cawacko
Well-known member
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the story she wrote about her daughter is still being discussed. I know this is JPP and we're not changing the world here, but I just find it fascinating.
With poor or failing schools, we often hear about the need for more resources. PS 307 where he daughter went got over $50k/student. That's well above the NYC average. And it had small classes sizes. So it had what we often say schools need, yet it still failed these kids.
Which raises the question, if lack of resources wasn't the issue here then what was?
This column was written by Joel Klein who worked in the Clinton Administration and was the head of NYC schools for a decade. It's his opinion and there are multiple factors at play. Given the importance of education what went wrong is a question worth asking.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s much-discussed New York Times article about the New York City public schools’ decadelong failures to educate her daughter drew a telling response from the head of the national union that represents the city’s teachers. “I was so saddened,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commented on the Bluesky social-media site. “Public schools must be places parents want to send their kids; where educators want to teach & where kids thrive. That is our North Star. We must learn what went wrong & address it so all students have what they deserve.”
But Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article makes clear “what went wrong.” Her daughter, Najya, and her classmates “were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach.” And the failure to educate “poor Black children” isn’t limited to Najya’s school or even to the Hannah-Joneses’ city: “There was nothing exceptional about what I witnessed at P.S. 307. I had observed and reported on similar educational malfeasance in Detroit, in Durham, in St. Louis, in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham.” Ms. Hannah-Jones writes.
If Ms. Weingarten wants to “learn what went wrong,” she should start by looking in the mirror. Her union is the primary reason New York’s public schools fail to educate so many children, especially poor black children.
Ms. Hannah-Jones chronicles a wide range of unprofessional practices at Najya’s school. Teachers refused to check homework or administer mandatory assessments. They were contemptuous of their students, thinking they had no ability to learn. They made up grades. They stopped calling on Najya in class, making her “so frustrated that, waving her hand furiously, she began to blurt out the answers.” They repeatedly ignored Ms. Hannah-Jones’s efforts to find out how her daughter was doing. Some were absent for long periods. Kids were left without substitute teachers and allowed to run wild and assault one another.
A debacle of this scope can’t be explained away by a lack of money or overwhelmed teachers—the usual excuses rolled out to defend failing schools by shifting blame to “the system.” Najya’s school is extremely well-resourced, spending more than $50,000 per pupil each year, and it has a low student-teacher ratio. More important, the transgressions Ms. Hannah-Jones documents had nothing to do with resources. They were intentionally harmful acts by uncaring teachers, who disrespected their students and refused to do the most basic and undemanding parts of their jobs. They didn’t even try.
This kind of persistent, comprehensive and unchecked behavior can persist only in the absence of accountability. These teachers knew there would be no consequences because their jobs are protected by policies and practices artfully designed by their union.
Teachers unions are built around two nonnegotiable principles: that teachers must be tenured for life and that their compensation can’t be based on performance. Taken together, they inflict enormous harm on schools like Najya’s. When teachers are paid the same regardless of ability, the good ones almost always go to high-performing schools serving motivated students. Those who “cannot get hired at a ‘better’ school,” as Ms. Hannah-Jones puts it, end up in schools like Najya’s. These schools, having started with less talented and conscientious teachers, are then stuck with them despite the intolerable practices Ms. Hannah-Jones repeatedly observed in Najya’s school.
Although fully aware of these harms, the unions remain implacable. Ms. Weingarten’s predecessor Albert Shanker, the most revered and powerful teachers-union leader in history, eventually came to appreciate the problem but couldn’t get his own union to change course. In a 1993 speech before the Pew Forum, he said: “The key is that unless there is accountability, we will never get the right system. As long as there are no consequences if kids or adults don’t perform, as long as the discussion is not about education and student outcomes, then we’re playing a game as to who has the power.”
No union leader since Shanker’s death in 1997 has adopted his position. They have kept playing the power game, a game they can’t lose and the kids can’t win.
Despite her devastating critique, Ms. Hannah-Jones remains focused on the problem and not the solution. She ignores the question of teacher accountability and fails to mention charter schools, an option showing real promise for the children she champions. For her, there are only two kinds of schools in New York—rich white ones and poor black ones—a description that inexplicably omits the almost 300 nonunionized charter schools in the city that educate 150,000 predominantly black and Latino children from low-income families.
Almost every one of these charter schools significantly outperforms Najya’s school. Some, like the 59 Success Charter Schools, match and even do better than the city’s highest-performing public schools. That’s because these charter schools hold themselves and their teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Despite these good results—or rather because of them—the teachers unions, supported by lawmakers fearful of their power, have put a limit on the number of charter schools allowed in the city.
Ms. Hannah-Jones has performed a public service by sharing the heartbreaking story of her daughter’s education and exhorting the rest of us to confront one of our nation’s greatest failings—the abysmal education being provided to the large majority of poor black children. But she leaves it to readers to identify the root cause: the teachers unions.
The unions have no answer to her exposé. On the one hand, they can’t defend the behaviors she documents without showing themselves to be cynical and uncaring. On the other hand, having created and enforced the rules that enabled those behaviors, they can’t condemn them either. Worse yet, given Ms. Hannah-Jones’s acknowledgment that these behaviors are commonplace and widespread, any condemnation by the union would create significant risk for its members.
That’s why Ms. Weingarten is playing dumb and other union leaders are silent. As they always do, the unions will ignore the problem, let time diminish the memory and force of Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article, and continue to play their power games to the detriment of poor black children in America. Shame on the rest of us if we allow that to happen.
Mr. Klein was New York City’s schools chancellor, 2002-11.
With poor or failing schools, we often hear about the need for more resources. PS 307 where he daughter went got over $50k/student. That's well above the NYC average. And it had small classes sizes. So it had what we often say schools need, yet it still failed these kids.
Which raises the question, if lack of resources wasn't the issue here then what was?
This column was written by Joel Klein who worked in the Clinton Administration and was the head of NYC schools for a decade. It's his opinion and there are multiple factors at play. Given the importance of education what went wrong is a question worth asking.
Nikole Hannah-Jones vs. Randi Weingarten
‘We must learn what went wrong,’ says the head of the teachers union. She needs to look in the mirror.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s much-discussed New York Times article about the New York City public schools’ decadelong failures to educate her daughter drew a telling response from the head of the national union that represents the city’s teachers. “I was so saddened,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commented on the Bluesky social-media site. “Public schools must be places parents want to send their kids; where educators want to teach & where kids thrive. That is our North Star. We must learn what went wrong & address it so all students have what they deserve.”
But Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article makes clear “what went wrong.” Her daughter, Najya, and her classmates “were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach.” And the failure to educate “poor Black children” isn’t limited to Najya’s school or even to the Hannah-Joneses’ city: “There was nothing exceptional about what I witnessed at P.S. 307. I had observed and reported on similar educational malfeasance in Detroit, in Durham, in St. Louis, in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham.” Ms. Hannah-Jones writes.
If Ms. Weingarten wants to “learn what went wrong,” she should start by looking in the mirror. Her union is the primary reason New York’s public schools fail to educate so many children, especially poor black children.
Ms. Hannah-Jones chronicles a wide range of unprofessional practices at Najya’s school. Teachers refused to check homework or administer mandatory assessments. They were contemptuous of their students, thinking they had no ability to learn. They made up grades. They stopped calling on Najya in class, making her “so frustrated that, waving her hand furiously, she began to blurt out the answers.” They repeatedly ignored Ms. Hannah-Jones’s efforts to find out how her daughter was doing. Some were absent for long periods. Kids were left without substitute teachers and allowed to run wild and assault one another.
A debacle of this scope can’t be explained away by a lack of money or overwhelmed teachers—the usual excuses rolled out to defend failing schools by shifting blame to “the system.” Najya’s school is extremely well-resourced, spending more than $50,000 per pupil each year, and it has a low student-teacher ratio. More important, the transgressions Ms. Hannah-Jones documents had nothing to do with resources. They were intentionally harmful acts by uncaring teachers, who disrespected their students and refused to do the most basic and undemanding parts of their jobs. They didn’t even try.
This kind of persistent, comprehensive and unchecked behavior can persist only in the absence of accountability. These teachers knew there would be no consequences because their jobs are protected by policies and practices artfully designed by their union.
Teachers unions are built around two nonnegotiable principles: that teachers must be tenured for life and that their compensation can’t be based on performance. Taken together, they inflict enormous harm on schools like Najya’s. When teachers are paid the same regardless of ability, the good ones almost always go to high-performing schools serving motivated students. Those who “cannot get hired at a ‘better’ school,” as Ms. Hannah-Jones puts it, end up in schools like Najya’s. These schools, having started with less talented and conscientious teachers, are then stuck with them despite the intolerable practices Ms. Hannah-Jones repeatedly observed in Najya’s school.
Although fully aware of these harms, the unions remain implacable. Ms. Weingarten’s predecessor Albert Shanker, the most revered and powerful teachers-union leader in history, eventually came to appreciate the problem but couldn’t get his own union to change course. In a 1993 speech before the Pew Forum, he said: “The key is that unless there is accountability, we will never get the right system. As long as there are no consequences if kids or adults don’t perform, as long as the discussion is not about education and student outcomes, then we’re playing a game as to who has the power.”
No union leader since Shanker’s death in 1997 has adopted his position. They have kept playing the power game, a game they can’t lose and the kids can’t win.
Despite her devastating critique, Ms. Hannah-Jones remains focused on the problem and not the solution. She ignores the question of teacher accountability and fails to mention charter schools, an option showing real promise for the children she champions. For her, there are only two kinds of schools in New York—rich white ones and poor black ones—a description that inexplicably omits the almost 300 nonunionized charter schools in the city that educate 150,000 predominantly black and Latino children from low-income families.
Almost every one of these charter schools significantly outperforms Najya’s school. Some, like the 59 Success Charter Schools, match and even do better than the city’s highest-performing public schools. That’s because these charter schools hold themselves and their teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Despite these good results—or rather because of them—the teachers unions, supported by lawmakers fearful of their power, have put a limit on the number of charter schools allowed in the city.
Ms. Hannah-Jones has performed a public service by sharing the heartbreaking story of her daughter’s education and exhorting the rest of us to confront one of our nation’s greatest failings—the abysmal education being provided to the large majority of poor black children. But she leaves it to readers to identify the root cause: the teachers unions.
The unions have no answer to her exposé. On the one hand, they can’t defend the behaviors she documents without showing themselves to be cynical and uncaring. On the other hand, having created and enforced the rules that enabled those behaviors, they can’t condemn them either. Worse yet, given Ms. Hannah-Jones’s acknowledgment that these behaviors are commonplace and widespread, any condemnation by the union would create significant risk for its members.
That’s why Ms. Weingarten is playing dumb and other union leaders are silent. As they always do, the unions will ignore the problem, let time diminish the memory and force of Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article, and continue to play their power games to the detriment of poor black children in America. Shame on the rest of us if we allow that to happen.
Mr. Klein was New York City’s schools chancellor, 2002-11.
