New York City Dept. Of Education Suspends Special Needs Instructor For Helping Student With A Kickstarter Project

from the system-broken-all-the-way-UP-as-well dept

A New York city schoolteacher sent sexually explicit emails to a student -- emails he admitted to sending. It took six years to get him fired, during which he was paid $350,000.

Another instructor was given a 60-day suspension for continually making offensive remarks to his students, like, "These Chinese students need to go back to their own country. They don't belong here."

A NYC school swim coach repeatedly touched and kissed his female students. Told one to shave the hair around her bikini. Commented on another's tan lines. He paid a $7,000 fine and was instructed to take a sexual harassment class.

Hundreds of New York city teachers bounced around the city's so-called "Rubber Rooms" for years, drawing full pay while playing cards and reading magazines as they killed time waiting for their case to come up. Some were "merely" incompetent. Others were facing misconduct charges, ranging from altering grades to physically or verbally abusing students. Very few of these teachers were ever fired. Firing a NYC teacher is generally a costly labyrinth that few with the power to eliminate bad teachers are willing to navigate. (PDF link to a 2-page flowchart showing all the steps needed to remove a lousy teacher from NYC schools.)

These are just some that actually were punished as the result of an investigation. Few teachers actually find themselves being punished for their actions. Between tenure and the city's powerful unions, the Dept. of Education has very little power to reprimand those it's charged with overseeing. But if the system wants to expeditiously punish a teacher, it can. But those it acts quickly against generally aren't the problem.

Case in point: Therapist Deb Fisher received a 30-day suspension for misconduct. Her misconduct?

She raised money on Kickstarter for a program that she and the student, Aaron Philip, 13, created called This Ability Not Disability. An investigator with the Education Department’s Office of Special Investigations, Wei Liu, found that Ms. Fisher sent emails about the project during her workday at Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children, and was thus guilty of “theft of services.”

Unmentioned in the official report leading to this suspension were any of the following details.

• The entire school, including the principal, was involved with the Kickstarter project and routinely utilized school email accounts to send update blasts.
• Ms. Fisher developed an arts program for disabled students aimed at developing tools and supplies they could use. She received a mayoral commendation for this effort.
• She spearheaded a drive to ensure permanent, accessible housing for Aaron Phillip and his family after unemployment led to a stay at a homeless shelter.
• The Kickstarter project -- a graphic novel and movie about being the only person with legs in a world filled with wheelchair users -- hit its goal and was celebrated during a town hall meeting.

All of this was ignored in order to punish Ms. Fisher for a small infraction of the rules. The investigation itself stemmed from something even more small-minded and petty than the Dept. of Education's final decision.

[A] co-worker with whom Ms. Fisher had had continuing disagreements made a series of charges against her. Ms. Fisher had complained that the co-worker was physically bullying and taunting her.

Even the best people have their flaws. It's not altogether inconceivable that this one-woman storm of good deeds wasn't above treating someone horribly. Except the accusations were lies.

The special investigators found that none of the serious allegations against Ms. Fisher were true, but said she was guilty of fund-raising for “her own charity.”

Except that this isn't true either. The money went to the student. Not that the Department ultimately cared to sort out the facts.

The report made no mention that the entire building had been involved with the effort, nor did it try to determine whether Ms. Fisher would profit from it in any way. She was suspended on Sept. 15 until the end of October.

Because rules are rules and using the school's email system to raise money for a personal project (albeit one that completely benefited a different person) isn't allowed... even if the rest of the school -- including the principal -- did the same thing. Fisher's 30-day suspension for helping an overachieving student pursue his dreams is the same amount handed out to librarian Devin Black, who helped a 13-year-old student fulfill Black's dreams by telling her she "looked sexy," while touching her -- something that wasn't an isolated incident.

Justice -- true justice -- may be blind, but what passes for "justice" in bureaucratic systems is spineless, officious and brutally incompetent. The same can be said for those who apply the "rules" in this fashion, ensuring no good deed goes unpunished while ignoring the rot and corruption inherent in the system. Whoever oversees the New York Dept. of Education needs to tell everyone involved in this decision that they're clearly too stupid to be entrusted with this -- or any -- power.

Filed Under: aaron philip, bureaucracy, deb fisher, new york city, nyc, suspension, teachers

DailyDirt: Learning How To Teach Teachers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As the school year in the US begins, students are getting their class schedules and teacher assignments -- and some teachers are going to be better than others. One school can be ranked higher than another, but if your kid has a great teacher, school rankings may not be a meaningful measurement. But how do we find or nurture a growing pool of good teachers? That's a tough task that some folks are looking into, and there may be better ways to teach teachers. Here are just a few links on improving teaching skills.

• Tenured professors aren't better teachers than non-tenured professors, but further conclusions are tricky to make. It does make sense that professors who spend more time teaching than on research and publications would be able to hone their teaching skills a bit more. [url]
• Over the course of a school year, the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher can be the amount of material students learn. Bad teachers barely cover half a year's worth of material, whereas a good teacher can cover 1.5 years of a subject. [url]
• Good teachers aren't born. They're taught to be good teachers. It takes effort and skill to diagnose a student's problems for learning various material, and this skill doesn't just appear out of thin air -- nor can it be created by putting teachers into a Darwinian accountability game of standardized test scores. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: education, learning, professors, school, students, teachers, tenure

DailyDirt: Learning How To Do Math Like A Boss

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people claim that they are not "math people" -- that their brains just don't understand mathematics that way "normal" people are supposed to learn it. Perhaps that's true for some, but the subject of math seems to be taught in a way that tends to weed people out as concepts get more abstract. Educators are trying to figure out how to avoid making math lessons as painful as they might have been in the past (and hopefully not create any further torture with "new math" or even "newer new math"). Here are just a few links on changing the way these skills are taught.

• Math classes are usually taught as a progression of skills, starting with counting, then adding/subtraction, then multiplication/division, then algebra, maybe some geometry/trig, and ending in calculus. However, a growing trend of abolishing this artificial math progression could have toddlers learning calculus concepts -- and other "advanced" math topics -- in a non-linear order. [url]
• Psychologists see evidence that preschoolers have a natural ability to do basic algebra before they ever sit in a classroom. This ability seems to come from kids' "Approximate Number System" (ANS) or "number sense" -- which allows children to solve simple algebra problems without a systematic logic. Researchers would like to figure out how this number sense breaks down as kids go to school and appear to lose these inherent abilities. [url]
• There's a trend to try to teach *everyone* how to program, but maybe if we're really serious about doing that, we should change the way programming is done. Forcing humans to think like computers isn't going to make programming very popular, so making human-friendly programming languages might be the way to go. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algebra, ans, approximate number system, calculus, coding, education, intuition, learning, math, number sense, preschoolers, programming, stem, teachers, teaching

DailyDirt: How Does Teaching Math Really Add Up?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Year after year, news reports state that the US has horrible test scores in math compared to other countries. This leads commenters to speculate on the dismal future of the US economy and to complain about the weaknesses of the entire US educational system. However, international tests have never correlated that well with the relative economic performance of a country, so it's hard to see how bad test scores would accurately predict future economic rankings. There are plenty of things to try to fix in the US education system, but perhaps we should be planning a longer term strategy (instead of trying to turn the ship every election year) and focus on the evidence of what produces good educational results (if we can even agree on what results we want).

• Teach for America has had its share of critics and supporters, debating the effectiveness of TFA teachers compared to traditional teachers, but it looks like students of TFA teachers score better on year-end math exams. This doesn't mean that TFA teachers are better trained at math education, though. The study that found this correlation also notes that TFA teachers themselves performed significantly better on a test of math knowledge than traditional teachers. [url]
• Wannabe scientists may be encouraged to know that Harvard professor emeritus E. O. Wilson believes that many of the most successful scientists today are semiliterate in math. But if you're bad at math, you better be good at collaborating with people who *are* good at math. (This applies to non-scientists, too.) Also, this might not apply to the most successful scientists in the future. [url]
• Emphasizing hard work as the key to learning and mastering mathematic concepts may produce better results, rather than letting students believe they are not "math people" by nature. Ultimately, doing well on math tests is not the goal, and we may want to encourage the next generation of kids to believe that their math skills can be improved through persistence. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: collaboration, education, math, scientists, skills, teach for america, teachers, test scores

Getting Fired 101, The Ohio Teacher's Edition: Go Full Racist On Facebook

from the how-does-this-guy-qualify-to-educate-children? dept

This is the week of All Hallows' Eve, when the near-entirety of a mostly staunchly monotheistic religious nation encourage their children to partake in a pagan ritual, because American hypocrisy is as endless as the ether to which it disbands. And, if you're David Spondike, it's all fun and games until some brown-skinned person urinates on a telephone pole. Then it's time for a fun little Confederate rant on Facebook.

I don't mind if you come to my neighborhood from the ghetto to trick-or-treat. But when you whip out your teeny dicks and piss on the telephone pole in front of my yard and a bunch of preschoolers and toddlers, you can take your nigger-ass back where it came from. I don't have anything against anyone of any color, but niggers, stay out!

Don't read that last line more than three times out loud, or your brain might just implode for uttering anything so stupidly self-contradictory. As I mentioned, Spondike is a high school teacher in Akron, where the majority of the student body is African American. In other words, he extra can't get away with saying something so racist and stupid.

Wait, did I say racist? Sorry, here's Spondike with a follow up to tell me why it wasn't a racist thing to say.

"Racism" implies prejudging, which is clearly not what happened here. Making any excuse for allowing one race to use a word and condemning another race for using the same word is institutionalized racism in and of itself, regardless of the justification used.

Yup, he's one of "those guys" who thinks simply using a racially charged term against a minority in anger isn't racist so long as you just say it isn't. Also, apparently there's this idea floating around some of my fellow white folks' brains that if it isn't okay for us to use racist terms then obviously it shouldn't be okay for the target of those words to use them either. A bit of advice: stop thinking that, because it's stupid. You can argue that if you want, but you apparently don't understand the history of word-adoption as an empowerment structure. Oh, and advocating that would put you squarely on the side of Spondike, meaning this guy:

Spondike also has a track record when it comes to disciplinary action brought against him at the school. In 2000, he was reprimanded for throwing a chair against a classroom wall, and using strong profanity against students. A year later, he was disciplined for spitting on the floor after a student in his class fell asleep. And in 2007, he was accused of physically abusing a middle school student, an allegation that was found to be unsubstantiated after investigation by the district and Akron police.

Here's to hoping he never works in a school system again.

Filed Under: racism, social media, teachers

Man Who Raped 14-Year-Old Sentenced To 30 Days In Jail Because Girl Looked Kinda Old And The Internet Is Mean

from the well-okay-then dept

We've seen ridiculous requests and results stemming from the concept of how "mean" the internet is. Recall that Prenda Law wanted all manner of documents sealed because the internet was a cruel, cruel place. To be fair, it isn't like we haven't seen our share of stories about jerks on the web. Still, I'm pretty sure the internet housing a bunch of meanie poopy-heads probably shouldn't factor into the decision to have a former high school teacher who raped a 14 year old girl serve only 30 days in jail.

Now, I know what you're thinking: that didn't happen. A guy did not rape a 14 year old student and then only do a month in the pen. Sorry, you're wrong, and the reasons for it are as absurd as they come.

A Yellowstone County district judge Monday ordered a former Senior High teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old female student who later committed suicide to spend 30 days in jail. Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison, with all but 31 days suspended, for sexual intercourse without consent.

Rambold's attorney, Jay Lansing, argued Monday for the suspended sentence. He said Rambold lost his career, his marriage and his home and has suffered a "scarlet letter of the Internet" as a result of publicity about the case. The judge also said Morales was "older than her chronological age."

Okay, let's take these in order. First, doesn't even 15 years for a teacher raping a student seem on the light side, particularly when that student subsequently killed herself? Secondly, reducing the sentence from 15 years to 30 days for any reason is insane, but when those reasons are that the rapist has lost his family and job while suffering the wrath of a pissed off internet, the justice train has gone off the rails somewhere. One would think any stories of the internet being so cruel to Captain Rapey as to warrant a reduced sentence would have made it into the public light without the defense attorney's help. To even make this argument is an insult to our concept of justice and accountability.

Finally, what the hell difference does it make that the girl may have looked older than her peers? Several news pieces on this story have shown the young lady, who certainly did look mature for her age, and I can imagine some nightmare scenario in which an adult unwittingly hooks up with a mature looking young person who is underage and faces the wrath of the court as a result, but this isn't that scenario. Rambold taught at the girl's school and had every reason to know and/or believe that her age should have come into question, setting aside entirely the fact that teachers probably shouldn't be banging their students no matter what age they are.

The internet can be a cruel world, but it isn't as cruel as a teacher raping a 14-year-old girl. It just isn't.

Filed Under: internet, punishment, rape, students, teachers

DailyDirt: School Is Out For Summer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's that time of year again: kids are about to go back to school in the US. (And for some of them, it's a time to try to skim quickly through their assigned summer reading lists.) While some families still have time to squeeze in a real vacation, the debate over whether summer vacation should exist in the US educational system continues -- are summer vacations a horrible anachronism that should be abolished? Here are just a few links on the topic of learning (or the lack thereof) over the summer months.

• Summer learning programs are getting more and more expensive -- just like the rest of education-related fees and tuition. Do summer vacations create unequal opportunities for kids, and can year-round schooling solve some of the achievement gap problems in the US? [url]
• A study of year-round schooling actually found some negative effects on standardized test performance for disadvantaged students. So there's no silver bullet that will solve our education problems? Dang. [url]
• A 2011 RAND study concluded that students typically lose about a month's worth of learning over summer vacation -- and the losses were particularly severe for low-income students. Reading skills for low-income students declined dramatically over summers, especially when compared to higher-income peers who sometimes showed reading improvements over the same period. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: achievement gap, education, inequality, learning, school, standardized test, students, summer, teachers, tuition, vacation
Companies: rand

Copyright Insanity: School Policy Requires Students Hand Over Copyright On All Work

from the that-test-you-got-a-C-on?-school's-copyright dept

There are some absolutely ridiculous situations created by the fact that all creative works are automatically granted a copyright on being put into a fixed form. Mostly, we just ignore these situations, because the vast majority of them never matter. But, as copyright has become more and more ridiculous, some people are beginning to start to make use of the stupid fact that all kinds of things can be "owned" that probably shouldn't be "ownable." Take, for example, school work. If a student creates something, it is covered by copyright, though most people never really consider or care about that. However, the board of education for Prince George County in Maryland is apparently considering a new "copyright policy" in which all students and staff would have to assign all of those copyrights over to the school system itself.

The school board claims it's doing this to keep up with the times -- especially the growing use of things like electronic curricula created by teachers, but obviously the policy goes way beyond that. Of course, we've seen other schools get greedy and seek to copyright and sell off curricula created by teachers. And that's already a crazy idea. But to have students' work included as well is (rightfully) angering a number of people.

Either way, this is yet another example of the insanity created by "ownership society," in which people are being fed the ridiculous line that all ideas and information can and should be "owned" thanks to things like copyright and patents. Is it any wonder that now our public schools even going down to elementary schools, are seeking the "rights" to student creations in order to create for profit ventures? This is a public school system, a place in which knowledge is supposed to be shared for the sake of learning. And the lesson they're sending is that information is to be hoarded by powerful entities for the sake of profits. Shameful.

Filed Under: copyright, maryland, prince george county, students, teachers

Animation Instructor Fights Unnecessary Textbook Purchases And Gets Fired For His Trouble

from the school-motto:-'Punire-Omni-Benefacto' dept

Endlessly mounting tuition isn't the only factor turning a college degree into a lifetime of student loan payments. Textbook prices are keeping pace with tuition, both of which are charging far ahead of inflation and wages.

There's no monopoly on the textbook market, but over 80% of it is controlled by the top four publishers (Pearson, Cengage, Wiley and McGraw-Hill). This control gives them enough leverage to maintain a 65% gross margin on their offerings.

The newest faces in the textbook world aren't making anything better. EDMC (Education Management Corporation), which operates several for-profit post-secondary schools (Argosy, The Art Institutes, Brown Mackie College) has its own e-textbook publishing arm, Digital Bookshelf, which handles all of its e-book offerings. As recently as last year, some were hoping the move to digital books would bring these prices down. Instead, digital offerings are arriving locked down, requiring students to purchase access codes which prevent the sharing of books and eliminates the resale market.

Here's what happens when a well-respected instructor attempts to push back against EDMC:

It's a common scenario and most college students appreciate a teacher who's looking for ways to deliver a quality education without requiring them to make unnecessary book purchases. Unfortunately, in the case of Mike Tracy, a highly-regarded animator who'd been teaching at the Art Institute of California-Orange County for the past 11 years, refusing to make students buy an e-book they don't need may have cost him his job.

Tracy posted on his Facebook page that he's "been in a dispute" with the school for several months "over their policy of mandatory e-textbooks in classes where their inclusion seems arbitrary, inappropriate and completely motivated by profit.

This isn't just Tracy's opinion. The post also cites EDMC's own Faculty Federation as being opposed to the strong-arm tactics being deployed:

EDMC continues to insist on e-books only and wants sole discretion over what e-books are used, compromising faculty independence and expertise in choosing best resources for class.

Not only are instructors not allowed to opt-out of this "service," students are forced to pay extra for versions they may not even need.

Art Institute requires students to pay a $50-$75 fee to download a temporary copy of the e-textbook from the Digital Bookshelf. Even if they want to buy a hard copy of the text, they still have to fork over the money for a digital version.

Note that this is a temporary copy, so there's no passing it on to another classmate who might be taking the course in the next semester. This also prevents any sort of resale/trading taking from taking place. One of the slim advantages of purchasing physical copies was the ability to resell the books to help offset the costs of the next set of curriculum. The textbook publishers have turned that into a complete farce by adding minor revisions to their line of books as often as possible, changing a few homework problems or pushing text back and forth to force re-pagination. Many books are outdated before the next year of schooling even starts, turning a $150 investment into a doorstop. Going electronic-only, tied to pass codes and non-refundable fees eliminates any further recoupment for the students.

Beyond the ugliness of these mercenary tactics is the fact that what EDMC is doing is, if not actually illegal, certainly operating in a very gray area. The Higher Education Opportunity Act (passed in 2008) states that textbook publishers must "unbundle" their core educational content from optional add-ons like study guides or homework systems. It could be argued that an electronic version of the same textbook is not an "optional add-on," but one could also certainly argue that the option to buy either/or when it comes to digital and physical books should still be left to the students' or instructors' preference, rather than subjecting students to mandatory, non-refundable fees.

EDMC should be a bit more careful about operating at the fringes of federal law. It's currently being sued by the Department of Justice for illegal recruiting and false claims:

The government's complaint says the company, which offers classes online and at 105 locations in 32 states and Canada, repeatedly made false statements to conceal its practices and receive $11 billion in federal and state financial aid – nearly all of the company's revenue. The complaint alleges that student enrollment was the sole focus of its compensation system, and the company instructed recruiters to use high-pressure sales techniques like playing on an applicant's psychological vulnerabilities and inflating claims of career placement opportunities to enroll students regardless of their qualifications.

Beyond the resale blockage and rent-seeking is the outrageous idea that somehow courses should have mandatory textbooks, thus forcing instructors to teach their classes in whatever direction the curriculum provider steers them, rather than being able to impart knowledge in a way that caters to the instructor and the students.

There's no way that locking your faculty and students into purchasing and utilizing textbooks from a single provider is ever going to work for the benefit of anyone but the company being favored and the administration members who made this exclusive contract a reality. EDMC can have it both ways for the moment, operating both a set of schools and providing its own exclusive conduit for instructional material.

As for Mike Tracy, his students have banded together to get him reinstated. They've also started a petition over at change.org, asking for the Art Institute to amend its textbook policy to put curriculum selection back in the hands of the instructors. It currently has over 3,500 signatures.

Filed Under: fired, pricing, teachers, textbooks

DailyDirt: How Do You Solve A Problem Like... Academia?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Getting a tenured professorship position has been the dream job of a multitude of highly-educated researchers, but as funding cuts have hit public universities, these careers aren't looking as attractive as they once did. The academic system may soon be looking at some significant changes if the promise of tenure no longer serves to compensate underpaid educators. Here are just a few complaints about the current system, and feel free to suggest some solutions in the comments....

• Associate professors are unhappy (significantly less satisfied than assistant or full professors)... with the monotony of writing research grants, publishing and teaching. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, or just the realization that there's not much appreciation for teachers in general. #firstworldproblems? [url]
• The problems with academia are nothing new -- graduate education has been called the "Detroit of higher learning" for a while now. Full-time professors probably shouldn't complain too much around grad students and adjunct professors, though. [url]
• Tenured CS prof Terran Lane explains why he resigned from his position to go work at Google. "We're being paid partly in cool. If you take away the cool parts of the job, you might as well go make more money elsewhere." [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: academia, education, professors, teachers, tenure
Companies: google