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In 1968, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) went on strike over the involuntary transfer of 19 teachers by a newly empowered community-controlled school board in New York City's Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood. The controversies at the heart of that bitter struggle live on in current debates over the methods of teacher selection, the role of seniority and due process in teacher assignment, and the appropriateness of affirmative action in the composition of urban teaching corps. Then, as now, the role of educators of color in urban school districts was an issue that sparked controversy. In recounting how rules for teacher selection evolved in New York, Christina Collins' book, "Ethnically Qualified", Race, Merit and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920-1980, illuminates the failure of the city's teachers' unions to effectively challenge the exclusion and marginalization of African American teachers.

I read something truly awful today in The New York Times Magazine article, What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? But before I share what it was, I'd like to preface it by restating my concerns about a pattern I see of some school reformers taking ideas and practices that have a huge learning and teaching potential and, instead, warping them so their benefits disappear and  can actually become destructive.

Dominic Randolph can seem a little out of place at Riverdale Country School - which is odd, because he's the headmaster. Riverdale is one of New York City's most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx. On the discussion boards of UrbanBaby.com, worked-up moms from the Upper East Side argue over whether Riverdale sends enough seniors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton to be considered truly "TT" (top-tier, in UrbanBabyese), or whether it is more accurately labeled "2T" (second-tier), but it is, certainly, part of the city's private-school elite, a place members of the establishment send their kids to learn to be members of the establishment. Tuition starts at $38,500 a year, and that's for prekindergarten.

I still support charter schools as they were first envisioned, as laboratories where educators could work without fear of failure on new approaches to improve the larger public school system. And, like my UTLA predecessors Day Higuchi and the late Helen Bernstein, I support the idea of union-inspired charters to "field test" the policies we propose in collective bargaining.

A new generation of affluent, educated, urban Americans is beginning to send its children to school.  Their dissatisfaction with the lack of choice and the status quo of failure in urban education will be far more personal than their elders'-and it represents a golden opportunity for choice advocates able to mobilize these parents.

Last week I read Paul Tough's New York Times Magazine article, "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?," about the approach being taken by the KIPP schools and others, inspired by the work of Martin Seligman. Two big issues came up for me. The first were some practical concerns, regarding what happens when public schools attempt to implement a "no excuses" model. The second were some larger philosophical questions about the moral lessons being taught, and the roles our

Last week I read Paul Tough's New York Times Magazine article, "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?," about the approach being taken by the KIPP schools and others, inspired by the work of Martin Seligman. Two big issues came up for me. The first were some practical concerns, regarding what happens when public schools attempt to implement a "no excuses" model. The second were some larger philosophical questions about the moral lessons being taught, and the roles our schools play in this arena. This post addresses the first set of issues. Tomorrow, part two will address the second set.

"The current and historical claims that public education is failing are more often than not political and corporate hyperbole that serves not to address education reform or to fulfill the promise of universal public education, but instead masks the political and corporate failures that allow swelling poverty among children and an ever-widening equity gap among the American public."

"In the midst of both teach praise and teacher bashing nowadays abides a nagging but persistent assumption among state and federal policymakers hellbent on the standards-testing-accountability agenda, charter school operators, and high-tech enthusiasts for online instruction that most teachers resist change."

"The unfairness of blaming public sector workers - and their unions - should be pretty clear. By all accounts (also here), the primary reason that pension plans are in trouble is that the 2008 collapse of financial markets decimated the value of pension fund investments (the early 2000's recession also seems to have played a role). Add to that an aging population (there is an increasing percentage of retirees as a share of the population, and they are living longer), as well as the failure of many states to make their required contributions during good times, and you have a fairly comprehensive explanation for the pension crisis."

Tired of waiting for Congress to fix No Child Left Behind, Oregon passed its own package of laws similar to NCLB last month that include their own, customized approaches to accountability systems. Why? According to current NCLB measurements, four out of five schools nationwide could be labeled as failures, and could possibly lose all federal funding.

This report examines our pervasive and longstanding failure to recognize and respond to variations in the effectiveness of our teachers. At the heart of the matter are teacher evaluation systems, which in theory should serve as the primary mechanism for assessing such variations, but in practice tell us little about how one teacher differs from any other, except teachers whose performance is so egregiously poor as to warrant dismissal.

Given our extreme reliance on test scores as measures of educational success and failure, I'm sorry I have to make this point: proficiency rates are not test scores, and changes in proficiency rates do not necessarily tell us much about changes in test scores.

School Reform is the American Elite's preferred response to poverty and inequality, a strategy that requires no sacrifice, no redistribution nor any self-organization by America's disfranchised groups. Every day, it is proving itself a dismal failure.

"Republicans are hatching an ambitious plan to rewrite No Child Left Behind this year - one that could end up dramatically rolling back the federal role in education and trigger national blowouts over standardized tests and teacher training. NCLB cleared Congress in 2002 with massive bipartisan support but has since become a political catastrophe: The law's strategy for prodding and shaming schools into improvement proved deeply flawed over time, and its unintended failures have eclipsed its bright spots. Today, NCLB is despised by some parents who blame it for schools "teaching to the test," protested by some on the left for promoting education reform and reviled by Republicans in Congress who say the law represents aggressive federal overreach."

"What they saw should chill the ardor of the most doctrinaire followers of Milton Friedman. Vouchers began in Milwaukee nearly 25 years ago based on the claim that they would save poor black children from "failing" public schools. Today, Milwaukee should be a national symbol of the failure of vouchers. Yet state after state is endorsing vouchers, egged on by the Friedman Foundation and rightwing think tanks. Let's be clear. Vouchers, charters, and choice have failed the children of Milwaukee. The city ranks near the bottom of all cities tested by the federal NAEP, barely ahead of Detroit. Black children in Milwaukee score behind their peers in most other cities and states. Study after study shows they don't get better test scores than their peers in public schools."

"In the most simplistic portrayal of the education policy landscape, one of the "sides" is a group of people who are referred to as "reformers." Though far from monolithic, these people tend to advocate for test-based accountability, charters/choice, overhauling teacher personnel rules, and other related policies, with a particular focus on high expectations, competition and measurement. They also frequently see themselves as in opposition to teachers' unions. Most of the "reformers" I have met and spoken with are not quite so easy to categorize. They are also thoughtful and open to dialogue, even when we disagree. And, at least in my experience, there is far more common ground than one might expect. Nevertheless, I believe that this "movement" (to whatever degree you can characterize it in those terms) may be doomed to stall out in the long run, not because their ideas are all bad, and certainly not because they lack the political skills and resources to get their policies enacted. Rather, they risk failure for a simple reason: They too often make promises that they cannot keep."

"In the rush to privatize the country's schools, corporations and politicians have decimated school budgets, replaced teaching with standardized testing, and placed the blame on teachers and students."

"I'm sure you've heard for years-even decades-that the public schools are failing; that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for this so-called failure. The solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires. Let's see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of history to the present. It won't take long-a few facts and a conclusion."

"Families for Excellent Schools of New York - the Don't Steal Possible folks - has just released an impossibly stupid analysis in which they claim that New York City is simply throwing money at failure. Spending double on failing schools what they do on totally awesome ones (if they really have any awesome ones)."