WHY SCRAP THE SAT?

Following is a copy of a letter to the editor sent to The New York Times.

To the editor:
Re: COLLEGE PANEL URGES SHIFT AWAY FROM SATs (September 22, page 14.)

The SAT is the only true honest barometer of the academic ability of every student. It is the great equalizer. Grade averages and Regents scores are no meaningful indication of a student's ability to do liberal arts work. Here at Brooklyn Technical High School a student with a seventy-five average could easily have a ninety-eight average at an education milieu such as Boys and Girls High School or Erasmus High School. However, if the Tech student scores 2100 on the SAT while his counterpart at Boys and Girls achieves a 1400, a more valid assessment of their respective abilities can be ascertained.

When I taught at Hillcrest High School in the 1980's I had A students who routinely scored below 1000 (out of a 1600 maximum) on the SATs. In far too many schools youngsters can attain 90 averages just by showing up for class or staying out of jail.

SATs are also the only exams to be accurately marked and fairly graded, as they are not graded in house. Here in New York, the Regents examinations (which are routinely dumbed down every year) are graded in house, which results in massive cheating and scrubbing. With teachers and administrators receiving monetary bonuses (and performance evaluations) based on high scores, grade manipulation and tampering are epidemic and out of control

CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS APPEAR IN D.C.

Now that Klein-Bloomberg have brought conditional cash transfers to NYC, Chancellor Michelle Rhee has set them up in D.C. Capital students will now be paid $100 monthly for good test scores and behavior. Money will be doled out to students who perform such amazing feats as showing up in class each day, arriving at school on time or sitting still during class. Hey; isn’t this what normal average students who supposed to do anyway? Will we soon pay students to each lunch, play in the school-yard, brush their teeth or practice personal hygiene?

Rhee defended the monetary give-away as merely giving inner city students the same equal opportunities as their suburban counterparts. “Kids in richer communities who achieve high grades are rewarded with cars, trips and money.” Gee; most families I have seen over the years just expect their children to attend school daily and perform well. Here in NYC the cash for grades programs have not exactly proved to be a rousing success. When our high school students were paid last year to take advanced placement exams , the failure rate actually increased.

Rhee will now attempt to emulate our failures in D.C.

D.C. COMES CLOSER TO ENDING TENURE

As I have previously reported, D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee is aggressively moving to end tenure and bust the teachers’ union by awarding humongous salary increases and bonuses to employees willing to forego tenure. The August 14th Washington Post reports that the union is almost evenly split, with all the younger teachers enthusiastically embracing tenure’s demise, while the older teachers wish to retain job security. The younger teachers who want bonuses are even planning to picket the offices of the teachers’ union in an amazing march of the scabs, demanding right to work laws for educators. A thirty-four year veteran educator remarked, “Rhee wants to purge older teachers and that for instructors to sell out hard-won protections against arbitrary or unfair dismissal is unthinkable.”

Naïve youngsters are willing to sell their souls in pursuit of the almighty dollar. A second year novice said “she would have no problem with a system in which her pay and her job was tied to her students’ academic growth.” Another genius said, “I’m secure with my teaching practices and my pedagogy. I know that if the growth of my students was questioned, I feel I would have enough data and anecdotal data to back it up. Why is it that veterans are against rewarding teachers for improved test scores?” Even a thirteen year veteran said she agrees with Rhee’s objectives. “All of us know there needs to be a weeding out. She has the right idea to aggressively get new blood.” Yes, we just need a revolving door of warm bodies staffing our classrooms. The anti-unionists are often Teach for America missionaries who are brainwashed into believing that they will succeed where older teachers have failed. Even in college, education majors are often told that it is their destiny to save inner city school systems from collapse. (La Forza Del Destino.)

Older teachers have the option of opting out of tenure and taking bonuses designed to bring salaries up to $130,000, almost the highest in the nation. Under Rhee’s latest proposal, newcomers will automatically not have tenure; which does not seem to bother the new recruits. The rookies just want to take the money and run as many of them only see taking this job for a year or two. Other novices feel that if they are fired, so what. They can just find another job in another field. Rhee herself commented in June of 2007 that we should look at teaching as a field where people will only stay a few years before moving on. We should not view education as a life-long career.

The right to work educators are oblivious to the fact that the goings on in schools defy logic and common sense, with most administrators functioning as political hacks who care very little about real learning. These dedicated kids really believe that principals wear halos over their heads and take vows of chastity. They are merely the grunts for the chancellor’s hidden agenda of busting the union while ridding the system of higher paid educators.

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SCABBING OUR SCHOOLS

The Washington Post Magazine, on Sunday, August, 3rd, ran a cover story, Outsourcing Our Schools, showing a glamorous photo of the smiling face of a Filipino teacher in Prince George’s County. The blurb accompanying the portrait read, “Desperate for qualified teachers, Prince George’s County has imported hundreds from the Philippines. It’s good for the country’s students, but what about the teachers’ own children,” What follows is a letter to the editor I sent to The Washington Post.

As a dedicated veteran teacher of forty years in the New York City school system I was very upset by the cover story of the August 3rd Washington Post Magazine glorifying modern day scabbing of the suburban schools. It's a sad commentary on our education system that we are outsourcing the education of our students to foreign workers willing to work for lower salaries than American teachers. The propaganda article glamorizes the hard work and dedication of non-citizen Filipinos who are dazzled by salaries that are high by labor standards in Manila. We are made to sympathize and empathize with the teacher whose smiling portrait graces the cover as she valiantly struggles to support a husband and three children back in the Philippines.

Why are not American teachers being employed in these schools systems? There are hundreds of thousands of hard-working, dedicated professionals across the country who would be able and willing to successfully teach in Prince George's County. If the pay and working conditions in the schools were improved, American college graduates would be lining up for these jobs. School systems need only employ qualified pro-teacher principals and administrators who are willing to help teachers deal with difficult students, rather than harass them, work against them and attempt to drive them out of the system before they gain tenure.

There are plenty of professional educators in this country who have families to support and who would make superb teachers. The goal of school systems should not involve importing cheap foreign labor into our classrooms in an effort to depress wages and bust unions.

The Post Magazine cover proudly proclaims, "It's good for the county's students." Who would you want in front of the classroom instilling knowledge and the values of citizenship to your children: a highly qualified American educator or a foreigner with little knowledge of our nation's deep heritage, culture, history and civic values. The history of the Philippines has unfortunately never been associated with the growth of democracy and civil liberties.

Postscript: I would like to note that NYC emulated this feat in the early 1990’s by bringing in cheap labor from Manila, as well as from Trinidad, Austria and Eastern Europe. UFT President Sandra Feldman boasted about helping these replacement workers find housing in NYC. I always wondered why she never questioned why the Board of Education could not raise salaries and improve working conditions, so as to attract educators from the metropolitan area. After all, in our better paying suburbs they have no need to import cheap labor from abroad. In her infinite wisdom our own leader was helping to scab our schools. However, the influx from abroad was a total failure as the novices were unable to control their classes and could not afford the high cost of living in NYC. (I always wondered if the Filipino contingent was nicknamed “the Manila folders.”)

YEARS TWO, THREE AND FOUR IN THE UNILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY OF HILLCREST HIGH SCHOOL

This chapter of my autobiography TEACHING IS HELL takes place thirty-six years ago, when I was starting my fourth year in the NYC school system.


The brand new innovative Hillcrest High School, the John Dewey High of Queens, began its second year of operations in 1972, with students in grades nine, ten and eleven. Since this was our first year with an eleventh grade, it was now time to think up new innovative courses for the juniors. Despite the fact that the kids needed a good solid year of American History, the wrappers and crappers were at it again conjuring up new Land of Oz courses. A teacher who had flunked out of law school decided that what we needed was a law program, which he could of course teach. Since he had an entire year of law school before flunking out he was now the law maven of the department. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. People who went nowhere in private industry, the legal profession, the medical field and so forth were now the kings of the shit pile.

We had a new chairman in the highly knowledegable Gerson Antell, author of the economics textbook used through-out the city. In the early 70's there were still some decent tenured old line chairmen who actually helped you out. Antell was a realist who referred to the school as a Potemkin Village.

The Russian History class was a tremendous success during the first cycle, with the kids really mesmerized by the idiosyncrasies of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. The trivia was also a big hit. Word spread amongst the more academic kids that this was the course to take. In cycle two when I started teaching four more Russian classes the kids came in on the first day yelling Rasputin, Ivan the Terrible or “the state swells while the people shrink.” The latter was a famous quote by the great Russian historian Klyuchevsky that was a theme of the class.

I had the privilege of supervising two student teachers during the year, one in the fall and another in the spring. In fact I had eight more in the next four years. In those days the student teachers went from room to room observing all the members of the staff giving lessons. They then selected which teacher they wanted for their cooperating teacher. I was always selected, and received many free graduate courses at Queens College for taking them on.

I also started a Hillcrest tradition of having a yearly trivia contest in the library. Working with Marian Pellman the librarian, a team of teachers played a team of students in a trivia match. This became an annual popular event and attracted quite and audience. The teachers always won, however.

In the spring of 1972 I decided to set up a new course for the fall, entitled Civil War. This was really a basic course in American History from the sectionalism in the Jacksonian Era to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Even though the War Between the States would be emphasized I designed the syllabus to provide the students with some down to earth knowledge of U.S. history from 1828 to 1877. I was disgusted with the fact that kids were receiving no background in American Studies as they were opting for such eleventh grade electives as Youth and the Law or Criminology. I went around to many social studies classes, plugging the new elective and telling the kids to sign up for it. I even gave them a flyer with such provocative questions as, "On which Civil War battlefield were more Americans killed in one day than in en entire year of the Vietnam War? Which member of Lincoln's cabinet may have plotted his assassination? Which Civil War general first came up with the term “hooker” to denote women of the evening? What was the last line of the movie Gone With The Wind?" When all was said and done 300 kids signed up for the class.

One of Gus Antell’s policy changes in the second was the setting up of remedial classes for students reading well below grade level. This was the first time that homogenous grouping replaced heterogenous classes. It was probably a sound policy as the brighter kids could study more advanced topics and critique more difficult documents and historiography. However, from a teaching point of view when you had a remedial class you were apt to have the class from hell. I remember in the spring of 1972 teaching a remedial version of a class entitled Nationalism and Colonialism. Many of the kids in the class had been suspended one or more times in their illustrious academic careers and now comprised a negative version of Its Academic. As I have pointed out previously, there were no video tapes or dvds to in those days to help you survive this academic nightmare. To deal with these students teachers of remedial classes were issued class sets of workbooks by an educator named Jack Abromowitz that were many years old and looked like rejects from a 1950's elementary school. The kids had to read boring passages and answer very juvenile fill-in and multiple choice questions. We still had modular programming in the early 70's and when you had an unmotivated audience for nearly an hour it was the longest hour of your life.

Needless to say the academic discourse in the daily lessons was not on a very high level. The class was unlikely to be engaged in a discourse on why did Otto Von Bismark refer to Italy as a geographic expression. One incident that manifested the scholarly aspect of the course occurred on a day when the biology department conducted a plant sale, which saw many of the kids purchasing small plants earlier in the day. In the middle of the lesson an honors student named Lorraine Dash started screaming at the top of her lungs, "My plant is dying. My plant is dying." She then ran out the room with the plant in order to water it, which undoubtedly saved the flower from an untimely demise.

In the fall of 1973 I taught four sections of Civil War for the first time and the course was a tremendous success. The students really received an in depth knowledge of the Civil War era. Tons of work went into the preparations for the class in the pre-Xerox days as I spent numerous hours typing up countless rexographed stencils. I gave the kids excerpts from Mary Eastman’s book Aunt Phillis's Cabin, which was the Southern response to Uncle Tom's Cabin. There was an overview of historiography on slavery and the causes of the Civil War where we analyzed the viewpoints of such eminent historians as John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Stampp, David Donald, Ulrich B. Phillips, Allan Nevins and Bruce Catton. We analyzed actual battles and military strategy, a vital element of history that was never a part of any curriculum. What were the basic military goals of such illustrious leaders as Lee, Grandt, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Joe Johnson, Sherman and Sheridan.. What were the types of warfare, some utilized for the first time in history, employed in the Civil War: trench warfare, the siege, ironclad battles, blockades, total warfare involving civilian populations, scorched earth policies, and so forth. We looked at the actual battle tactics and flank movement on the battlefield of such well known engagements as Bull Run, the Peninsular Campaign, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Spotsvylvania Court House, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Sherman's March to the Sea and Petersburg. How can one really understand military strategy in World War I, World War II and even Iraq without examining the classic battle of the Civil War. We even examined Lincoln's suspension of the writs of habeas corpus in certain areas of the country where loyalty to the U.S. government was dubious at best (which certainly is relevant today in light of George Bush's rendition policies). We finished up the course with a hard look at the Era of Reconstruction, a term which a chairman named Al Weiner later told me was improper to use. Every Friday was also trivia and nostalgia day, which really added to the fun of the class. Who was the first actor to play Superman? Which movie ended with the line, "Louis this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship?"

Naturally I received some criticism from other teachers for running the course. "You took some of our best kids for your classes." This common refrain overlooked the fact that
many of these kids would have learned nothing in some of the dumbed down classes running at the time. Would they have gained more cultural literacy out of The Future or The History of rock Music. One highly respected veteran educator complained, "Why do I always see kids walking around the school with books about Civil War battles?' Gee. I wonder why? The whole purpose of the course was to turn them on to Civil War battles as many of them wrote reports on them. That's really terrible to see kids reading classic historical literature such as Andersonville by McKinley Kantor. Better they should walk around with comic books.

In 1974 and 1975, years IV and V at Hillcrest, hundreds of kids took the course as an elective after fulfilling their three and a half years of required social studies courses. (Today kids must take a full four years of social, while but back then it was seven semesters.) This meant that each year there were at least 170 kids taking Civil War who would be taking no social studies classes at all. If 170 less kids took social, one teacher in the department would be excessed out of the building, as 170 kids would equal five classes and one teaching position. Instead of complaining about the class, the other teachers should have thanked me for keeping an extra person employed in the department.

By 1975 the composition of the school was changing dramatically. We were receiving more students from feeder schools in South Jamaica and less from Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. There were more remedial kids and less academic kids. The cafeterias and halls were totally out of control.

On a November afternoon in 1974 I had an interesting confrontation with an honor student named Andrew Young. The identity of the pupil was always easy to remember since it was the same name as Jimmy Carter's United Nations ambassador who later became mayor of Atlanta. He had failed the previous term because of attendance and lateness problems. In those days you could still fail a student for not showing up, whereas today you cannot. As you will see later in the book a student can be absent the entire term and still earn a passing mark, or even a high grade. I'm sure that in the job world, which we are preparing youngsters to enter, a young man or women can stay out as much as they desire.

I was sitting in my empty classroom (room 410) at the end of the day marking exams, when Andrew and two of his buddies walked in. Andrew pleaded with me to change his failing grade to a 65, but I refused all his entreaties. As you will see throughout the book I was one of the few teachers who maintained standards and stuck to their grades. He then took out a gun, pointed it at me and asked if I would reconsider. Now I am an immovable block who never knuckles under to students. Believe it or not, I did not feel at all intimidated, panicky or unnerved. I just said to him very calmly, "Andrew, I issued you a grade and it's not going to be changed." Andrew then put the gun back in his pocket and began laughing, with his two friends joining him in their perverted version of amusement. They three then walked out of the room laughing.

Throughout my career I have never backed down or tried to avoid a confrontation with a kid. I could not have survived for thirty-five years in inner city schools if I gave in to the kids. You have to show them that you are not intimidated by them in any way. Over the years I have been assaulted numerous times and endured countless death threats without ever blinking an eyelash. To give just one example, in August, 2004 I was proctoring a Regents exam at Flushing when I spotted I kid cheating and called him on it. He told me that in September he would come down to the library and confront me. I told him, "Fine. You know where to find me. I look forward to it."

Getting back to Mr. Young, I had him arrested by the police. Principal Salmon also gave the student what was called a Superintendent's Suspension, where he was permanently banned from the school. For some reason they never arrested his two confederates however. The gun turned out to be fake. Since he was still under sixteen the case was remanded to the Family Court in Jamaica. At the courthouse he was given two lawyers from the Legal Aid Society. I had to attend three or four court appearances over the years, which were very degrading and humiliating experiences. Young, with the help of his lawyers, claimed that he had not threatened me in any way, but was merely at that moment taking out the gun to show to his friends. This is a very common argument that every kid uses who is picked up on a weapons charge. I have seen numerous articles in the Daily News and the Post over the years about juveniles picked up with guns and knives. In each case they invariably say that they were merely showing the weapon to a friend, or took the gun to school to exhibit,

The lawyers also continually joked about the fact that it was a toy gun and not a real firearm. If he had taken out this fake gun in front of a policeman would he still be alive now? Are we all expert members of the NRA who can differentiate phony pistols from real revolvers? His father continually came to chat with me in the waiting area outside the courtroom, attempting to become very friendly. He and the lawyers kept telling me that it was just a foolish thing done by an immature youngster who had no idea of the seriousness of his act. They attempted to convince me to drop the charges and give Andrew another chance. They also made it sound very plausible, even to Andrew, that the judge would easily understand that he took the gun out to show to his friends, resulting in an instant acquittal.

Finally after a year’s delay a judge was ready to hear the case in court. About five minutes before court appearance time, Andrew's two lawyers suddenly told him to drop the idea of telling the judge he was just showing the pistol to his friends. (The whole argument, as I always surmised, was merely a con job on the part of the lawyers to persuade me to drop the charges.) They instructed the kid to tell the judge he had just acted foolishly without realizing the gravity of his actions. In the courtroom the Judge inquired about his academic career since departing the hallowed halls of Hillcrest. It came out in court that within days of expulsion from Hillcrest he was placed in Forest Hills High School, one of the best in the city; where he was maintaining a passing average. Since he apparently underwent a metamorphosis and rehabilitated himself at Forest Hills the judge felt no need to waste a space on him in jail or a juvenile home. He was completely exonerated and the records were sealed so that no future school or employer need ever know about his criminal past.

So Andrew was rewarded for his felonious little plans. Instead of continuing at a school in decline, he was now ensconced in one of the best educational edifices in the city. The incident illustrates how our city educational system functions. Students who commit criminal acts are not incarcerated or even expelled, but merely placed in another school. The powers that be do not want to psychologically harm or stigmatize the innocent youth in any way that might hamper or endanger his academic career. The superintendent's suspension process is really a game whereby a felon at Hillcrest heads for a new home and in turn Hillcrest gets a criminal in training from another school. I wouldn't be surprised if principals traded problem kids the way baseball teams swap players. "I'll trade you one arsonist for two assaulters, a student to be named later and a third round draft pick.

Kids quickly learn through the grapevine that they will merely incur a slap on the wrist when crimes are committed on educational property. I don't believe in isolated incidents. A youngster who assaults a teacher has usually emulated this action before, and knows he has a permanent Get Out of Jail Free card. Years ago there were milieus such as 600 schools and wildcat academies for out of control delinquents, but these have gone the way of the Model T Ford. It is now considered too psychologically stigmatizing to send miscreants away to special milieus. Today we even have in house suspension, whereby a student who assaults a teacher is not even expelled from his school for one day. Instead he sits in a room in his school for three days, ostensibly keeping up with his class studies, after which he is returned to his regular classes and buddies. In many cases he is returned to the same class presided over by the teacher he attacked. He often returns to class with the sound of cheers and accolades from his peers.

COMPULSORARY NON-ATTENDANCE: OR PAYS TO CUT

This may sound like a cliche, but schools were at one time supposed to nurture and encourage positive values about work, ethics and morality to aid students in finding and keeping gainful employment. If a high school graduate cannot successfully navigate the intricacies of attaining and maintaining a position in the job world he or she will either spend their lives on the dole or turn to criminal activities to support themselves. For every individual who fails to assimilate into the work world the taxpayers will have to spend millions in welfare, incarceration expenses, court costs, drug rehabilitation and medical expenses. Moreover, the burdens of society multiply in Malthusian progressions when these failures have children of their own.

Yet the schools instill youngsters with negative values that if translated into the job world will result in termination and unemployment. One major example of this trend is the encouragement of non-attendance in class. Now it would seem simple and basic to most reasonable people that arriving in school daily and on time are basic tenets of positive values for education and work,. Certainly this was the case when I began teaching in 1969. At Bayside High School in 1970 (in the pre-computer era) the attendance office spent a great deal of time, effort and funds preparing what were dubbed Mandatory Failure Lists at the end of each and every marking period. (Today with computer spreadsheets the same task could be performed in minutes.)

Any student who cut class even once during the marking period had their name proscribed on the list; and the principal instructed teachers that they must fail these students. It was a great policy as students killed themselves to show up in class, lest they fail the marking period. It also backed the teachers up, as students could not argue and debate teachers if their names cropped up on this non-honor roll. Bayside High had a cutting office and a cutting coordinator to investigate and verify that students were truant before being proscribed. There was also a list of kids to be failed for being absent too many days during the marking period. The system also backed up and rewarded positive behavior, as the students who meticulously came to classes every day were the beneficiaries of these policies
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When Hillcrest High School opened in 1971 we had similar policies, whereby if you missed a certain number of classes you failed automatically for the cycle. Around 1980 the Board of Education issued a fatwa that prohibited mandatory failures and forbid teachers from using attendance as a criteria in grading. (For teachers it was the equivalent of a soldier going into battle without a gun. Your leverage and authority over the students was cut out from under you. The standards were now that there were no standards. One of the rationales for the change in policy was the conundrum of why should a failing truant ever return to class if he knows he has no chance of passing. Simultaneously teachers were placed under a gag rule whereby they could never tell a student that he is failing. Even if a student had a zero average and started three fires in the room you must hold out hope that he can pass. Once again the students who played by and obeyed the rules were slapped in the face so that the lowest students at the bottom could be rewarded. To pour salt onto the wounds, the cutting office and cutting coordinator were eliminated, sending the message that absence from class was fine.

As a veteran teacher I creatively managed to work around this nonsense by giving lots of quizzes in class and not giving make-up tests. I carefully never told kids they were failing, but I always reminded them the odds of passing were greater than being struck by lightning. However, many of the younger teachers slit the throats of the veterans by passing any warm body. In fairness to them they were under pressure from the principal to pass anyone who breathed. However, by giving the kids a free pass the principal and the chairman always demanded to know, "Why is Mr. Smith’s passing percentage so much greater than yours?"

AS I mention in other portions of my narrative the administration creatively thought up policies under the rubric of REDEMPTION, that permitted kids to pass while never attending class. At the end of the term any cutter was allowed to come up to you and ask for a Redemption Plan, which consisted of take-home busy work that would allegedly compensate for never attending lessons. There was even the AL WEINER special: go home, write a so called research paper and hand it in the following morning. Redemption also abetted the administration in securing brownie points by showcasing better passing statistics. If you didn't give the kid a Redemption Plan, the truant just went right to the principal and was accommodated. Yes, the Jesus Christ Superstar of the education world saw nothing amiss in this massive compromise of grades. Did the student gain any knowledge from all this make- work? In a way it was the modern day meaningless equivalent of writing one hundred times on the blackboard, "I will come to class every day in the future."

It's interesting to note that while standards were being thrown to the wind, the summer school program still successfully maintained attendance policies. During the six week summer school you were only allowed three absennces; after which you were dropped
from the program. It didn't matter if you became sick, had a death in the family, experienced psychological problems, had personal or family business to take care of, etc. Once you hit the magic number three that was it; three strikes and you were out. Moreover, any kid who cursed, mouthed off or became a discipline problem was expelled. There were no laws on the books that required kids to go to summer school, nor required us to keep them in the program.

Nevertheless, the students always rose to the occasion, as they knew and understood that there were real standards here. After the first week the traditional malcontents and orthodox cutters were gone with the wind, while the bulk of the pupil population learned in unbearable conditions. The heat in the classrooms was often over one hundred degrees; yet the kids killed themselves to come to class. I remember in 1986 when I was teaching summer school at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, a student fainted from the heat and fell out of his chair. The assistant principal called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. As the paramedics placed him in a stretcher, the student (now partially-revived) asked the assistant principal, "This won't count as an absence will it?"

In education all good things must come an end. Any worthwhile program has to be killed or done away with. Alas when Joel Klein became chancellor the standards and bedrocks of the summer school program were abolished. Attendance and cutting requirements were eliminated. Kids could be out for days on end and still pass. You could now go to the beach every other day and receive course credit. Discipline problems could no longer be eliminated by eliminating the problem kids. Studentsscan now act up every day and stay in school.

When I was the summer school librarian at Flushing High School in 2004 Principal Gutwein employed me to do outreach all day long. From eight in the morning to one in the afternoon I had to call up the homes of students who were not showing up to summer school, find out why they were absent and somehow encourage them to return to class. Each day I was handed a detailed and lengthy computer printout of no-show kids, complete with addresses and phone numbers. For each call I made I had to write an explanation of what transpired.
Nobody home.
No-one speaks English.
Student promises to return to school.
Pupil claims he does not have to go.
Student is out of the country
Phone has been disconnected.
Each day I was handed a new list of truants, many of whom had missed many days of the thirty day summer school program. What was the point of calling up kids who had already missed fifty per-cent or more of the sessions? I had to then document daily the number of calls I made and what happened with each one.

How do these attendance policies translate into the real world? Can you hold a real job if you stay out every other day or often arrive late? Will your bosses or supervisors sympathize with the fact that, "I took unannounced vacations every month at Flushing High School and they were fine with it. What's your problem man?" Doctoral candidates who are looking for unique and original subjects for a PhD thesis should study the repercussions of how the encouragement of non-attendance in school plays out when graduates enter the work world.

Attendance is not the only area where school instills negative values in kids. Students know they can curse, make death threats or say anything they want to teachers, without any meaningful consequences. In many cases they can even physically attack staff members without punishment. No matter what the infraction, the deans merely tell the kids to write or orally give an apology, which instantly lets the perpetrators off the hook. What happens when graduates emulate these antics on the job and are instantly canned?
Any rule or deadline in school is made to be broken. For example, if kids are told to pay their senior dues by May 1 and fail to follow through on this, there are no consequences. Kids can just bring on their money on May 15, June 1 or whenever they feel up to it; no questions asked. If the boss asks for a paper to be handed in at work on May 1 will he wait patiently wait until June 1? Many schools allow kids to wear hats all day in school. Are hats regularly worn at business meetings?

SWAPPING TENURE FOR BONUSES IS CATCHING ON

The union-busting idea of swapping tenure for thousands of dollars in bonuses now appears more frequently in the newspapers. In a July 21st, Washington Post op-ed essay Connecticut Senator (and former vice presidential candidate) Joseph Lieberman praises D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee who “seeks to reward teachers for good performance…Rhee proposes offering teachers the choice of staying in the seniority system or giving up their seniority and tenure rights in exchange for the opportunity to earn as much as $131,000 a year for raising student performance.” The $131,000 figure is either a misstatement by Lieberman, or a sweetening of the pot by Rhee. As of last week the Faustian bargain was only worth $100,000.

Lieberman seems to be building his own bandwagon when he cites “bonuses of up to $10,000 for exceptional Prince George County teachers who choose to participate in an incentive pilot program. And in New York City, Chancellor Joel Klein has sought major reforms, including enhancing the charter school system, rewarding successful schools, closing he worst schools and evaluating teachers in part on the basis of their students’ progress.”

What is really alarming about this perfunctory piece of propaganda is that for the first time the insanity of teachers voluntarily forfeiting tenure is promoted by a major recognized political figure. You better believe that Joel Klein is chomping at the bit, ready to make the issue part of the negotiations for our next contract.

EUREEKA, WE'VE FIRED MORE TEACHERS!

The July 19th Daily News revs up the anti-tenure trend by reporting MIKE TEACHES ‘EM A LESSON, TENURE DENIALS TRIPLE. In July, 2007, sixty-six teachers were denied tenure, while this year 164 met the same fate. Now that’s progress. Credit is due Joel Klein for spending millions of dollars on state-of-the-art computer systems designed to “alert the principals to who’s coming up for consideration, to remind them that this is their chance to try to block tenure if they wish.” Of course there are no incompetent administrators, sub-par principals or inept parents. PS 49 Queens Principal Anthony Lombardi, who makes his reputation by firing incompetent teachers, could not stop lauding and praising Messiah Klein for bringing new tablets down from the mountain. “This is the first time a chancellor has ever taken the bold step to demand that we have competent teachers in the classroom.

Of course Tweed still hopes “they can use student test scores to bolster future tenure decisions – something they’re currently barred from doing because of state legislation passed earlier this year.” Yes, holding on to your job will depend on your truant students mastering reading tests. Get those scores up or hit the bricks. If a student only shows up on average one day in five, it’s your fault. You did not motivate him properly to attend school. Perhaps if you asked better pivotal questions during your lessons he would have achieved perfect attendance. You’re fired.

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

Here is another excerpt from my autobiography TEACHING IS HELL.

The lesson plan is to teaching what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptology. Without a lesson plan you are doomed to being an UNSATISFACTORY teacher, ready to be drummed out of the school system in disgrace. Chairpeople analyze your lesson plans the way Orthodox Jews dissect the Talmud. You can teach the greatest lesson in the world, one in which your kids exit the classroom communicting with God. But if you do not produce a lesson plan a U observation report will enter your file, and you are well on your way to being declard a TEACHER IN NEED OF IMPROVEMENT.

Placido Domingo can sing an aria without a score in front of him. James Levine could conduct the entire Ring Cycle without sheet music in front of him. Yet, if you teach lessons without the written plans you are ready to be court martialed. On many occassions administrators would open the door to my room, surruptitiously tiptoe in, pick up the LESSON PLAN from my desk, look at it for a minute, and then slither out the door. The Lord of the Universe found the plan to be ok, and the world can go on. Under this Byzantine system Plato and Socrates would have been issued U ratings, as the two never had lesson plans when they taught. The students could literally be jumping up and down but if your lesson plan is well written you're a great teacher. Usually the plans find the way into your file, often attached to your observation reports, a permanent archive of your teahing abilities.
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Millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted daily and countless hours of professional time are devoted to improving the almighty lesson plans. Workshops are devoted to improving the pivotal questions and medial summaries tucked away in the recesses of the plan. Questioning techniques are endlessly reviewed and debated, to see if they conform to the highest echelons of Bloom's Taxonomy. I'm sure that the kids who just completed a recent drug deal are extremely impressed by the expertise of the questions.

The less facts you place in your plan, the better off you are; as kids should never have to memorize facts. Knowing the names of illustrious people and ciritical historical events is not important; as long as students are aware of vague general concepts. Its not important to know who Stalin, Trotsky or Lenin was, as long as you just realize that Communism was something really terrible that negatively impacted the lives of the average Russian citizens.

Over the years chairmen have sat down with me after observations to dissect the lintrinsic meaning of the lesson plans. I was once told that the use of the phrase ERA OF RECONSTUCTION in my aim was incorrect. Everyone knows that it is the AGE OF RECONSTRUCTION. The fact that the emminent historian Kenneth Stampp wrote a classic work still used historyt courses at ivy league universities entitled the ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION is totally meaningless. Even though Stampp devoted his entire life to research on the Civil War and Reconstruction, his expertise can not hold a candle to the knowledge of a chairman such as Al Weiner. I remember once teaching a fantastic lesson on the economic causes and effects of the Reformation which piqued the interest of a class reading well below grade level. LIke most historical topics, this is really of not much interest to most of our clientelle. After looking at my lesson plan the chairman informed me that the lesson concentrated too much on the poltical repercussions of the Reformation and not enough on the religious aspects of the Reformation. This is why the taxpayers pay the chairmen the big bucks. I'm sure Johnny Smith would never have been arrested had I only been able to ask him, "Johnny, what did Martin Luther really mean by the phrase EVERY MAN IS HIS OWN PRIEST?"

If you have a great teacher who daily imparts knowledge to the kids, what does it matter what's in his lesson plan; or even if he has a lesson plan. A great teacher can even lecture to the kids part of the time, and get through to them. When I was in high school many really fantastic teachers never used developmental lesson plans. My terriffic American History teacher, who inspired me to teach social studies, never put an aim on the board in her life. She really knew her stuff, and you really learned U.S. History. You also learned tons of facts, a dirty word in today's educational milieu. She never asked pivotal questions nor had medial summaries. I hate to say this, and teachers are not allowed to say this, but the kids basically know nothing about history, nor any other subject for that matter. If they did, there would be no need for them to attend school in the first place. A qualified teacher with a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in their subject field knows alot more than the kids. He should be imparting this knowledge to the youngsters in any way, shape or form he deems appropriate at the moment. If the kids learn the subject matter, and pass the almighty Regents of course, what difference should it make how he does it? He's the doctor and kids are the patients.

The secret ingredients in a lesson plan change every year. The Board pays millions of taxpayer dollars to the best and the brightest to think up new innovative changes to the Torahs of education. A few years ago the gurus at the Board ascended the mountain, came down with new tablets and decreed that every lesson plan must provide for ten minutes of GROUP WORK. With periods of roughly forty minutes in length, 25% of the lesson consists of GROUP WORK. Theoretically the youngsters are supposed to be sitting around in small groups delving deeper into the topic of the lesson. Kids are are virtually illiterate allegedly become now become mentors and gurus to their fellow students as the blind lead the blind. In the middle of the period when the kids have calmed down and settled into the lesson the teacher instructs them to rise and move around into groups. The teacher must then calm them down again when the groups are formed. Presto! After the ten minute dosage of group work the kids must arise again, return to their assigned seats, be calmed down and be re-engaged in the lesson. In practical terms much more than ten minutes are consumed in this constructive waste of time.

Back in 1980 the Board of Education required all lesson plans to contain a five minute dosage of reading and writing. At the start of the period teachers were required to provide a handout with a few paragraphs to read, accompanied by a provacative question to answer and discuss. While the idea may sound great on paper, not even John Dewey cold do all of this in five minutes. No adult could meaningfully accomplish this in five minutes. However, nothing was too difficult for kids who could write research papers in one day. Any lesson that failed to have the five minute reading and writing was automatically judged unsatisfactory.

This was the Board's great idea on teaching the kids reading. You could learn to read, write, analyze and discuss all in less time than it takes to go to the bathroom. I could never understand why kids couldn't read at home? Or why they couldn't read entire books and write book reviews? Or read a number of books and write a real research paper? None of these were allowed to substitue for those five precious minutes.

Today, the five minute reading-writing drill has simply morphed into a DO NOW. Here at Brooklyn Tech (and all other high schools) every teacher has a short reading and writing assignment on the blackboard when the kids walk into the room. In the 70's the Do Nows were strictly junior high fare, designed to calm down immature students at the start of the period. In a sign of progress, this ritual is now incorporated into high school routines.

If you add together the time wasted in the Do Nows and the group work, more than half of the period is eaten up. If you tally up the half periods countless precious hours of each day are pissed away with Potemkin Village make-work and busy work. To an outsider it would probably appear that real learning is transpiring, when in fact nothing of significance is taking place. Then Klein and the powers that be will proclaim that we have to extend the school day by an hour a two so that kids can assimilate more knowlege, and real learning can take place. In another Gilbert and Sullivan paradox more time is wasted during the school day, so that the day can be extended to make up for squandered minutes.

Moreover, whenever the faux reading scores and bogus and fudged test results move up, the politicians and the media all cry in unison. "It's the extended day and/or our new accountablitly systems that have enabled our kids to see God and enter the promised land of milk and honey." The entire charade reminds me of a Caldecott Award winning classic children's book entitled Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel. In one chapter Frog plants a seed in the ground and then sits by the earth reading poetry to the seed. As the days go by he serenades the planted spot with violin music. When the seed begins to grow into a plant he proudly explains to Toad how the plant only appeared because of his poetry reading and musical serenades.

WHY ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS SO BAD AT HIRING GOOD INSTRUCTORS?

Columbia Business School Professor Ray Fisman poses the title question in a July 11th article on Slate.com. The answer revolves around the usual managerial propaganda of all powerful teachers unions protecting droves of incompetent teachers. The solution to having truly great schools is to bust unions. Fisman cites as his hero Principal Anthony Lombardi of P.S. 49 Queens, who managed to fire or force out dozens of allegedly incompetent staff members. After the evil teachers were purged reading scores miraculously rose into the stratosphere. I am sure all of the exams were administered and marked with the utmost integrity.

Yes; firing more teachers can solve every social problem. There are no incompetent administrators. I have never seen an op-ed piece on breaking up the supervisors union or ending tenure for assistant principals.

It's always the fault of the teachers. Never mind if some students are absent every other day. Disregard kids who come from broken homes or poverty households. Overlook students who spend all of their evenings partying or engaging in criminal activities. If teachers do not up these students' scores, fire them.

Fisman's thesis consists of requiring all new teachers to sign YELLOW DOG CONTRACTS. Rookies must agree not to join the teachers union for three years, prior to being hired. This will allow principals to fire teachers quickly without having to worry about unimportant matters like due process.

Is "voluntarily" giving up tenure becoming a trend. In a previous posting I wrote about how Chancellor Rhee in Washington, D.C. devised a plan for her teachers to forfeit their tenure rights in return for bonuses. Will the pro-management media start beating the drums for tenure to go the way of the dodo? Stay tuned.

HILLCREST HIGH SCHOOL, 1971

The following is another chapter from my autobiography, also titled TEACHING AS HELL. The excerpt profiles my baptism of fire teaching social studies at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, during the school's first year of operations. With two years of teaching experience under my belt I secured a job at a newly constructed school building during its maiden year of operations.


When Hillcrest High School opened its doors in September of 1971 it was engulfed in problems and politics, some of which spilled out on the evening news. The zone of the school took in the high poverty area of South Jamaica, parts of the middle class Kew Gardens and a small portion of middle class enclave of Forest Hills. The Forest Hills parents were up in arms and protesting about their kids being sent to Hillcrest, rather than the high regarded Forest Hills High School. Many parents refused to send their kids to Hillcrest, opting to send them to private schools instead. As a result the school opened with far fewer middle class kids than anticipated.

Hillcrest opened with roughly 2000 youngsters, but only in grades nine and ten. It was then slated to expand by one grade in 1972 and reach full capacity in 1973. For some unknown reason the junior highs in middle class areas comprised grades 7,8 and 9, while the so called intermediate schools of the inner city took in grades 6,7 and 8. As a result the ninth grade was comprised of more difficult and challenging students, while the tenth year saw many more academically motivated kids. Moreover, the ninth grade also contained many kids who had dropped out or been expelled from private and parochial schools, none of whom were apt to be Rhodes Scholars.

Hillcrest, modeled after a school name John Dewey in Brooklyn, was designed to be very progressive and innovative, with the principal, Dr. Daniel Salmon, always emphasizing the "innovations." Most high schools had two semesters or terms, the first spanning September to January, while the second (or Spring term) went from February to June. At the end of each term the kids were given new programs, courses and teachers. Hillcrest was different, simply for the sake of being more "innovative." In lieu of two semesters per year there were four "cycles," necessitating new programs, teachers, rooms and courses every nine weeks. Before you or the students had a chance to really know each other, the kids were handed off to a fellow colleague. Many students who needed the stability of the same programs and rooms each day were on a constant merry-go-round of change and chaos. No sooner had they bonded with a teacher and settled into the routine of the class when the nine weeks were up and they were off and running
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In lieu of having a year of courses such as World History or American History, the kids were encouraged to take what were called mini-courses and electives, each course lasting nine weeks. In the tenth year, for example, the kids could opt for courses such as Nationalism and Colonialism, Struggle for Democracy, Emergence of Modern Europe and Twentieth Century Europe. If you took these four classes in the right order, you could probably get a decent year of European History. However, instead of these courses you could opt instead to pick from courses such as Sociology, Behavioral Science, The Future or Psychology. As a result the kids missed out on part of European studies while being allowed to take less challenging electives. Instead of learning about the causes of World War I they could have discussions about such profound topics as, "Is there a positive existence after death?" In lieu of the Renaissance you could learn about ceremonies and celebrations in tribal societies occurring when pubescent females experience their first menstruations Believe it or not I once walked by a classroom where a teacher was giving a lesson on the important topic of penis envy.

Besides "innovation" the second great code word at Hillcrest was "choice." More choices. More electives. Kids who were barely literate were constantly being dazzled with more and more exotic electives. Since classes changed so frequently, it seemed that every other day youngsters were being given sheets of courses with new electives to pick from. It didn't matter that they had no idea what they were choosing; if it sounded good, take it. On opening day of Cycle I, Year I, the kids were handed out course selection sheets for Cycle II.

In the English Department the situation was even more insane than Social Studies. As in every high school you needed four years of English to graduate, which translated to sixteen cycles at Hillcrest. There were meaningful courses in Shakespeare, American Literature or European Literature. But there were less challenging subjects such as Literature of Sports, Mystery and Detective or Horror. As a result you could go through high school without ever reading Shakespeare, Dickens, Elliott, Hardy or numerous other classic writers. How you were supposed to learn writing or grammar was always a mystery to me.

There was also a separate Communication Arts Department, with its own chairman, a fellow name Stephen Posner. The department offered such academically oriented courses as Mime, Improvisation, Advanced Improvisation, Advanced Mime, Comedy, Film and Tragedy. Two Communication Arts courses could be substituted for two English courses. Instead of reading or writing anything significant, you gained English credit by acting out little meaningless skits or pantomimes.

There was no reason why communication arts courses were basically bullshit and lacked substance. I always wondered why the department did not offer meaty courses such as Shakespeare, Greek Comedy and Tragedy, Existentialist Drama, Theatre of the Absurd, Ibsen, Victorian Drama, History of the Broadway Musical, O'Neil or Miller. I suppose that these drama literature classes, involving real work and study, would not appeal to the average student. The idea at Hillcrest was to give whatever sells, not whatever the kids should really have to prepare for college. Whatever happened to in loco parentis. We're not here to amuse and entertain the customers, we are here to educate them and impart knowledge to them.

Academically challenged kids had no conception of the courses they were opting for. I'm sure that a student who already possessed a criminal record thought long and hard when selecting courses. A fellow teacher and I once stopped a kid who was racing around the halls yelling, screaming and cursing. We looked at his program card and saw that he was registered for such subjects as Chance and Games, Teutonic Literature, The Future and Tour of Spain. I'm sure that years later while he sat in his cell at Rikers Island he contemplated the past and thought, "Why didn't I take Kafka or Shakespeare instead of Teutonic Literature?"

The problem with Hillcrest (and many other schools) was that the powers that be designed a four-story building capable of housing 4,000 kids without asking the advice or input of any veteran teachers. Roughly three fourths of the actual classrooms were on the third and fourth floors. Any academic teaching and learning was going to take place on these two floors. Yet in the center of these two floors were two large cafeterias, each with its own kitchen facilities capable of feeding five hundred kids. Every other school I've been in had the cafeterias in the basement, away from the learning centers. Here the cafeteria occupied the central fulcrum of the floor, with the classrooms radiating around the eating facility. The design reminded me of the architectural layout at the Palace of Versailles where King Louis XIV had a large bedroom in the center of the floor, and all the nobles had rooms radiating and surrounding the room of the Sun King. At Hillcrest the cafeteria was the sun and classrooms mere planets revolving around this star. Everything in the school revolved around eating lunch.

The administration claimed that their cafeteria planning was extremely creative and innovative; instead of housing 1,000 kids in one cafeteria we would have better control of our customers by splitting the youngsters up into two 500 student facilities. This meant that as you imparted knowledge to kids, students would be constantly running through the halls yelling and screaming on their way in and out of the cafeterias. To further improve school tone no bathrooms were built inside the cafeterias. (Now every restaurant is supposed to have a bathroom inside for the customers.) This meant that all period long kids would be running in and out of the cafeterias to use the restrooms. Any teacher of course would have known that as the doors to the eating facility opened and closed every thirty seconds, there would be a steady stream of students running in and out, filling the halls with the sounds of music. The cafeterias became a magnet and a haven for cutters and intruders, as many students just majored in lunch.

In every corner of the third and fourth floor were large unused open areas known as Resource Centers, with each department having its own Resource Center. Each center was surrounded by five classrooms and a departmental office. The administration promoted a Land of Oz scenario whereby these resource centers were going to revolutionize and enrich education by providing a milieu for books and/or enrichment materials. Teachers were even given compensatory time assignments to function as resource center coordinators. The administration was always vague about how these centers were going to be utilized. Of course these facilities were again designed without ever asking input from teachers. With over 300 students passing through each resource center at the end of each period, the centers rapidly fell into disuse. By the end of the year they became little more than hangouts or impromptu cafeteria annexes. After a few years all that remained of the resource centers were huge empty spaces where more classrooms could have been built.

Teachers were not asked about classroom design, and many rooms had partitions in the back in lieu of walls. Some rooms even had paper-thin partitions in front and back. This meant that while you taught, the students could stereophonically hear the fellow in the classroom next door. If your next-door neighbor was showing a film, you heard the entire sound track in your classroom. If there was a sub next door, forget it! The yelling and screaming of the kids would completely drown out your lesson; plus the students next door would often play with the partition and bang against it. The rooms housing partitions on both the front and back walls lacked blackboards. (You needed to bring in a portable blackboard to teach.) The reason for this insanity? The principal felt it was wonderfully innovative to be able to remove partitions, thereby doubling and tripling the size of rooms. The arrangement would be perfect for guest speakers and theatre in the round! (This madness made about as much sense as the logic some years back of a member of the State Board of Regents who increased the foreign language requirement by a year. He took this step because he had trouble communicating with foreign visitors during tennis matches at Flushing Meadow.) In all my years at Hillcrest I never once saw any rooms utilized for theatre in the round.

In place of normal forty-five minute periods, Hillcrest possessed what was termed "modular programming," with periods replaced by "blocks." A block was either half an hour or one hour long, depending upon which day it was. What this insanity signified was that each class met for half an hour one day and an hour the next day. An hour was really too long for most kids to sit still for. If you had a bunch of crazies it seemed like one hour was an eternity. For the less academically oriented kids half hour classes each day would have been ideal. Forget about the hour classes. On the other hand a really good class was penalized by this arrangement, as half hour classes were really too short for many lessons.

There was also a huge planning problem. You could have three identical European history classes on a given day, with two of them meeting for an hour and the other for half an hour. How do you teach the same lesson to three classes comprised of different time frames? We often asked the administrators this question, only to be told in political rhetoric and Newspeak jargon that it was very possible to write lesson plans. Teachers who had the audacity to question the Solomon-like wisdom of Dr. Salmon were simply labeled "inflexible" and "un-innovative." Really good teachers would know how to deal with this quagmire. Our crackerjack assistant principal of administration, Irving Laverman, often suggested that teachers prepare twenty-five minute self contained lessons, teaching one during a short block and two during a long block.

What happened in actuality was that all the teachers quickly signed out all the video equipment during the long blocks. When you walked through the halls during the long blocks rooms were dark and the school was filled with the sound of filmstrip records beeping incessantly. Back then teachers would show these usually not very interesting filmstrips accompanied by scratchy records played on antique phonographs with needles past their prime. During the monotonous recorded narration a beep would sound from the Victrola instructing the teacher or monitor to turn the filmstrip projector to the next frame. Some teachers showed so many filmstrips that their rooms were perpetually dark, and their kids never saw the light of day. The filmstrips were also a strain on everyone's eyes as the pictures never seemed to quite be in focus.

After a few years of teacher protests over long and short blocks, the modular programming was revamped so that the school had four different bell schedules, appropriately dubbed A, B, C and D. Out of an eight period day there were now two long blocks instead of four. For example, on Monday periods one and five would be an hour long, with the others being about thirty-eight minutes in length. Then on Tuesday periods two and six would be the interminable designees. And so on. This reduced the AV periods down to two daily, and made for some unique programming decisions by Mr. Laverman. If Monday was bell schedule A and Tuesday B, what happens if Tuesday is a holiday. Do you make Wednesday B, or do you skip B and go directly to C? Only our crackerjack AP of supervision could solve this quagmire, as he meticulously composed monthly calendars indicating which bell schedule would fall on which day. I'll never forget the time when April 30 was scheduled for A and May 1 deemed a C. It seemed that Laverman had programmed April 31 for B, overlooking the trivial fact that there was no April 31.

Another state of the art innovation at Hillcrest was the absence of late bells. Dr. Salmon
believed that late bells created too many un-necessary bell rings, which wasted time and interfered with instruction. Of course it didn't waste time when kids disturbed the start of the lesson by walking in late and then yelling, screaming and carrying on about how they were on time. "I wasn't late. Your watch is wrong man." A simple thing like a late bell would have alleviated these scenes, and clearly established that the honor student was late. However, we didn't want any un-needed bells to disturb the academic tranquility of the classrooms.

Hillcrest also was a devout follower of heterogeneous grouping, as opposed to homogenous grouping. There were no advanced, average, academic, remedial classes or anything else resembling tracking. Students reading on a 12th grade level were thrown into the same classes as kids reading on fourth grade levels. The theory behind this was that the superior pupils would inspire the less motivated youngsters to strive harder and advance to higher levels. In actuality, the advanced kids were simply prevented from learning by the academically students. If students who are borderline criminal are acting out in class, preventing the teacher from imparting knowledge, how do the academic kids benefit? If an English teacher assigns a class to read THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE, how pray tell can a student years behind in reading get through the book?

A constant theme of NYC education is that everything is geared to the lowest common denominator. Everything is geared to the kids at the bottom who are least likely to contribute anything positive to society. Instead of skewering education to motivated, brighter and/or academically oriented kids, it is always focused on the youngsters at the bottom of the totem pole. Instead of zeroing in on the kids who study and do homework nightly, it is focused on kids who do nothing but go home and party till the wee hours of the morning. It is also geared to kids who do other things all night that are best left unmentioned. At one time years ago Chancellor Rudy Crew actually wanted to have a high school that would commence classes at twelve noon for kids who had alternate lifestyles and biological clocks. I suppose this would accommodate the nocturnal party goers who needed to roam the streets all night. Crew¢s phenomenal brainstorm would also be great for teaching kids to get into positive work habits for future employment. How many organizations let you stagger into work every day at noon?

By grouping kids heterogeneously you would allegedly be helping the slower students self esteem. This was not only the goal of Dan Salmon, but of every administrator I've ever worked for. You could never tell a kid that he was years behind in reading; you always had to hide the fact. No matter how deficient the kid was, you had to tell him he was really a genius. Supposedly by placing him with more intelligent individuals he would feel that he too was very smart. The fact that he would fail all the Regents exams supposedly would not dissuade him from the knowledge that he was in reality Einstein Junior.

Hillcrest also possessed a guidance office offering something new and innovative called Omnibus Counseling. With my limited knowledge of education, I never really understood or figured out the difference between regular guidance counseling and omnibus counseling. All it seemed to signify was that we had twice as many counselors as any normal high school, and that the kids were constantly commuting daily from the classrooms to the guidance suite. Since the kids were reprogrammed four times yearly, instead of the usual two at every other school, they apparently needed to be called down to the guidance office more often. Each class was constantly disrupted all period long by kids commuting to and from guidance.,

The first few weeks of September, 1971 were scenes of total anarchy and chaos, as the administration had no idea how to run the school. Kids were running amuck through the halls, or in and out of the cafeteria, helped by the fact that the lunchroom lacked bathrooms. Lines for counselors snaked out into the halls as far as the eye could see.

For the first nine-week cycle I taught a class called 20 Century Europe, which was simply the latter part of a normal year of European history. In every other high school the tenth grade was given over to one full year of World History from ancient times to the Cold War. Here the students were given the latter part of the subject without the first three quarters of the course. The other class I taught had the fancy name, Emergence of Modern Europe, which was simply world history from ancient times through the Renaissance. The kids in the class were taken aback by such topics as the fall of Rome or the Middle Ages, since they wrongly thought a title like Emergence of Modern Europe would deal with World War I and World War II.

The 20th Century classes had some highly motivated kids who were enthusiastic about studying the Russian Revolution and the World Wars. World War II was still a hot topic in 1971, whereas today's kids would regard it as ancient history. One of the activities that enhanced and enriched the course involved screening a couple of sixteen mm films that the social studies department had inherited from a defunct vocational school. I remember setting up the old 16mm projector, and showing the black and white films. There was a great Screen News digest on Russia that had some clips from Eisenstein's masterpiece Ten Days That Shook The World, as well as some great newsreel footage of Lenin, Stalin and Khruschev. There were some really great propaganda moments in it with narrated lines such as, "Lenin eliminated all objections by eliminating those who objected.....Stalin was ruthless, but he learned his ruthlessness from Lenin." The kids loved the films and the movies really livened up the class. But the best was THE NAZIS STRIKE. Amazingly the department had inherited a copy of the greatest propaganda documentary ever made, Frank Capra's 1943 magnum opus. It was the highlight of my eighth grade social studies class in 1961, and now I had the honor and privilege of showing it in 1971. The kids loved it, and many wanted to see it again.

Over the next few years I would show it so many times that I was able to memorize the entire script. "Hitler tore up treaties the way we tear up scraps of paper....No labor unions here. No overtime. The Fuehrer tells you where to work; when to work; how much your work is worth." In addition to world history classes, I later showed it to American History classes. It always brought down the house. The students were always mesmerized by the Nazi Luftwaffe bombing Poland, or the Panzer divisions marching into Austria and the Sudetenland.

In November of 1971 the first cycle came to an end, and we were given new classes and kids for Cycle II. This time I taught three classes of a world history class entitled Struggle for Democracy and two classes of a ninth grade course called Africa. The entire 9th year of social studies was always one big waste of time. Instead of learning about important people and events in World and U.S. history the kids were given a year of what was termed Area Studies. Instead of learning about the fascinating history of France, Germany, Russia, and so forth, the kids had to learn about the history of Nigeria, Libya, Uganda, Ethiopia, etc. The subject matter and the classes were absolute bores. I even remember taking a graduate course in the Cold War in 1970 where the professor talked about which nations he would focus on in his lectures. "We're not going to be discussing nations like Libya, which never was or will be a great power in the world."

To teach area studies should have required a separate license and college major. Ideally, graduates with degrees, backgrounds, interests and majors in Afro-Asian studies should have been given the ninth grade classes . To my knowledge, not one member of our social studies department had taken any courses in this area. In reality, we were short-changing the students by not really having qualified specialists instructing these courses.

It always amazed me how the kids knew next to nothing about such important topics as our European heritage, the development of democratic values and ideas from ancient Athens through the Enlightenment or ways in which our government operates and functions. A year of world history and a year of American history do not do justice for preparing our students to exercise their rights as citizens and to vote and participate in our democracy.
Yet here we are wasting an entire year going over such meaty topics as why so many third world nations have poverty, and why so many African and Asian nations experience one holocaust after another. Kids who would never learn about the Battle of the Bulge had to be taught about Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey.
If I was designing a social studies curriculum world history would take up both the ninth and tenth grade. Interwoven into a two year world history sequence would be lessons on Africa and Asia. If the teacher thought that it was important to have a lesson or two on ancient Timbucktu, he could have one. But an entire year spent on area studies is a waste of precious time. What makes the ninth grade area studies more deadly is that the kids in the class are usually some of the lowest performers in the school. As I pointed out previously they all hail from inner city intermediate schools or are private school dropouts. So in addition to having the most difficult youngsters to teach, you are stuck with the most uninteresting curriculum imaginable. It all added up to a cycle of hell, which every Hillcrest teacher went out of his or her way to avoid. After the first year teachers began to battle for the tenth grade, and in later years for the 11thh and 12 grade classes.
Today you could easily survive and while away the time in the ninth grade by showing dvds of movies such as Hotel Rwanda or Ghandi. There are dozens of great documentaries and docudramas from the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and so forth graphically depicting everything from King Leopold's genocide in the Belgian Congo to the extinction of the African elephant. (Of course you would have to show them at a time when the administrators weren't running around writing you up for showing films that made the class too interesting.) But back in 1971 you didn't even have a Xerox machine to copy and reproduce an interesting article from Time or Newsweek. All the department had was one hand cranked rexograph machine, which often broke down from over-use. Moreover, teachers who typed who spent countless hours typing up rexogrphed stencils to reproduce for reading materials and class handouts were often criticized by their fellow co-workers. "All he does is run off reading materials every day on the rexo," was an all too common complaint. We wouldn't want the kids to be doing too much reading now, would we?
So I was stuck with a class devoted to Africa for nine weeks. For a text book I was given a small paperback book with black and white photos entitled AFRICA that was published in 1964. The text of the book could not have been more boring with chapters devoted to such fascinating topics as life along the Zambezi River, diamond mining in South Africa or farming in the Sudan. As I approached the room on the first day of class I heard some honor student screaming, "Who's the fuckin’ teacher of this fuckin’ class?" Most of the kids resembled candidates for Rikers Island rather than Rhodes scholarships. In fact maybe I should have taught about the latter, since Cecil Rhodes was so intertwined in the history of Africa.

I told the class that in addition to studying Africa we would also be learning about current events and world issues. This gave me a chance to show a couple of Screen News Digests under the rubric of current events, and move away from in depth discussions of the roots of corruption in Lagos. I'll never forget showing a pretty interesting movie on the international drug trade when the same honor student started screaming in the middle of the flick, "Hey this fuckin’ movie isn't about Africa. I took this fuckin’ class to learn about Africa." Yes, I'm sure a discussion of the Mali Empire was just what she was looking for. To survive the cycle I also gave out a great deal of class handouts for the kids to read and answer questions on, only to hear gripes about how I was overtaxing our rexo machine.

The name of the game for most of the staff became how to get out of teaching the freshmen. Members of our department would constantly think up new innovative elective courses they could design and of course teach that were skewered towards tenth grade kids. Incredibly, nobody ever came up with a great elective for ninth grade kids. (I wonder why.)
At department meetings our leading innovators, Bonnie Silvers and Estelle Karden, would propose to our chairman that we further expand such courses as anthropology, the future, psychology, sociology and behavioral science. These courses might well have provided for valuable learning and insights were it not for the fact that kids would be taking them in lieu of such classes as 20th Century Europe, Nationalism and Colonialism and Emergence of Modern Europe. So while kids might be immersed in the differences between schizophrenia and paranoia they were not learning anything about vital topics such as the World Wars or the Cold War.

To me one of the most useless courses that we offered was Bonnie Silvers' class on The Future. The text book was Alvin Toffler's best selling opus Future Shock, and the kids had endless discussions about life on earth a century from now. She was one of these so called with it innovative teachers who had the kids arrange their seats in a circle each period and call her Bonnie, rather than Miss Silvers. Each day she would tape blank white papers to each student's desk with the instructions DOODLE HERE on each one. I always used to categorize teachers as rappers, crappers or probers. Bonnie fell into the first two categories.

A number of proposals for really innovative courses never saw fruition such as the History of Advertising and the History of Rap Music. Richard Kobliner once attempted to start a course called Science Fiction, which to me sounded more like an English course. It was going to look at inventions and discoveries of the past that were originally sci fi and allegedly show how they came true. I guess the class was gong to study how Jules Verne Captain Nemo pioneered the original submarine. Bonnie Silvers once proposed a course which never got off the ground entitle My Community, where the kids would walk around the neighborhood each day supposedly taking notes on their observations. What is really scary is that today we have an entire New Visions school centered around such activities, named The City As School. Bonnie was way ahead of her time.

In cycles three and four (which corresponded to the spring term of 1972) I began doing something very unusual, unorthodox and unheard of with my more academically oriented tenth grade classes. I had always been into old television shows, radio programs, movies, nostalgia and obscure facts and information. I began spicing up classes by asking such profound questions as, "Name all five of the Marx brothers?" Name the old lady on the bicycle in Wizard of Oz who later morphs into the Wicked Witch of the West?" "What island was King Kong found on?" "Who was Sherlock Holmes' housekeeper?" "What was the secret identity of The Shadow?" "Which American President was the heavyist?" And on and on. I had thousands of questions in the ready. I was into trivia before the term entered our lexicon in the mid-1970's. The kids loved it and they kept wanting more. Many of them began writing up and bringing in their own trivia questions to class. I eventually established every Friday as TRIVIA DAY, and I would give out a rexo with ten tor twelve trivia questions, many of them multiple choice, for the kids to answer. What was the closest plantation to Tara, and home of the Wilkes family, in Gone With The Wind? Which book begins with the line, "The clocks were striking thirteen...?" Who narrated the Fractured Fairy Tales on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show? Name the Lone Ranger's nephew? Where was Nixon when he made the immortal statement, "I am not a crook." What was the theme music to Captain Video? What was the name of the first boy to own the collie Lassie on television? Who did the voices of Charlie the Tuna and the Jolly Green Giant? The kids looked forward to Friday every week. On that day I would hurry through our lesson, leaving out any class discussion and get right to the trivia in the second half of the period.

Around April of 1971 two student reporters came to interview me for an article in the school newspaper, THE CYCLE, about why my classes were becoming so popular. The authors referred to me as the Trivia King of Hillcrest High School and the name kind of stuck. The article told how all of my classes had such profound queries as, in which movie does a citizen of Tokyo yell out "Look at King Kong, he's roasting." What does Charlie Brown's father do for a living? What was the only movie based on a Charles Dickens novel to win Best Picture of the Year? The nickname Trivia King kind of stuck, and that's what I began calling myself.

Around May of 1971 I decided to get in on the band wagon of this innovative elective nonsense and develop a course of study in Russian history to be offered in September. This would totally different than the Bonnie Silvers and Alan Kitt rap sessions and would never get off the ground today. It was a class designed to teach many in depth facts and issues about the fascinating history of Russia from its founding in 860 by Rurik the Viking through the Khruschev era. Even though I don't belive in curriculums, as I will point out later in the book, I had to make up a syllabus to hand to the chairman for the course to take off. The course would focus on the policies and personalities of the great Czars (and Czarinas) such as Ivan III (The Great), Ivan IV (The Terrible), Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Nicholas I, Alexander I, Alexander II, Alexander III and NIcholas II. We would have a detailed study of the causes and effects of the 1905, February 1917 and October 1917 Revolutions. We would examine the Soviet period of Russian history emphasizing Lenin, Stalin and Khruschev. IT featured reading primary source material such as the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Ivan IV-Kurbsky correspondence, the Communist Manifesto and documents written by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. The students would also have to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, Orwell's 1984 and Orwell's Animal Farm.

Omitted from the curriculum were a number of unorthodox topics designed to bring the course to life. WE would look at a primary source 1613 doument from The Time of The Troubles, when one third of the Russian population died, describing unchecked cannibalism in the countryside. A lesson wuld be spent, complete with eyewitness primary source account, on the tortures of Ivan The Terrible and his liquidation of the Boyars (old Russian nobles). A day would be spend on the sixteen creative assassination attempts by the radical anarchist association The People's Will to kill Czar Alexander II, the 16th of which succeeded. A period had to be devoted to Felix Yusupov's assassination of Rasputin, as well as another lesson on the Mad Monk's social life. In addition, we would continue to have our Friday trivia sessions.
In June when the time arrived for the kids to select courses for cycles one and two for the fall term I went from room to room plugging the course. One hundred kids signed up for the class in cycle one and another hundred signed up to take it in cycle two. The course was a tremendous success as kids were exposed to the remarkable history of a nation they knew little about.

JOE KLEIN IS WATCHING YOU

The July 10, 2008 New York Sun reports that Tweed is now setting up a TRUTH SQUAD to peruse anti-Klein web sites and blogs. Seven Department of Education employees will actually be paid for checking the internet all day long to crack down on bloggers who do not stick to hyping the party line. Money that could have been used for smaller classes will now fund an Orwellian Ministry of Truth squad to uncover educational dissidents and thought crimes. Deputy schools chancellor, Christopher Cerf, who came up with the Truth Squad concept, siad, "We believe in the truth." How about some truth when it comes to dumbing down reading and math exams, reporting graduation statistics or issuing letter grades for schools?

Honest Joe Klein's sycophants plan to utilize the COMMENTS section of blogs to correct "misinformation" and allow the truth to set everyone free. Tweed officials assert that the Truth Squad "is a natural extension of their commitment to provide accurate information to the public." Yes, we must have all bloggers towing the party line. Klein's scheme seems analogous to the work of censors in mainland China who watch the internet twenty-fours a day. Any blogger who dares to publish a blog critical of the government ends up in jail.

CAN THIS BE THE END OF TENURE AS WE KNOW IT?

The July 3rd Washington Post (Page B1) ran a story entitled Rhee Seeks Tenure_Pay Swap for Teachers; Giving Up Seniority Would Boost Salary If Benchmarks Met. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is proposing a new contract whereby teachers now earning $62,000 yearly can earn $100,000, if they voluntarily give up seniority and tenure rights. Under her proposal the school system would establish two pay tiers, red and green. Teachers in the red tier would keep tenure and receive minimal traditional yearly raises. Teachers who go voluntarily into the green tier would receive thousands of dollars in bonuses and raises.

The green teachers would be reviewed yearly and allowed to keep their jobs only if their students’ test scores increased. It’s a no-brainer that green teachers will inevitably lie, cheat and steal to raise those scores by any means possible. If one’s salary and job depend on the scores rising, the grades will increase come hell or high water. I’m sure that going green will be completely voluntary, with absolutely no pressure from principals and administrators to switch over from red.

Rhee proclaims that her contract would “revolutionize education as we know it.” Education experts assert that D.C. teachers would be among the highest paid educators in the nation under Rhee’s plan and that a proposal eliminating tenure and seniority would be groundbreaking.

Rhee is undoubtedly banking on the fact that many rookies, novices and Teach for America missionaries will happily sign on to the scheme without knowing any better. The neophytes think that they will only last a year to two in the system anyway, so why not take the money and run. The youngsters will not mind going without pensions or medical plans, working to six o’clock daily, forgoing summers off or teaching on Saturdays. In May, 2007 July Rhee even mentioned in an interview about gearing and structuring the education system for professionals who will remain in teaching for only a few years, prior to exiting for other more lucrative vocations. Her idea is undoubtedly to model teaching after private industry. In business, management takes young salesmen,; burns them out in a few years; fires them; and hires new salesmen.

What is really disturbing about this article is that it may well be a harbinger of things to come in NYC. Rhee was Klein’s protégé and assistant for several years before moving on to D.C., even helping negotiate the givebacks in our recent contracts. Our beloved Chancellor is undoubtedly well aware of her proposal. Ending tenure and busting the UFT have always been goals dear to his heart.

TEACHERS LIKE THE IDEA OF LINKING THEIR PAY TO PERFORMANCE

The editorial page of the July 2nd Washington Post prints another of the many propanda opinion articles trumpeting the virtues of merit pay. "In Prince George County teachers and administrators are eager to particpate. They are unafraid of linking their salaries to student test scores, and that confidence is a hopeful sign of student learning." Yes: why not have your salary depend on student test scores. So what if little Johnny is out of class right now relieving himself on the side wall of the building. Your meal money rides on this honor student passing the exams. Of course, you can always help him a bit with the answers while he is sitting for the test. Or better still, you can actually mark the exam yourself.

"Teachers and principals will have the opportunity to bump up their pay by as much as $10,000...Given the historic resistance of national teacher unions to linking performance and pay, it is to the credit of the local union" that merit pay will become a reality. Yes; we would not want the evil, greedy teachers union to block this educational wonder of the world. Never mind the fact that merit pay is designed to bust teachers' unions and devisely pit one member against the other. Forget about English teachers asking for more money than gym teachers, or science teachers feeling entitled to more dough than art instructors. Disregard the fact that merit pay ushers in massive cheating and chicanery by administrators, teachers and students.

"Participation in the program is voluntary...Nonetheless we were struck by the comments of teachers such as Beverly Acors, who essentially called participation in the plan a no brainer." Beverly commented, "Every day I give 100%, so if there's an extra incentive why not take advantage." How will Beverly feel if several of her colleagues receive bonuses and she does not? School superintendants rely upon young teachers and Teach for America missionaries to take the money and run without any serious thinking. If there was no merit pay the money could be utilized to provide across the board raises to all union members. Yes, merit pay schemes are simply "NO BRAINERS."

YOU'VE GOT TO CHEAT TO WIN

YOU’VE GOT TO CHEAT TO WIN

Leo Durocher once made the infamous quote, “You’ve got to cheat to win.” The late baseball manager’s maxim certainly applies to suceeding in the NYC school system. As I have pointed out in numerous articles, fudging the scores is a primary factor, if not the main reason, for the surge in high stakes test scores. The newspapers and television stations usually do not often publicize this factor and give credit where credit is do. However, every once in a while an article about a cheating scandal makes its way into the newspapers. Such was the case in a front-page New York Sun story on June 30, 2008, entitled HIGH SCORES, CRITICISM FOLLOW A PRINCIPAL. It seems that “a South Bronx elementary school that adopted the motto “The Best School in the Universe” on the strength of soaring test scores is being investigated for allegations that teachers helped students cheat on state tests.”

P.S. 48 principal John Hughes was routinely pressuring teachers to help the students during the exams by providing the test-takers with the answers. As a result “he oversaw a thirty point jump on a math test in 2004, and that year Chancellor Joel Klein spoke at the school’s graduation – reportedly wearing a “Best School in the Universe” T-shirt. Hughes was even favorably profiled in the New York Times and on PBS . Yet any untenured teacher who disagreed with his culture of cheating was let go at the end of the year. One teacher, Sandra Ameny said, “He asked me to guide my students to the right answers during the test…He basically said during the exam that I should go over close to them, and for example if they mark “D” and “D” is not the right answer, tell them, you know, ‘That’s not the right answer, try something else,’ and just keep guiding them until they get the right answer.”

This year the staff at P.S. 48 is set to receive merit pay bonuses averaging $3,000 a teacher, giving the faculty a vested interest in these nefarious shenanigans. “Eleven of twelve P.S. 48 graduates interviewed last week said they were coached during the state tests.” The article does not mention that Hughes himself will also see a bonus of as much as fifteen to twenty thousand dollars for his excellence in academia. It pays to cheat.

CURRICULUM: THE TORAH OF TEACHING

The following is another excerpt from my auto-biographical tome: TEACHING IS HELL


Some people say to destroy all the lawyers; I saw destroy all the curriculums. One of the most over-rated facets of teaching has to be the reliance on a printed detailed curriculum. In twenty-one years of teaching social studies the only times I looked at curriculums were when I wrote them. If I taught American History I knew the subject matter inside out. I knew the important events and people in our country's heritage. The last time I checked, the Civil War still began in 1861 and Louisiana was still purchased in 1803. It would seem to me that any knowledgeable professional educator would be familiar with U.S. history and plan his lessons accordingly.
Why do we need a curriculum telling us that on day seventy-three of the semester we will all in lock step review the details of Congressional Reconstruction, with the guide pointing out exactly how we should talk about the Freedman’s Bureau, 1866 Civil Rights Act, 13th Amendment, Thaddeus Stephens, and so forth. As an educated professional I already know the important figures, events and concepts of the Reconstruction era; why do I need a HISTORY FOR DUMMIES curriculum guide to enlighten me?
Unfortunately, curriculums are designed for rookies or inexperienced (or incompetent) educators, who are relatively unfamiliar with the academic territory. They are handed the bibles of learning and don't have to think for themselves at all. Everything for them to teach on any given day is printed out for them, and they can all march lock step together with no thinking, creativity or knowledge required. Principals can also fire veterans and hire rookies to fill their places. It does not matter if the novices have no background in the subjects they teach, since they all can be handed curriculum guides.
The curriculum impinges on academic freedom, as the teacher should have the right to teach important events not covered in the scholastic Talmud, or eliminate unimportant items enumerated in the Holy Book. Curriculums enable administrators to more easily write up negative observations, as the meistersupervisors can claim that your lesson did not stick close enough to the curriculum. Or they can allege that your lesson was just the opposite, and merely regurgitated the curriculum. If they're out to get you they can come at you from either direction.
In 1983 I was given per session pay after school to help write a new European Studies curriculum, even though there was nothing wrong with the old one. I suppose the only difference involved inserting a five minute required dosage of reading and writing into each lesson. Each topic came with a lesson plan so that any illiterate or warm body could teach it. On a Marxism lesson I inserted the following off the top of my head: "Students will read a five minute teacher prepared summary of Das Kapital.” For a session on the Reformation I put down, "Students will read a five minute teacher prepared summary of Will and Ariel Durant's THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. I emulated this feat in numerous topics and nobody ever said anything or appeared to notice. The absurdities ended up in the curriculum. So much for the value of curriculums.

IT PAYS TO CHEAT

All of the newspapers are chock full of stories on the state-wide rise in math and reading scores. Klein and Bloomberg are patting themselves on the back for a job well done. This is proof positive that you cannot disput for continuing mayoral control over schools. Never mind that the exams have been dumbed down! The more accurate Federal tests showed no reading and math gains whatsover.
What follows is a copy of a letter to the editor I sent to The New York Times regarding the primary reason for this alleged success story.

To the editor:
"Scores in Reading and Math Rise Sharply Across The State" (front page, June 24). How much of the apparent gains in reading and math test scores are due to cheating by teachers and administrators? Teachers in many NYC schools earn merit pay bonuses of several thousand dollars if scores increase. Principals and administrators are awarded bonuses of as much as $15,000 if school letter grades and ratings go up due to improved exam scores.
Since the tests are marked in the schools by the very teachers and administrators who will profit handsomely from higher grades, the tendency to fudge and inflate the scores is ever present. Principals also employ scare tactics to intimidate staff members, such as proclaiming the impending closure of schools with unacceptable scores. Teachers can also help secure tenure by falsifying reading scores. Pedagogues are often placed in a quagmire where the choices are between maintaining one's integrity or one's job.
Robert Grandt
Teacher of Library
Brooklyn Technical High School