NYC Schools and Mark Dayton Part 2
I posted yesterday about my response from the NYC Department of Education/NYC Schools to a Freedom of Information request to verify Mark Dayton's employment with their school system. I was surprised when the department could not confirm any employment for Mark Dayton since he's talked for years about working as a teacher in the NYC Schools and has made this experience a prominent part of his personal history.
Some have questioned the ability and integrity of the processes of finding records in the NYC School System. I can only say that they have an entire department dedicated to fulfilling FOI requests and the letter I posted was from an attorney in their Department. Based on his response, it is fact that the NYC DOE has no records of Mark Dayton working anywhere in their system.
Politics in Minnesota Morning report picked up my post around 8:30am this morning. I called the Dayton campaign around 9am for comment and by noon Politics in Minnesota had posted their own defense of Senator Dayton and misquoted my blog (which they later corrected.)
Dayton's campaign had released this Teaching Certificate as proof that Senator Dayton had taught in the NYC Schools....(they also sent it to me as a response to my phone call, saying that they "hoped" I'd update my blog)
The certificate shows that Senator Dayton was licensed as a teacher of general science teacher in the Jr High Schools in the City of New York effective Oct 21st, 1969. It also shows his address was in c/o "The Teachers, Inc."
I can indeed verify that Mark Dayton was a teacher in the New York City public schools for two years, and a member of The Teachers Inc., which was the predecessor of Teach for America.
I was one of the first Peace Corps Volunteers (1961-1963). Following that experience I created The Teachers Inc. as a kind of "peace corps" for American inner-city schools. Unlike the Peace Corps the organization itself was a private non-profit that recruited, trained and placed outstanding and highly-motivated young people in urban school districts. We operated by contract with school districts in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Atlanta.
Mark taught on the Lower East Side where my headquarters were located. He was one of the first to come into the program, along with a number of recent Yale graduates, and I knew him quite well. He did a very good job and the conditions were in some ways more demanding than the Peace Corps.
It is indeed contemptible that anyone would attempt to claim that Mark did not teach in the New York City public schools or deny his youthful idealism.
I would never deny Senator Dayton's youthful idealism. I am however, still confused about Senator Dayton's dates of employment and the job title he held. And Senator Dayton could also be confused, look at these conflicting press accounts.
From Education Week (date unknown- emphasis mine)
Thirty years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Minnesota in 2000, Mark Dayton was a ninth-grade science teacher at PS 65 in New York City — his first job after graduating from Yale.
"I have always said it was the toughest job I ever had," Dayton told the National Education Association before retiring from Congress.
Dayton, who spent three years in the classroom, was one of 79 members of the outgoing 109th Congress who identified themselves as former educators in an NEA survey conducted for American Education Week.
"The experience left me with profound respect for the tremendous work that dedicated teachers perform all across our country, for which they receive too little pay and too little appreciation," Dayton said. The NEA is one of NYSUT's national affiliates. The United Federation of Teachers is NYSUT's affiliate in New York City schools.
And currently, per his website:
After college, I taught 9th grade general science for two years in a New York City public school.
Perhaps the EdWeek writer had it wrong?
I've done some research myself on The Teachers Inc, here's one thing I found today... According to the New York University Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor archives index :
| Community School Board: District 3 - Two Bridges Model School District - The Teachers Inc. | 1967-1970 |
This Two Bridges Model School District is apparently where Senator Dayton taught.
If Senator Dayton didn't have a license to be in the classroom until late October 1969 and records show that The Teacher's Inc existed within the NYC system from 1967-1970....how many months did Senator Dayton teach? And why doesn't the NYC DOE have any record of his employment?
My guess (based on instructions in the corner of Senator Dayton's own teaching certificate) is that he did not turn in his certificate to the school secretary so it never made it to central records. The campaign simply needs to rectify this by having their attorneys contact the NYC DOE with this record in order to verify his employment dates....or they can just go on the word of his former boss I suppose. (Of course this method of employment verification wouldn't pass muster in the "real world".)
And although he was licensed to teach, it's been reported that he was a student teacher.
From the International Falls Journal, March 2010)
“Dayton said he taught 32 kids in a ninth-grade classroom as a student teacher in New York.”
Was he a student teacher, or was he a teacher? There's a huge difference. Senator Dayton gives the impression time-and-time again that he was a 9th grade Junior High School science teacher in New York City at P.S. 65.
This is basic employment verification that any average Joe would have to complete before getting a job. Apparently the media doesn't agree. (Although I did have an AP reporter ask me for my FOI request, which I provided.)
All of this reaction for simply trying to confirm that Senator Dayton worked at a ghetto school?
Next up: The Boston years.
P.S. If any media would like more detailed information about this organization "The Teachers Inc." (because there is very little online), I have an interesting report from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education from June 1970.
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