The New York Post’s Effect on Man…Stayin’ Alive

Do you remember this?

You know it’s all right. It’s OK.

I’ll live to see another day.

We can try to understand

The New York Times’ effect on man.

Whether you’re a brother

Or whether you’re a mother,

You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Feel the city breakin’

And everybody shakin’,

And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Long before “El Quijote del GED” was born La Tribuna Hispana USA on the front page, what I was doing probably should have made front page news or at least page 35 of the New York Post.

We have to go back to a public being fed information in New York City by an important newspaper that affected public opinion, based on among other things the Bush Administration’s policy called No Child Left Behind. I did at least one outreach into another state (Rhode Island) when I learned that half the teachers could be fired there based on a policy that exists no more. That policy was wrong and I told myself that someday in the future the police were going to suffer the consequences of that kind of policy and today cities like Minneapolis are asking police to reapply for their jobs. The police could have and should have spoken up back then, but neither departmental heads nor union officials spoke out. The New York Post could have nipped this problem in the bud, but it chose not to.

It was not until this last week that I learned that the GED teachers of Offsite Educational Services and ASHS had to reapply for their jobs under the terms of the last restructuring of the GED programs under Michael Bloomberg-Joel Klein-Cami Anderson. Had I known about this, I would have spoken out and contacted people in power. Would I have a case? I don’t know everything about the case, but I am opposed to blaming an entire group for the actions of one or a few with certain exceptions of course. Hate groups are not entitled to that at all.

These were years where I became famous, but I hardly helped anyone. There were two new GED tests created during those years (2002, 2014 and the Spanish and French versions of the 2002 test were delayed for two years). When a test gets harder, it has an earthquake effect in some states and it is difficult to assess the performance of the system based on that. The best way to keep up the performance is through community mobilization and improving instruction. By 2013 I learned from the CEO/President of the new GED Testing Service (previously under the American Council on Education since 1942) just what the mobilization would be about. I know that I am taking you on a trip away from The New York Post, but this trip is important. Since the GED Testing Service of Pearson Vue told me that it was going to double the number of GED diplomas, we have to think deeply about that. The GED was removed or kicked out of New York and other states, but in states where it continued to be the only game in town, we should expect either a doubling or something close to that in those states. That did not happen, because we know that in any game you have to execute the plays right. Victory is not just handed to you.

Yes teachers had to go (be fired) even before Bloomberg took action, but it should have been on a one by one basis based on evidence submitted by all the parties concerned and that included administrators, parents, students, police and other investigations, etc.  I also learned other things about the program set up by others including my former supervisor and later principal Robert Zweig. In fact his name was mentioned as credit was given to him by Cami Anderson at a big New School meeting on GED. The Last Time I Saw Paris, I mean The Last Time I saw Zweig was at that meeting as he sat behind Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan and I had to go to the assemblywoman to tell her something. No exchanges of hello were needed. He had been cancelled by me long before the “cancel culture.”

I was also informed last week by a person who knew first-hand about the GED programs (TASC-HSE also) that before 2015 students in the program were not allowed to take the test because they were restricted for 6 months as they just studied in class. I suffered before 2000 knowing that there were programs under the umbrella of those Board of Education programs that required extremely high practice test scores to take the real test instead of allowing students who had just passed the practice test with the minimum score. This type of education was about the adults and making the BOE program look good by showing only the high percentage of passers and avoiding telling the public the actual numbers that were not good. That is part of the school to prison pipeline to look at and to bury forever. And I am waiting for more information today from that source. The goal could have been and should have been a higher passing rate and many more diplomas, but that could have been proposed by The New York Post to share with the public all these years.

My article Floyd about a student who had a hearing, a suspension hearing, in which the truth found its way to the fore and not because of the assistant principal who was conducting the hearing and not because of the assistant principal working with me in Offsite Educational Services (Zweig).

And the article on Floyd exposes a lot of things that were not known by others during the mayoral campaigns in New York City this year. I exposed things back then and will continue to expose things.

“Now on May 13, 2020 this went out by email.

Policing and social distancing.  Almost two months before July 1, 2020 and youth are not in school.  Borough president Eric Adams is taking action to communicate with parents as we see eruptions against the policing. I was a guest speaker at DOE headquarters under Chancellor Fariña and nobody listened to me.  This was the time of Toya Graham and the trouble in Baltimore as she caught her son on the street with a ski mask and a rock in a protest.  She slapped him on the head and took him home before he got into trouble.

I was informed many years ago that 60 percent of youth in jail were special ed students and they make up a low percentage of the school population.  Parents probably have to deal with more than one such child in the family and those parents need to be targeted for help, specifically and not part of a general population of parents.  That is what the borough presidents and the mayor can do with the police and the DOE right now.  I have spoken to headquarters today in Chicago PD where an officer was assigned to talk to me by the superintendent and that officer knows me well.  Detective Amen of the NYPD Hate Crimes Division and I talked today as well.  Now is a time for urgent care and urgent responses to develop better parent involvement and possibly greater police awareness to this problem.  And what is going to happen to those students in our schools that were not on track to graduate in June?  Help can be provided for them.

Now I take you to a Floyd on May 10, 2020 when I published this. Open the book which reveals what I considered to be the most important first scene of my work as a teacher in New York City. You will quickly read about my student who you could also call Floyd. I could have started that work with other amazing experiences, but I chose to write about what happened to this Floyd. Here is what happened. Think about it! Our youth need added layers of protection by our society.

The information contained in this article was sent to major cities: New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, and more.

I never heard back from the district leader mentioned in the article and the rest is history. So read the entire article Floyd. And make sure to click on Here is what happened in the article to read about what that hearing in which I sensed that a youth was going to be railroaded by the administration

. And as I mentioned before, I knew the police were going to get theirs eventually and things could have been done a long, long time ago to prevent the excesses of mistrust that have developed including the political fallout from “defund” the police.

I look forward to any of the parts of this article being published by The New York Post. I purchased the New York Post just about every weekday during those years and looked forward to reading education news. Can The New York Post prove today that it published the same kinds of thoughts that I had about No Child Left Behind in relation to No Police Left Behind (except for the corrupted or toxic ones? It takes both knowledge and creativity to feel, speak, and promote important changes. The New York Post should reveal if it covered the news that I was just informed of last week. I look forward to sharing more soon.

I want to thank the BeeGees for their lyrics to Stayin’ Alive which inspired the title of this new article. And knowing that even I cannot be certain about my formalized complaint about The New York Post and whether that newspaper wrote about the things that concerned me (it should have had concerns for the defunding or diminishing the police in the early 2000s to share with readers), I wait for documentation or evidence.  Or are we continue to maintain Trump-like fantasies in the media where evidence does not matter?

After taking a long break it dawned on me that I had forgotten about The New York Post bias against the teachers’ union. And I also ask now if The New York Post covered how many teachers were not rehired under the reorganization plan and just how any new teachers contributed to the newly reorganized GED program? And just that policy adversely affected those men and women.

I also forgot to mention that I was told that the students were discharged who were aged out (21 years) and they could not continue the work they had not completed. Could it also be that The New York Post contributed to the school to prison pipeline in not advocating for those New Yorkers who have been mentioned here? The reporters and the editorial staff, I feel, have a lot of explaining to do here. I would be happy to assist any and all of them toward better comprehension because education matters.

The GED was created to help American youth who dropped out of school to serve our nation against Germany, Japan, and their allies. In my readings about the Iron Curtain, even the countries that fell under Stalin set up high school equivalency programs to prevent crime, educate peasants and others who never had the opportunity to finish school, and help others who were displaced by war from improving their lives and contributing to their nation (free or otherwise). Yes The New York Post has a lot of explaining to do. And there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the city who could have benefited greatly from an equivalency diploma as well. And we could have developed nursing programs with many of them which would have been an asset during the pandemic, among other things. Patriotism matters and it’s time for others to put their thinking cap in straight.

And “stayin’ alive” is so critical, isn’t it? We should think about this newspaper that supported the man who gave US The New York Pandemic, the man who controlled the Oval Office. New York Pandemic? The National Pandemic that was out of control from the middle of March 2020.

When the GED testing system of New York State was collapsing many years ago, I was called upon by the State Education Department to seek private donations to pay the cost of the test proctors and not a single company was able to help.