In honor of Womens’ History Month–which is rapidly ending–here is a video of Ken Burns and Paul Barnes’ 1999 documentary about two of the most pivotal actors in the womens’ suffrage movement in the United States.
The film is not perfect by any means. Yet that Ken Burns shmaltz can be a useful vehicle for more nuanced, complex conversations about womens’ rights and the role of women in 19th and 20th century America.
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Entrance to the South Street Seaport Museum
Rarely am I impressed at any institution that plies me with food and alcohol.
This Tuesday, however, was a rare exception.
It may have been the salmon wraps…the booze…the gentle rolls of the floorboards (more on that later)…or a combination of the three. In any case, the new and improved South Street Seaport Museum is definitely worth a visit—both by your class and on your own.
“New and Improved?” you may ask. “But Mr. D, didn’t you toot SSSM’s horn way back when covering places for field trips?”
Well, things have changed since our last jaunt down to the waterfront.
Built in 1967 in an early 19th century building with musty smells and buckling floorboards (the floors alone gave you seasickness), the South Street Seaport Museum has been, at least in museum terms, something of a Mom-and-Pop operation. It focused mainly on maritime history and New York’s seaport life, and its one dank floor of exhibits brought mostly seafaring enthusiasts and wandering tourists enjoying a summer day at the corner of Fulton and South Streets.
Like the proverbial working girl on the docks, this museum has had a hard life. Apart from the odd school field trip, SSSM’s fairly seasonal clientele could not sustain the place financially. By last year, the museum was in so much debt that a third of the board resigned and half the staff were let go. When the New York Times uses the word “beleaguered” multiple times in describing its status, it can’t be good.
Enter the Museum of the City of New York.
MCNY has risen in recent decades to become one of the preeminent cultural institutions in New York. In my mind, no other museum connects with historians, educators, students, tourists and casual observers quite like it. So it made perfect sense that MCNY took over operations at South Street in the fall of 2011.
The folks uptown gave SSSM the royal treatment, taking charge of the building as well as the fleet of aging schooners, tugboats and barques sitting in the East River. Upon arrival on Tuesday for an Educator Open House (the free food and booze sealed the deal), I was floored at the finished product.
A one-floor dankhole has been expanded to three floors chock-full of exhibits and classroom space. Sixteen galleries now highlight different aspects of the city and the waterfront through a combination of artifacts, photographs, video and multimedia exhibits.
(By the way, the floorboards still buckle—it is an 1812 building after all.)
Some highlights include old Seaport favorites like model ships, old tools and seafaring paraphernalia that survived the overhaul. Other additions include an impressive photo exhibit of the Occupy Wall Street movement, exhibits covering products made in New York, and the highlights of MCNY’s Manahatta exhibit (it’s great that the light-up interactive map of Manhattan made its way downtown).
For school groups, MCNY installed two spacious classroom spaces, with plenty of primary artifacts, text sources and activities that connect students to New York’s maritime past. Furthermore, a number of school programs are available, including a New Amsterdam Walking Tour that used to be offered up at MCNY—guess it just makes more sense to base it here.
Finally, never fear…the Pioneer is still there! I had the pleasure of sailing on this 1885 schooner around New York harbor and even help hoist one of the sails (it inadvertently got me into a short sailing craze which future Mrs. D regrets). The old rust bucket is still there, and still available for tours of the harbor, focusing on history, ecology, commerce and navigation.
Yet all is not well on Schermerhorn Row.
The MCNY experiment is brief, and there is a real danger that the South Street Seaport Museum may not survive once its on its own again. They really need membership (there’s those financial problems again) and a steady stream of visitors to keep the place afloat.
Like it or not, New York’s history is tied intrinsically to the waterfront. We’re blessed not only to have a historic district like South Street, but also a museum that showcases New York’s deep connection to the sea. As commercial and crass as it is, the South Street Seaport offers the only glimpse of what New York looked like before the age of skyscrapers and subways, and the South Street Seaport Museum provides an important educational service in connecting New York’s past and present.
Make sure you give South Street a look, and not just during good weather. Bundle up and get your butt over to Fulton Street—either on your own, or with your class. If you can contribute to becoming a member, great…but come down even if you can’t.
And as always, since we crave attention as much as the aforementioned harbor chick, do tell them the Neighborhood sent you.
South Street Seaport Museum (phone # 212-748-8600) is located at 12 Fulton St., between Water St. and South St.
Take the 2,3, 4, 5, A, C, J,M or Z to Fulton Street Station, then walk down Fulton Street until you see the tall ships. It’s the marine-colored entrance on the right-hand side.
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In our belated homage to Dr. Seuss on his March 2nd birthday, the Neighborhood presents a video of one of Seuss’ greatest–and most controversial–works.
In 1984, Seuss’ The Butter Battle Book caused a sensation in classrooms, libraries and especially the corridors of power in the Reagan administration. A satirical parable about the arms race, militarism and especially nuclear war, The Butter Battle Book was so controversial that public libraries across America banned the book over its viewpoints.
Given the Cold War hysteria of the early Eighties, the book’s content was rife for discussion.
The book chronicles the long-simmering conflict between the Yooks and the Zooks, two cultures at war over breakfast food. The Yooks butter their bread on top, while the Zooks butter theirs on the bottom. This innocuous difference leads to an escalating arms race, culminating in the development of an “Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo”–a weapon designed to wipe out all life with no counter-defense. The book ends as both generals hold their tiny Armegeddon devices, ready to drop at any moment.
Like the Lorax, Seuss’ other well-known political work (then about the environment), The Butter Battle Book is not your traditional feel-good children’s story. A cliffhanger is left as we don’t know what happens with the Yooks and Zooks and their factories of death.
Yet Seuss’ nuclear fable differs in that it feels much more hopeless, more helpless–and thus much more sinister.
Attached is the 1989 animated special of the book by TNT. It was created by an equally controversial animator in Ralph Bakshi, who created a work very close to the wording and intent of the original book. Narrated by charles Durning, the special was so well made that Seuss himself considered it the most faithful adaptation of his work ever made.
This is my all-time favorite Seuss work, and is brimming with classroom debate and discussion at any age.
Enjoy…and stay away from butter altogether. It’ll kill you in the end 
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Tweed Courthouse, headquarters of the NYC Department of Education. Image via Wikipedia
On November 16, 1801, a group of New York politicians led by Alexander Hamilton began a political broadsheet that would eventually become one of the most influential publications in the metro area.
Recently, it decided to cease being a newspaper…and become a tool of propaganda instead.
On Friday, February 24, after a lengthy court battle, the New York City Department of Education was forced to comply with a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request filed by the New York Post, the aforementioned tabloid founded over 210 years ago. The DOE released the infamous Teacher Data Reports (TDRs)—the rankings of supposed teacher effectiveness based on standardized test scores in English Language Arts and mathematics.
In the days that followed, each of the city’s major media outlets released the teacher scores (with names attached) in varying formats. Some ranked teachers from highest to lowest percentile. Others released searchable databases by district, borough and school. Still others, such as the New York Times, published the data with lengthy addenda explaining that the scores shouldn’t be used to rate or rank teachers, since it was a single indicator based on outdated, faulty data with a ridiculously wide margin of error.
(These explanations, by the way, were provided by the DOE itself, along with a recommendation that the media treat the data fairly as it was intended.)
However, the New York Post, the paper that initiated the FOIL request, didn’t stop at a mere spreadsheet of names and numbers.
After releasing its own version of the teacher data—with language so editorialized it hardly passed as hard news—the Post released a story about the alleged parent uproar over a Queens teacher who received the lowest scores in the city.
The story’s lead paragraph read: “The city’s worst teacher has parents at her Queens school looking for a different classroom for their children.”
In that one sentence, the Post lost the last vestige of journalistic integrity.
The controversy over the TDRs embroils teachers, administrators, parents and political leaders. The arguments range from the valid to the ludicrous.
The data was flawed.
It’s impossible to rate teachers based on only one indicator in each subject.
The data doesn’t take into account the myriad of extenuating circumstances.
The DOE secretly wanted the scores released.
The DOE supposedly encouraged media outlets in their FOIL requests and even expedited the process.
The DOE got into a devil’s compact with the UFT leadership, the mayor, Fox News, the Republican Party, the Tea Party, the Freemasons, Jesuits, the Vatican, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderburg Group to publicly tear out the entrails of “ineffective” teachers…
(Okay, that last one was far-fetched—but you get the point.)
The actual release of the data is a moot point. Until a new law or federal court ruling decides otherwise, the scores are out, and will probably be released again in the future (even if the DOE itself stopped collecting such scores).
The real issue, one that has an even farther-reaching implication than the classroom, is how media outlets use that data. While it is true that the First Amendment gives newspapers quite a bit of leeway, there are definite boundaries that journalists cannot cross.
When a newspaper publishes a story based on a flawed, incorrect and unsubstantiated source, it crosses that boundary.
When a newspaper uses false data to publicly shame an individual, it is not only unethical. It is slanderous.
The inaccuracy of the TDRs was acknowledged by teachers, administrators, and even the DOE itself. All parties agreed that the data was imperfect. What’s more, the data has such a wide margin of error that any percentile derived from it is akin to throwing a dart at a dartboard blindfolded.
Thus, the TDRs are a flawed, inaccurate, and therefore non-credible source—by open admission from the powers that be.
The papers can print the data, as long as their stories about them have multiple sources discussing the data. So far, all the newspapers covered this base (in the Post’s case, just barely.)
Yet the labeling of teachers in superlatives, as “best” or “worst”, based on TDR data does not pass the journalistic smell test. Along the same vein as the Queens teacher’s article, the Post also published a piece about teachers with the highest percentiles. The following was the lead to the story:
“The city’s top-performing teachers have one thing in common: They’re almost all women.”
Not only does this statement say absolutely nothing (considering the vast majority of teachers in the city are women anyway), but it makes a dangerous classification—the same kind of classifying that drove that Queens teacher to a virtual lynch mob by ill-informed parents.
When news stories throw around a value judgment based on one singular measure—a measure that is so ridiculously flawed even its authors disavow it—the journalists behind these stories used what amounts to false, unsubstantiated information.
It is, in effect, mocking (or exalting) people based on a probable lie. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the textbook example of slander and libel.
The New York Post’s editorial pages have attacked teachers’ union and teachers for years now. Yet this frenzied hatred never hit the news headlines as hard as it did this weekend.
They have used unsubstantiated, inaccurate data to shame teachers, using the unfortunate quotes of ill-informed parents in the process as they whip up support for their negativity.
Worst of all, they have the gall to couch this journalistic lynching as hard news.
The New York Post should stop calling itself a newspaper. It is now no better than a common propaganda pamphlet that panders to the lowest common denominator. At times I even agreed with the Post politically—but their tactics disgust me.
Finally, for those whose reputations have been ruined by this pseudo-journalism, there is a weapon far more powerful than any ordnance. It usually has a suit, a briefcase, and an avalanche of legal motions.
See you in court, Rupert.
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It seems the one truly bipartisan agenda in Washington today is duping the American public.
The bailout, the modest job increases, the upswing in the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones, even the rebound in the mortgage bond market are all spun to make it seem that things are actually getting better for average Americans.
The same is true for American education, and no more so than social studies—the sacrificial lamb to the altar of “interdisciplinary” or “integrative” studies.
Back in 2011, the federal budget for the fiscal year 2012 saw hatchet-like slashes across federal agencies, cracking off limbs where pruning would suffice. In education, the ax fell on programs that were needed for its stated mission of a literate citizenry by 2014. Suffice to say the boughs that needed most attention were left untouched (boughs with branches in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example).
The Teaching American History (TAH) Grant program, of which I am a big fan, lost its funding for FY 2012, signaling to one and all Washington’s contempt for a quality education for our citizens. In the 2013 budget released on February 13, the program’s woes would continue—the lost funds would not return.
Furthermore, most of the 2012 cuts have remained in place for 2013. Although the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would receive a modest $8.2 million boost, most agencies saw a leveling off or a reduction in funding.
The real insult, however, is how the Obama administration’s Department of Education views the role of social studies in future national plans.
Once again, the DOE proposes to scrap traditional K-12 history education and fold it into this new educational Leviathan named “Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education.” According to the National Coalition for History, the program aims to:
“support competitive grants to States, high-need LEAs, and nonprofit partners to develop and expand innovative practices to improve teaching and learning of the arts, foreign languages, history, government, economics and financial literacy, environmental education, physical education, health education, and other subjects. There would be no dedicated funding for any of the disciplines.”
To add insult to injury, this boondoggle has also felt the sharp edge of Obama’s ax: from $246 million in FY’12 to an astounding $90 million in this current budget. Even the Administration has lost faith in their own proposal, to the tune of an over 63% reduction in funding.
If the federal government doesn’t even believe in this idea, why should educators buy into it?
In this endeavor, social studies educators should be joined with science faculty, teachers in foreign languages, physical education teachers, athletic coaches and others in common cause. As much as integration is a valuable tool in the classroom, it is not a silver bullet for the ills of education—any teacher will tell you that.
There are certain skills, concepts and facts that require the concentration, focus and expertise of a dedicated subject. Thus, funding should also reflect the continued necessity of subjects/content areas by allocating monies to science, foreign languages, the arts and especially the social studies.
This program is dependent on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which governs K-12 education. Since it’s an election year, and the ESEA is mired in Congressional deadlock, then nothing much can be done on this in the coming session. Yet that gives that much more time to express our opinions on the matter.
Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of collective action—too much of the Beltway cynic in me. However, this can be driven in the right direction given the right buttons are pushed.
Here is the link to the members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Also included is the members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (phew, that’s a mouthful). Take a little time to let them know that “Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education” is nothing but a front to destroy our educational system. It will make a mockery of our system, dragging us even farther behind other countries in every category.
Furthermore, even the Administration has shown its reluctance by slashing its funding—so Congress should devote those funds to more worthy educational endeavors.
Please contact your local Congressman, at any rate…and as usual, make sure to let him/know the Neighborhood sent you.
House Committee on Education and the Workforce
John Kline, Minnesota
(Chairman)
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin
Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California
Judy Biggert, Illinois
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
Joe Wilson, South Carolina
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Bob Goodlatte, Virginia
Duncan Hunter, California
David P. Roe, Tennessee
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania
Tim Walberg, Michigan
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee
Richard L. Hanna, New York
Todd Rokita, Indiana
Larry Bucshon, Indiana
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania
Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota
Martha Roby, Alabama
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada
Dennis A. Ross, Florida
Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania
George Miller, California
(Senior Democratic Member)
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, Virginia
Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Rubén Hinojosa, Texas
Carolyn McCarthy, New York
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Susan A. Davis, California
Raúl M. Grijalva, Arizona
Timothy H. Bishop, New York
David Loebsack, Iowa
Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Tom Harkin (IA) - Chair
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA)
Kay R. Hagan (NC)
Jeff Merkley (OR)
Al Franken (MN)
Michael F. Bennet (CO)
Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)
Richard Blumenthal (CT)
Michael B. Enzi (WY) -Ranking Republican Senator
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
Rand Paul (KY)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
John McCain (AZ)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Mark Kirk (IL)
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A few nights ago, PBS showed a documentary that chilled me to the bone.
Slavery by Another Name is a documentary based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon. It details an often-overlooked chapter in African American history: the ”convict lease” system that placed thousands of Southern Blacks in a state of virtual slavery after the Civil War.
When the Reconstruction occupation forces left the South in 1877, Southern whites retook state governments and forced Blacks into a secondary status. Part of this process was a series of laws that entrapped Black men under seemingly innocent conditions, such as looking at a white woman, walking on a railroad, etc.
Once in custody, these men faced exhorbitant fines and were forced to pay for the cost of their arrest. Unable to pay such “debts”, these prisoners are leased out to plantations, mines, brickyards, railroads, quarries, steel mills and road building contractors. State governments made millions in revenue leasing prison inmates to private companies as a source of cheap labor.
These men endured brutal conditions and backbreaking labor in a state of bondage thanks to a loophole in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which does not bar slavery in the case of punishment for a crime.
It was a system that persisted until World War II.
The video is a conversation that takes place at the National Museum of American History between Blackmon and Bernard and Shirley Kinsey about the book. For those unfamiliar with the period, the conversation is a real eye-opener to Blackmon’s award-winning research.
Also, read his book and watch the documentary. You’ll be just as shocked as I was.
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Today’s Document from the National Archives
This Day in History, from Infoplease
Education Week Headlines US Department of Education NY Times – Education BBC World Headlines AP Top Stories
Ready for Inspection! The Problem with “Quality Reviews”
Some time ago, an acquaintance I knew from the Department of Education, a science specialist, told me this when I was complaining about State Quality Reviews (SQRs).
As true as this is (and he should know—he actually does SQRs for the district), it still doesn’t explain how a two-day beauty pageant defines years worth of expertise and academic achievement.
In New York State, that’s exactly what an SQR does.
For those in the Neighborhood living outside New York, you may have something similar. They come under various names: reflections, reviews, audits, analyses. Here in the Empire State, these inspections are known as Quality Reviews, with the appropriate air of a Dickensian workhouse.
These official reviews are masked as “learning experiences” meant to provide “reflective feedback” on our practice. After you choke a little bit on your own vomit, you’ll realize their true purpose: to make sure schools do exactly what they’re supposed to do in the manner expected from the state education department—or at least to the whims of the pack of inspectors sent to your school.
The reviews come in multiple levels. The peer review, a less invasive but no less insidious device, involves groups of teachers and administrators rating each other. The educational equivalent of a gladiatorial contest, the peer review is usually less intense since fellow teachers and admins rarely want to crap on their own brethren.
The State Quality Review, or SQR, involves a pack of reviewers from a mix of different places, from the district to the DOE offices in Tweed to the state offices in Albany. A two-day affair, the SQR usually is triggered if a school suffers a drop in their rating or is rated a School in Need of Improvement according to No Child Left Behind.
Even this level of review comes in different degrees. For example, if your school dropped in ranking due to poor test scores in targeted areas, such as English Language Learners (ELLs) or Special Education Students, the review will most likely focus on the school’s work in that area. Otherwise, in case of a monumental screw-up, the entire school apparatus is put under the microscope.
My school recently had the former: a review based on our supposed lack of progress in ELLs and Special Education. Even so, the entire school was mobilized. Reams of assessment reports, data reports, student diagnostic reports, spreadsheets, graphs, charts, lesson plans, rubrics, student work, teacher evaluations, curriculum maps—all of it gets collected into a series of massive binders. These binders are designed for a dual purpose: to provide adequate evidence that we’re doing our job even without making educational targets; or to overwhelm the reviewer with work to the point that they just assume the school’s doing a thorough job without cracking open these three-ring behemoths.
Rarely does the review not go past the binder stage.
After a day of sifting through numbers and charts, day two features the classroom visits. In theory, the visits are supposed to be “random.” Therefore, every class is spruced up, cleaned up, papered with new charts and new student work (with appropriate rubrics and task cards). In practice, however, since the visits target certain populations, it is often the classes with said populations that get visited—and are often prepped ahead of time.
The result is a series of visits into model classrooms in the vein of Disney World’s World of Tomorrow rides. Bulletin boards stand as monuments, replete with student work, carefully labeled with comments, a rubric and task card (never mind the mind-numbing hours spent preparing these works ahead of time). The charts around the room carefully detail every minute movement in the academic process (usually after re-doing and sprucing up charts the teacher has used for years).
Even the procedures need procedures—such is apparently a “well developed” classroom. I’m surprised there are no charts detailing how to effectively utilize the lavatory (Lord knows they can use it).
The children sit in their seats (the more impossible ones are either conveniently absent or not-so-subtly convinced/cajoled/threatened to behave) and stage a performance worthy of Broadway. While they are listless, lethargic or outright defiant most of the year, the SQR somehow summons articulate, well-mannered, enthused children gleefully engaging in one of your “A” lessons (a little coaching certainly helps.)
All the while, the reviewers (some blasé, some meticulous, and even a few true-believers with Nazi brutality) ask the teachers and children questions about their learning, mostly to figure out if the little whelps are actually paying attention. It’s a scream when they go off-script. One year, a boy was asked his favorite subject. He replied, “Home.”
Some of the questions teachers get can be downright insulting. One teacher was asked to show her lesson for that day. She was asked to show the lesson’s objective (which is clearly marked on most lesson plan books, which seemed to go above the head of this reviewer). After pointing to the lesson objective in her plan, she was then asked, “Why is that the objective?”
Hmmm…how about because that’s what the phony-baloney curriculum map they had to make (and could barely read) says to do.
Even the tone of that question—and I wasn’t present to hear it—would suggest that the reviewer was not among academic professionals but rather a pack of chimps that still needed Jane Goodall to teach them how to poke at anthills with a stick.
In the end, the review usually comes with a long checklist of positive points and things to work on (NEVER negative points, because the word “negative” doesn’t exist in a well-developed classroom *vomit*). The negatives rarely carry much substance, but rather focus on how to create MORE useless paperwork to make the appearance of learning.
Sometimes, they even suggest to return to methods and theories that were discarded during the LAST quality review.
After coming out of the subsequent scotch fog, I had some serious questions about the SQR process. Why the reams of paperwork? Why collect data that often says little and means even less? Why ask children for answers who are notoriously honest—even in the best schools?
Most importantly…how does a quality review help children learn more?
I’m looking really hard, and I haven’t the foggiest.
The window dressing, the bulletin boards, the charts—they are only as effective as the teacher behind them. Any trained animal can clean up well enough to perform a show.
The “evidence” question doesn’t wash with me. Most of a teacher’s best work is done without a ream of paperwork or forms to complete. Effective professionals know what data works and what data is simply filler for a spreadsheet. More data doesn’t necessarily mean improvement.
Thus, if reviewers are really looking for reams of evidence, are they viewing teachers as professionals? Or are teachers more like Goodall’s chimps, according to the state?
Therefore, maybe that’s how the education reform crowd, the NCLB nancies and TFA fops, views all of us who chose education as a calling: a pack of trained animals that can’t be trusted to make intelligent decisions and need a zookeeper to collect the feces.
Which leads back to the earlier quote. My friend was absolutely right. The quality review can’t scratch the surface of what a teacher does in the classroom. Yet the very existence of such a review undermines the status of professionals whose talents and achievements far exceed any binder of data.
So if the state continues to treat me like a chimp…well, let’s just say chimps are marksmen with their bowel movements.
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Tagged as Classroom, Comedy, Commentary, Education, education reform, Educational leadership, Humor, Humour, Jane Goodall, Leadership, Lesson plan, New York, Opinion, Special Education, SQR, Standards, State Quality Review, Student, Teachers, Teaching