Russia Expelling Protesting Students

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH RUSSIAN STUDENTS RISK LOW MARKS OR EXPULSION SHOULD THEY ATTEND OPPOSITION RALLIES

By Stephen Wilson 

MOSCOW --  "The Headmaster asked me to voluntary leave the school. For me this was incomprehensible as I my academic performance was okay so I wondered why I was being kicked out. ... During the last term I got a two for Algebra but earlier my knowledge was sufficient to a take part in the Maths Olympiad competitions.For the whole year

I received a two. My transfer to another school had to be carried out by the 30-31st of August but I had no time to complete the documents, " declared 11th year school student Mikhail Samin , a former student of school number 1329. 

The student had attended a massive protest against corruption held on 26th March . The student, who was carrying a placard with the words : 'Dimon, we are waiting for an answer' , was arrested and charged with attending an 'unsanctioned rally. ' It turns out that the headmaster of his school was an active member of the establishment party 'United Russia '. He did not take kindly to Mikhail's political views . 

However, Mikhail Samin is not alone. There exist numerous examples of how school students who attended demonstrations have been unfairly penalized with low marks, expulsions and in some cases threatened with being sent into the army. The Russian government were taken aback by the huge number of school children who had been attending opposition demonstrations. Instead of asking the logic question ; 'Why do so many young people feel increasingly alienated ? ' they resorted to the old question : 'Who is to blame ? ' as if the very act of disagreeing with the government represents a crime and that children don't have a right to an opinion. Some ministers even went so far as to propose fining parents of the children.

The young people who attend those marches are treated in a condescending and patronizing way by officials who sneer at them not having minds of their own and being misled by the Piped piper Navalny. This is despite the fact that many of the children are critical of Navalny and don't always support him.

In another case , a student of Oil stone machine construction college Almaza Imamov was threatened with expulsion for going to a meeting on the 26th March . For 6 months after going on this demonstration the authorities met him 4 times to persuade him to give up his political opinions. This only incensed him and he stated : " We live in a country where the existing power don't allow us to express our views.In the past people were shot for this'.

He was told by the college authorities : " If you participate in such demonstrations it means you are against us. We don't need such students. "

A student of Kalingrad Baltic Federal University Kant , Oleg Alekseev , has already been expelled for attending a rally on the Day of Russia. He was informed that he had been expelled from the University for 'contempt of the Law and court'. Kant , the German philosopher whom the university is named after , would be turning in his grave. After all , Kant did appeal to students to : 'Dare to use your own reason'.

It is not difficult to see why many young students are going to protest rallies. One of the obvious reasons is that they want to see their own government observing rather than cynically violating the constitution. School students actually have to learn by heart some of the articles in the Russian constitution through a school subject called 'Social Knowledge'. Now some students might actually take this subject literally . After all the constitution states everyone has the right to freedom of expression and the right to attend protest demonstrations.

One school student who had been attending some Moscow demonstrations called Peter told me "I have been attending those protests because I'm sick of a situation where the government continues to steal, steal and steal . I intend to go into politics to change this situation" . A fellow student sitting next to him agrees with him but did not feel any urge to go on a rally.

What worries the government is that so many young people not only protest but their high competence in using new information technology can make them effective at quickly organizing such protests . The older generation of officials don't have such a grasp of technology. Another problem is that those people who are protesting don't just confine themselves to the issue of corruption but are fighting for the rights of workers, for a freer education system as well as more just legal system. Those people can't' be taken for granted.

 

HOD October

Should Charter Teachers Join CTU?
By Jim Vail


The biggest issue facing the Chicago Teachers Union is the decision to make constitutional changes.

The union wants to make constitution changes so that the charter school teachers are a part of the CTU union.

The idea itself sounds convincing - let's unite with our brothers and sisters in the charter schools and fight CPS for a better contract for all of us, and of course better schools.

Better charter schools?

Charter schools have grown like mushrooms throughout the city to destroy public education and of course, the Chicago Teachers Union.

So do we join up with charter school teachers as one union who fight for public schools and charter schools?

The union says the fact that charter schools have to deal with teachers in a union will deter them from growing. 

The CTU has fought, within the confines of the democratic machine, against charter schools and proudly pointed out that there were no new charter schools opened this school year.

However, will a union really stop the growth of charter schools?

That is the position of the American Federation of Teachers and President Randi Weingarten. It was parroted by form union boss Marilyn Stewart who said charter schools are our friends - we just need them to join us.

The idealists argue let's make the charter teachers a part of our union and make these charter schools into public schools again and make them a part of our contract.

Will that happen? It's not even a part of the plan CTU announced because they know it won't happen.

Charters are there like sweatshops to merely pay less to teachers.

Period!

I said at the CTU House of Delegates meeting that the charter teachers are already a member of a union - Chiacts. Why do they need to join us?

Is it about the money? Will they get more resources to unionize and fight for better conditions? Is it unfair that charters get more corporate money?

CTU officials pointed out that selective schools also unfairly cream off the top to destroy neighborhood public schools.

I think this is a situation where the CTU is waving the white the flag on the fight against charter schools - the union won't significantly suffer when they close public schools and switch to charter schools if the staff gets unionized and they pay dues to the union.

But it is reality. We are all (99 percent) headed to minimum wage jobs with no union representation. The Supreme Court rules billionaires can throw as much money they want into elections to control our politics. They will soon rule that unions cannot automatically deduct dues from workers paychecks, which will further destroy the unions that have already been decimated. 

It's like, yeah we represent taxi drivers, but let's focus representing the future, Uber and rideshare companies, who are taking over.

The union wants to make it seem like they will do both - fight against charters, and join up to them by representing their teachers. It's similar to organizing protests against racist attacks against black schools while funding and endorsing House Speaker Mike Madigan who closes those schools.

Can we have it both ways?

Teacher Judgement

DAY OF THE TEACHER OR JUDGMENT?

THE 5th of OCTOBER

By Stephen Wilson

 

MOSCOW -- "Congratulations on 'The Day of the Teacher Day'. It is our day today " announced a cheerful and lively teacher to me when I entered a Greek and Latin Gymnasium which is situated within the vicinity of Prospect Mir when I entered the staff room . Judging by the frantic activity of teachers rushing in and out of the staff room with textbooks and carrying heaps of homework, I wondered if any teacher had time to celebrate this day. It seemed an irritating distraction which hindered rather than helped our work. In fact, if you leaf through the articles in the Russian media you might be forgiven for believing it is 'a Day of Judgment ' as people freely evaluate or assess the performance of teachers.

An indication that some pupils had noticed was when a teacher brought in a huge banquet of flowers. 

On this day, articles in the Russian media mushroom. Many of them amount to inappropriate comments to tactless judgments. For instance, why do government officials announce, in a

newspaper,that they intend to close down 100 institutions of Further Education' which the government deem 'ineffective'? One of the best universities in Saint Petersburg has been practically closed down on the spurious grounds that it does not provide physical education facilities ! Yet this university specializes in the humanities and not sport! So you have a government that literary threatens to make some teachers redundant on: 'The Day of the Teacher '!

One thing is certain. It is not all bad news. Despite the occasional teacher bashing, the profile and prestige of teachers has radically changed over the past decade. Gone are the days of the 1990's where schools in Moscow were short of teachers and the pay was absolutely abysmal.

The usual stereotype of a Russian teacher is of a late middle-aged or old teacher who is angry, authoritarian and constantly shouts rudely at pupils : " Keep your Eyes on the blackboard " as in the Russian satirical film 'Hitler Caput'. Recent research indicates this crude stereotype of Russian teachers is an oversimplification and misleading generalization. For instance, one out of four teachers is estimated to be under 35 and International surveys have found that Russian teachers are among the most qualified in Europe and continually seek to upgrade their qualifications. The shortage of teachers in rural schools is less than one percent and all the vacancies in Moscow schools are practically filled. This is a far cry from the 1990's when the job of a teacher was largely an unwanted position and schools had a high turnover of staff. Nevertheless, one wonders whether the recent statement of the Minister of Education where she claims that : "It is namely due to the high qualities of patient and strong teachers that millions of our children joyfully go to school." I can already hear grunts from some school kids.

How does the public perceive the financial status and prestige of teachers in Russia? A recent survey by the All Russian Center of Social Opinions asked respondents to assess perceived the status of teachers on a scale from one to five. The scale found they received a mark of 2.86.

By the way, this is how school students are marked at school! It is as if teachers are being equated with pupils.

Journalists stated the teachers score a very average mark. The survey does not measure the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom but irrelevant factors such as how people rank teachers according to pay and prestige. It is as if people are being asked to rank teachers on the basis of how much money they make rather than more important considerations. Only people highly materialistic could have thought about carrying out such a survey. A much more interesting finding of the survey is when the public were asked what qualities they like to see in teachers. As many as 30% stated they most of all value 'kindness and well-wishing' , 28% 'competence' and thirdly, 'love towards children and their work' and in fourth place, 'the level of education.' What is more important is whether the teacher loves and cares for their children rather than perceived power or prestige.

Teacher Bashing Returns!

New York Times Trash Job on ATR Teachers

by Marjorie Stamberg

NEW YORK -- So the “bad teacher” industry is alive and well, and once again it is targeting our colleagues in the Absent Teacher Reserve.

A totally biased article slamming educators in the ATR is splashed on the front page of the New York Times (October 14) under the headline “Caught Sleeping or Worse, Idled Teachers Head Back to Class.” The online version refers to “Troubled Teachers.”

The whole thrust is, as always, to blame teachers for any and all problems in the public school system. The fact that almost 10 percent of our students are homeless (more than 100,000 kids) is, of course, not mentioned.

The Times did a whole statistical study, it says. But for all the claims about “troubled,” “incompetent” or even “mentally unstable” teachers, further down in the article you read that nearly 40 percent of the ATRs are there because their schools were closed, and another 30 percent were excessed for budgetary reasons or because of low enrollment.

 Only 12 percent had “ineffective” or “unsatisfactory” ratings, less than one in eight of those thrown into this limbo.

And why are teachers “U rated”? Times writer Kate Taylor blew off suggestions that such ratings often spring from arbitrary and even vengeful principals against whistle blowers, union activists, or others who don't get on board with the latest PD fad. 

The “experts” quoted in the article are a long list of ex-principals, supervisors and other leftovers from the Bloomberg-Klein era. In fact, some of the very best teachers in the system have been ATRed at various points.

And among the 12 percent, the “worst” case they could cite was an ATR teacher who took a day off to go to a family reunion in Chicago and called in sick. Horrors! 

Also, they found she didn't report that she had been arrested, although at the very end of the article we learn that these were bench warrants stemming from a family dispute and the charges were later dropped.

The article is aimed at the union, of course, for insisting the DOE give excessed teachers a chance to teach, instead of rotating them from school to school on a monthly basis as subs or leaving them sitting in the neo-rubber rooms (which supposedly don’t exist anymore).

The ATR crisis grew out of the orgy of closing public schools, part of the whole privatizing “education reform” craze, which brought us Success Academy maven Eva Moskowitz and Teach for America. 

In this era of Trump, it is worth remembering that many of the big pushers of this union-bashing effort were Democrats for Education Reform (a bunch of Wall Street moguls) and the Obama administration in Washington headed by his basketball buddy Ed Sec Arne Duncan.

Follow the money – along with the school closures they gave principals dictatorial control over teacher selection and introduced a funding scheme giving each principal a set amount of dollars, instead of paying salary through the central office. This created a whole set of incentives.

 (A careful reader will note that both of the supposed “bad teachers” singled out in the Times hit piece are in the top salary grade.)

So it was “two for the price of one”: instead of hiring an experienced teacher who had accrued raises, the principal could hire two new teachers fresh out of ed school or Teach for America. 

And the system is hostile to new teachers as well as to veteran educators: many new teachers leave because they are stuck in the “delay of tenure” trap, as the DOE keeps them as probationary employees to be fired at will and under the thumb of the principal.

As for the veteran teachers pushed out in the ATR frenzy, I personally know a black Ph.D. science teacher who helped countless students to get a GED; a Vietnamese-American teacher who was visiting her homeland the summer they interviewed for jobs after the schools in D79 were closed and hundreds of teachers excessed when Cami Anderson “reorganized” the district.

Both those teachers are retired now – our loss, and that of the students. Anderson went on to become chief of the Newark School system where she could play with a $100 million grant from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.  

She used it to carry out mass firings of teachers, introduce school lotteries and expand the number of charters. She was eventually driven out over her arrogant disregard of parents’ protest and student sit-ins.

The UFT leadership clique “Unity Caucus” bears a big part of the responsibility for the whole ATR mess. Especially Randi Weingarten, who later admitted that they didn’t realize what the results would be. In the 2006-7 contract, the UFT bureaucracy agreed to abolish union seniority transfers. 

Under that system, if your school closed, or your principal was impossible, you could transfer to another school with an opening, based on seniority, license and an S rating showing you were qualified.

No more. In exchange we got the “open market.” It’s about as “open” as the affordable housing market in Manhattan. The “open market” is a vehicle for manipulation, favoritism, nepotism and possibly worse. 

Principals often go through the motions of “listing” jobs, and even sometimes “interviewing” candidates, when they have already decided who they are going to appoint.

One of the consequences of this system is that teachers got less experienced, whiter and much more distant from the communities they serve. It has become harder to get in if you are a graduate of CUNY, while TfA recruits Ivy Leaguers and college grads from outlying states with zero experience with urban schools. 

This was borne out by the comprehensive study initiated by a union activist on “the disappearance of black and Latino teachers.”

And now, some charter school teachers won’t have to go to ed school at all. They can just be thrown into the classroom in a charter teaching mill. If Eva likes them, they’re certified. And the effect on the students…? 

 But of course the purpose is to bust the union.

A piece of good news on that. Among the huge numbers of new teachers who flee the charter schools after a couple of years, we’re hearing that a number are getting jobs as union teachers in the DOE. They are more than welcome, but what we really need is for the union to step up its drive to unionize the charters, and not under sub-par Green Dot contracts.

Protest Rahm's House

MEDIA ADVISORY

  

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                               

Oct. 6, 2016

 

CONTACT:  Priya Shah, 312-493-2092

 

Parents take fight to save their school to mayor's own backyard

 

NTA parents, teachers want Emanuel to back down from plans to close their successful elementary school,

consider other plans for South Loop high school

 

CHICAGO—After the mayor’s office refused to meet with parents from National Teachers Academy (NTA), the NTA community will take its fight to save the school to the mayor’s own backyard with a protest and rally in front of Emanuel’s Ravenswood home on Monday.

 

The mayor wants to close the school, which serves predominantly low-income, African-American students, and convert it into a high school to serve the booming, pricey South Loop neighborhood. But parents, teachers and staff at NTA are fighting to keep the elementary school open and demanding a meeting with Emanuel to discuss other high school alternatives for the South Loop.

 

Parents will meet outside of the mayor’s Ravenswood home on Monday to deliver a letter to the mayor and make their voices heard. Although recently released emails show Emanuel devised the school closing plan to satisfy South Loop real estate interests, he has so far refused to meet with NTA parents.

 

What: NTA is Here to Stay Parent Rally and Press Conference

When:  Monday, Oct. 9, 4 p.m.

Where: Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home, 4228 N. Hermitage

Why: Mayor Emanuel is pushing to close NTA and turn it into a high school to serve the booming South Loop. Parents are fighting to save their beloved, high-performing school and are demanding a meeting with the mayor to make their case. 

Visuals: Parents, teachers, students with signs and banners marching and chanting through the mayor’s tony north side neighborhood.

 

The NTA closing is the first of a series of school closings aimed at predominately African American schools. The mayor also wants to close four Englewood high schools and the announcement of other school closings is expected in December.

 

The NTA community has said a resounding “NO” to the closing, with 1,500 signatures on petitions opposing the plan, 471 letters sent to state legislators, and 43 parent testimonials before the CPS Board of Education.

###

About National Teachers Academy

National Teachers Academy (NTA), is a Level 1 elementary school with a "well-organized" school culture. NTA is one of only 16 elementary schools in CPS that serves a 80% African-American population at or above these distinctions of quality. NTA was established in 2002 as a community center and school for residents of the Ickes Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) development. Residents have continued to send their children to NTA after the Ickes were torn down during the CHA Transformation.

Russian School Rankings

NEW RUSSIAN ROAD MAP FOR TEACHING - A TABLE OF RANKS

By Stephen Wilson

 

MOSCOW -- According to a new statement issued by the Ministry of Russian Education and

science , from 2020 a new 'table of ranks' within secondary state schools may

come into effect where teachers will be allowed to climb a wider career ladder.

The rank of the teacher will be based on their effectiveness and experience as

teachers in schools. It is hoped that such a reform will encourage not only retraining

teachers but allow them access to a fairer career ladder. As they move up the

career ladder they will obtain better pay as well as improved status.

In fact, the government has already launched voluntary pilot schemes in up

to 13 regions of Russia covering teachers of Russian and Physics.

But how do you assess what rank a teacher deserves? What criteria is the

government set on using? According to some sources teachers would be

ranked around those who are competent to solve problems in familiar

situations,solve them in some unfamiliar situations and the highest level where teachers

can cope with problems in any awkward situation. So you have the basic teachers at the

bottom of the wrung while further on you will have older teacher {methodists}

and a higher teacher called a nastvnick or mentor.

The proposed reform has brought many groans from Russian school teachers.

It is an excuse for teachers to undergo more tests and endless evaluation of their

experience. During the Soviet period, 'retraining courses' were viewed as

a punishment for teachers who had stepped out of line.

Some teachers are asking: "Why do we need a new table of ranks ? Who

will really benefit from this ?" At present you already have potential promotion

for ambitious teachers who can in theory, become a deputy headmaster or

headmaster. Teachers can also enter a competition : 'Teacher of the Year'.

The real danger in such a scheme is that it will intensify rivalry between

teachers and create a wider 'them and us ' atmosphere ' where a few

teachers obtain higher pay and benefits than others. However, moving up

a rank won't be determined by 'merit' alone, if at all, but involve filling in

a lot of paperwork to prove you deserve such a rank. Most school teachers

don't have time to be distracted by overwhelming red tape. They already

have too much additional paperwork as well as homework to mark.

The unfairness of the present situation is indicated by a government claim

that while some headmasters obtain 120,000 rubles a month a teacher can

earn 32,000 rubles if he or she does 36 academic hours .

All this red tape has not deterred some stubborn teachers. Tanya, a Russian

English teacher in a primary school in Moscow stated : "I think it is a great

chance. I want to reach the next level in teaching even if it means filling in all

those forms . I advise you to do the same ! " But her friend, a teacher from

Kishinev, Oksana Chebotareva, replied : " I don't have the time . I'm just

too busy. I'm teaching not only at school, but at an institute and at the university".

This is part of the problem. Teachers are just too exhausted as well as being

fed up with another reform which means one more stressful headache ! They

feel like potential guinea pigs being thrust into some ill thought out experiment.

The proponents of such schemes should remember lessons from history.

Peter the Great attempted to impose a 'Table of Ranks' in order to foster

a meritocracy in 1722. The idea was that a career could be open to the talents of the

lowest peasant. Instead this largely created a caste system based more on

bribery and corruption than merit. It did not end or eradicate injustice but provoked

the Russian revolution.