Politicizing the Trapezoid
The trapezoid, is the homeliest of our special quadrilaterals. And it has just been redefined by the Common Core’s David Coleman.
Children will be tested, using definitions that are different from what is in their books
For about two hundred years, when American teachers taught about trapezoids, they were teaching about a figure with four sides, two of which were parallel, and two of which weren’t.
Last year, only the figure on the left was a trapezoid. Now, they both are.
We call that a “non-inclusive” definition, because it doesn’t include the special case when both pairs or sides are parallel (a parallelogram). Readers who are less familiar with math may have encountered the inclusive vs non-inclusive debate when considering squares: are they special rectangles? or are they something of their own kind? Math people say squares are rectangles (special ones), the inclusive definition. Rectangles have four right angles (that fits a square). Rectangles have both pairs of opposite sides equal (that fits a square). We can ask: “Are there four right angles?” If the answer is yes, we say “Rectangle!” – we don’t say, “well might be a rectangle. Let’s first make sure it’s not a square.” And if we like the inclusive definition for rectangles, why not for trapezoids?
There are conventions in mathematics. Agreements that we have made, that we stick to. We should be aware when something is conventional (electrons flow from the negative terminal) (north is at the top of the map) (x is left right and y is up down) (we use an inclusive definition of rectangle, but an exclusive definition of trapezoid) versus a decision we make with a mathematical reason (1 is not prime is a good example). And we should talk about conventions, with each other, with the public, with our students.
I am not arguing that the change is wrong. I’m saying that change without warning, with no discussion is wrong. And I’m saying that the person making the change should not be a vendor, should not be David Coleman.
We stuck with 200 years of the non-inclusive definition. It is worth changing. But that requires changing every major textbook (geometry, but also many middle school books. It shows up sometimes in algebra too. It’s a lot of books…) It requires a national discussion. Teachers need to know, need to think about it. Teachers need to realize that the really neat figure called an “isosceles trapezoid” needs a brand new name, if we even think it is worth talking about. And honestly, this discussion is worth having. The change is worth making.
But the change happened with no discussion. Common Core’s testing left arm, PARCC, redefined trapezoid. Without permission. Without telling anyone. Without talking to teachers. Without initiating discussion. Without changing textbooks. Without even giving an opportunity for any of these things to happen. Children will be tested, using definitions that are different from what is in their books, different from what their teachers taught them this year, and every year previously.
When we overtest kids, there are players who can object (parents, kids, teachers, even principals and superintendents). When we cut funding, there are players who will object. When we close schools, there are players who can object. But who stands up when a vendor screws around with a mathematical definition?
Do math teachers have organizations? Well, yeah, but… The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) was so ed-reformy that I lapsed my membership over a decade ago and never looked back. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and American Mathematical Society (AMS) are for professors and graduate students, not teachers (I should rejoin MAA, they have a journal that I find accessible, and I like the challenge, and I prefer paying the member price for their books). There is a NYC group, but they hold one conference a year, and put out one journal, and nothing else as far as I can tell. The UFT group has some nice people, but not in my area of interest (if you are interested, they did and probably still do some very nice art/math combination stuff).
But I have long maintained connections with the New York State group: The Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State (AMTNYS). And they are an active group. They have direct connections to the New York State Education Department. They have sometimes campaigned to change rules about calculators, dates for exams. Here, in New York, if there is a place for math teachers to go, it is AMTNYS. Because of this, their listserves, especially their high school level listserve, buzzes when the state screws up a regents exam or a schedule or a new ruling or a roll out. One of AMTNYS stated purposes is “To serve as liaison between the State Education Department and the field.” This sometimes means communicating SED decisions to us, sometimes conveying our concerns to SED, sometimes organizing teacher voices for or against a change, and sometimes seeking clarification on behalf of their members.
Here is an AMTNYS listserve discussion from last year on the new definition of trapezoid. And here’s one from this year.
In this case, a vendor was imposing a change in definition with little warning, and no discussion. Teachers haven’t heard about it (the majority probably still haven’t), textbooks aren’t updated. And the decision was made implicitly, by accepting a test, not by people responsible to the public. AMTNYS should have worked to stop SED. Instead, they told teachers about the new definition. AMTNYS’ leaders can claim they are not an advocacy organization. But when they accept the new testing regimen without complaint, education reform, including in mathematics, without complaint, new curricula without complaint, changes made to a mathematical definition by a vendor, without complaint, and in fact transmit each of those to mathematics teachers – they are in fact adding their weight to the direction of change advocated by the Ed Reformers in Albany, they are advocating, and they are advocating against teachers and against students. I am disappointed.
Of all the bad things ed reform is doing and has done, changing a definition without discussion is not high on the list. And, in this case, its not that Coleman is out to screw kids (he is, but does he care about trapezoids? He has millions of children who he treats with disregard, what’s a silly shape to him?) It’s not that John King and Andrew Cuomo were out to get kids to get one more question wrong (they don’t care). It’s not that Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, when they pushed Common Core on the states thought about ways to change one definition. And it’s not that AMTNYS’ leadership is so badly compromised by needing to be friendly with powerless state bureaucrats that they forgot to speak up.
No, it’s just one more, small, bizarre episode: Common Core redefines Trapezoid.
Where my niece got her non-commutative model of multiplication
Way back last fall, I played math with my niece and nephew, and wrote about it.
Along the way, a curious thing happened. My niece saw a 6×2 rectangle, horizontally oriented, and wrote 6 x 2 next to it, and saw the same size rectangle, vertically oriented, and wrote 6 x 2, then crossed it out to write 2 x 6 (my sister-in-law thought to “correct” her, but I asked to leave it alone).
Last week I went to my niece’s school, where she goes as a 3rd grader, and where I went as a 3rd grader, in a city 70 miles from New York. I visited math classes at several grade levels. And here is what I found in a second grade class:
I also found a woman who was friends with my nursery school teacher’s daughter. And I learned that my teacher is still alive and kicking. I’m going to dig out some old photos and pay her a visit. And thank her.
If the contract is not ratified…
Probably the contract will be ratified. Across the city, teachers, while not enthusiastic about the money or the language, are relieved to be getting something. Now, if it were just the Bronx high schools voting, it would fail, 2:1 or even 3:1, but that’s the high schools, and the Bronx. How can we really know what happened across the City? With the rush, and the $1000 signing bonus, and little time for teachers to talk to each other and ask questions, I think it’ll pass. But if I had to guess I’d say this contract passes with an unenthusiastic 70% or so. Compare the TWU, who just ratified by 83%, or the 90% for the last UFT contract. I don’t expect it as tight as the 2005 UFT contract, which was approved by just 60% of teachers and 63% overall. (You can imagine Bronx HS numbers that time!) But I don’t know.
But what if somehow there are more no voters, and the thing fails. The UFT leadership will go back to the negotiating table. We will be first in line (ignore the rhetoric – I think it’s clear we go first). What do we want our leaders to change?
Some might be tempted to ask that every aspect be renegotiated. But imagine a contract defeat. Maybe 45% yes – 55% no. Both the UFT negotiators and the City will want to quickly come back with an agreement that does just enough to get the thing passed, which means, just enough to get 6% to switch. (Actually, they will shoot higher, since they would want a slightly safer cushion.) That speaks to one or two changes. What would you want them to change?
1. Health Care. Take it out of the agreement. Might cost money on wages. Probably can’t be done while improving wages. Making health savings a material part of the contract, and giving an outsider the right to determine if we are in breach, and another the right to mandate changes – this is an astounding error. It should be removed.
2. ATRs. People who are ATRs (few of us), were ATRs (more of us), have former colleagues who are ATRs (many more of us), etc, get nervous when their status is changed. Changing the 3020a process, even for a small number of teachers, raises fears. Read Lynne Winderbaum’s moving appeal. I don’t care how benign the intent was, that’s enough to say, let’s get rid of that language. There is nothing that stops the DoE from bringing charges, we know that, we see that. This wasn’t necessary, and it scares the hell out of some people. Plus, you know, unions, sticking together, all for one – the kinds of ideas that say separate provisions for separate groups, especially a targeted group, are just plain wrong. Get rid of the expedited 3020a.
Then two changes that do not need to be negotiated. These are wrongs committed the first time around by the union leadership. And the union leadership can (theoretically) address these (if a second ratification vote is needed).
3. No rushing us. Give members time to read, ask questions, discuss. The question “Why the Rush?” has no good answer, unless you think that ‘giving people time to discuss would have made ratification less likely’ is a good answer. You should not. Publishing the details of the Lump Sum Payments from the 2009-2011 Round, and the MoA language on Health Care (care to guess why that is in the Wages section?) on the Friday before the ballots went out is just bad practice. If your agreement cannot withstand serious scrutiny, you should not bring it to us.
4. No selling. Some people in the schools were annoyed when they learned that the immediate raise from this deal would be 2%. The leadership sold this as 4 and 4. But some people were angry when they realized that they’d been sold a line. Same mix of reactions when people realized that the “retro” had not yet been earned, or that there was no interest. Of course the special reps in the schools are individuals – but some were heavy spinners, others clearly did not understand what they were saying. That’s just not the right way to treat members. One man’s selling or spinning is another man’s misleading or misdirecting. There are people who are still voting yes, but are feeling distrusted by the leaders because of this behavior. But this is tough. This leadership spins every mistake they have ever made. Could they actually stop long enough to provide members accurate information?
The perils of the ATR
by Lynne Winderbaum, retired ESL teacher, JFK HS, and former Bronx High School UFT District Rep
For the greater part of the 44 years that I have been a member of the UFT teachers truly believed that an assault against one of us was an assault against all of us. The idea of union was that if we all held together, we could accomplish what we never would be able to as individuals. There was one job title of teacher and we all enjoyed the same rights. I am puzzled now, or maybe just too old and nostalgic to understand, how under our most recent agreement, a certain category of teachers has been singled out for disparate treatment. The teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve have required more protection, not less. Their job security and their outlook have been shaken to the core by the fact that they are no longer appointed to a school.
When the wholesale closing of traditional high schools began under the Bloomberg administration, the borough hardest hit (and most embracing of small school creation to replace them) was the Bronx. Morris, Monroe, Taft, Roosevelt, Walton, New School, Evander Childs, Stevenson, and soon Kennedy and Columbus, shuttered. Veteran teachers were displaced not through any fault of their own, but as collateral damage in the effort to show that a reform was underway that would benefit students. Well, no such benefits have been the result and the loss of the large high schools has been an irreversible destruction. Graduation rates inflated by bogus “credit recovery”schemes (Education critics blast high school credit recovery – NY Daily News) (Students earning credit with dubious make up work – NY Post) , changing of IEPs, waivers on providing special education and English Language Learner services, screening of students, and closing of many of the replacement small schools that were supposed to provide better instruction. (The New Marketplace: Executive Summary – The New School, Milano Institute of International Affairs, Center for New York Affairs)
In the final year of these closing ghost schools, the last students going down with the ship were often underserved as the Department of Education staffed them with a handful of remaining teachers to teach the last seniors. The city abandoned these students. But there was always a cadre of teachers in each school that refused to turn their backs them. These were usually veteran teachers, nearing retirement, who told me they felt an obligation to the students in a dire situation and would not leave for another school and make matters worse for them. When the doors finally closed, these dedicated teachers were in excess.
At a staff meeting of the UFT I rose to point out that this category of excessed teacher created by the massive school closings were unlike any other prior group of excessed teachers. For years “last in, first out” (LIFO) put in excess the most junior teachers in license on a staff that had a contraction of positions. So teachers who had one or two years of service were at risk. But the excessed pool now included hundreds of teachers with 20-30 years of satisfactory classroom service who had dedicated their entire professional lives to the students of New York City. This was new.
Since 2005, when the category of Absent Teacher Reserve was created, teachers in the ATR have always had a sense of uneasiness. I cannot recall a single school visit when an ATR teacher did not approach me and ask if the union would protect them. Will the next contract let us be fired? I always assured them that the UFT would stand by them. And that the ATR category was created to give them job protection. ATR’s could not be fired without the same due process as every other teacher in the system.
At the same time I recall when Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City schools, returned from a trip to Chicago. He learned there that the Chicago school system resolved their teacher displacement problem from school closings by firing excessed teachers who could not find a new teaching position within twelve months. “For years, Chancellor Joel Klein has trumpeted Chicago’s method of laying off teachers, which gives out-of-work teachers a year to remain on salary and find a new job in the schools. Klein’s new list of demands would shrink that window to four months.” (Among City’s Contract Demands: Flexibility to Lay Off Teachers – Chalkbeat)
But in order to make such a move palatable, the teachers in the ATR had to be vilified and portrayed in the media as unemployable losers who could not find jobs and were a drain on the budget of the Department of Education and the taxpayers. And how the city officials threw themselves into that campaign! Joel Klein wrote, “We’d also be forced to keep teachers in what’s called the “Absent Teacher Reserve”pool—a bureaucratic name for those let go from downsizing or closing schools but who remain on payroll. Many of these teachers haven’t applied for new jobs despite losing their positions as long as two years ago. And many who have looked for a job can’t find a school willing to hire them despite many vacancies. Yet none of these teachers can be laid off, even during a budget crisis.” (We’re firing the wrong teachers – Joel Klein)
Steven Brill, wrote in his book “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools”. “These were the teachers who were excessed but had not taken positions elsewhere. Some hadn’t even gone on job interviews…the prospect loomed that they would continue to be paid even if the city had to dismiss thousands of real teachers because of the budget crunch.”p. 129
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. I remember the day that Randi Weingarten, then president of the UFT, put out a call to the district representatives to counter such arguments by bringing a group of ATRs to a press conference. I went to Evander Childs HS and gathered a group of about a dozen from the library and brought them downtown from the Bronx to tell tales of the many online applications sent through the Department of Education website, the many resumes they sent out to principals, and the interviews they went on, all to no avail. None had ever received an unsatisfactory rating. But they were tenured, older, expensive, and they were turned down in favor of fresh new hires, many on probation. They were losing hope and to add insult to injury, they were being painted with the insulting brush of pundits like Brill. Eventually, even Brill saw the superficiality of his opinion in 2011 and reversed course. (Teaching with the enemy – The New York Times)
But the drumbeat did not stop. Even now, the New York Post writes, “Ineffective teachers from the Absent Teacher Reserve are headed back into the classroom.”And the New York Daily News warns “The mayor must hold firm [against forcing principals to hire ATRs]. Otherwise, he would dump teachers of poor quality on unlucky students and schools (Expel these teachers – NY Daily News)
So they insist that the 2/3 of the ATR pool who have never been accused of wrongdoing or had unsatisfactory performances be characterized as “poor quality”and “ineffective”and worthy of firing. The truth is that the Department of Education has never made a secret of its desire to fire the ATRs. It’s been raised in every contract negotiation. But the union has up to now provided protection for this group because they are valuable teachers and members whose predicament was created entirely by the Department of Education. As a 31 year veteran teacher from Kennedy High School, a school not slated for closing for many years as other Bronx high schools met their demise, I often thought “There but for the grace of God go I”.
The UFT not only saw that displaced teachers were not fired, we reached agreement with the Department of Education that they could only be moved once a semester. This gave them stability for at least half the school year. It was humane. Many got regular assignments saving the city money on hiring long term substitute teachers for teachers on leaves for child care or health issues. (Although the city and the press still just multiply the number of ATR’s by their salaries and calculate that as a drain on the city’s resources without deducting the savings). ATRs were also serving as per diem substitutes for daily absentee teachers. Another savings. A survey we were asked to do by the union in 2009 showed that hundreds of ATRs were serving in this capacity—not sitting around idly doing nothing and collecting salaries.
Recently, this all changed for the ATR pool. They are now shuffled around week to week, from school to school. They are observed teaching students they do not know while covering classes out of license. It is not only a recipe for wasting talent if there ever was one but a sure path to thinning the ATR pool. “Until recently, the city allowed ATR teachers to remain at a posting for a full school term, during which the school principal could decide whether to hire them. That changed with the weekly reassignments, which went into effect in October as part of a deal with the United Federation of Teachers to avert layoffs.” (City’s Unwanted Teachers Drift Through a Life in Limbo – DNA Info)
This brings us to the new contract and it’s agreement regarding this maligned and vulnerable group of teachers.
The city has been looking for a way to fire this teachers since before Klein’s Chicago jaunt. The Memorandum of Agreement now under consideration makes this much easier. It streamlines the process for ridding the city of the ATRs. It proposes a separate and unequal disciplinary system that will end the career of an ATR in a way that cannot happen to an appointed teacher.
Memorandum of Agreement:
“If a principal removes an ATR from an assignment to a vacancy in his/her license area because of problematic behavior as described below and the ATR is provided with a signed writing by a supervisor describing the problematic behavior, this writing can be introduced at an expedited §3020-a hearing for ATRs who have completed their probationary periods”
The term “problematic behavior”is unacceptably vague. What is it? It can’t rise to the level of a violation of Chancellor’s regulations because that has always allowed for removal. In instances of language belittling or causing emotional distress, corporal punishment, misappropriation of funds, excessive absence and/or lateness or any other clearly defined violations under the Chancellor’s regulations, teachers could be removed and charged. Two years of unsatisfactory ratings could lead to removal and charges.
So “problematic behavior”must fall into a category of actions beneath these violations. Let me give you four examples that I have heard from ATRs: Leaving four minutes early on a staff development day after receiving a phone call about a son’s medical emergency, scolding in front of students for not wearing a tie, dozing off in the teachers’lounge on a day when he was given no assignment or classes to cover, making a statement in the classroom that sounded like religious proselytizing. One might concede that these actions are “problematic”but they never would have led to more than a file letter in the past! Now, they can rise to the level of such severity that the career of the beleaguered ATR can be ended forever. Who will decide what’s “problematic”? The panel of arbitrators whose standard we agree is a mystery at the moment? The two consecutive principals who may have marked certain teachers for discipline possibly because they spoke up when they were given five classes in a row to teach, or reported a special ed violation, or cheating on a Regents? Or maybe they just seemed too confrontational or not compliant enough? Or maybe didn’t wear a tie! Without clearly defining “problematic”behavior, we have provided a roadmap for showing the door to ATR’s.
I have read that the ATR’s cannot “automatically”be fired. They would feel more secure without the modifier. The grounds for their removal and ultimate firing are far different from those required of regular appointed teachers. Do we have the right to create a new and lesser category within our own family?
The speed with which an ATR can be dispatched is breathtaking. No regular appointed teacher could be pushed out the door with such haste. There is due process and then there is what the MOA calls the“exclusive”due process for ATRs. The union should stand behind one 3020a process for all its teachers.
EXCLUSIVE DUE PROCESS FOR ATRS ONLY:
“If, within a school year or consecutively across school years, an ATR has been removed from a temporary provisional assignment to a vacancy in his/her license area by two different principals because of asserted problematic behavior, a neutral arbitrator from a panel of arbitrators jointly selected for this purpose (the panel presently consisting of Martin F. Scheinman, Howard Edelman and Mark Grossman) shall convene a 3020-a hearing as soon as possible Based on the written documentation described above and such other documentary and/or witness evidence as the employer or the respondent may submit, the hearing officer shall determine whether the ATR has demonstrated a pattern of problematic behavior. For purposes of this program, problematic behavior means behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations established for professionals working in schools and a pattern of problematic behavior means two or more instances in a vacancy in the ATR’s license area of problematic behavior within a school year or consecutively across school years. Hearings under this provision shall not exceed one full day absent a showing of good cause and the hearing officer shall convene a §3020-a hearing as soon as possible.
The parties agree that in order to accomplish the purpose of establishing an expedited §3020-a process, the following shall serve as the exclusive process for §3020-a hearings for ATRs that have been charged based on a pattern of problematic behavior in accordance with this agreement.
- The ATR shall have ten (10) school days to request a hearing upon receipt of the §3020-a charges;
- At the same time as the ATR is charged, the Board (DOE) will notify the UFT as to where the ATR is assigned at the time charges are served;
- The employer shall provide the Respondent all evidence to be used in the hearing no more than five (5) school days after the employer receives the Respondent’s request for a hearing;
- Within five (5) school days of receipt of the employer’s evidence, the Respondent shall provide the employer with any evidence the Respondent knows at that time will be used in the hearing;
- The hearing shall be scheduled within five to ten (5-10) school days after the exchange of evidence is complete;
- The hearing time shall be allocated evenly between the parties, with time used for opening statements, closing statements and cross-examination allocated to party doing the opening statement, closing statement or cross-examination and with time for breaks allocated to the party requesting the break;
- The hearing officer shall issue a decision within 15 days of the hearing date.
For the purposes of charges based upon a pattern of problematic behavior under this section only, if the DOE proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the ATR has demonstrated a pattern of problematic behavior the hearing officer shall impose a penalty under the just cause standard up to and including discharge”
I know many ATRs because the displacement of veteran high school teachers has been so great. It is a problem of the Department of Education’s own making. From the dumping of these teachers into a special pool, to the changing of their assignments every semester, to their bouncing from school to school every week, to the special and unique expedited 3020a hearing that adheres to a timetable that no other teacher must be suffer, these life-long teachers have been beaten down.
They have been mandated to apply for jobs online, mandated to attend interviews, and mandated to accept assignments for years. But many are never offered jobs because principals prefer to hire probationary teachers that can be fired at will. I served on many hiring committees for new schools every June. They were looking to staff their entire schools. There was a constant parade of new, uncertified teaching fellows getting hired to the exclusion of the veterans who interviewed.
The unsettling feeling I have now is that the worst fears that the ATRs shared with me all of those years have been realized.
The phrase “Retroactive Payment” is not in the MoA
Instead, what we have been calling retro appears as:
Lump Sum Payments stemming from the 2009-2011 Round and schedule for actives for those continuously employed as of the day of payout.
This is the title of one section of the Memorandum of Agreement (with the payment schedule below). And in the entire MoA, there is not another word about retroactive payments for in-service members. For most of us, there will be no difference between retroactive raises on the one hand, and a “2009-2011 Round” on the other.
But there are details in the agreement which are worth pointing out. We did not earn this money, according to the agreement, in 2009, 2010, and 2011. We will earn it when have been continuously employed as of each payout date (and once we retire, the payments are locked in).
What difference does it make if we earned it in 2010, or we earn it in 2015, if the first payout is in 2015 anyway? The difference is for those who do not receive any payout at all.
- People who have quit, or will quit before 2015. They may have worked in 2009, but they did not earn retro.
- People who quit between 2015 and 2020. They will have worked for a chunk of time that retro was theoretically accumulating, but they will only receive 12.5% or 25% or…
- People who are discontinued, or will be discontinued before 2015. They may have worked in 2009, but they did not earn retro.
- People who will be discontinued between 2015 and 2020. They will have worked for a chunk of time that retro was theoretically accumulating, but they will only receive 12.5% or 25% or…
Not every discontinuance is undeserved. We know that. But in the age of Bloomberg, hundreds of teachers were unfairly discontinued each year. We expect this number will fall under de Blasio and Fariña, but we don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet. And we worry because the new administration has been slow to make its presence felt in the school system.
The word “continuous” raises questions. I do not know the answers, but will ask:
- People who leave now, and retire later (eg, you reach 30 years and you are only 53. Stop working now, but retire in two years. Have you been continuously employed?)
- People who take childcare leave for a year (do they get all the payments up to that point? All the payments? All the payments except the one due when they are out?)
- People who take childcare leave for more than one year
- People who take a leave for personal reasons, and return a year later (do they get all the payments, or none?)
- People who take a leave for personal reasons, and return a year later, and that leave includes one of the payout dates (do they get all the payments, all but the one when they are on leave, or none?)
- People who are brought up on charges (often now they agree to a lesser charge of wrongdoing and pay a small fine – will the DoE start exacting a ‘break in service?’
Remaining questions about health in the UFT contract
- How will the way we access benefits change?
- Where will the health care savings come from?
- What changes can the arbitrator make to our health care?
- Where is the list of possible changes to health care that the City and the UFT agreed to?
- Why did the UFT leadership wait until the Friday before the vote to release the MoA language on healthcare?
1. The way we access benefits may change (according to the UFT’s Frequently Asked Questions). How might that change?
2a. The Memorandum of Agreement (Original here, or health only here) makes health care savings, in the “Wages” section of the agreement, a material part of our contract. But where will the savings come from?
2b. If the health care savings targets are not met, an arbitrator will impose changes. (from The Memorandum of Agreement, Section 3.I. original here, or health only here). What changes is the arbitrator allowed to consider?
2c. Almost two weeks ago a leaked document from the City listed some areas of potential savings. Mulgrew mentioned this at the DA, said that we rejected that list. Where is the list of potential savings that the UFT accepted?
3. Why did it take three days to release the MoA, but over two weeks to release the MoA language on healthcare?
Health Care Agreement? Let’s Look Carefully
Sometime in the last day, the UFT website was updated with the healthcare agreement. It is not easy to read, but must be read. It follows, at the bottom of this post. (formatting errors may have occurred in converting the pdf. Please point them out, and I will correct them – jd)
There are still nagging questions – including my favorite. The factsheet says: The way that you access certain benefits may change – It’s no clearer what that might mean. How will I access benefits differently?
I want to post this right away, so I will give me and others more time to look over where the issues might be, although I suspect some will jump right out at you.
One last note. The agreement with the City was made 15 days ago. The Exec Board approved sending the agreement, unseen, to the Delegate Assembly 11 days ago. The DA voted on this, without having seen the money or the health in print, 9 days ago. Yet the changes to our health were only published today, the Friday before schools get ballots. And still without knowing what options the arbitrator has, and where the savings are to be found.
The facts make the accusation. I don’t have to.
http://www.uft.org/files/attachments/final-complete-moa-contract-2014.pdf
H. Healthcare Savings
a. The UFT and the City/DOE agree the UFT will exercise its best efforts to have the MLC agree to the following:
i. for fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015),
there shall be $400 million in savings on a city- wide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
ii. for fiscal year 2016 (July 1, 2015-June 30,
2016), there shall be $700 million in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
iii. for fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016-June 30,
2017), there shall be $1 billion in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
iv. for fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30,
2018), there shall be $1.3 billion in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
v. for every fiscal year thereafter, the savings on a citywide basis in health care costs shall continue on a recurring basis
vi. The parties agree that the above savings to be achieved on a Citywide basis are a material term of this agreement.
vii. In the event the MLC does not agree to the above citywide targets, the arbitrator shall determine the UFT’s proportional share of the savings tar- get and, absent an agreement by these parties, shall implement the process for the satisfaction of these savings targets.
viii. Stabilization Fund: (1) Effective July 1, 2014, the Stabilization Fund shall convey $1 billion to the City of New York to be used in support of the pro rata funding of this agreement. (2) Commencing on July 1, 2014, $200 million from the Stabilization Fund shall be made available per year to pay for ongoing programs (such as $65 welfare fund contribution, PICA payments, budget relief). In the event the MLC does not agree to provide the funds specified in this paragraph, the arbitrator shall determine the UFT’s proportional share of the Stabilization Fund monies required to be paid under this paragraph
I. Dispute Resolution Regarding Paragraph H
a. In the event of any dispute, the parties shall meet and confer in an attempt to resolve the dispute. If the parties cannot resolve the dispute, such dispute shall be referred to Arbitrator Martin F. Scheinman for resolution.
b. Such dispute shall be resolved within 90 days.
c. The arbitrator shall have the authority to impose interim relief that is consistent with the parties’ intent.
d. The arbitrator shall have the authority to meet with the parties at such times as the arbitrator determines is appropriate to enforce the terms of this agreement.
e. The parties shall meet and confer to select and retain an impartial health care actuary. If the parties are unable to agree, the arbitrator shall select the impartial health care actuary to be retained by the parties.
f. The parties shall share the costs for the arbitrator and the actuary the arbitrator selects.
Health Care doesn’t change – or does it change?
What does: “The way that you access certain benefits may change, but benefits should not decrease.” mean? What changes?
From the UFT’s fact sheet (emphasis mine – jd):
Will I be able to keep my current insurance plan and will my network of doctors and hospitals remain the same?
Yes and yes.
Why did the unions agree to $1.3 billion in health care savings? How can the city save on health care without decreasing my benefits?
We have been paying too much for health care. The last mayoral administration had no interest in addressing this, and the municipal unions had no motivation to work with them. Now the city and municipal unions will convene a joint citywide health care committee that will work collaboratively and transparently to identify ways to deliver health care more efficiently and streamline the administration of benefits.
We could not have made these changes with the previous administration because of the former mayor’s utter disrespect for city workers and their unions.We are confident that we will meet the savings targets set in this program. The way that you access certain benefits may change, but benefits should not decrease.
What does: “The way that you access certain benefits may change, but benefits should not decrease.” mean??
Do I fill out a new form? Or do I have to go to a different doctor? Why don’t we know what “change” they are telling us about?
And what does “should not increase” mean? I know what “will not increase” means.
Some notes from the Contract Recommendation DA
Apologies for the slight delay. The Delegate Assembly was Wednesday (2 days ago) and I planned to write yesterday afternoon, after class. However a friend who works (worked) in a charter school called – she needed to be picked up with her things right away. She’d just been fired. Zero notice. Apparently her sixth day out since September interfered with “educational continuity” while changing teachers after the 8th grade state tests are over does not.
Not much to say about the DA
By getting the date set prematurely, Unity guaranteed that delegates and chapter leaders had not had much of a chance to dig into what was in front of them. In fact, many in the room were seeing parts of the agreement for the first time. Even today, no details have been published about the healthcare deal, and the language involving salary (base, and retro) has not been published, though tentative payscales are on the UFT website (I don’t know if they’re visible to members only, or the whole world.)
Healthcare? Mulgrew swore, and Artie Pepper, the head of the Welfare Fund, swore that the deal was good, (see the last paragraph) that members would not pay, that savings would be found administratively… I don’t think they would risk their reputations by telling a lawyer-style falsehood on something as big as health. But remember all the misdirection while they were selling the 2005 contract? Until we have the agreements in writing, there is no way I will recommend a yes vote. From the New Action leaflet:
Imagine your son came to you and said he needed to update his health care, and found a plan that he was going to sign up for. “Have you read it?” “No, it won’t be available for a week” “Do you have to sign up right away?” “No, I have a month” “Then why don’t you wait a week, and read it first?” “But my friends, who I trust, tell me it’s fine”
When we sign something important, we read it first.
Discussion
Because delegates had not had a chance to read, digest, ask questions, it seemed reasonable that most of the DA time was devoted to Mulgrew explaining the contract. Of course there is a problem with the setup – Delegates should have had another week or so to read, digest, ask questions. As a result, there was insufficient time (30 minutes) for the number of questions in the room, and only 15 minutes devoted to debate.
Sexual Misconduct
There are changes to the contract language about sexual misconduct. Mulgrew explained that this was to modernize the language to include “sexting” and doing what former US Representative Anthony Weiner did (“Weinergramming?”). Also, to add public lewdness, but only when it is directed against children (apparently directing a stream against a wall, or off a podium, is also considered public lewdness – that’s been intentionally excluded.)
Then Mulgrew went on to boast about the UFT’s zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse. He didn’t bother adding that our zero tolerance policy includes suspending teachers without pay on an accusation of sexual abuse. Suspend them? Of course. Without pay? That only serves to pressure innocent members to take bad deals – who can afford to fight? – especially when the DoE drags out cases.
Any suspension should be paid. If there is a swift 3020a, the teacher will be separated from the system quickly enough. But why should the teacher who is charged then cleared have to do without a single check? Who pays our innocent member’s bills when his union says it is ok not to pay him?
Procedure and Debate
The debate was poor. Mulgrew violated Roberts Rules, calling on two speakers for the resolution in a row. James Eterno called a point of order, and the parliamentarian told Mulgrew he was wrong. Even after that, while there was mostly alternating, Mulgrew managed to call Dolores Luzopone and Kenny Achiron back to back.
Back to Eterno. He makes a point, Mulgrew interrupts to say that he’s wrong. Did James have a right to speak without being interrupted by the chair? Absolutely. Should he have complained? No, he should have gone on. But he fell for the bait, and ended up in a pissing match over procedure – when that happens, and one guy is on the floor, and the other on the podium, who do you think gets wet? And that was INSTEAD of political discussion. The rest of the debate was briefer than it was memorable.
Motion: Send! Recommend? Send and recommend?
The motion was to send the motion to the membership. No. Even though Mulgrew and Assistant Secretary LeRoy Barr said about ten times that we would send this to the membership, the actual resolution by LeRoy was to “send and recommend” the deal to the membership. Mulgrew also once said “send er um recommend.” And there might have been one more time.
Is the difference real? Arguments from the floor implied that by voting yes, we were just letting members decide. That’s kind of what “send” means. But recommend means that the full force of the UFT will be brought to bear in the schools, getting members to vote “yes.”
Did the officers state that the motion was to “recommend”? Yes. Did they state it in a way that was likely to leave delegates thinking that they had voted to send it to the members for the members to decide, and not that they had also voted to devote UFT resources to producing a yes vote? While you might think so, I can’t speak to their actual intent.
Congratulations
In other matters, congratulations to Francesco Portelos for beating his 3020a charges. They still fined him $10,000, but against the odds he’s got his job. Sometimes we have no choice but to stand and fight.
A few questions, some with answers, about this proposed contract
Newer questions:
- Why the rush to push the contract ? Am I being paranoid that there is a cover-up? I don’t know. And, if we saw the agreement, we could decide if you were being paranoid.
- What happens if we lose part of our benefits?
- What happens if we are forced to contribute more to the system?
- Who makes these decisions (is it a 3-person arbitration panel, headed by Marty Scheinman) ?
- If so, what are the limits to those decisions ? Can they drawn from our would-be raises and/or back pay to make up the difference?
ATRs
- Will ATRs still rotate on a week to week basis? – SOME
- Will ATRs still be sent on Mandated interviews? – YES
- What are the behaviors inconsistent with the expectations established for professionals? How can one group (ATRs) seemingly have less due process than another group (non ATRs) operating under the same contract and same titles, licenses, etc?
- If an ATR is picked up at a school, and a principal decides that ATR isn’t working out, what happens to the ATR? I’ve read that a principal can make that decision in as little as one day?
- Why are we we agreeing to a separate “fast track” 3020A for teachers on the ATR?
- Are they not entitled to the same due process as any other teacher? – Mulgrew says it is the same due process on a different timeline
- if a letter is removed from a file does the original go to the teacher
- Are members able to have negative material removed from their files that is over three years old
- As the retro, what is the percentage of interest?
- How will C6/school schedules (especially ones that put the 37.5 into classes) be effected as the working school day changes?
- Monday PD teacher initiatives: Admins or part of the Ambassador program of teachers?
- In collocation situations, will PD be combined?
- Is there a way to make a list of abusive administrators that have followed the old doe line and thus have lost the respect of their staff in the “future more collaborative DOE”? – New Action, my caucus, continues to push for something like this.
Old questions:
- Does the agreement increase per session by the same per cents as salary? – YES
- Will there be retro on any per session we worked? – YES
- Is per diem pay going up? – YES, by the same percents as salary
- Will members get a schedule of future payments (how much they can expect) – no answer yet
- Will people who resigned receive retro? – NO
- Will people who take a leave receive retro? – no answer yet
- Will people who move into another chapter receive retro? (eg, teacher to guidance counselor) – no answer yet
- Will people who moved from a UFT position to another position with the Board receive retro (ex. Secretary to Business Manager, or Teacher to AP) – no answer yet
- Will we earn interest on the retro? – YES
- Will retro just cover the period from 2010 – May 2015? – NO
- Or will retro also cover the period from May 2015 – May 2018? (ie, 6% for 15-16, 4% for 16-17, 2% for 17-18) – YES
- The union’s letter said retro for someone making $100,000 in 2009 would be more than $40,000. I calculate $49,000. Is this a discrepancy? – NO. The union put up a conservative figure.
- Please explain where the savings is coming from, in some detail. (I don’t put things in all capital letters. If I did it anywhere, it would be here)
— NO ANSWERS YET — This is the biggest question set of questions left.
- Do we have to document parent contact? Is this going to be a source of more paperwork? – I haven’t asked.
- How will validators be chosen? How will teachers qualify? Highly Effective? Effective? National Board Certification? – 50/50 UFT/DOE CTTEE to set criteria, and choose. Details (lengthy) in Memorandum of Agreement.
- If you get HE, the number of observations goes down to 3. Will these be full observations, drive bys, or a mix? – DRIVE BYS
- Is the bonus money for Masters, Models, and Ambassadors paid out of the school budget? – I think the answer is no, but I am not certain.
- Do Master Teachers do AP work? – NO (not according to the agreement. ymmv)
- Who is eligible to vote? (Active member today, or at any time during the life of the contract until today?) – IN-SERVICE MEMBERS TODAY
- There are non-DoE schools (including charter schools) represented by the UFT. Some contracts are based on the UFT pay scale. Will those people be getting raises, retro, etc? – I haven’t asked
- Is there any increased protection against abusive administrators (of whom there are 100s in this system) – NO
- Is there any increased protection against incompetent administrators (of whom there are 100s in this system) – NO
- Is there any recourse for probationary teachers who were unfairly discontinued by abusive or incompetent administrators? – NO
- Do those probationary teachers lose their retroactive pay? – YES
UFT Executive Board Sends Contract to Delegate Assembly
Michael Mulgrew led a question and answer session for over an hour. The session was open, and observers asked questions. Mulgrew was confident – he clearly believes the agreement is good.
The format was not ideal for reading off lists of questions, but quite a few from my list got answered. I’ll fill them in. But no Memorandum of Agreement was distributed, and I expected to get much of the information from there.
My confidence that the contract was mostly ok was not at all shaken. Money is mediocre, but not unexpected. I have a bunch of detailed money questions that didn’t get answered, but I’ll read the MoA. I don’t like the Master/Model/Ambassador, opens the door to merit pay schemes, but is not itself merit pay. I like losing the faculty conferences. PROSE is a mistake, albeit consistent with other things our union has pushed, and 65% is way too low for a 3-5 year SBO. The changes that directly affect excessed teachers may well make people nervous, but will help some teachers get placements, and are not setting them up for firing. I like the extra pay for hard to staff schools – in fact, $5k is not much, not really enough. I’m ok with restructuring the 37.5, but was not pleased that they still have their eyes on multi-session schools.
But there is a huge question mark on health. Mulgrew was not at all specific about what changes were being agreed to, and that should be of great concern.
I was not happy to be asked to vote without seeing the MoA. Apparently it is almost 50 pages long, and they are delaying putting it on line until they have checked it for grammatical errors.
But we are weeks ahead of where we expected to be in the process. There is time to get the MoA out for CLs and delegates to read. There is time to get the health care details published.
At the end of the Q&A, Carmen moved the report as a whole (to send to the Delegate Assembly).
Janella Hinds rose to support the motion.
I rose to table it, to give delegates and CLs time to see the MoA, and to see the details about health care (though I was not allowed to say all that, a courtesy has been extended to officers several times this year). Motion was defeated on a caucus-line vote about 80-7.
Nina Tribble called the question. Michael Shulman rose on a procedural point, there had been no speaker against. Mulgrew put it to the body in a way that favored letting Shulman speak, and it was allowed.
Michael pointed out that there was time, that the leadership could put back the DA as long or as little as needed to let people read for themselves (he mentioned Friday, he mentioned next week) and that we would still be far ahead of where we thought we would be.
And then they voted, with the only no’s coming from New Action.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
Earlier in the meeting the leadership moved an endorsement for Adriano Espaillat in the primary for US House against Charlie Rangel. I asked why, and the reporter listed warm fuzzy stuff about Espaillat, but did not explain why we were dropping Rangel, who the UFT has supported more or less forever. I live in the district. I abstained.
A few of my questions about this proposed contract
- Does the agreement increase per session by the same per cents as salary?
- Will there be retro on any per session we worked?
- Is per diem pay going up?
- Will members get a schedule of future payments (how much they can expect)
- Will people who resigned receive retro?
- Will people who take a leave receive retro?
- Will people who move into another chapter receive retro? (eg, teacher to guidance counselor)
- Will people who moved from a UFT position to another position with the Board receive retro (ex. Secretary to Business Manager, or Teacher to AP)
- Will we earn interest on the retro?
- Will retro just cover the period from 2010 – May 2015?
- Or will retro also cover the period from May 2015 – May 2018? (ie, 6% for 15-16, 4% for 16-17, 2% for 17-18)
- The union’s letter said retro for someone making $100,000 in 2009 would be more than $40,000. I calculate $49,000. Is this a discrepancy?
- Please explain where the savings is coming from, in some detail. (I don’t put things in all capital letters. If I did it anywhere, it would be here)
- Do we have to document parent contact? Is this going to be a source of more paperwork?
- How will validators be chosen? How will teachers qualify? Highly Effective? Effective? National Board Certification?
- If you get HE, the number of observations goes down to 3. Will these be full observations, drive bys, or a mix?
- Is the bonus money for Masters, Models, and Ambassadors paid out of the school budget?
- Do Master Teachers do AP work?
- Who is eligible to vote? (Active member today, or at any time during the life of the contract until today?)
- There are non-DoE schools (including charter schools) represented by the UFT. Some contracts are based on the UFT pay scale. Will those people be getting raises, retro, etc?
- Is there any increased protection against abusive administrators (of whom there are 100s in this system)
- Is there any increased protection against incompetent administrators (of whom there are 100s in this system)
- Is there any recourse for probationary teachers who were unfairly discontinued by abusive or incompetent administrators?
- Do those probationary teachers lose their retroactive pay?
Contract Comments this morning
I’ve gotten fewer comments this morning (of course, people are working). Tone is a bit more negative. But of course, it’s just a few comments, and they are people who know me (or who know people who know me). No good for making any sort of projection.
- Pay – questions – 4
- Pay – annoyed – 3
- Health – concerned – 3
- Career Ladder – 1
- UFT Explained itself poorly – 1
Still about 2/3 pay, 1/3 health.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
UFT Executive Board is tonight, at 6.
Delegate Assembly is Wednesday, at 4:15
UFT Contract Proposal – My First Comments
After the negotiating committee meeting Thursday I had dinner plans – but not until 8, an hour’s walk north of 52 Broadway. So I sat in the back of the lobby, facing the escalator, reading. “Jonathan” a voice shouted “it’s a good contract” – It wasn’t a question. Mulgrew, going down to the garage, had noticed me. I shrugged yes, and answered in the affirmative.
Two and a half days later, I would back off that answer. I wouldn’t call the proposal good, just ok, and with one big question mark left. I can reserve judgment, but not for long. The ballots will be out soon, sometime this month. Wednesday there is a Delegate Assembly where we are expected to vote whether or not to recommend this contract proposal to the members. And Monday there is an Executive Board where we will be asked to recommend this proposal to the DA. And tonight my caucus is meeting to choose our course of action.
So some first thoughts.
If a proposed contract leaves members in worse shape (financially, or rights) than before, that is not ok.
If a proposed contract makes it less likely that teachers will stay in the system, that is not ok. (that weakens the schools, and the union)
If a proposed contract does not harm members, but falls short of what it should be, that is not good. But opposing that contract would depend on our ability to improve the provisions.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
My caucus has been saying: 4 + 4, current contract (no more working under expired contract), full retroactive for everyone, including recent retirees, and no givebacks.
We have the 4 + 4, but deferred. For people in need of a quick infusion of cash, this sucks. We would see an immediate 2% + $1000 one time payment, followed by raises the next four May 1’s (2015, 16, 17, and 18): 3%, 3½%, 4½%, 5%. For most of us, the deferral allowed the contract to move up to 18% total (instead of perhaps 15%). Future money is cheaper than current money, and easier to budget for and promise. For those of us who can survive the deferral, 18% over nine years is still kind of mediocre money.
Current contract? Well yes. And we should never have allowed ourselves to work under an expired contract. But nine years is a long time. When will we have a chance to undo the damage from the Weingarten years, especially the 2005 contract? This extends that damage until 2018, unless some can be renegotiated outside of the contract. And we are setting a low (non-zero) pattern for other unions.
Full retro? Ironically, that’s taken care of best for recent retirees. For the rest of us, retro payments are broken in 4 shares, the first split between October 1 2015 and October 1 2017, and the other three coming October 1 2018, 2019, and 2020. That’s a long time. But for anyone who was thinking about it over the last year or so, not unexpected.
Givebacks? Here’s where we need to see the Memorandum. On the surface, I don’t see givebacks that concern me. Not even the ATR piece (though were I an ATR, any change of status would worry me. Remember, the biggest change for ATRs is that no schools were added to the closing list, that’s not conractual). I don’t like the Model Teacher, Master Teacher, Ambassador Teacher (sounds like frequent flyer status, or cruise ship cabin upgrades), but unless the DoE is going to slosh around a lot of cash, it falls short of a merit pay scheme (which I notice some have been calling it). Reconfiguring the 37½ is not a giveback. The two extra parent teacher conferences are a trade-off, not a giveback.
But health? Neither Mulgrew nor de Blasio have been sufficiently forthcoming about where these billions (with a b, 10^9, 2^30) are coming from. I need better answers on health care before I can support this.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
Oh, is there anything I like?
Yup. I like trading away the faculty conferences.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
I’ll have more to say in the coming days.
50
Yesterday I turned 50. I would have thought it a bigger deal.
I got up. Had yogurt, coffee. Went to class. Professor was late. Got out. Found I got a ticket. (took photos, and felt “outraged” but not actually angry. I really wasn’t in the bus stop. And it did not spoil my good, mellow mood). Drove to my other college. Got a good spot, close. Couldn’t find my professor so taped an xkcd to his door (it’s a cryptography class, good comic just came out) went to the comfy chairs, sat down and read, and had an apple. Found professor, hung out in his office while he prepped for our class. Chatted. Went to class. It was mostly math that I knew. Left – got caught in some awful traffic near Sean’s (Chandradat’s) house, trying to avoid the awful traffic on the xBx. Munched pistachios. Rested. Jumped on the train to meet a friend with the same birthday (but only 45) for drinks in Carrol Gardens. Got some appetizers. A coworker was nearby, joined us. We took the train back north. I got home at 11, looked at the computer, and went to sleep.
So there were birthday calls and texts and facebook messages and e-mails. But otherwise, just a nice day.
NYSUT on Common Core
The anti-public education reform movement is being driven back, everywhere. It’s high-water mark is in the past.
NYSUT’s opposition was to NYS implementation, not the Common Core as a whole. Progress, but less than we want.
Yet, they are still dangerous. They are still well-funded. They have access to media, to propaganda. They have influence from Arne Duncan through many state and local education departments. They have institutes and organizations and influential private donors. And they have already changed many of “the facts on the ground” – rewritten laws, broken contracts, attacked pensions, closed schools, opened doors for private charter school operators, test makers, etc etc.
We need to check them as they continue to aggressively assault public education. We must turn back new attacks.
We need to pursue the facts that they have changed, and changed them back. We need to undo their damage. (In NYC, the shorthand version is undoing Bloomberg’s failed legacy).
Our unions need help opposing, and strengthening their opposition, to anti-public education
But importantly, we need to make certain our own allies are on board. Our national unions made awful compromises and concessions to the anti-public education reform movement. They can be brought back, but it will take pressure from below. And we need to take care that they don’t do as Nasser did in Moscow: signal left and turn right.
A month ago the AFT President tweeted opposition to Value Added (a way of judging teachers on test scores). Careful. My local, usually closely aligned to her, has opposed Value Added for quite some time . Instead they support a “Growth Model”. Honestly, the difference is miniscule. But a lawyer chooses words carefully. She didn’t oppose “Growth Models” – and that’s what we should have heard. We have a signal of progress, but no real progress, not yet. We need to keep up the pressure.
(Similarly, I oppose rating teachers on test scores. The AFT opposes rating teachers “primarily on test scores.” You think there’s no real difference?)
This weekend the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) called for the removal of Commissioner of Education. (The NYSUT Board adopted the resolution, still needs to be adopted by the Representative Assembly this Spring). That’s progress.
The proposed resolution also brings NYSUT in open opposition to the Common Core “as implemented and interpreted in New York State.” That is progress as well. But it is not opposition to the Common Core. Really.
- Opposition to the Common Core would mean that NYSUT was looking to take New York State out of the Common Core.
- Opposition to the Common Core as implemented and interpreted in New York State means NYSUT is looking for NYS to implement Common Core better.
There’s a difference. We would want the former. If they polled members in NY, they’d know we want to dump the Common Core. But they chose, for now, the latter, a half step.
In a similar vein, the UFT called earlier this year for a moratorium on consequences for high stakes exams. We should have called for a moratorium on the tests themselves. Progress, but a half-step.
Let’s recognize what we have: The steps in the wrong direction have stopped. We have half-steps in the right direction. And we have need for much more progress.
It is crucial to our struggle that we get our organizations fully on board. Pressure from below has moved them. Let us state, but not overstate, our progress, as we continue to move forward.
Chancellor Fariña: Progress Reports and Quality Reviews
Things under de Blasio/Fariña will get better for the schools, students, and teachers of NYC. They might get a whole lot better. They certainly won’t get worse.
One area we should watch is “Accountability.” De Blasio’s campaign already promised
“in his first year in office, Bill de Blasio will eliminate letter grades of schools. Overall progress reports will remain available for parents, and educators, experts and parents will be convened to determine if the progress reports are the most effective long-term way to evaluate schools.”
Dropping the letter grades is a welcome change. It provides some immediate relief. But we should expect more relief than just that from “accountability”
The word, in today’s anti-public-education-reform parlance, does not mean what it sounds like. Their version of “accountability” creates scores for schools. (They also will be producing scores for teachers as part of the new teacher evaluation). The NYC Accountability systems involve two parts.
The first is a “Quality Review” where reviewers who may or may not be familiar with your school, and certainly do not work to support your school, conduct an on-site review in less than a week. The result is “Well Developed” “Proficient” “Developing” or “Underdeveloped”. There’s also “Proficient with Well Developed features” and that sort of thing. You know what else has well developed features? Anyway,
The second is a “Progress Report” where the results of the Quality Review are hocus pocus blended with a bunch of statistics, much based on standardized test scores, compared against other schools in a hard to comprehend formula, (and those schools may or may not look anything like your school), a little bit of standard deviations and averaging – and voilà! a number. And then the number is translated to A, B, C, D or F. By the way, the Progress Report formula changes each year. Also by the way, the borderline between A and B and B and C etc changes each year. Also, by the way, none of the versions of the formula ever made sense. Also, by the way, the DoE claimed to be making school closing decisions based on the letters (not true, but scared the hell out of school communities in targeted schools. The DoE had its own secret agenda in selecting schools to close)
So, you should also know, there is Federal and NY State accountability. This stuff, Progress Reports and Quality Reviews, that’s just extra that Bloomberg’s DoE glommed on to harass or terrify schools. But NYC DoE has something like 200 central staff, many of them pricy young lawyers with no knowledge of education, assigned to doing accountability to the schools.
1. Any review or evaluation of a school should be done by the administrators responsible for supporting the school. The evaluator must be responsible to the school (as the principal should be responsible to the staff, students, and parents, as the teacher must be responsible to students and parents, as the chapter leader must be responsible to the members, as the district rep must be responsible to the chapter leaders, etc)
The panic caused by Quality Reviews is quadrupled because it is being done by strangers. They don’t know the school, or the people. They look for oddball things that no one in the school knew they cared about (and often that no one in the school should care about). They have no interest in seeing the schools succeed.
2. All “scoring” of schools should be stopped. Boiling a school down to a number is wrong. (As is boiling down a student to a number). Release reports on graduation rates? Sure. But no cooking up a phony statistic or metric that pretends to rate a school. In other words, the Progress Reports should be ended.
3. The actual educators working in “Accountability” should be given productive work, supporting schools, in other DoE offices. The non-educators working in “Accountability” should be given the opportunity to find more appropriate work outside of education. And the Office of Accountability should be staffed by a couple of people to make sure the reports to the State and Feds are being filed.
So what do we look for?
1. The letter grades on progress reports, de Blasio’s campaign said they would go in his first year. We should make sure they are actually being dumped. This alone will make schools calmer (especially combined with a likely end to arbitrary school closings – which those in targeted schools were led to believe were linked to progress reports. Untrue, but made people crazy.)
2. The campaign promised “educators, experts and parents will be convened to determine if the progress reports are the most effective long-term way to evaluate school.” We care
2a. when this committee is convened. Best case, in a month or two, so its findings can be out before the 2014-15 quality review/progress report cycle. Later in the spring, or in the summer would mean that recommendations could be made for 2015-16. This would be disappointing, but perhaps more realistic. On the other hand, if September/October roll around with no committee, we may be in trouble. I do not suppose this is likely.
2b. who is on the committee. Educators, experts, and parents. I could stack that committee with great people, or with horrible people. Who gets named makes all the difference. Watch out that all the educators are actually experienced educators. If there are DoE people who never taught, or were briefly teachers, and not very good, that’s a problem. If “educators” excludes teachers, or only has a token teacher, that’s a problem. On the other hand, if the committee mixes teachers, principals, and superintendents… For experts, anyone from the testing companies would be a real issue, but I expect de Blasio and Fariña to shut them out. Real public education advocates would be great. Does Diane Ravitch have the level of detailed knowledge necessary? I’m expecting some balance here, but we should watch carefully.
2c. Finally, we should expect the blended single score (statistical nonsense) of the Progress Reports to be abolished. That would be best. Perhaps replacing the reports with unfiltered, unaggregated numbers would represent a middle ground.
3. Fariña will be making staff changes, bringing new people in, and getting rid of some of the old. The “getting rid of the old” should have as one of its foci the non-educators working in the Office of Accountability. This has three positive results – cost savings and a shift away from punitive data and increasing the weight of real educators in the DoE. This will be hard to watch, as we don’t usually notice mid-level lawyers slithering out the door. Perhaps we can keep an eye on the headcount. The best outcome here would be to disband the office. We would certainly notice that.
Boston Teacher Ratings discriminate
I missed this article in the Boston Globe – The Boston Teachers Union is grieving the evaluation process – claims pattern of discrimination against Black teachers, against men, and against older teachers.
They are asking for adverse consequences to be rescinded. Notice that this includes both dismissals, and teacher improvement plans. I believe in NYC we have not preserved the right to challenge a D rating that would lead to improvement plan type consequences for the following year.
Also note, the BTU is not waiting for statistical proof. They are moving on the first indications that there is discrimination. Also note, every anti-public school reform of the last dozen years, anywhere in the country, has hit Black kids and Black teachers the hardest. And many have hit older teachers disproportionately.
Boston Teachers Union contests ratings
By James Vaznis GLOBE STAFF DECEMBER 11, 2013
The Boston Teachers Union has filed a grievance with the School Department over its teacher evaluation system, asking school officials to rescind the “offending evaluations and improvement plans” and to stop discriminating against employees on the basis of race, gender, or age.
The union announced the grievance Tuesday morning in its weekly newsletter. The School Department fired back in the afternoon, issuing a press release and posting tweets that called the grievance an attempt to “block reform.”
The clash came months after the union first raised concerns that teachers who were African-American, Latino, male, or older were more likely to be rated “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory.” Those ratings are the lowest of four possible marks under the evaluation system, which was implemented during the last school year.
The union was swayed in the last few weeks to take formal action after the School Department released an analysis of teacher evaluations that revealed patterns of potential bias based on race, gender, or age.
“The Boston Teachers Union expects and wants great teachers in each classroom,” Richard Stutman, the teachers union president, said. The union “also expects that the School Department will not punish teachers on the basis of race, sex, or age.”
“We are not arguing against good performance evaluation; in fact, we welcome healthy and constructive feedback,” Stutman added. “But the evaluation process must be done in a way that does not discriminate.”
In all, 272 teachers regardless of race, gender, or age received a “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory” rating last school year, representing 7 percent of teachers. About 30 are no longer in the classroom.
Interim Superintendent John McDonough said it was too soon to determine whether bias or discrimination exists, given that there is only one year of data. He said the School Department, in response to the concerns raised, is devoting more attention to bias prevention.
But McDonough said the union has taken the issue too far, demanding jobs back for poorly performing teachers.
“That is totally unacceptable,” he said. “Under no circumstance are we going to rehire poor-performing teachers.”
Under the grievance, which is dated Dec. 2, the union in its request to rescind the offending evaluations and improvement plans demanded that “affected teachers be made whole.”
Stutman said in an interview that the union has not decided which members would be covered under the “class-action” grievance. But he emphasized that the union is not seeking return of poorly performing teachers, but trying to ensure fair treatment for all.
The disparity in ratings among teachers of different backgrounds was quite wide in many cases. For instance, 9.7 percent of all black teachers received a needs-improvement rating, compared with 4.1 percent of white teachers; male teachers were almost twice as likely to receive that rating as female teachers; and 11.3 percent of teachers 60 and over were deemed needs improvement, compared with 5.6 percent of those in their 20s.
Tension over teacher evaluation is one of two simmering issues between the School Department and the union. The two sides also have been clashing over a School Department proposal to give principals more autonomy in hiring teachers, prompting the union to file a separate grievance.
James Vaznis can be reached at jvaznis@globe.com.
Chancellor Fariña
Fariña’s selection alone sets a better tone. We can expect a different kind of conversation with, for the first time in ages, educators leading both the school system and the teachers union. And tone helps. But Bloomberg did a lot of damage. Where will Fariña start?
Since before de Blasio’s election there has been speculation about who he might choose to lead the NYC school system. Names, ridiculous, serious, evil, laughable, all floated together. And now, two days away from inauguration, Bill de Blasio is naming Carmen Fariña Chancellor. There will be lots of excitement and speculation and what does she stand for and what does she stand against, etc. etc.
But for us teachers, the Chancellor is someone who makes decisions, who we sometimes agree with, and sometimes disagree with. Part of our work will be discussing with our new Chancellor, and part will be arguing against the Chancellor. And that would have been true whomever was chosen. The Chancellor is the schools’ Chancellor, the Mayor’s Chancellor, not the union’s or the teachers’ or the parents’. We want someone we can work through disagreements with…
In the current national context there will be outside pressure on NYC about testing and evaluation, and about curriculum. We are not an island (well… you know). And so, a month ago, I made a list of experiences and characteristics we would hope to see in a Chancellor (but not a list of political/pedagogical positions). I reasoned that we would work best with and argue most effectively with a Chancellor who spoke our language and shared at least some of our experiences.
There are a handful of people who would have checked all the boxes. Didn’t mean we would love them. We wouldn’t. Be we would be able to work with them. And Fariña checked all the boxes:
- My list: 10 years teacher. (Would be nice if the person had some time with extra responsibility before becoming a principal). 10 years principal. Public school. NYC. Not TfA. Not an anti-public-school-reformer. No one who has done grave harm to our schools.
- Fariña: 22 years teacher, (five years district curriculum coordinator), 10 years principal. Superintendent. Deputy Chancellor. All in NYC Public Schools. Not TfA. Not a testing/reformer. And while I would consider parts of her record mixed, there’s a lot of positive in it, and she certainly did not do grave harm to the system, even while she worked directly under Joel Klein.
I expect that teachers will not fall in love with the next Chancellor. I expect she will do a lot of things we don’t like. But I also expect she won’t be hated, and that she won’t pursue massively harmful reform strategies. And I hope that she will undo all of the Bloomberg destructive policies. And I expect that she will undo at least a few of them.
Fariña’s selection alone sets a better tone. We can expect a different kind of conversation with, for the first time in ages, educators leading both the school system and the teachers union. And tone helps. But Bloomberg did a lot of damage. Where will Fariña start?
Look at structure of the system. Look at curriculum. Look for some de-emphasis of testing. Look at hiring and how excessed teachers are treated. Look for school closings to stop. And look for new colocations to stop. Look for Progress Reports and Quality reviews to be ended or modified and reduced. Look for scores of lawyers and non-educators to be given the opportunity to find gainful employment somewhere else. Look for a housecleaning of high-ranking TfAers and other anti-public-school-reformers. Look for high school admissions, and kindergarten admissions to be remade. Look, over time, for some undoing of noxious changes to chancellors regs. Really, look for everything.
Watch carefully: which Bloomberg damage is undone in the first month? Which Bloomberg damage is fixed by next September?
We should look for progress, and we will find it. We should push for undoing all of Bloomberg’s damage. There will be conversations.
Walcott’s goodbye
Today every teacher in NYC received a goodbye message from Dennis Walcott (at the bottom of this post). That this is his last school day as Chancellor is something most of us would instinctively celebrate.
But was Walcott a bad chancellor? That question should be asked in context, and in comparison. Was he as bad as Joel Klein? How will he compare to whoever comes next?
There is no question that Joel Klein was reviled by parents and teachers across New York City. If the question was “who was more hated?” then Klein wins walking away. Walcott was not personally offensive the way Klein had been. He wasn’t provocative, mocking. He wasn’t hated. But that’s not the question here. Was Walcott a bad chancellor?
Klein really was bad. His disruptive reorganizations took a mediocre system and made it a disaster. He vilified teachers. He engineered the ATR crisis (through budgeting legerdemain, combined with hoodwinking the UFT’s leadership). He screwed up special education. He closed and reopened schools, improving nothing, but damaging communities. He appointed anti-public education reformers to high posts, including many who had barely taught. He helped make teaching a far less attractive job.
As Joel Klein’s damage peaked, he was replaced, first by Cathy Black (tell me again why the UFT did not oppose the waiver for this non-educator to become Chancellor), then by Dennis Walcott. Walcott walked in to the system in the worst shape it had ever been. And every day that passed, it stayed that way. And every day it stayed that way, the damage was deepened. The Board of Education and its schools are a worse place after Dennis Walcott then they were after Joel Klein. Walcott has been the worst Chancellor I have known.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
I expect that teachers will not fall in love with the next Chancellor. I expect she will do a lot of things we don’t like. But I also expect she won’t be hated, and that she won’t pursue massively harmful reform strategies. And I hope that she will undo all of the Bloomberg destructive policies. And I expect that she will undo at least a few of them.
Dear Colleagues,
As you know, December 31 will be my last day as Chancellor. I am writing today to thank you for your unwavering commitment to our students and families. Over the past 12 years, first as Deputy Mayor and then as Chancellor, I have witnessed your outstanding efforts to prepare our students to lead this City and our nation. It has been a privilege to work with you.
You are engaged in an undertaking that is both noble and challenging, and not a single day has gone by without my reflecting on the magnitude of our shared pursuit. The phenomenal gains we have achieved are a testament to your expertise, creativity, passion, and dedication. You are the reason we are handing over a system of schools that is far better than when we started. What an accomplishment!
Under the next Chancellor, I am confident that you will remain focused on the critical work you are leading. While challenges clearly remain, I have no doubt that you can take our schools to even greater heights.
Thank you again for helping our students work toward graduating high school with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and careers.
I wish you and your families a healthy, happy holiday and a wonderful new year.
Sincerely,
Dennis M. Walcott
Bad repairmen and US educational policy
– both continually change things without fixing them. – both continually change things without figuring out what the effects of the previous changes were. – and both might make things better one day, might make them worse another day, but are bad for everyone in the long run.
I know math best. In my 17 years in the system, we have had four sets of high school math state tests – Course I, Course II, Course III, then Math A, Math B, then Integrated Algebra, Integrated Geometry, Integrated Algebra II/Trigonometry, and now Common Core exams.
These changes were primarily political. Even the one that was almost pedagogical (I/II/III —> A/B) was primarily political.
We lurch from one to the next, never stopping to ask: “what should children learn?” “how much should children learn?” “what have children been learning?” We don’t examine the previous curriculum for strengths and weaknesses. (Isn’t Common Core an exception? Not for 9-12 math it’s not. It’s the worst kind of grab bag you could imagine, every topic + the kitchen sink thrown together without rhyme or reason)
We (meaning the people who set educational policy, not really me, and I hope not you) are bad repairmen, raking in $$$ as we perform repair after repair, sometimes we fix things, sometimes we break things, and we need to be stopped.
PISA Problem Problem
Ever count ceiling tiles during a boring test? I have. And I run into a problem (besides that people notice me staring goofy at the ceiling). The tiles never fit. How do I count the broken tiles? Does each broken tile count as a full tile, since a full tile had to be consumed to make it? Or should I just be counting the area? My geek game, my geek rules – I count both ways.
One of the released PISA math questions sets up a similar problem – and then does not give even partial credit for a partial geek answer.
Before I share the question, I had every intention of fully ignoring PISA. The results are used to do things like justify attacks on teachers local unions in the US, or to set up charter schools whose kids would never learn to agonize over going with the Geek answer or the normal answer. The test is used to harm us, to create panic over a single data point (is there still a country between Sweden and Russia?)
But I was curious about what the questions looked like. Most of them seemed fine. But here’s the ceiling tile question:
PATIO
Nick wants to pave the rectangular patio of his new house. The patio has length 5.25 metres and width 3.00 metres. He needs 81 bricks per square metre.
Calculate how many bricks Nick needs for the whole patio.
Hmm. The 5 x3.25 patio, there are 5 x 3 = 15 nice squares that could be filled. 15 x 81 = 1215. But now we have a strip a quarter of a meter wide (hate when they have fractional remainders, 1/4, for a metric problem. feels like mixed units), and 3 meters long. We should think about the shape of the bricks.
(by the way, the geek analysis is about to cost me credit).
Since there are 81 bricks to the square meter, the bricks could be little squares. One ninth (yeeks!) of a meter on a side. So two rows of them would be about .22 m, and we would have to get another row of partial bricks to fill our .25 strip (and lead to some wastage. or is it waste?) So it would take 3 x 9 = 27 bricks to complete each quarter square meter, or 27 x 3 = 81 of them to eat up the full remaining strip, so 1215 + 81 = 1296. My first answer. And I would not have gotten full credit. Because I forgot something.
What if the bricks were a different shape? We are tiling square meters, and the problem implies we can do that well. With 81 things – doesn’t that mean we are stuck with rectangles? 1 x 4 rectangles could work. That’s 1/18 of a meter by 4/18 of a meter. With one row long-ways and one row side-ways we could create a strip 5/18 m. wide. 5/18 ≈ .278, and now we are getting somewhere. Now, 54 long-ways bricks (stacked long side against long side) would create a strip 3 m x .22 m, and 14 side ways bricks would put a layer on top that was 3.11 m x 0.56 m, so there still is waste, but much less. 54 + 14 + 1215 = 1283.
And I still don’t have full credit. But now I have an approach to refine my answer.
Imagine bricks 3 m long and 1/81 of a meter wide. 81 of them cover a square meter. 20 of them would be just under a quarter of a square meter, so let’s go with 21 once, twice, three times. That’s a strip 3 m long and 21/81 ≈ .259 m wide, with minimal possible waste. Can’t get a better answer than this. That’s 3 x 21 = 63 + 1215 = 1278 bricks. Perfect answer.
So if the bricks are squares, we need 1296, but as the rectangles get further and further from square shape, we need fewer and fewer, with the minimum possible 1278.
And PISA would:
SCORING PATIO: QUESTION 13
Full Credit
Code 2: 1275, 1276 or 1275.75 (unit not required).
Partial Credit
Code 1: 15.75 (units not required)
OR
- 1215 bricks for 5m X 3m
(This score is used for students who are able to calculate the number of bricks for an integer number of square metres, but not for fractions of square metres.)
OR
- Error in calculating the area, but multiplied by 81 correctly
OR
- Rounded off the area and then multiplied by 81 correctly
No Credit
Code 0: Other responses
Code 9: Missing
PISA would give me partial credit, while a Finnish child who was 2 or 3 bricks short of a full load would get full credit.
Pythagoras Day, 2013, again!
Math teachers, don’t let this one pass. Today is 
Today paired up with this year’s other Pythagoras Day. When does that happen? Nice discussion, gives kids a chance to engage their smarts.
When’s the next one?
How many have they already lived through?
What would make a good PythDay greeting?
How many might they live through? (Hint: is there a highest year in two-digit format that works?) (Query: can we use the four-digit year?)
How can we change the rules?
I’ve played this before. I’ll play it again (skipping a year…)
Starting Pay ≤ My Pay < Top Pay
That little inequality would be true in any district. But what would the numbers be?
I guess you should know that this is my 17th year. I have a Masters. And I’ve collected a bunch of additional credits, but no additional degrees. Probably if we added up the advanced credits, it would be around 30, but I padded that with some credit by examination a few years ago, so in NYC I am closer to 50. Not that those credits matter elsewhere. You should also know that I am on sabbatical this year, so I am not drawing full pay. But for this exercise, let’s pretend I am.
The list includes all the towns and cities in Westchester and Nassau that border NYC, and I’ve thrown in the NYC rates from September 1997, when I started, to boot.
| District | Starting Teacher | jd2718 | Top Teacher | (deg, years) |
| NYC 1997 | $28,749 | $28,749 | $60,000 | MA+30, 23 yrs |
| NYC 2013 | $45,530 | $85,426 | $100,049 | MA+30, 23 yrs |
| Yonkers 2010 | $57,772 | $118,709 | $131,016 | PhD, 30 yrs |
| Mt Vernon 2009 | $51,540 | $109,616 | $122,275 | PhD, 20 yrs |
| Pelham 2012 | $52,931 | $119,308 | $137,433 | PhD, 25 yrs |
| New Rochelle 2013 | $54,969 | $119,593 | $131,839 | MA+90 or PhD, 20 yrs |
| Great Neck 2013 | $56,829 | $119,270 | $136,856 | PhD, 25 yrs |
| New Hyde Pk – Garden City 2012 | $53,620 | $109,140 | $119,702 | PhD, 26 yrs |
| Floral Park- Bellerose 2011 | $56,088 | $105,768 | $123,616 | PhD, 25 yrs |
| Elmont 2012 | $52,076 | $106,275 | $119,328 | PhD, 22 yrs |
| Valley Stream 2010 | $55,574 | $112,362 | $123,510 | PhD, 26 yrs |
| Lawrence 2011 | $51,432 | $113,989 | $130,072 | MA+90 or PhD, 30 yrs |
A child’s non-commutative model of multiplication
I was playing math with a niece and nephew a few weeks ago. Really, just playing games. And challenges.
We played who can get to 12 (by adding 1s or 2s). I wasn’t going for a rule, but my niece was close, so we (sister-in-law helped) got her to discover that 9 was a good number. And so was 3. And my nephew (younger) wasn’t going to discover it, but once his sister announced it, he kind of sort of followed.
We played puppies and kittens (game I learned from Sue Van Hattum. Adopt as many puppies as you like. Or as many kittens. Or an equal number of each. And – here’s a twist – whoever adopts the last furry animal loses). The two kids played with each other (I watched), and while the girl discovered some strategy, it was not a complete solution, and the two seemed to enjoy it.
I broke out some wonderful dice that my games mentor gifted me. Blue dice have the numbers 5 – 10 on the sides. Red dice have 0 – 5. 2cm, wood. I gave my niece one red, and I rolled one blue, and we saw who got higher. I won two or three rounds before she called me on it. Then I gave her two red dice, and him one blue one, and they rolled against each other, sum of the red against the blue. And then I gave her five red dice, and him 2 blue dice, and they both had some quick adding to do. They played for almost fifteen minutes, and needed to be stopped. Completely engaged. (And no, not a fair game. I didn’t calculate the probability, but the expected value favored the younger child. Intentionally, to help maintain interest).
I pulled out some graph paper (1/2 inch) and some crayons. Here I didn’t involve my nephew (I asked him to draw me something), but I drew a rectangle for my niece, 4×3, horizontally oriented. I counted the boxes (12) and the lines on the outside (14). I asked her if she could make another 12 box rectangle. She copied mine. I asked her if she could make a different 12 box rectangle. She drew a 2 unit high rectangle, and counted, and closed it at 6 wide. I asked her to draw another 12 box rectangle. She drew a 6×2, but this one vertically oriented. I asked her to count lines for each rectangle – 14, 14, and 16.
My sister-in-law asked my niece if she could write a multiplication for each rectangle. Not where I was headed. But I understand that it is not obvious to non-teachers that not every encounter with mathematics needs to reach “fruition.” And it was fine, the girl knows a little bit about multiplication, so I sat back, and watched.
Next to the 4×3 she wrote 4 x 3 = 12. Next to the next 4×3 she wrote 4 x 3 = 12. Next to the 6×2 she wrote 6 x 2 = 12. Next to the vertical 6×2 she wrote 6 x 2 = 12, and started to cross it out. My sister-in-law started to speak, to interrupt the process, but I motioned to let my niece continue, and she did. And after crossing out 6 x 2 = 12, my niece wrote 2 x 6 = 12.
I was delighted. My sister-in-law was concerned. She wanted her daughter to see that 4 x 3 and 3 x 4 were the same thing. I did not. I thought the girl was in a good place, was developing a strong sense of multiplication, and would transition nicely, later. So I intervened to assuage her mother’s concerns while only denting, not exploding, her non-commutative model. I turned the paper, and let her conclude that a 4 x 3 could be a 3 x 4 if you looked at it differently. And I asked if 3×4 had the same number of boxes as 4×3. She answered without pausing. And 2×6 and 6×2? Ditto. Right, 4×3 and 3×4 in her mind were different things, with the same answer, and that’s ok.
I dragged out the rectangles challenges by asking if there was a different rectangle with 12 boxes with even more lines. She was stuck, so I drew a 1×12. She carefully counted. 26 boxes. I asked if that was the most, she was not sure, I began to draw 1/2 by something, counting half boxes with her along the way (she was good at counting by halves!), and she was certain that there were more lines. She counted anyhow. My brother, who had only watched part of this, asked if we would ever be done (with the most lines) and she articulated nicely a “keep cutting in half” approach.
Then I taught them Set (or rather, what makes a set. I turn teaching someone how to play Set into an enjoyable game itself. I’ve done this with high school and middle school students for years. The first day we never play). And then I sent them some turn-taking rules that I thought would be better for adults playing with little kids, and kids of different ages playing together. (I played these rules on Thanksgiving, 2 math teachers and a 2nd grader, fun for all).
I never wrote about going to the Math Circle 2013 summer conference a few months ago, at Notre Dame. But I believe my experiences there had some influence on this story.
JD2718 