroom.

From the beginning, it looked to many that the district was trying to silence a vocal critic of its controversial plan to hand Audenried over to Universal Companies, the development firm run by local music mogul Kenny Gamble.

"This settlement reinforces our belief that PFT members have the right to voice their concerns about workplace issues without threat of retribution or intimidation from their employer," PFT president Jerry Jordan said in a statement.

Despite being banished since Feb. 18 to "teacher jail" in the basement of a district administrative building - instead of helping prepare her juniors for the state assessment tests that they began to take this week - Moffett said she'll continue to speak her mind about the district's plans.

"All of their recent public statements have said this isn't a free-speech issue, so I take that to mean I can speak out to whatever extent [necessary]," Moffett said. "If they're so adamant that it's not a free-speech issue, then I'm going to use my freedom of speech."

Moffett said she'll do her best to get a job with the company if the plans to hand Audenried and Vaux Middle School to Universal go through. All of the school's teachers would then have to reapply for their jobs.

"I really want to see the students graduate," Moffett said. "I know for a fact there are other staff in the building who feel that way. We are so invested in [the students].

The district said in a news release: "Educating students is and will always be the No. 1 priority of the School District of Philadelphia. The parents of our students expect us to know the whereabouts of their children during school hours."

School District Agrees to a Settlement in Free-Speech Lawsuit Filed by the Teachers Union
Press Release Source: Philadelphia Federation of Teachers On Friday March 18, 2011, 8:23 pm EDT

PHILADELPHIA, March 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and School District of Philadelphia agreed late Friday afternoon to settle a First-Amendment lawsuit that the union filed against the District in U.S. District Court a week ago.

During a conference with Magistrate L. Felipe Resttrepo, the School District agreed to return Hope Moffett to Audenried High School effective Monday and reduce Ms. Moffett’s termination to a five-day suspension.

The PFT will proceed directly to expedited arbitration on the suspension because it does not agree that Ms. Moffett should have been subjected to any discipline.

“This has been an extremely difficult experience for Hope Moffett, for her students and for all PFT members, who feared retaliation for speaking out on behalf of students and schools during a tumultuous period of change,” PFT President Jerry T. Jordan said.

“This settlement reinforces our belief that PFT members have the right to voice their concerns about workplace issues without threat of retribution or intimidation from their employer.

“PFT members are professionals, who care deeply about their students and the future of public education. With many fiscal, legislative and ideological challenges facing public education, it is imperative that educators have the ability to participate openly in any community dialogue on how to improve student outcomes for all Philadelphia children.”

PFT files for injunction in Moffett termination case
LINK

District agrees to halt temporarily disciplinary proceedings against teacher who spoke out against converting Audenried HS to a charter school.

3/10/2011

PFT President Jerry T. Jordan went to federal court in Philadelphia today to file for injunctive relief in the case of Hope Moffett, an Audenried High School English teacher who has been outspoken about the conversion of Audenried to a charter school.

The district agreed to take no further action with respect to any future disciplinary proceedings in Hope Moffett's case until a preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled and completed.

The injunction is being sought in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania. No hearing date is set.

“The suit is being filed on behalf of all PFT members to protect their right to speak freely, without fear of retaliation or intimidation by the district,” Jordan said. "I urge all PFT members to come out to the PFT's Stand Up for Public Schools Rally on Monday, March 14, at 4 p.m., at 440 N. Broad St. to speak with one voice."

Read the Lawsuit.

Read the PFT Brief in Support of the Lawsuit.

Proceedings against Moffett delayed after PFT goes to federal court
Mar 10 2011
LINK

Update: Proceedings that could lead to Hope Moffett's dismissal are delayed until a hearing on the PFT's request for a permanent injunction.

The District issued a statement saying:

"Today the School District of Philadelphia was served with injunction papers by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and at the request of the judge both parties agreed to participate in a hearing on this matter next week. The judge has asked the parties to maintain status quo until the hearing."

PFT President Jerry T. Jordan is in federal court now in Philadelphia seeking to halt dismissal proceedings against Audenried High School English teacher Hope Moffett.

“The suit is being filed on behalf of all PFT members to protect their right to speak freely, without fear of retaliation or intimidation by the district,” Jordan said in a statement sent to reporters.

The School District is moving to fire Moffett, saying that she endangered students by giving them tokens that they used to travel to a protest during school hours against the planned conversion of their school to a charter. School officials have denied that the swift action against her has anything to do with her outspoken opposition to the charter plan, and said they have more evidence against her than they have shared.

The PFT is seeking a temporary restraining order from a judge. In cases like this, sometimes a a judge will hear the case right away and make a ruling immediately, but that is not guaranteed.

At a hearing earlier this week, school officials indicated that the School Reform Commission would vote on the dismissal as early as Wednesday.

The injunction is being sought in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, at 601 Market Street.

The union is also planning a mass protest.

"I urge all PFT members to come out to the PFT's Stand Up for Public Schools Rally on Monday, March 14, at 4 p.m., at 440 N. Broad St. to speak with one voice," Jordan's statement concludes.

We will continue to update this breaking story.

Source URL: http://www.thenotebook.org/blog/113433/pft-goes-federal-court-behalf-hope

We will not be intimidated
PFT.org
LINK
2/18/2011

I learned last night that two teachers from Audenreid High School received letters from the School District ordering them to report to the High School Academic Division office this morning (Friday, Feb. 18). At another school, a principal said he was told by the Administration to warn teachers that they will be disciplined if they encourage students to engage in peaceful civil discourse about the future of their schools and, by extension, by their communities.

I will not allow our teachers to be abused and intimidated in this way and will use every legal means at our disposal to protect them.

How dare the district send hard-working, dedicated teachers to the equivalent of a “rubber room.” How dare the district target the very teachers who have demonstrated their commitment to working with students in the toughest neighborhoods and schools. This is an insult to our teachers, and an insult to the students.

These high school students – young adults – care about their school and their community. And when they could not obtain adequate information from the School District about why their school is being turned over to an outside company or on what basis this decision was made – students turned to their parents and teachers to help them understand what is happening around them.

We do not know yet why these passionate educators have been removed from their classrooms, but if it is because they spoke to students about how, in a democratic society, we make our voices heard, the PFT will defend its members with every tool available.

Wendy Kopp On Fixing Schools

Hmmmm....it seems that Ms. Kopp and Mike Bloomberg have something it common: good (effective) teaching does not require any experience. Cold turkey is best.

Betsy Combier

Wendy Kopp: Teach for America founder on fixing schools

3:48 pm March 11, 2011, by Maureen Downey
LINK

Wendy Kopp, who, as a Princeton student founded Teach for America as her senior thesis, agreed to be interviewed by her 8-year-old son for a school project on what led her to invent an elite teaching corps.

Benjamin’s final question to his mother is one that people still ask Kopp: “If this is such a big problem — kids not having a chance to have a good education — why would you ask people with no experience right of out of college to solve it?”

Kopp’s answer today, 21 years after she launched Teach for America, is that the program works, that it benefits both the idealistic college graduates who enter the classroom and the struggling students they serve.

She told Benjamin that while there’s value in experience, there is “a power in inexperience — that it make a huge difference to channel the energy of young people, before they know what’s impossible and when they still have endless energy, against a problem that many have long since given up on.”

Last year, 46,000 college graduates, including 20 percent of the seniors at Atlanta’s Spelman College, sought Teach for America posts. There are more than 20,000 alumni of Teach for America, including the founders of the KIPP charter schools, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin; former Washington, D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee; Atlanta school board member Courtney English; and new Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman.

Transferring the Peace Corps model to America’s most challenging classrooms, Kopp dispatches Ivy League whiz kids to communities and cultures as foreign to them as Morocco and Tonga are to Peace Corps volunteers. They have training and ongoing support, but it is a baptism by fire that singes a few and sparks 60 percent to remain in education.

In Atlanta this week to talk about her new book, “A Chance to Make History,” the 44-year-old Kopp, a married mother of three, drew from her Teach for America lessons to discuss what needs to be done in education today.

First, she says, it can no longer be argued that socio-economics determine a child’s education course for life. “We have hundreds of schools that are putting kids whose socio-economic background would predict one end, on a track to literally graduate from college. There is nothing elusive about it. We can replicate it.”

If it can be done, why hasn’t it?

“I do think we need to ask ourselves why we haven’t we moved the needle in an aggregate sense,” she says. “We lurch after one silver bullet idea after another. You realize that it is no one thing. It is not small schools, voucher laws and charter laws. ”

Instead, Kopp says it is teachers like Teach for America member Maurice Thomas, who tells his Atlanta students at the School for Technology, Engineering, Math and Science at Therrell, “All of you are going to go to college,” and then makes it his mission to see it happen. He offers tutoring during lunch hour and after school and runs a Saturday school.

Kopp’s book pays homage to Thomas and other teachers like him, but admits that systematic education reform can’t hinge on heroic teachers willing to work 15-hour days .

“There are only so many Maurices out there,” she says.

Kopp says the solution is creating school-wide cultures where all teachers share Thomas’ mission, if not his relentless schedule. And the keys to such school cultures are principals who, as teacher themselves, succeeded in raising achievement in low-income students.

“We have 3.7 million teachers. The notion that we can do this by just changing teachers is not realistic,” she says. “We have to develop a leadership pipeline of extraordinary leaders…they have to had taught successfully in this context because once you have done that, no one can ever shake your conviction that these kids have potential.”

Traditional public schools can learn from charter school companies, says Kopp. “These charter school organizations view finding extraordinary leaders as their only task. It has to be the core of the work.”

Along with silver bullets, America embraces “silver blame,” says Kopp. In the past, school failures were pinned on unmotivated students and uncaring parents. Now, teachers are the villain du jour.

“We are blaming the group whose engagement we most need,” says Kopp. “If I were a teacher right now, I would be infuriated by the public discussion. Most teachers come into this because they want to do good things for kids. It doesn’t seem to make sense to spend a lot of energy blaming them.”

In her book, Kopp tells of the creed that Thomas adopted when he decided that everyone is his class, even those reading at a sixth-grade level, would go to college.

“This is not kindergarten and we don’t have 12 years to fix this,” Thomas said. “I’ve got 12 months to get this done if they are going to college. Twelve months. We have to get to work.”

They did. And all his students went on to college.

–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog.

NYC Principals To Cathie Black: Dont Take My Money Back

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Principals: Cathie Black Makes Bad Business Decisions
Perdido Street School
LINK
I would have to agree with this:

They wanted half, but the Education Department Monday night said it would only take 30% of the money prudent principals had saved for next year.

The move is unlikely to quell principals' anger.

Chiara Coletti, spokeswoman for the principals union, called the compromise "capricious," adding: "They should have trusted the principals to know how to best use their savings for kids."

"It's simply a bad business decision sending the wrong message to frugal and fiscally responsible principals throughout New York City," said Edward Tom, principal of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics.

Principals have until March 18 to decide whether to take the deal or spend the saved funds this school year.

In a statement, Schools Chancellor Cathie Black said that after "thoughtful feedback" from principals, the department had crafted a solution to help them keep making "prudent, long-term budget decisions."

Cathie Black is, to be frank, full of shit that the "thoughtful feedback" helped her craft a solution to help principals make "prudent, long-term budget decisions."

The criticism forced her to try and walk back the decision to STEAL 50% of the unused school money, but STILL save face and garner some cash by saying she'll ONLY take 30%.

Not good enough, Ms. Black,

I think the principals are right on the substance of this - to punish principals who have tried to be judicious with their funds is just a bad idea.

But coming from the woman who thinks birth control is the solution to school overcrowding, can you really expect any good ideas?

Posted by reality-based educator at 11:59 AM

Frugal principals feel Black's 'pinch'

By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter, New York Post, February 18, 2011

Frugal principals who manage to squirrel away rainy-day school funds to offset pending budget cuts are livid over a Department of Education bid to pinch half their savings.

Schools Chancellor Cathie Black dropped the bombshell in her weekly letter to principals -- telling them half the funds they manage to set aside for the next school year will be diverted to the DOE's central coffers.

Last school year, principals collectively rolled over more than $80 million -- meaning that if individual school piggybanks are as plump this year, DOE educrats could reap $40 million.

"This is insanity," said Sean Walsh, principal of IS 291 in Brooklyn. "It's saying whatever you put into this deferred account, you only get 50 percent back -- without any rationale as to why and what it would be doing to support the system as a whole."

After having endured eight rounds of budget cuts in recent years, principals said they took great pains to set aside money that could maintain staffing and instructional services in the next school year.

Many were outraged about being punished for exhibiting the same sound fiscal management that Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly touted as the impetus for Black's appointment as chancellor.

"We've been very frugal with our spending this year -- that's what a good business manager does," said a Queens elementary-school principal who had hoped to roll over $100,000 for personnel costs.

"I'm sure [Bloomberg] didn't spend down to zero when he was running his business, and I'm sure [Black] didn't when she was running hers. It's really sending the wrong message."

DOE officials said money taken out of school accounts would be used to plug anticipated budget holes. They did not elaborate.

Principals said the attempt to redeploy the money would backfire by spurring most school leaders to spend it immediately and not hold it over for the next school year.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

Florida Pursues Linking Teacher Pay To Student Performance

Karen Aronowitz hits the nail on its head with this comment in the article below:

“The rubber hits the road here,” said Karen Aronowitz, the president of United Teachers of Dade, which represents teachers in the country’s fourth-largest school district. “Why would you retain experienced teachers if they simply cost too much? You don’t have to provide a reason not to renew the contracts. You can be teacher of the year and be let go because there is no due process.”


Indeed. Also, widespread lying about student grades in New York City and the fact that Principals order teachers to scrub grades or lose their jobs and then charge them with changing grades or other actions related to their changing grades makes the tying of teacher pay to student performance absurd. Additionally, all a principal has to do is give an expensive teacher a class full of students with behavior problems, language difficulties, and/or academic disabilities, and the unwanted teacher is quickly run out of the school as "incompetent" (even though it might not be humanly possible to teach such a class). If a teacher has a classroom filled with gifted children who did above average - lets say 97% on their tests the previous year, and then these students get 97% the following year, the value-added is zero and the teacher is labelled "incompetent". See the excellent article about this by Mike Winerip, also below.
Betsy Combier

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, center, with his wife, Ann, at the opening of the legislative session, which also brought a silent protest, left, and Tea Party members singing “God Bless America.”

March 8, 2011
In Florida, Push to Link Teacher Pay to Student Performance
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ, NY Times

MIAMI — The Florida Legislature, convening its 60-day session on Tuesday, quickly set its sights on measures that would link the pay of new teachers to student performance and allow school boards to fire teachers more easily for mediocre results.

The final bill is expected to clear the Legislature next week. Unlike last year, when similar legislation was vetoed by the former governor, who considered it too extreme, this slightly softened version is expected to win Gov. Rick Scott’s approval easily.

The far-reaching bills in the House and Senate would shake up a system of pay and tenure in Florida that has existed for decades and would position Florida as a leader among those states taking on teachers’ unions. Supporters say it will make it easier to reward and promote the state’s best teachers, not by their longevity, but by their work in the classroom. This, they say, will ensure that the lowest-performing schools can lure more effective teachers.

Representative Erik Fresen, a Republican from Miami who is sponsoring the House bill, said the measure would do away with a system that did not benefit the best teachers or help struggling students and replace it with one that would actually assess how well a teacher performed.

“If you look across the board, one thing that is consistent is that teacher effectiveness is the most influential variable in a student’s learning,” Mr. Fresen said. “Teaching is disconnected from any other profession in the world. Every profession that I know has some effectiveness input in terms of a salary increase and whether you get promoted or get paid less or paid more.”

But teachers’ unions, who forcefully opposed the legislation last year, say the measure, which will mostly affect new teachers, is deeply flawed. It would serve, union officials say, only to demoralize a work force already battered by ever-shrinking resources and other demands.

“We are under siege by our own Legislature,” said Robert Dow, the president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association. “People are extremely depressed. People are seeing this coming like a freight train, and no matter what you say, you can’t stop it.”

At rallies in Tallahassee and other Florida cities, state employees who say they fear for their jobs and benefits turned out to protest what they view as extreme measures on the part of Republicans in the House and Senate to make up a budget gap of $3.6 billion. Tea Party activists also streamed into the capital to support lawmakers in their plans to cut spending and create jobs.

“You are changing the country because people are listening to what you’re doing, whether it’s Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey or Texas,” Governor Scott, a Republican, told the Tea Party crowd, which helped elect him.

If passed, the education bills in the House and Senate would mean that starting in 2014 students’ performance on assessment tests would count for half of a new teacher’s evaluation. The other half would rest with the principal. Those evaluations would lead to yearly raises or dismissals, if poor ratings continued three to five years. Tenured teachers can opt into the merit pay system, if they choose, but they would face the possibility of dismissal because of unsatisfactory evaluations regardless.

New teachers would also be subject to one-year contracts beginning this July. Their ability to renew those contracts would rest squarely with their evaluations.

Mr. Fresen, the author of the House bill, said much of the bill’s framework in terms of pay had been laid out in the state’s applications for federal dollars in the Race to the Top program. The state was awarded $700 million in federal money to help develop measurable standards to evaluate teacher and student performance.

“The toxicity of the debate this year is much less than last year,” Mr. Fresen said. The overwhelming majority of school districts signed up for those federal dollars and the performance evaluations that were tied to them.

But the unions and most teachers oppose the Fresen bill, saying the move is premature. There are no reliable ways yet to evaluate teachers consistently, outside of testing, which does not necessarily capture a teacher’s worth. In addition, they say, the shift to yearly contracts will lead to hiring teachers on the cheap and will do little to attract the best candidates. They also argue that Florida’s schools have sharply improved in the past several years and are now ranked fifth in the nation, according to a yearly report by Education Week magazine. Teachers are doing something right, they say.

“The rubber hits the road here,” said Karen Aronowitz, the president of United Teachers of Dade, which represents teachers in the country’s fourth-largest school district. “Why would you retain experienced teachers if they simply cost too much? You don’t have to provide a reason not to renew the contracts. You can be teacher of the year and be let go because there is no due process.”

Gary Fineout contributed reporting from Tallahassee, Fla.

Teacher Evaluation And Effectiveness: What Exactly Do These Terms Mean?

Bloomberg and Mulgrew Join Forces To Create Green Dot Unionized Charter Schools In NYC

Green Dot Charters are, it seems, on the calendar for NYC.

March 8, 2011

New Strategy Weighed for Failing Schools
By FERNANDA SANTOS, NY Times

The Bloomberg administration’s signature strategy for low-performing schools has been to shut them down, a drastic move that often incites anger and protests from teachers, parents and neighborhood officials. Since the beginning of the mayor’s first term, more than 110 schools have been shuttered or are in the process of closing.

The administration is now thinking of testing another approach at two schools in the Bronx: replacing the principals and at least half of the teachers, but keeping the schools and all of their programs running — a strategy known as a turnaround.

The plan would bring together unlikely partners: the New York City Department of Education, the teachers’ union and the founder of a charter school network who is best known for turning around one of the toughest high schools in Los Angeles.

There are benefits and risks for each side. The city would be departing from its philosophy of closing large schools and opening smaller ones in their space. But it could cause less political blowback.

Union leaders might be seen by their rank and file as acquiescing to the replacement of teachers, though those teachers would be entitled to their full salaries and jobs elsewhere in the system. But if those schools were closed, they could be replaced with charter schools, which tend not to be unionized.

For the charter network, Green Dot America, the plan is an attempt to turn its model into a national commodity of sorts. But Green Dot would also be inheriting some of the city’s most challenging students.

“This notion that some kids can make it and some kids can’t, I don’t buy that,” Steve Barr, who founded the network, said in an interview. “I’m of the belief that all kids can be college-ready if you give them a chance.”

The plan involves a middle school and a high school in the South Bronx; the schools were not named because their staffs had not been notified. The schools would be controlled by the Education Department, managed by Green Dot and staffed by unionized teachers, as is the norm in the 17 charter schools run by Green Dot Public Schools, a separate organization that Mr. Barr founded. Among those schools is a high school in the South Bronx that opened in 2008.

Mr. Barr has been in the business of turning around schools for more than a decade, but his work gained prominence in 2007, when the Los Angeles Unified School District refused to give him control of Alain Leroy Locke Senior High School, in the city’s rough Watts neighborhood. But he took control anyway. He put a school board member on his payroll, managed to infiltrate the school building even after he was banned from it and persuaded half of Locke’s teachers to vote to split from the district. The district relented, allowing him to turn the school into a charter.

Mr. Barr is proposing a more conciliatory tack in New York City, going door to door to garner support among parents, while weaving political alliances to avoid fighting — though, he said, he would not shy away from more aggressive tactics if that was what it took.

“We’re going to do it one way or the other, no matter who resists,” said Mr. Barr, whose management expenses are largely covered by private philanthropies, chiefly the Ford Foundation.

Turnarounds, among the four school-improvement strategies that qualify for federal assistance, have not been tried in New York City before, but they have run into obstacles elsewhere, as some districts have had trouble finding qualified principals ready to replace the ones being forced out.

The plan would also involve forcing all teachers to reapply for their jobs and using a committee of teachers, school administrators and parents to pick who got to stay.

The teachers’ contract would give them some measure of job protection, but it would be easier to fire them. The teachers also would work under more flexible rules, including longer hours in exchange for higher pay.

“It’s about, what do we need to get this staff in order for them to meet the needs of the children and stop with this one-size-fits-all stuff?” said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers.

Mr. Mulgrew has been waging a very public war with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg over the mayor’s push to eliminate rules that protect the most senior teachers in the event of layoffs, but the union chief has been quietly lobbying for the turnaround plan behind the scenes. He met with Schools Chancellor Cathleen P. Black in January and sounded conciliatory when asked about potential roadblocks, saying, “We are committed to getting this idea for these schools moving.”

City education officials have been receptive to the proposal, but say it is still early in the process. They are also contemplating using the turnaround model in schools other than those Green Dot would run.

“We’re always ready to work with organizations that are interested in doing the hard work of reforming public education,” said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Education Department.

One of the unanswered questions is where the money would come from to finance the flexible compensation plan for teachers — federal grants, philanthropic donations or a combination of both, said Gideon Stein, the president of Green Dot America.

One of the criticisms of Green Dot’s work at Locke has been that it costs far more per student than at traditional schools.

If New York City’s Education Department signs off on the proposal, the schools would begin the new model in the fall of next year.
October 15, 2010

Randi Weingarten with students at Green Dot High School in the Bronx

Despite Image, Union Leader Backs School Change
By TRIP GABRIEL, NY Times

In “Waiting for Superman,” the new education documentary, the union leader Randi Weingarten is portrayed, in the words of Variety, as “a foaming satanic beast.”

At a two-day education summit hosted by NBC News recently, the lopsided panels often featured Ms. Weingarten on one side, facing a murderer’s row of charter school founders and urban superintendents. Even Tom Brokaw piled on.

It’s nothing personal, really. Ms. Weingarten happens to be the most visible, powerful leader of unionized teachers, and in that role she personifies what many reformers see as the chief obstacle to lifting dismal schools: unions that protect incompetent teachers.

A combative labor leader who does not shrink from the spotlight, Ms. Weingarten has been fighting back. She issued a written rebuttal to “Waiting for Superman,” and she has publicly debated the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim, arguing that teachers have been made scapegoats. More to the point, the portrait of Ms. Weingarten as a demonic opponent of change — albeit one more likely to appear in a business suit and cashmere V-neck sweater, with a Cartier Tank watch and a red kabbalah string around her wrist — is out of date, according to many education experts.

In the past year, for example, she has led her members — sometimes against internal resistance — to embrace innovations that were once unthinkable. She has acted out of a fear that teachers’ unions could end up on the wrong side of a historic and inevitable wave of change.

“She has shrewdly recognized that teachers’ unions need to be part of the reform,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, an education research group.

Christopher Cerf, a former deputy schools chancellor in New York City who has sparred with Ms. Weingarten, offered a similar, if more skeptical interpretation.

“The earth moved in a really dramatic way,” he said, “to the point that a very successful strategist like Randi has to know that teacher unionism itself is in jeopardy, perhaps even in mortal jeopardy.”

Both friends and foes describe Ms. Weingarten, 52, who became president of the 1.5-million member American Federation of Teachers in 2008 after a decade leading the New York City local, as a superb tactician who cares deeply about being seen as a reformer.

“We have spent a lot of time in the last two years looking at ourselves in a mirror, trying to figure out what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong, and we’re trying to reform,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview.

Early this year, she delivered a major policy speech that embraced tying teachers’ evaluations in part to students’ scores on standardized tests, a formula that teachers — and Ms. Weingarten herself — once resisted.

In the District of Columbia, Ms. Weingarten stepped into a stalemated contract negotiation and agreed to give up certain seniority protections and to enable schools to more easily fire poorly rated teachers.

And in May, she threw her support behind a Colorado law that went further than any in the nation to strip tenure protections from ineffective teachers. “You have to look at that collection of steps and say they deserve applause,” said Timothy Daly, president of the nonprofit New Teacher Project, who has been a frequent critic of teachers’ unions.

Lest anyone think the union is rolling over, it threw money and manpower into defeating the mayoral patron of Michelle A. Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor — and a heroine of “Waiting for Superman” — who resigned this week.

Ms. Weingarten must navigate tricky waters between reformers who demand sweeping changes and rank-and-file union members for whom job security is a major issue. She has met with some opposition within her ranks.

On Thursday, Baltimore teachers voted down a new contract that Ms. Weingarten had endorsed, which would have based pay in large part on how successful teachers are in the classroom rather than on seniority.

And in May, Ms. Weingarten was heckled at her union’s state convention in Michigan by a handful of Detroit teachers, who were angry, in part, that a new contract introduced an evaluation system in which they are rated by their peers. Hard-liners argued that peer review makes teachers complicit in the firing of colleagues.

Ms. Weingarten had played a major role in reaching compromises on seniority and evaluations during the contract’s negotiation. It passed in December but with 36 percent of teachers voting no. Some called the leader of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, Keith Johnson — and by extension, Ms. Weingarten — a sellout.

At the Michigan convention, when Ms. Weingarten was booed, David Hecker, the state union leader, shushed the dissenters. Ms. Weingarten, according to participants, said she wanted to hear them out.

“She was masterful,” Mr. Johnson said. “One by one, she said, ‘That is not true.’ She had the facts to contravene anything they brought forward.”

Ms. Weingarten, Mr. Johnson said, is telling teachers “things that were taboo.”

“We now have our backs up against the wall,” he added. “If we don’t embrace education reform, we will get knocked through the wall.”

In many ways, Ms. Weingarten is fighting to keep her footing in a tilted political landscape. For the first time, a Democratic president, Barack Obama, is espousing ideas that have been anathema to teachers’ unions — chiefly, encouraging school choice through charter schools and holding teachers accountable for student learning.

A $4.3 billion federal grant competition, Race to the Top, enticed many states this year to climb aboard the administration bandwagon, and pulled some unions along, too.

For some reformers — an unusual alliance of moderate Republicans and Democrats — there is still skepticism about the depth of Ms. Weingarten’s commitment.

“The problem is the messages have been very mixed,” Mr. Daly of the New Teacher Project said. “While wonderful steps have been taken, the exact same policies that seem to be supported in one context are opposed in another.”

For example, critics said, even though Ms. Weingarten helped negotiate a breakthrough contract with Ms. Rhee in Washington, the union contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who lost the Democratic primary last month to Vincent Gray, setting up Ms. Rhee’s departure.

Some analysts have said that teachers’ support of Mr. Gray was a shot across the bow of elected Democrats elsewhere who might try to push unions too far.

Ms. Weingarten resisted any suggestion that her union was bending with the political winds. “There’s a much more important purpose here, which is the love of children,” she said in the interview, held at Green Dot New York Charter School in the South Bronx, an unusual example of a charter with unionized teachers.

As she did often in the interview, she spoke slowly, tapping her hand on the table for emphasis, and offered perorations, as if speaking to a hall full of listeners.

But she can also be surprisingly intimate. She is a touch person, and at one point reached across to check a reporter’s forehead to see if he might be feverish after asking a particular question.

If Ms. Weingarten is cast in the black-hat role in “Waiting for Superman,” which has inspired a blizzard of favorable op-ed columns, the role of education savior is given to high-performing charter schools.

Yet one scene that the director filmed, but left on the cutting-room floor, showed Ms. Weingarten signing a contract on behalf of teachers at Green Dot, which has had impressive results since it opened in 2008.

Steve Barr, who founded the Green Dot charter school network, lamented that the film ignored examples of charters and unions working together. “It doesn’t help to take the one true open-minded union leader and bash her,” he said.
 
Green Dot press Release 2008
 
Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)
Green Dot plans a school in N.Y. City

Green Dot Public Schools, the upstart charter operation that has aggravated Los Angeles school administrators and union officials alike with its early successes and expansionist plans, has entered into what it hopes will be a less strident relationship in New York City.

Green Dot founder Steve Barr and Randi Weingarten, president of the powerful New York City teachers union, have reached an unusual agreement to open a jointly run charter high school. The two are scheduled to announce the collaboration in a news conference at the union's Manhattan offices today.

The United Federation of Teachers' willingness to enter into an alliance with Green Dot seems certain to put pressure on United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents the roughly 35,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although in recent months UTLA President A. J. Duffy has softened his caustic and dismissive attacks on Green Dot — and charters in general — he has repeatedly rejected the idea of a partnership with Green Dot.

Weingarten, in a telephone interview Wednesday, said she hoped the deal between the nation's largest teacher union and Green Dot would encourage Duffy to move in a similar direction.

"If you really actually believe in kids and believe in their success, those of us in education, we really shouldn't be in the sandbox fighting with each other. We should be ... trying to figure out how to work together," Weingarten said.

Barr and Weingarten said the unusual collaboration should set an example, not only in Los Angeles, but elsewhere as well. Throughout the United States, charter schools are largely nonunion and, as such, have drawn the sharp ire of union leaders. Green Dot teachers, however, offer an exception, because they belong to a union, though not one representing educators in Los Angeles or New York.

Several weeks ago, Weingarten visited Green Dot schools in Los Angeles and met with Barr. The trip helped her decide to push ahead with the partnership, she said. Weingarten praised Green Dot's model, so far implemented only in the Los Angeles area, as one that has posted promising results while also giving teachers a considerable voice in making decisions on instruction and resources.

"When you go and see Green Dot schools, you see schools that really work for kids ... in places where kids have not always been given the best chances in life," she said. "Teachers are treated as the professionals they ought to be, and they step up to act as those professionals as well."

Under the terms of the proposal, which requires approval by New York state education officials, Barr, Weingarten and several New York education and civic figures would sit on a board of directors that oversees the school. The South Bronx campus is expected to open in fall 2008 and will primarily serve Latino students from low-income families.

Weingarten and Barr said they expected the school to operate much like the 10 high schools Green Dot runs in the Los Angeles area. Those schools are rooted in a set of basic tenets, including enrollment no greater than 500 students and a college-preparatory curriculum.

Although New York state regulations require that they wait until the charter is approved to work out details, Weingarten and Barr said they expect that the New York teachers will work under a labor agreement similar to the one Green Dot has with its teachers in Los Angeles.

Unlike the lengthy, proscriptive contract UTLA has negotiated with L.A. Unified that spells out a teacher's workday down to the minute and offers extensive job protections, Green Dot's contract is more straightforward. While giving teachers considerable authority and higher starting salaries, it calls for a "professional workday" and allows teachers to be fired for "just cause."

Conflict between UTLA and Green Dot has long been a barrier to serious discussions of partnership. Earlier in his first term as union president, faced with an explosion of charters in Los Angeles that ultimately drew hundreds of teachers away from district schools, Duffy hammered on the independent schools, questioning whether they produced better results and criticizing their labor practices. As the largest — and most aggressive — charter group, Green Dot was a frequent target. Earlier this year, Duffy charged that the group "takes bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, idealistic people and works them to death."

On Wednesday, he dismissed the notion that an agreement between the New York teachers union and Green Dot had relevance to Los Angeles, saying that "the landscapes are very different." He emphasized that his criticism of charters has been driven, in part, by the frantic growth of charter schools here. New York City has considerably fewer of them.

Weingarten "is doing what she thinks is best for public education in New York City," Duffy said.

But the partnership announcement comes at a particularly delicate time for him. As he prepares to mount a reelection bid, Duffy is under pressure to assuage rising discontent among teachers chafing at the slow pace of district improvements at middle and high schools.

Last month, that frustration spilled over when a core of tenured teachers at Locke High School voiced support for Green Dot's plan to take over the South Los Angeles campus and convert it into several small charters. Since then, teachers from more than a dozen other L.A. Unified schools have contacted Green Dot to discuss similar actions, Barr has said.

Duffy readily concedes that, against this backdrop, he has struck a decidedly less confrontational tone on charters, now saying he would be willing to negotiate with Green Dot if two-thirds of the teachers at a school called on him to do so.

"I am listening and responding to the needs of my members," he said.

Alert To All Teachers On Attendace Record

I have been told that principals have been ordered to put a letter in the file of any teacher absent from his/her position for any reason (with or without a doctor's note) five (5) days in a school year.

Please email me whether this is true or false

Thank you,

Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com

Public Advocate Bill De Blasio To Cathie Black: Cut The $$ From Consultants

Public Advocate Bill De Blasio has said in a letter to schools chancellor Cathie Black that the city should avoid teacher layoffs by nixing raises for computer consultants.

This request makes total sense to everyone but the NYC DOE.

Public Advocate De Blasio has plan to save some teaching jobs: Forget hike for consultants

BY Rachel Monahan, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER, Sunday, March 6th 2011, 4:00 AM
LINK


The city should save 300 teachers from layoffs by canceling its plans to increase payments to high-priced computer consultants, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio urged Saturday.

In a letter to Schools Chancellor Cathie Black, De Blasio recommended also looking for other cuts to avoid increasing class sizes in city public schools.

"There is nothing more important for our children's education than keeping teachers in the classroom," he wrote.

The Daily News reported Friday that the agency is planning to increase its budget for the technology contracts next fiscal year by 86%, or $24 million, while planning to lay off 4,600 teachers.

De Blasio noted that class size is already on the increase and suggested there were other ways to save teachers.

"The department should examine its administrative budget to identify any superfluous spending that could be used to prevent teacher layoffs," he wrote. "Freezing all nonessential expenditures, such as this contract, is without doubt the right place to start."

Average class size in elementary school rose by 4% this year, official figures show.

Faced with a $4.6 billion budget gap, Mayor Bloomberg has argued state budget cuts to education require blanketing the city with pink slips for teachers.

Bloomberg has pushed for Albany to change the state's last in, first out law, which requires that the newest teachers in the city be laid off first.

Critics have said the mayor is playing politics, just threatening layoffs just as he did last year, when there are other ways around the budget shortfall.

A bill that instead required first laying off city teachers with unsatisfactory ratings passed the Senate last week, but the Assembly has no plans to introduce it. Governor Cuomo is supporting a teacher evaluation measure that would not immediately change the law on layoffs.

The teachers union and other advocates have been pushing for Albany to extend the so-called millionaires tax to prevent the teacher layoffs.

City Education Department officials insisted last week that the increase in its budget for technology contracts simply was a result of more accurate budget projections.

The agency expects to spend $52 million by June, not the $28 million budgeted, officials said.

But in a deal with City Council in January, Bloomberg agreed to cut $4 million from the agency's tech contracts in order to save city firehouses.

Education Department officials declined to comment Saturday on De Blasio's letter.

rmonahan@nydailynews.com

Filmaker michael Moore says that there is money, it's just not going where the general public - poor and middle class - want it to go:

Michael Moore: America Is Not Broke

Employers Who Lie About Former Employees May Be Held Accountable

Rare win for a rep in defamation suit against Edward Jones

Former adviser with firm claims broker-dealer defamed him on U-5 termination report; brokerage ordered to pay $100K
By Dan Jamieson, Investment News, March 1, 2011
LINK

Brokerage firm Edward Jones on Monday was ordered by an arbitration panel to pay a former representative $100,000 in damages.

Marc Miller, who left Jones in October 2008 for Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc. in Sarasota, Fla., claimed that Jones defamed him on his U-5 termination report and breached an agreement to clear his record.

George Guerra, Mr. Miller's attorney at Wiand Guerra King PL, said Mr. Miller resigned from Jones, but the firm claimed that he had been terminated for a "laundry list" of alleged problems, including unauthorized use of margin and misuse of his expense account.

As a result of the tarnished U-5, Mr. Miller had to withdraw pending registrations from several states, Mr. Guerra said.

In addition, as it normally does with negative U-5 filings, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. opened an investigation into Mr. Miller's conduct.

“When we [saw the U-5], we were stunned,” Mr. Guerra said. “Jones knew this is what would happen to the guy.”

Mr. Guerra said Jones ultimately agreed to amend the U-5 and inform Finra that the firm's own investigation found no problem with Mr. Miller.

But Jones backtracked on that agreement, he said. The firm would not tell Finra that it had completed an investigation of Mr. Miller, Mr. Guerra said.

"Edward Jones agreed to the expungement of Marc Miller's U-5, which was cleared more than a year ago," said Jones spokesman John Boul in a statement. "We're pleased the matter has been resolved."

Although Mr. Miller's award counts as a rare win in a defamation case, it still comes up short, Mr. Guerra said.

Mr. Miller had asked for $750,000 in damages, $120,000 in attorney's fees and $3 million in punitive damages.

The $100,000 award isn't enough to keep a firm from retaliating against a defecting broker, Mr. Guerra said.

Mr. Miller also had to wait for more than two years to get justice, Mr. Guerra added.

The broker had to file a new arbitration claim in 2009 after the first settlement agreement fell through, he said.

Edward Jones Loses $100,000 Advisor Defamation Case

Advisors for advisors, Wednesday, March 02, 2011 07:01
LINK

Arbitrators have finally given a Florida rep who defected from Edward Jones in 2008 his clean U-5 back and $100,000 in damages after determining that his old boss claimed he'd been fired for cause.

The negative report on Marc Miller's U-5 interfered with his registration once he went to Morgan Keenan and prompted a FINRA investigation into his conduct.

However, none of the charges -- including misuse of firm funds -- were true.

Edward Jones reportedly sat on the order to correct Miller's U-5 for a year before correcting it.

Miller wanted about $4 million in damages and punitive charges. He got $100,000, which his lawyer says is not nearly enough to discourage other firms from similar behavior in the future.

Comment from Betsy Combier:

This case brings to my mind the fact that Theresa Europe, Director of the Administrative Trials Unit or "Gotcha Squad" randomly places tenured teachers on the "Ineligible/Inquiry List or "no-hire" list. When asked by New York State Supreme Court Judge Alice Schlesinger (in the matter Philomena Brennan v NYC BOE, Index number 112977-2009) to give the how and why the list is created and names are placed there, Ms. Europe removed Ms. Brennan's name, thus thwarting the efforts of people like me to figure out the reasoning behind this very damaging career-ending list of names.

Teacher Layoffs In A Worst Case Scenario

February 27, 2011
City Details Worst-Case School Layoffs
By FERNANDA SANTOS, NY Times
LINK

The New York City Department of Education made public on Sunday a list that estimates the number of teachers each school will lose to layoffs if the state does not allocate more money for schools and seniority rules are not changed.

The layoffs, totaling 4,675 teachers, 6 percent of the active teachers in the system, would spare virtually no academic subject or neighborhood, and they would affect 80 percent of the approximately 1,600 public schools in the city. Most would lose one to five teachers; nine would lose half of the teachers they have.

The list details the worst case, and its projections may never materialize. City Hall chose to release it as the State Senate prepared to vote on a bill that would allow the city to lay off teachers based on factors like performance and disciplinary records, rather than seniority. By releasing the list, the department hopes to draw more parents to its corner by reminding them that virtually no school would be untouched.

Natalie Ravitz, the Education Department’s chief spokeswoman, described so-called “last in, first out” layoffs as “an arbitrary standard” that punishes schools that have chosen to hire teachers who are new to the profession.

The bill is likely to pass the Senate, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has a strong base of support, but it is bound to meet fierce resistance in the Assembly, particularly among members of the New York City delegation who have opposed the way the city goes about closing failing schools.

“It’s unlikely that we will simply sign off on a unilateral power grab by the mayor in the area of seniority without significant input and modification to the legislation,” said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who represents a broad slice of central Brooklyn, including some of the borough’s poorest neighborhoods.

Seniority rules are under assault in many states, and teachers’ unions have fiercely defended them, saying that without them, principals and school districts would be able to fire teachers on a whim. Michael Mulgrew, president of the city teachers’ union, called the layoff list “a political maneuver to create panic” among parents, teachers and school administrators. “That’s how the mayor works now,” Mr. Mulgrew said.

The city has not laid off significant numbers of teachers in more than three decades. When it found itself in a similar financial situation last year, Mr. Bloomberg was able to avert layoffs by eliminating raises for teachers and principals for two years.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposed budget would cut aid to city schools by $1.4 billion for the next fiscal year. Mr. Bloomberg has said he would be left with no option but to lay off 4,600 teachers to balance the Education Department’s books, assuming that just $200 million in school aid would be restored during negotiations. Another 1,500 positions would be lost to attrition.

The school that stands to lose the highest percentage of its teachers is Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Harlem: 14 teachers, or 70 percent of the 20 it employs. It is a relatively new school, and so employs a large percentage of new teachers, who are the first to be laid off under seniority rules. The largest number of actual layoffs would come from the New Rikers Island School, a high school for jail inmates, which would lose 21 out of 69 teachers.

The list does not reflect the number of teaching positions each school would lose, only the number of teachers who would be laid off. A school like Columbia Secondary might, for example, lose only a couple of teaching positions, but would have to replace roughly a dozen laid-off younger teachers with more senior teachers from elsewhere in the system, a situation principals have resisted because it restricts their ability to choose their own staff.

PS 130

About 320 schools would see no layoffs, because they have not hired new teachers recently. Some schools, like Public School 130 in Bayside, Queens, and P.S. 57 in the Park Hill neighborhood of Staten Island, have employed the same teachers for many years.

According to the list, the only teachers who would be spared from layoffs are those who teach special education, English as a second language and speech improvement, positions that are harder to fill.

Tom Rochowicz, 28, a global history teacher at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School in Manhattan, would most likely be laid off, as would two other teachers at the school. He was hired in September after teaching for two years in California, followed by two years at a charter school in Brooklyn.

“I want to teach for several more years, I want to get on school leadership, but it’s hard to plan your career, it’s hard to plan your future, if you’re going to lose your job,” Mr. Rochowicz said. He is a member of Educators 4 Excellence, a group of current and former teachers, mostly young, who oppose seniority-based layoffs.

At the Yorkville Community School on the Upper East Side, which opened in 2009 to help alleviate crowding in other neighborhood elementary schools, the layoffs would add a complicating layer to the personnel changes that the principal, Samantha Kaplan, will have to enact in the fall.

The school started with five kindergarten classes, expanded into first grade this year and will be adding second grade classes in September, for which Ms. Kaplan plans to hire six teachers. But she would also have to contend with getting rid of 4 of the 13 teachers on staff.

Because she hired new teachers in the school’s first year, but not in its second, some of its original faculty members would be the ones to go.

“There’s more than experience that goes into making a great teacher,” Ms. Kaplan said. “To our school, it’s their familiarity with the building, with the culture, with the students. It would be a huge loss if we were to lose that.”

Michelle Rhee and Her Save The Teachers Video

Dear Betsy,
Video: Save Great Teachers In school, having a great teacher is the single most important factor in determining a student's success. Giving America's kids the best education in the world is only possible with the best teachers in the world.

States are being forced to make major cuts in education, with 45 states and the District of Columbia predicting huge budget shortfalls totaling $125 billion. And with these cuts our nation is at risk of losing some of our brightest, most effective teachers.

Right now in schools across the country, the last teacher hired has to be the first teacher fired, regardless of how good they are. A teacher's performance plays no role in who stays and who goes. This policy, based on seniority rather than effectiveness, is referred to as LIFO (Last In, First Out) -- and it is crippling our schools.

That's why we've launched the Save Great Teachers Campaign. Watch our video to learn more and pledge to get involved now:

Save Teachers Video

We can't afford to pull highly effective teachers out of America's classrooms. This is just the beginning of a very important campaign. In the next few weeks, we will ask you to take specific actions to engage with your legislators. We need your help to save great teachers.

Thanks,

Michelle
Michelle Rhee
CEO and Founder
StudentsFirst