UFT's City Sue Outs Herself on Edwize

UPDATED

UFT top level blogger City Sue put out a remarkable statement on Edwize "explaining" how and why the UFT knew about the "secret" DOE teacher rating plan focused on test scores. We'll have fun parsing this one later tonight in an update. But here is a first response from a correspondent on ICE-mail:

They are so worried that she had to "out" herself. Her post is truly unbelievable and pathetic -- we could put her own statement out as a leaflet to their own incompetence. They "promised it wasn't going to be used to evaluate teachers" to get the UFT on Board and to keep it secret and then the UFT figured out later on that this really wasn't the truth. Oh my god!

Off to a Joel Klein press briefing for more truly unbelievable stuff.

Update: There's be an update on the press briefing to follow later.

Back to City Sue who reveals she is the UFT's Director of Policy Research. She can no longer try to pose as a teacher/blogger. I think I remember City Sue once saying something about the advantages in being an ATR when she was defending one of the recent contracts.

What exactly does a Director of Policy Research do? Almost sounds like one of the DOE's bullshit positions. The UFT needs a Director of ATR Research.

There's much defensiveness and obfuscation in City Sue's piece:

The UFT had been invited to join the panel only after President Weingarten had angrily refused to endorse the project last summer and had won a concession that results would not be used to evaluate any UFT member.

Translation: Only due to our fearless leader who so intimidated Klein who clearly has proven he will do nothing without the endorsement of the UFT.

At that time, the union’s opposition to the relentless focus on high-stakes tests was the main reason for its objections to the experiment.

Translation: We showed out "opposition" by accepting a merit pay plan based on high stakes testing.

Initially, I was pleased to join the panel. I’d been reading so much about the controversy swirling around the usefulness of value-added (VA) analysis in developing fair and objective ways to evaluate teacher performance. For myself, I can’t remember ever having received an observation report that was truly helpful or thoughtful, and I’d received some that made it clear that the AP was reading his mail throughout my lesson. Maybe, I thought, VA would be an improvement. Hope springs eternal.

Translation: Has City Sue noticed the BloomKlein onslaught, fudging of stats and downright dishonesty in just about everything they've done. Hope springs eternal only if she's been living in a bubble, which is where Directors of Policy Research obviously live.

I am probably on this panel — indeed the panel itself was probably created — for one reason only — so the DOE can say that the UFT “participated” in the project, as they have done for the last couple of days.

Ahhhh! I see. The panel was created to entrap the UFT.

In today's emailbag was this:

I'm just amazed that they're surprised. Can't they predict the behavior of this administration yet? It's so transparent. What are they, a bunch of fucking morons?