NYC Educator: Gotham Schools and Danielson Rapidly Plummet Downhill

NYC Educator: Gotham Schools and Danielson Rapidly Plummet Downhill:

Gotham Schools and Danielson Rapidly Plummet Downhill

Now that Gotham Schools has redesigned itself into a super slick website, it's not nearly as user-friendly as it once was. I used to really use the Rise and Shine thing on days when I was at a loss for what to blog. Now you have to click on it to see it, and today's features several iterations of the all-important news that charter folks are worried about Bill de Blasio. Apparently, since de Blasio feels they should pay rent and stop displacing and destroying public schools, the astroturfers fear he may make them pay rent and stop destroying and displacing public schools.

Shocking stuff.

To encourage community participation, Gotham has removed the comments from the sidebar. I suppose when you're giving the charter folks everything they want, you don't want those inconvenient teachers blabbering all over your front page. Actually a lot of comments appeared to be about the perfidy of teachers lately, though for a long time they'd been largely about what an atrocity it was that teachers had pensions.

So here's the thing--today I want to write about Danielson, but I don't have enough info. My UFT contacts can't yet give me the answers I need, but as of today I think that the rules don't mean anything, that supervisors can write any damn thing they feel like, that they can manipulate the system just as much as they did before, and if they hate your guts, they can and will trash you.

I don't actually blame Danielson for that. I still see the framework as having elements worth striving for. Danielson might work in the context for