Data, Evaluations, and "Bad" Teachers

UPDATED JANUARY 16, 2012 7:00 PM

Can a Few Years’ Data Reveal Bad Teachers?

NY TIMES 

January 16, 2012

Invoking King, Cuomo and Bloomberg Stoke Fight on Teacher Review Impasse

By THOMAS KAPLAN and KATE TAYLOR, NY TIMES

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, each irate that a stalemate over teacher evaluations is endangering federal education aid, fixed their sights Monday on a shared opponent: what they derided as New York State’s education bureaucracy.

Both men said the state could no longer tolerate a public school system they said was failing students, invoked the ideals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and appeared ready for a fight.

At separate observances commemorating Dr. King’s birthday, the governor and the mayor ratcheted up their attacks on teachers’ unions and school administrators.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, declared that “we have to realize that our schools are not an employment program” and vowed to press for the speedy establishment of a statewide teacher evaluation system.

“It is this simple: It is not about the adults; it is about the children,” Mr. Cuomo said, drawing loud applause from a mostly black audience at a state convention center in Albany.

Citing the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the governor lamented that because of failing public schools, “the great equalizer that was supposed to be the public education system can now be the great discriminator.”

Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, spoke later at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, offering an impassioned case for the education proposals that headlined his State of the City address last week, including firing up to half of the teachers in dozens of low-performing schools.

Mr. Bloomberg, whose plans were met with hostility by union leaders and most of the Democrats expected to run for mayor in 2013, said, “Special interests and defenders of the status quo are digging in for a fight.”

“Well, let me tell you, I’m ready to fight for our kids; I’m ready to stand up to special interests,” the mayor said, adding, “This school system shouldn’t be run for the people that work in the school system.”

Mr. Bloomberg was greeted with boos as he began to speak to the crowd; some of the criticism appeared to be about education, but some was associated with other issues, including concern over the New York Police Department’s practice of “stop and frisk.”

Mr. Cuomo, according to people who have been told of his plans, will announce on Tuesday, as part of his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, that he will require the creation of an evaluation system as a condition for school districts to receive a scheduled increase in state education aid.

Local school districts already evaluate teachers, but the reviews are often basic, and poor ones frequently carry few consequences for tenured teachers. In 2010, the State Legislature approved the framework of a new evaluation system that would be more specific and would allow for tougher sanctions against teachers who are rated ineffective, but efforts to put that system in place have stalled in New York City and elsewhere over issues like the appeals process for teachers and the role that student test scores would play in teacher evaluations.

On Monday, Mr. Cuomo vowed to force the evaluation issue to secure the $700 million that is in jeopardy because New York has not instituted an evaluation system, which it promised to do when it sought money through the federal Race to the Top program.

Under his plan, Mr. Cuomo will effectively order the statewide teachers’ union and the State Education Department to settle a continuing legal dispute over evaluations and to agree to standards for the evaluation system. If they cannot, he will seek to impose an evaluation system as part of the state budget, which must be approved by the end of March, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Cuomo’s budget was not yet public.

Once the evaluation system has been set up, either by agreement or by fiat, school districts would have until January 2013 to put it into effect. At that point, the official said, any district that had not done so would lose the promised increase in state education aid.

Carl Korn, a spokesman for New York State United Teachers, said that while the union shared “the governor’s frustration over the implementation of the law,” tying teacher evaluations to state education aid was the “wrong approach.”

“We think supporting teachers and unions in their work is a much better approach,” Mr. Korn said.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents city teachers, focused his criticism on Mr. Bloomberg. “I believe he’s trying to use this as sort of political grandstanding,” he said.

Mr. Mulgrew, noting that his union had “no disagreement with the governor over the evaluations,” did not object to Mr. Cuomo’s tying the increase in education aid to the creation of the evaluation system.

“We’re just as frustrated as he is, and I publicly came out and asked him to get involved,” he said.

Anna M. Phillips contributed reporting.

Huff Post on NYC ATRs

 

City's Unwanted Teachers Drift Through A Life In Limbo

By Jon Schuppe, Huff Post New York

LINK 

MANHATTAN — Hundreds of city teachers show up at schools they've never seen before every Monday morning.
The lucky ones get assigned to classrooms, maybe to teach the subject in which they were trained. Others do paperwork. And some waste hours doing nothing.
On Thursdays, they get a notice from the Department of Education telling them where to report the following week, and the cycle repeats.
This is what the DOE calls the Absent Teacher Reserve, a pool of nomadic educators who are paid their full salaries to work as substitutes. Most have been "excessed" by budget cuts or school closings and have been unable to find new jobs. Others have been liberated from the department’s notorious "rubber room," or have survived "unsatisfactory" ratings, and were deemed fit to keep teaching.
Until recently, the city allowed ATR teachers to remain at a posting for a full school term, during which the school principal could decide whether to hire them. That changed with the weekly reassignments, which went into effect in October as part of a deal with the United Federation of Teachers to avert layoffs.

The department says this is a fairer and more efficient way for the castoffs to find new jobs. The regular reshuffling gives them more opportunities to impress more potential bosses, officials say. They also have access to job fairs, online job announcements and recruitment consultations. Hundreds of displaced teachers get placed in permanent jobs through this "free market" system, the DOE says.
But critics say the city isn’t doing enough to help teachers adrift.
In an audit of the ATR last year, Comptroller John Liu said the city could have spared millions of dollars by filling open positions with ATR members instead of hiring new teachers.
Many of the teachers who remain stuck in the ATR, especially those with the most experience — and highest salaries — believe the DOE is trying to force them out to make way for younger, less expensive, talent. For proof, they cite a comment by former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who proposed eliminating the ATR because it cost the city $100 million.
"That’s money that could be spent on teachers that we desperately want and need," Klein said in a December 2010 memo to principals.
The teachers feel stuck, and see no way out.
"It's very stressful. And very frustrating," said Rodney Nightingale, a licensed reading instructor with 19 years on the job. "It’s frustrating because I consider myself a good teacher, and I enjoy working with kids. This is not what I had in mind when I decided to do this for a living."
Nightingale, 61, was placed in the ATR in 2009, after his position in a mentoring program was eliminated. He spent the following year in the pool as a reading-intervention specialist at a school in the Bronx. The next term, he taught gym. This year, he has worked at a dozen different schools in the northern Bronx, filling in for whatever staffer happens to be absent.
When a principal compliments him on his work, Nightingale replies, "Then hire me." But the principal usually says there isn’t a spot available, and that his $86,000 salary — nearly double the starting salary of a new teacher — is too high.
"I used to like teaching," Nightingale said. "I still like it when I make a connection. But it’s not very satisfying because you know you’re not going to see these kids again."
Many members of the ATR commiserate on blogs in which they share their stories. One of them, NYC ATR, is run by a former member of the pool who recently landed a "provisional" job at a school he likes.
"I wish I knew what the point was, because it certainly doesn’t serve the students… and it doesn’t benefit the teachers," said the blogger, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear that his new principal would cut him loose. "They are given meaningless assignments, so I don’t see who it’s benefitting."
Charles Pollak, a health teacher with 27 years in the system, joined the ATR after reaching a settlement with the DOE that freed him from a "rubber room," one of the reassignment centers for teachers under investigation for incompetence or misconduct — a system since abandoned.
Pollak, 66, earns more than $100,000 bouncing around the city, often doing nothing related to his expertise. At one recent stop in Harlem, he spent half his day in a day-care center, where students struggling to graduate dropped off their young children. The other half of the day he had nothing to do.
"With this economy, you pay me top salary to let me watch babies sleep?" he said. "Hello?"
The principal stopped by, and said he was just as frustrated by the system, which he described as "a computer pushing people around to drive them crazy."
Pollak said he had finally decided to ride out the next few months and retire.
Nightingale said his wife wants him to leave immediately, but he has decided to hang on a little while longer, when he becomes eligible for a full pension.
"I didn’t plan on retiring," Nightingale said. "I’d rather not give them the satisfaction, but they’re forcing my hand."
Last Thursday, he returned home from his posting at P.S. 87 in Wakefield and checked his email, where he found a note from the DOE's human resources department. It ordered him to report the following week to P.S. 89 in Williamsbridge.
Thirteen schools this year, and counting.

A NYC teacher's observations on how the Danielson rubrics are being (mis)used

Sunday, January 8, 2012

A NYC teacher's observations on how the Danielson rubrics are being (mis)used

One thing that the DOE and the UFT seem to have agreed upon is that the instructional framework developed by consultant Charlotte Danielson is potentially useful and constructive, though they disagree about how these rubrics are being used to evaluate teachers currently in NYC schools. Below are the observations of one teacher about how the Danielson rubric is being applied in his school.

I'm an English teacher at a NYC high school.   There are several major problems with the way the Charlotte Danielson rubrics are being used and misused.  Here are some that I have observed at our school.

We have an AP who is unqualified to do these observations.  Hitherto, he has overseen budgeting and technology and has never been involved with instruction.  He is now being told to do observations because the principal is unable to do them all.  In his feedback to teachers, he has demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic instructional strategies and has not been able to provide suggested improvements to accompany his critiques.

Other problems we are seeing I imagine are more universal across the city.  For one, administrators are being pressured to do (and to document) far more observations this year.  Previously, informal observations weren't written up, now they are.  As a result, observations of only 5 or 10 minutes (out of an 80 minute class) are being used to characterize a teacher's ability.

Story one: We have a new teacher and three people walked into her class and observed her for five minutes (during the starter, aka "do now") and then left.  Her observation report cited her for insufficiently interacting with the students, yet made no consideration for the fact that this was a time for independent student work by design. This is a very hard-working and devoted teacher and afterwards she was visibly upset.  Again, they watched the first 5 minutes of an 80 minute lesson and made sweeping conclusions based upon that.

Story two:  An English teacher (me) was instructing students in how to write a critical lens essay.  Then students began their essay and the teacher helped them individually.  The feedback given said: "All discussion is between teacher and students; students are not encouraged to speak directly to one another."  There was no reason for students to be speaking to each other during this portion of the class, in fact that would have detracted from what they were accomplishing in that time frame.  This is how the rubrics can be misused.

 
Story three: An excellent tenured math teacher was given an "ineffective" for questioning because he used questions with "a single correct answer." This comment comes directly from the Danielson rubric, yet this was a math class where yes, there often is a single correct answer and students do need to get that.  You would hope that anyone would realize this was not how to use the rubric, but you'd be mistaken.
There are more stories along these lines, but when observers miss most of the lesson, teachers feel it's unfair for an all-encompassing rubric to be applied to specific instructional snippets.  They also aren't being given specific feedback.

All teachers are being told to watch ARIS Learn videos, which are overly general and most veteran teachers are already familiar with much of the material covered.  Other recommendations are very superficial or generic.  But then, how could it be otherwise, when the observer only saw 5 or 10 minutes of class?  No one is being given subject specific or lesson specific feedback, and the only real outcome of this new teacher effectiveness system has been teacher demoralization.

For the time being I would prefer to remain anonymous so please refrain from using my name or the the name of our school.  My main reason for this is that I don't want to embarrass our administrators whom we see as being unfairly caught up in the respective mess on their side of this broken system. 

ATRs as Field Supervisors: Or How To Turn the Tables on the DOE

Phil Nobile is a former Rubber Roomer now unfairly designated as an ATR (Absent Teacher Reserve).

 ATRs as Field Supervisors: Or How To Turn the Tables on the DOE

By Philip Nobile

One of the pleasures afforded teacher tourists, otherwise known as ATRs, is savoring a different school every week. Despite the burdens of enforced nomadism, it can be vaut le voyage if you eroticize (i.e., anthropologize) the experience. 

Apart from hardship commutes to remote Staten Island, I enjoy the chance to compare and contrast institutions in District 76. My past two assignments at Automotive and Boys and Girls high schools in Brooklyn tested my theory about indiscipline and college un-readiness.  The more I travel the more I see that low achievement correlates highly with prevalence of lewd language and the popularity of pants on the ground.   

Automotive is an educational carwreck like all thirty-three transformation and restart schools. Hyper-segregated (97 percent black and brown) with a 53.6%  graduation rate and .9% college readiness, the school is not a favorite to survive.

The first class I covered during the week before Christmas was a perfect storm of mismanagement leading to a dangerous fistfight. The regular English teacher (and football coach) had been mysteriously suspended and replaced by a long parade of substitutes. Nobody gave me a sub-lesson and the paraprofessional had none either. The twenty or so kids were loud, unruly and unreachable. A young female dean popped in and sternly complained about the noise. The boys addressed her as “Gorgeous.” “I don’t have time for that,” she said in character and left. Soon after, I called her back to extract a wiseguy’s I.D. I mentioned the absence of a lesson. “Turn on the History Channel,” she said, and departed again. Adrift and undistracted, the boys started flinging paperballs. One hit the wrong fellow at the wrong time and fisticuffs ensued to the cheers of the crowd. I nimbly rushed into the corridor to hail security agents who had to club the locked door to enter the room and subdue the gladiators.

Later, I told the new male AP Security that the mayhem might have been avoided with the provision of a lesson plan and some handouts, which is the normal procedure.  “I can’t disagree with you,” he said. Does the Principal know that English chair isn’t giving the kids lessons?” I asked. “The Principal is the English chair,” he replied. Hmm. Not much changed after Christmas. I returned to the class. There was still no lesson, no regular teacher, no learning, no interest from the principal, but no donnybrook either.

Flash forward to 8^th period on January 6, my last class on my last day at Automotive. It was a filthy interlude in a computer room. Again, there was no lesson. About twenty students went online and the mischief took off. I could live with the loud music but not the words and the dirty dancing by the only two girls in the class (Automotive’s’s overall M/F ratio is 9/1 that cannot be good). Before exiting the premises, I wrote a fed up note on the coverage sheet circling 8^th period. I delivered it to the office of first- year Principal and acting English head Caterina Lafergola:

To the Principal:

This class was a disgrace, full of rolling obscenities—like “suck my dick”—via the computers despite two dean visits and AP security. I’ve been here for [9] days. Despite many pleasant encounters, your school discipline is atrocious. Your deans are too friendly which plays into the hands of the students. Regrettably, [Chancellor] Tisch was right about Automotive [when she zapped its chronic dysfunction the Dec. 6 NYT]. I urge you to get serious.

P.S. What kind of school are you running where students feel free to defy teachers and administrators with the grossest language and gestures?

*****

Last week was my second algorithmic go round at Boys and Girls, another near-dead school walking. Hyper-segregated (2% white and Asian) with a 45.7 grad rate and 4.2% college readiness, B & G is also swimming against an F on its 2010-11 Progress Report. (Automotive’s grade was a not so gentlemanly C.)

B & G’s culture, like Automotive’s, seems woebegone. I never met a contented teacher there. Despite the DOE asteroid speeding in its direction, the faculty appeared to be bravely holding on and keeping the place together. On the other hand, I was told that so much STD popped up in a student blood drive that all the donations were rejected. The only fight I witnessed was a screaming clawfest between two girls that left clumps of hair in the corridor.

More memorable was a loutish oral sex debate in a geometry class the day before the final exam. I instantly intervened with the instigator via a lowkey tete-a`-tete in the hallway. He did not get the message and recommenced the maledicta. I called a dean. The boy and his conversational partners were removed. But enough. I decided to write up the three boys and personally hand my incident reports to the AP Security, which I did.

While I had the AP’s attention, I brought up the gap that I noticed between the ubiquity of electronics and pants on the ground and the prominently posted rules forbidding both. I said that the scanning was ineffective and the dress code commanding “no pants worn below the belt or ‘sagging’” was equally so. Enforcing the latter, I suggested,  could swiftly move the culture of the school a few more feet from the street. As I heard a principal once say to a School Leadership Team, “Our students should look like they’re going to college, not to Riker’s.”

The AP listened politely and did not disagree. He said he would look me up before I disappeared on Friday. But he never did. Even so, B &G is the only school I’ve seen with a wall poster protesting male prison swag:

YOU WON’T

GET INTO

COLLEGE

WITH

SAGGING

PANTS PULL

EM UP

We ATRs are unintended field supervisors of the entire system. From now on I’m going to rate my assigned schools and principals on their enforcement of the Chancellor’s Discipline Code, specifically Level 2 B15 against “using profane, obscene, vulgar, lewd, or abusive language or gestures.” There is no Tweed standard re pants on the ground …not yet. A year ago, during an ATR term at Abraham Lincoln High Principal, I asked Principal Ari Hoogenboom why he didn’t outlaw the Riker’s swag, he said: “I have to pick my battles.” I have chosen mine. Please join me in your own way.

To be continued … 

Tom Allon On Corruption, Everywhere

Christine Quinn

 

Letting scandal fester

By TOM ALLON, NY POST

Last Updated:12:14 AM, December 13, 2011

Posted:10:10 PM, December 12, 2011

LINK

City Councilman Larry Seabrook can afford a sigh of relief after the mistrial blocked a corruption conviction. But taxpayers can take no solace, for the abusive waste of “member items” underlying the case was irrefutable.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn should be held accountable; it's high time Mayor Bloomberg and the voters held her feet to the fire for the mismanagement of taxpayer dollars during the last decade.

Full disclosure: I’m a declared candidate for mayor in 2013, and Quinn is generally deemed the early front-runner. But, on this issue, the facts speak for themselves.

You see, the Seabrook scandal wasn’t an isolated action but part of a persistent pattern. The responsibility for deterring corruption in the City Council lies with Quinn, who has failed to hold her members accountable.

In April 2008, the putrid swamp of slush funds touched the speaker herself. Her office apportioned millions of member-item dollars for what The Post called “bogus” or “phantom” grant groups, so the speaker could ladle out the member-item gravy later, at more propitious political moments. Moreover, the speaker benefited from this trickery: The Post reported then that about a quarter of the mystery funds went to Quinn’s own district in Manhattan.

In June of 2009, it was revealed that Councilwoman Carmen Arroyo directed member-item dollars to a charter school headed by her nephew, who was forced to resign after being charged with embezzlement. The next month, Councilman Miguel Martinez resigned and pleaded guilty, admitting to stealing more than $100,000 that he had directed to a not-for-profit he controlled. More than half of those pilfered funds were member-item funds. Only after all that did the Seabrook case come to light.

A principled speaker would have connected these dots and moved decisively to close the doors for such abuses. But Quinn has instead preferred to go along to get along.

She keeps a breathless schedule of thinly veiled campaign stops, using her colleagues as validating props, rather than putting protections in place to protect taxpayers from her members’ avarice.

What could she have done differently?

First, set up an independent system to review the quality of member-item proposals. Independent eyes should provide a thumbs-up on substance before a project is funded.

Second, institute a system where no member item gets funded without a signed statement from the sponsoring member of the City Council. That statement would attest that the member (and also his or her family and staff) has no business relationship with and has received no money (even indirectly) from the entity receiving the member item.

Had this provision been in place, Arroyo and Seabrook’s actions would have beenper seviolations of City Council rules. This reform should be augmented by a state law, treating a violation as a felony.

Third, announce that no member items will be funded until both those reforms are enacted. Cutting off the slush-fund spigot would get her members’ attention.

In fact, if Quinn were serious about protecting taxpayers, she could put all three measures in place now.

Why does it matter? One, Quinn is a likely candidate for mayor, and this sordid litany of member-item abuses came on her watch. Is this how a Mayor Quinn would manage economic development dollars?

Two, our city can’t afford to waste any public dollars. We must cut the fat out of the budget so that we can invest in what we truly need, from effective schools to efficient mass transit.

The scandal over member items isn’t about any single member; it goes to the heart of how the City Council operates. It’s high time that Speaker Quinn did her job.

Tom Allon, president/CEO of Manhattan Media, is a candidate for mayor in 2013.

SCOTUS For Law Students: Student Speech and The Internet

        

SCOTUS for law students: Student speech and the Internet (sponsored by Bloomberg Law)
LINK

Few things are more challenging for the Supreme Court than applying old rules to new technology. The question of whether and under what circumstances public schools may punish Internet communications by students outside of school may soon present that challenge to the Justices.

At their private Conference on January 13, the Justices will consider whether to review two cases pitting student free speech claims against the authority of public school administrators to maintain order and discipline for a safe learning environment; the Court could announce whether it will hear the cases as soon as that afternoon.

For law students, the issues are important in classes on education law, First Amendment, perhaps cyberspace law and juvenile law, and courses studying the inner workings of the Supreme Court – especially those that study the role that conflicting rulings among the federal appeals courts play for the Justices.

If the Justices agree to take up the issue, the outcome will be important not only for school administrators, parents, and students, but also for those practicing education law and, perhaps more broadly, for free speech analysis under the First Amendment.

A decision by the Justices not to grant review, however, may demonstrate that the Justices have passed in light of the difficulty of determining when different federal appeals courts are actually in conflict over an issue. More on this point later.

One factor that may influence the Court’s choice of whether to hear the appeals is that the Justices do not seem fond of cases involving new technology. Just last June, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, Justice Scalia noted the “challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-advancing technology,” as the Court struck down a California law restricting sale of violent video games to minors. And from time to time, some Justices have appeared to wrestle during oral argument with understanding the mechanics of different technologies.

The two petitions in fact involve three cases. In one petition,Blue Mountain School District v. J.S., school officials are seeking review of two different decisions issued by the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In the first decision, the Third Circuit ruled, by a vote of eight to six, that a middle school in the district improperly suspended an eighth grader for ten days for creating a fake MySpace profile of the principal. The profile – which included profanity and a vulgar message purportedly from the principal – was created on her home computer on the weekend and used a fictional name for the principal but displayed a real photograph of him.

The same petition is also an appeal in the case of Hermitage School District v. Layshock, in which a senior at a Pennsylvania high school was suspended for similar conduct. Using his grandmother’s computer, outside of school, the student created a fictitious profile of the high school principal on MySpace, posting a real photograph and describing the principal in insulting ways and as engaged in a substantial amount of drinking and drugs. The Third Circuit ruled that the school violated the student’s free speech rights.

In the other petition, Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, a West Virginia high school student asks the Court to review a decision by the Fourth Circuit upholding her suspension for creating a discussion group on MySpace where students posted comments suggesting that a classmate had herpes. The discussion group was created from the student’s home computer after school hours.

The legal issue in all three cases turns on the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In that case, the Court ruled that students had a right to free speech in school, such that school officials could not interfere with student expression unless “it is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline.” In Tinker, the Justices found that there was no disruption from a small group of students wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

Fast forward forty years to a new world in which students communicate instantly with methods that did not exist when Tinker was decided — tweets, instant messages, YouTube videos, and social media Internet pages. Add to this mix growing societal concern over bullying; while the problem has existed as long as there have been schools, the impact is more immediate and more potent when the message may be disseminated quickly and widely through the Internet or other electronic means.

What sets the new cases apart from Tinker is that the communication took place outside of school. Should a school be able to discipline a student for communication that took place in the student’s home on the student’s own time? And if so, what legal standard should apply? So far, lower federal courts have wrestled with how to apply the Tinker standard to out-of-school speech. The result is that some student discipline has been upheld, while other punishments have been overturned.

But is this a conflict among the federal appeals courts? Or have the federal courts simply differed on the case-by-case factual question of when out-of-school speech threatens to disrupt, or actually disrupts, school functions? The answer to these questions is critical to whether the Supreme Court may decide to hear the cases. Petitions that present a genuine conflict on the meaning of the law among federal appeals courts are a high priority for review by the Supreme Court: after all, it is the only court that can resolve these conflicts, thereby eliminating the problems that can arise when laws are interpreted inconsistently in different parts of the country. For this reason, however, many petitions assert the existence of a circuit conflict, even when the disagreement among the lower courts is not so obvious or direct. The Justices – and their law clerks who screen the petitions – must therefore ascertain whether a conflict is sufficiently direct and significant to warrant the Court’s scheduling of oral argument to resolve it.

In the Kowalski case, the Fourth Circuit used the Tinker standard but found that the MySpace discussion group did disrupt school functions. By contrast, although the Third Circuit also applied the Tinker standard in both the Layshock and J.S. cases, it found that there was no school disruption attributable to the student speech.

These outcomes seem to turn on each court’s perception of the facts of the case. But in their petition seeking review of the Third Circuit rulings, the school districts assert that there is a deep division in lower federal courts over whether Tinker is the correct standard for out-of-school speech, and – if so – how it should apply.

A second Supreme Court ruling is also implicated in some of the off-campus speech cases, and the federal courts have wrestled with the application of that decision in much the same way. In Bethel School District v. Fraser, the Justices ruled that school officials could punish speech in school that was vulgar or lewd and inappropriate for the age of students who were listening. Bethel poses the same problem as Tinker: how does it apply to out-of-school speech that is vulgar? Lower courts have come to different conclusions on that question as well.

Even if the differences among the student speech cases are somewhat factual in nature, federal courts and school officials are struggling with these issues and might welcome clarification from the Supreme Court. Circuit conflict or not, sometimes the Supreme Court is the only place to go for clarity on an issue that has enormous practical impact, such as in the day-to-day operations of public schools.

Posted in Blue Mountain School District. v. J.S., Featured, SCOTUS for law students

Recommended Citation: Stephen Wermiel, SCOTUS for law students: Student speech and the Internet (sponsored by Bloomberg Law), SCOTUSblog (Jan. 7, 2012, 4:01 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/01/scotus-for-law-students-student-speech-and-the-internet-sponsored-by-bloomberg-law/

Actor Matt Damon and His Mother Reject the Friend of Education Award

Matt Damon with his mother, Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, in 2007 after he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Matt Damon and Mother Reject Union's Award

Jan. 5, 2012, 11:25 a.m.

By ANNA M. PHILLIPS, School Book

LINK

7:19 p.m. | Updated The actor Matt Damon and his mother, a professor of education, on Wednesday turned down the opportunity for an award from the country’s largest teachers union after reading an opinion article that the union’s president had co-authored with the founder of Teach for America.

Writing that she was “confused by your collaboration” with Teach for America, Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige said she and her son, Mr. Damon, no longer desired to be nominated for the National Education Association’s Friend of Education Award.

In the opinion piece that Dr. Carlsson-Paige referred to, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the N.E.A., and Wendy Kopp, founder of T.F.A., urged the importance of evaluating and improving teacher training programs across the country. Yet in her e-mail to Mr. Van Roekel, Dr. Carlsson-Paige said she finds this message somewhat disingenuous on the part of T.F.A.

“I am very familiar with TFA and believe that its short-term, minimal training of teachers undermines teacher quality and harms children who too often get an inadequate education with its teachers,” the e-mail states.

Already a celebrity in the entertainment arena, Mr. Damon became one in the education world during a rally in Washington last July, where he publicly opposed the emphasis on standardized testing in public schools and the pressure educators are under to teach to those tests.

“This has been a horrible decade for teachers,” he told the crowd, according to a report by the Washington Post. “The next time you feel down or exhausted . . . please know there are millions of people behind you.”

Dr. Carlsson-Paige is an education teacher at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and founded the university’s Center for Peaceable Schools and Communities, and focuses on the impact of violence on children.

On Thursday, Mr. Van Roekel issued a written response to Dr. Carlsson-Paige’s letter, saying:

“I respect Matt Damon and thank him for his support of public education.”

“I believe NEA should talk to those who support public education, even if we don’t agree on everything, and work together to serve students.

Wendy Kopp and I agree that students will benefit from stronger
recruiting and teacher preparation.

“NEA isn’t going to quit fighting for students and our members, or for stronger teacher preparation. In fact, better teacher preparation is part of our 3-point plan on Leading the Profession that was released last month.”

Dr. Carlsson-Paige’s letter:

From: Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 20:03:02 -0500
To: Dennis Van Roekel, Paul Toner
Subject: Friend of Education
January 4, 2012

Dear Mr. Van Roekel,

You wrote a lovely letter of appreciation last August to my son Matt Damon after he stood with teachers at the Save Our Schools rally. I was so happy to read your letter and forward it on to Matt.

In October, Paul Toner, President of the MTA, asked if Matt and I would accept the nomination for the Friend of Education Award to be given by the NEA in July, 2012. After some discussion and deliberation, Matt and I decided we would accept the nomination if it became a reality.

Recently, I read the opinion piece you wrote with Wendy Kopp in USA Today and was upset and confused by your collaboration with Teach for America. I am a life long teacher educator. I believe that one of the first things we must do to improve our nation’s schools is to extend, strengthen, and support teacher preparation. I am very familiar with TFA and believe that its short-term, minimal training of teachers undermines teacher quality and harms children who too often get an inadequate education with its teachers.

In your letter to Matt in August, you wrote about a first-grade teacher who was retiring because she wouldn’t teach to a script. You said that teaching to the test strips teachers of their professionalism. Yet it is the best-trained, most knowledgeable teachers who can offer the most meaningful, excellent education in this test-driven climate. It’s the under-prepared teachers who are most often teaching to tests and using scripts because they don’t have the knowledge base to do otherwise.

I have decided that because of your collaboration with TFA, it would not be wise for me or for Matt to be nominated for the Friend of Education Award. I regret this turn of events.

Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Professor Emerita
Lesley University

Anna M. Phillips is a member of the SchoolBook staff. Follow her on Twitter @annamphillips.

Principals From Hell: Reginald Landeau, MS 216, and His Reign of Terror

Principal Reginald Landeau didn’t turn off his unauthorized hot plate and burned down his office

Queens principal burns office, staff

MS 216’s Reginald Landeau — ‘the worst’ — ignores contract and rules by fear

BY MICHAEL HIRSCH | PUBLISHED MARCH 10, 2011

LINK

Parents attending open school night at MS 216 in Fresh Meadows, Queens, on Feb. 17 got a primer on their school’s principal, whom the teachers call “insufferable” and “vindictive.”
That evening, chapter leaders from other schools in District 26 and several of the school’s embattled staff — despite fears of reprisals — joined District Representative Mary Vaccaro in leafleting parents with fliers containing home truths about Principal Reginald Landeau Jr.

Parents read in the flier about the school’s failure to provide state-mandated special education services, the lack of safety, the “decline of a well-rounded education,” and poor staff morale.
“We can’t do our jobs or serve your children with this principal in charge,” one teacher told a parent of a 7th-grader.

District 26 chapter leaders armed with leaflets detailing the failings of the MS 216 principal wait for parents to arrive on open school night.

The following day, Landeau put letters in two teachers’ files. Staffers call it payback for the leafleting.
“It’s a constant struggle to get him to respect us and our contract and how children should be treated,” said Chapter Leader Rachel Montagano, an 8th-grade social studies teacher.

Because of the threat of retaliation from Landeau, no other MS 216 staffer is identified in this article.
Landeau (pronounced land-OH), an alumnus of the first Leadership Academy graduating class, has ruled the school for seven years.

An Educational Leadership magazine article about him claimed that “his first order of business was to systematically restructure the school in a way that benefited everyone.”

UFT District 26 Representative Mary Vaccaro tells a parent about the staff’s issues with Principal Landeau.

“Whoever wrote that never visited this school,” one veteran teacher said.
The staffers question Landeau’s sense of student needs and priorities. Even as he was dismantling the school’s reading and Academic Intervention Services programs, he brought in a dance program. As one staffer darkly put it, “students may struggle with reading or math, but they will be dancing their way to a jobless future.”

The school of some 1,300 is served by only two guidance counselors after a third retired and was not replaced, another staffer complained.

After a 30-year special education teacher was given an unusually unruly group of students, Landeau blamed her for being incapable of controlling her class. As punishment, the teacher said, Landeau removed her smartboard. “But it was the smartboard that was helpful in motivating the children,” she said.

Staffers paint a picture of a school leader who takes no responsibility for his actions.
During the 2009-2010 school year, several staff members reported, Landeau neglected to turn off a hot plate — itself unauthorized — in his inner office, which sparked a fire that left the room charred and unusable. Landeau soon redecorated and refurbished the inner office at school expense, including, as one staff member attested, “repainting it over the course of six months at least three times to get the color ‘just right.’”

Meanwhile the main office, which sustained smoke damage, was never cleaned or repaired, staff said. The office staff was left exposed to fumes from the fire’s residue as well as sweltering heat because the air conditioners,  damaged by the smoke, were not replaced.

Staffers said Landeau never formally advised parents or staff of the incident.
Landeau is also no fan of the UFT. “At every opportunity, he will bash the union and violate the teachers’ contract,” one staffer said.

After losing a past grievance in which he maintained that teachers were required to attend common planning meetings during their preparation period, he returned to the proscribed practice this year once the arbitrator’s jurisdiction had expired, District Representative Vaccaro said.

Montagano, the chapter leader, said Landeau had postings for per-session positions hand-delivered to certain selected teachers in disregard of the contract.

 “Consultation team meetings go unattended, because nobody will sit down with him,” Vaccaro said. “Why? Because they’re afraid.”

The school generates the district’s highest number of U-ratings, based on what one teacher called “incessant walk-through observations,” though teachers say they do not receive quality professional development.

Meanwhile, every parent interviewed by the New York Teacher at open school night praised the teachers and blamed the administration for what they thought was an insufficiently rigorous curriculum and for being, as one called it, “remote.”

Miguel Carrasco, the uncle of a 6th-grader, said, “I don’t think Landeau knows how to — or wants to — do outreach.”

Among those leafleting outside the school that evening was Susan Singer, chapter leader and kindergarten teacher at PS 162.

Happy enough with her own long-serving principal, Singer worries that when her principal retires, “we’re terrified we’ll get someone as terrible as Reggie. He’s the worst, most abusive principal in the district. We hear it all the time. No other principal in northern Queens gets that level of criticism.”