Ed Notes Online: John Merrow, NCLB

Monday, August 11, 2008

John Merrow, NCLB - and Randi Too

Last week we posted on the clear bias of John Merrow who chaired a loaded on line conference on NCLB which included few if any people who taught for more than 10 minutes.

But AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten was on the panel to defend teacher interests - ha, ha, ha - see one of her quotes below.

Susan Ohanian in her daily Outrages put up quotes from some of the participants.

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Ohanian Comment:
I post a few snippets from this discussion on NCLB, narrated by PBS's John Merrow, Education Correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and President of Learning Matters Incorporated, as a warning. Should you wish to inflict more damage on your psyche, the url for the complete discussion is below.
http://newtalk.org/2008/08/do-we-need-a-basic-rewrite-of.php

Note how Merrow sets the tone: Any talk of abandoning No Child Left Behind is foolish. . . . So nobody who advocates ending NCLB is invited to the table. No grassroots activist wa

s invited. "Activists" by definition in this atmosphere have ties to places like the Manhattan Institute, Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute. As I’ve been pointing out incessantly, those who come close to saying "dump NCLB" do so only as part of their strident calls for national standards and a national test.

But don't miss these [Merrow] gems:

NCLB as the vehicle for "beaming sunshine" down on public schools.

We as a nation have no aversion to national standards; we set them for everything from food to cars to toys. Why not national standards for all students in reading and math?

[L]et me throw into the mix Education Sector's finding–that we spend 15 cents of every $100 education dollars on NCLB testing. I know from conversations with the folks who make kitty litter, flea powder and other Hartz pet products that it spends at least 10 times that much testing its products.

I am struck by the wisdom of Achieve, Eli Broad [who funds Merrow] and others who talk about 'Common Standards,’ perhaps recognizing that 'national' and 'federal' are widely confused concepts and red flags to many Americans.

Count how many times panelists proclaim, "I agree with Checker/Chester [Finn].
______________________

Here is Randi's namby pamby quote:

Randi Weingarten, newly elected President American Federation of Teachers (AFT); a lawyer and active member of the Democratic National Committee

"John Merrow is right: Helping all kids achieve, particularly kids at risk, was always the main goal of federal education law. NCLB correctly set high standards, but it over-emphasized testing and sanctions at the expense of helping all kids achieve. . . . It's great that Achieve has been able to find a way to move toward national standards by working with the states and moving the consensus outwards, rather than starting at the top and moving down. Their work shows it's doable and I'd like to see more of it, more states, more subjects."

Does Weingarten want NCLB eliminated or modified? Where exactly does she stand? Which direction is the wind blowing? And there's too much testing? Randi made sure to jump into the photo when Bloomberg/Klein got the Broad prize, bragged about high test scores in the NYC test all the time system and agreed to a merit pay scheme based on test scores.

If anyone finds more fun Randi quotes at the site, send them along. I've had enough.

Susan O has a selection of comments from classroom teachers.

Lynn: I got through about 15 responses in this discussion before I got bored. Mainly because these folks keep saying the same thing in different ways. I have two questions for these participants: Have you ever taught in a K-12 public school classroom? If so, how long has it been since you were there? If any of these people have never had K-12 experience, I'm not particularly interested in what they have to say. The only real experts in a discussion like this are current and recently former teachers.

John Thompson: John [Merrow], I'm frustrated by your opening questions. I've always admired your work, but they sound like a "bait and switch." You started with an endorsement of NCLB, but shouldn't the question be about NCLB-type accountability. If I heard correctly, most panelists challenged national test-driven accountability. You said that we spend 15 cents of every $100 on testing, but isn't that the problem with NCLB I? Its another example of "Fire! Ready. Aim." Then when you started off today with the issue of National Standards, you started us off on the path that gave us NCLB. The next step is "better tools, curricula, and instruction stategies." No! That's not the only way!

Read Susan's full treatment http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_outrages.html?id=3492

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Monday, August 11, 2008

John Merrow, NCLB - and Randi Too

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