At one time, the Liberal Party of New York had its headquarters in an office building on Park Avenue South in the 20’s.
And because the Liberal Party’s interest in the importance of education existed from the moment of its founding and the Teacher’s Union was in the forefront, just crossing a street to get to it seemed perfect.
Randi eventually proved to be a great choice to follow the former head of the union, Albert Shanker, whose 25 years of ferocious determination made him one of the most important leaders in the world of education as he made the union a critical part of the effort to make public education work.
He went on strike when he had to and Mayors and the State Legislature understood that Shanker wanted more money and respect for New York’s teachers. The Liberal Party was the first and only political party in New York – and in the country – to fully support and encourage Shanker’s work fighting regularly for better teacher pay to influence a broader recognition of the importance of our school teachers. He knew he had a very vocal ally and appreciated the support.
It had been years since a now working Mom had been home to assist teachers in helping students learn effectively. This simple fact combined with critical changes in the way English, reading and arithmetic had been taught and an end to memorization which helped build the mind had combined to reduce the results of public education in New York and throughout the country at levels never seen before.
That slow, steady decline continues today years and years later with no changes to halt the fall – just an endless do-over and continuous excuses which add up to nothing but failure.
During her tenure, we walked across the street on selected occasions to talk directly to Randi about what was happening in NYC schools and to education throughout the country and what could be done to improve sagging results.
It was on one of those that she introduced us to a staff member leading a group of selected professionals right there in the union office who were available at a phone call’s notice to respond to any Principal’s call for help in schools throughout the city.
The team was able to deal specifically with academic problems that teachers might be experiencing and had a number of ways to do so.
All that team needed to get going was a call for help.
The woman in charge of the team told us confidentially that “no one ever calls.”
When that honest notice was shared with Randi, she shrugged and said that Principals ran schools and if they didn’t need help there was nothing the Union could do.
We did not say “But you could talk openly about it and people would listen.” knowing full well that the Teacher’s Union would never criticize anything within the system that had to do with professionals in charge…it didn’t matter how bad it would get or what that was doing to students who needed help they would never get. And that crime has never been recognized nor punished.
In all her years as head of the national union Randi has never used her voice to express singular truths about our public system’s failures.
Under Mulgrew the Teacher’s Union now resides on Wall Street.
Mr. Mulgrew has done little for NYC education and nothing for the city’s schools but get his teachers a few raises in a deal with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education people. As he admitted after his elongated term of office, Bloomberg’s principal regret as Mayor for 12 years was his failure to improve education.
Mulgrew is certainly not an Albert Shanker nor will he ever be a Randi Weingarten. When things go downhill…
REASONS FOR FAILURE
Schools stopped teaching successfully in the 1970s when they turned to new ways of teaching reading and arithmetic. Like a wall of Humpty Dumpties the whole house fell down.
Two national studies by Washington, DC independent education think tanks issued public reports on the absolute failure of Schools of Education to properly prepare teachers. Randi herself put her name on the first report which was a deeply detailed look at what should be done, what was not being done and what as being done badly. She has never spoken or written about either report.
That first study said, among pages of other things, that those students focused on specific subject areas – like history, science or math and English – were not being taught by professors hired for their reputation and expertise by the Liberal Arts school on campus – but by teachers in the School of Education …less rather than more.
It said that teachers in training waited until just months before graduation to be put into classrooms with students they would soon be teaching…rather than begin working with them in the first or second year of Ed School.
The failure to teach teachers how to teach did much to explain the sinking results in public education which still exist today with no end in sight but further failure. There is no indication that any significant changes have been made in Schools of Education.
As we are writing this, a major educational journal is holding a webinar on why first-time teachers are not ready or prepared to teach. They’ve held meetings like this “forever”.
In 2009, a group of well-known and highly regarded educators spent eight years to produce the Core Curriculum, a completely new approach to teaching our children. The program was presented to State Governments because the States have the obligation by law to provide education.
The effort came late in the school year and the program was actually presented to our school systems in mid-Summer with the understanding that if they were accepted immediately, they would receive millions of dollars necessary to introduce the program to students at the beginning of the upcoming term.
Understandably, forty States accepted the offer including New York.
The program was placed into the hands of teachers just a few weeks before the start of school. The absolute stupidity of such an arrangement still stuns. The result was an immediate mess-one that never recovered. Teachers and parents came to hate the program which they never quite got to understand. Despite the obvious brilliance of the approach and the work of the founders to help everyone who needed it, the day-to day realities were simply beyond everybody – and they never caught up.
The program faded from view by 2015.
Once upon a time each child in elementary school had such courses as music, art, shop and home-making. They stopped years ago.
Once upon a time each child in junior high school had courses in civics and economics. They stopped years ago
Once upon a time children on both levels had history and social studies. Teaching of those courses today have now been reduced by half the time because academics who write history books have never been able to agree on the way our children should be taught about America’s history. Scholars in other academic areas agree…those in history disagree. And now the actual teaching of history is fading away.
So what are our schools doing to teach our children?
Sadly…not much.
Blaming Covid and IPhones for failure are sad excuses as failure pre-dates both. Failure is years and years old.
SCREEN TIME
Now we hear Randi’s current concern about screen time for our very youngest pre-school children right through second grade.
Several things ring terribly true about this concern: for years and years all students were allowed to bring social media screens to school so that they could keep scrolling Tik Tok and Instagram right through classroom time instead of paying attention.
When schools made a weak attempt to put an end to this ridiculous destructive problem, parents – yes, parents – complained about needing to reach their children in case of an “emergency”.
The obvious answer was to say “Call the school”…which had worked for the past one hundred years…but schools backed away and that kind of screen time was rampant…and still is despite new efforts to lock those phones up on entering school.
Parents today are too busy to want anything but happiness for their children in school…as if happiness corresponded to learning and knowledge.
Speaking recently at the National Press Club in Washington, DC Randi urged elementary schools to avoid using AI because young people are “drowning in tech” and told them to stop giving digital devices like iPads to children in prekindergarten through second grade.
According to PR materials from her union the effort is part of a new campaign to prioritize active, hands-on learning, socialization and human relationships in classrooms, while reducing school reliance on digital devices.
According to Randi she has been influenced by a recent study which said that screens can hook children, hindering socialization and critical thinking.
Very, very late Randi…too little and way too late!
College professors complain they cannot get their students to talk to each other in class. They take notes, study, take tests and move on. No talking because they do not know how. Ask them to text something and they might get better results.
But we believe something worse and more important is going on – worse because no one – no Governor, no Mayor, no legislature, no union, NOBODY has taken a moment to find out if all this new demand and focus on Pre-K for 4, 3, 2 year olds works.
Perhaps our school system is still playing make believe, introducing these many Pre-K programs to give working parents a chance to earn a living and feel good, believing their youngest are not only being cared for but are learning as well.
There is no study which introduces us to elements of success and failure. We have no idea whether all these Pre-Ks are nothing but high-quality baby-sitting services…and apparently no one cares.
Years ago, the Carnegie Foundation introduced a model of what Early Childhood Education was and what it was not. It is not Kindergarten. It is supposed to have a ratio of one professionally educated Early Childhood teacher working with just four children at a time in classrooms designed to appeal to and educate pre-school children.
None of that exists in New York.
When we spent time in Waco, Texas just a few years ago, Baylor University had built a building to house Early Childhood teacher preparation. It had a Dean but was totally empty. There weren’t enough jobs then for graduates with a degree in Early Childhood…and the few that existed in Texas paid less than for Kindergarten teachers.
Times have changed. But there is still no indication that all – or any – of the Pre-K “opportunities” in NYC are staffed by fully trained Early Childhood Education teachers or that proper ratios between children and professionals exist.
THE FEAR OF AI
Fears abound.
Fears of the extraordinary, and perhaps genius “new” is nothing new.
Data Centers eating up space, water, energy…noises bothering residents close to them. Anyone old enough to remember the introduction of computers way back when? Whole rooms were devoted to monster machinery feeding the most simplistic card information to those in offices.
See any of that now? Of course not.
And speaking of Elon, there is the political fear of the seven most powerful companies in American history all owning some of the AI world…that adds up to all of it.
These same companies own 25% of the entire Stock Market!!!
And were all at the recent G7 meeting of the free world’s leaders.
So fear abounds.
As it does with AI as instructive teacher. Do you ever get all the news you need from a doctor treating you? No worries as AI will fill in the enormous blanks. Use Google lately? If so, you have been interacting with AI provided
information and its questions to you about whether more specifics are needed with examples of specifics to help your consideration.
AI AT WORK
Some months ago we told the story of Alpha in Austin, Texas and Florida.
Each elementary school in this private school system teaches each course in the curriculum with programmed AI computers for each child in those schools. No teacher is present. The classes last for just two hours every school day. The rest of the day is spent with hands-on learning, socialization, independent, hands-on relationships and group activities all handled by teachers helping to engage each and every child in the adventures of learning everything but the necessary subject matter in each grade now taught only by AI.
The genius here is that those AI computers assigned to each child can quickly do something THAT NO TEACHER IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM HAS EVER BEEN ABLE TO DO – KNOW HOW EACH CHILD LEARNS BEST SO THAT A CHILD CAN BE TAUGHT ACCORDINGLY.
The test results in this private school are far beyond any public school in Texas or Florida. Children, learning fast and well, are skipping grades because they are learning as they never have before.
Yes this is a private school system. It costs parents $40,000 a term.
Can such a reality happen in a public school anywhere in America? Not without teacher union support – which seems improbable if unions fear endangering a teacher’s ability to earn a living.
This despite them knowing that one-third of our teachers are leaving the field five years after beginning their careers because they cannot do the job…and no longer want to struggle.
THE FUTURE
We are all involved in the political battle involving the coming mid-term elections.
For years most Presidents have suffered losses during them.
Many believe that the Democrats must at least win back the House if there is to be some modification of Donald J. Trump’s very special personal approach as CEO of America.
There is not a single politician in America talking about education. We see and cringe at the essentially ignorant behavior of our non-educated newest generation often showing themselves in the political arena as people who do not know what they do not know.
If we do not finally recognize and understand that the failure to educate our young results in the loss of World power as it has been doing for centuries – as we boringly report much of the time here – then we might as well give up any thought that anything will change for the better.
Voices must be raised. Leaders must be found.
Silence is a form of national death…where we no longer recognize the country we have always known and loved …because we feel it no longer exists.
We admire those who would become teachers. The failures we describe here come without anyone openly willing them. Yet they don’t stop coming.
We urge the Teacher’s Union to stop taking baby steps that are coming too late to make any changes. That is what it used to do when America’s educational strengths were as powerful as the rest of the country.
But it no longer is. We rank 28th in the world of industrial nations. As education has fallen, so has the country. It is historically inevitable.
It doesn’t have to be.
“WE THE PEOPLE” must care.