The Wire

5 Replies to “The Wire”

1. Stop The Presses! These People Know Each Other! And Sometimes They Even -Gasp- Work Together!

2. Could this blog be any more juvenile? You insist that people judge your work by its content, not by all the boards you sit on (who all, incidentally, have an interest in your “results”).

   But yet we’re asked to form our opinion about Eduwonkette based on her willingness to converse with an ed policy activist. Shouldn’t readers judge for themselves whether her “coverage” of a conference is fair or worth reading?

3. I like Eduwonkette and her coverage of the conference. But I think we all agree it would affect our opinions if we found out she is Margaret Spellings or Randi Weingarten.

4. You don’t read enough. I’m not only anti-everything NYC,but anti-everything Chicago and anywhere that the phony reform movement to turn schools into factories is in operation. When it is clear that the PR expression Children First is really Children Last then you look at what’s really going on behind the PR and oppose the entire program of BloomKlein.

   I’m proud to be part of the NYC community where a host of respected teacher bloggers are on the same page as I am, in addition to influential parents on the NYC public school parents blog who have been persistent critics of the Bloomberg/Klein administration. Someone should point to a similar outpouring of support from parents and teachers in NYC for the mayor.

   But then again, why listen to teachers and parents? You mentioned in your session at AERA that your survey shows teachers don’t know much about educational policy. You know. NYC teachers are just a little busy marking those 150-170 papers a day from overcrowded classes and those 10 hour days the heroic “quality” teachers are expected to put in to save the world to have much time for these little debates.

   As for Eduwonkette, whatever research she comes up with to support what we feel in our gut, is welcome. Why not take the research she puts out there and pick that apart instead of the irrelevant issue as to whether she is anonymous or not? No one seems to care except you and other pro-everything NYC people who get their words thrown right back in their faces and want to expose her for purposes that seem awful suspicious.

5. If Norm Scott is “anti-everything” that perhaps Eduwonk could enlighten us and point to some positive outcome of the Bloomberg education reforms. As a member of the panel responsible for approving policy and budgets for NYC public schools, I have yet to see much good news. NAEP tests are stagnant, state tests are up but not as much as under the prior administrations. Graduation rates remain among the lowest in the nation. “Social promotion” has purportedly been ended in 3rd, 5th and 7th grade yet the administration now tells us 18,000 students don’t meet the new promotion criteria in the 8th grade. Class sizes have not materially been reduced despite a system-wide decline in enrollment.

   We have had many reorganizations and countless press releases yet the verdict looks increasingly like the Bloomberg era, despite increased spending and unprecedented authority granted to the decision makers, will go into the history books as a missed opportunity.