dianeravitch posted: Peter Greene here reviews and refutes Campbell Browns article in the New York Daily News about why she is bringing a Vergara lawsuit in New York. Campbell Brown was once a CNN anchor; her husband advised Romney and is on the board of Michelle Rhees Stud Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on Diane Ravitchs blog Peter Greene Explains What Campbell Brown Doesn’t Know about Schools by dianeravitch Peter Greene here reviews and refutes Campbell Browns article in the New York Daily News about why she is bringing a Vergara lawsuit in New York. Campbell Brown was once a CNN anchor; her husband advised Romney and is on the board of Michelle Rhees StudentsFirst New York. She is a fierce critic of teacher unions, tenure, and seniority. The lawsuit gives her an opportunity to act on her passionate hatred for veteran teachers while claiming to defend the rights of students, as the California sponsors of Vergara did. Brown has thus far found six families to act as plaintiffs. She says that one of the students wrote an essay complaining about the quality of education she was receiving and was harassed by multiple teachers and had to change schools. Brown assumes that by getting rid of tenure, seniority, and due process, there would magically be a great teacher in every classroom. Greene writes: Its a good story because it underlines exactly what is problematic about this sort of narrative as a model of teacher evaluation. This could in fact be the story of a student who made a reasonable request, wrote an essay about it, and was unfairly hounded by multiple teachers. While Id like to say that I cant imagine that ever happening, its certainly not impossible (though the harassing phone calls from plural teachers is hard to imagine). But this could also be the story of a student who decide she knew better than a trained professional how the teacher should do his job, got called on it, and had the whole thing blow up when the school tried to deal with her insubordination and disrespect. Either version of the story could be the truth. If we put in student hands the nuclear option of ending a teachers career, we are certainly, as Brown says she wants to, changing the balance of power. But Im not sure how we get to excellence in teaching by way of a student smiling and saying, Mrs. DeGumbuddy, my lawyer and I think you really want to reconsider my grade on this essay. He writes: Tenure-- NY makes teachers wait three years and eighteen observations for tenure. This is the most obvious difference between the New York case and Vergara (California was awarding tenure after less time). This is a hard argument to make-- if an administrator cant tell whether or not shes got a keeper after three years and eighteen observations, that administrator needs to go get a job selling real estate or groceries, because, damn! On the plus side, I look forward to Browns accompanying argument that all New York schools should be barred from ever again hiring Teach for America two-year contract temps. If it takes more than three years to determine if a teacher is any good, then clearly TFA is a waste of everybodys time. Do let me know when Brown brings that up. Dismissals-- Too long, too hard. Im not in New York, so I dont know the real numbers here. This was the weakest part of the states case in Vergara-- while you cant rush through these proceedings, theres no excuse for dragging them out for months and years. Its not good for either party. And he concludes: In the meantime, teachers here in the East can now look forward to a PR blitz tearing down teachers in support of a lawsuit designed to dismantle teaching as a profession. We can only hope the ultimate result will be better than the California version of this traveling circus. dianeravitch | July 8, 2014 at 12:00 pm | Categories: Students, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching | URL: wp.me/p2odLa-8cU Comment See all comments Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Diane Ravitchs blog. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: dianeravitch.net/2014/07/08/peter-greene-explains-what-campbell-brown-doesnt-know-about-schools/ Thanks for flying with WordPress
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:44:11 +0000
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