Ed Notes Online: CORE: Chicago Teacher Caucus Makes Waves

Sunday, March 15, 2009

CORE: Chicago Teacher Caucus Makes Waves

I spoke to Substance's George Schmidt briefly today and he tells me CORE (The Caucus of Rank and File Educators), a caucus in the Chicago Teachers Union, has had a galvanizing impact on the progressive educators in Chicago by leading the charge against the corporate, mayoral control-driven agenda. Their actions have even forced the regressive Marilyn Stewart Unity Caucus like CTU to join the parade. The mostly youthful CORE and the more senior Substance have established a close relationship, with some CORE members writing for Substance.

In NYC, the UFT holds a rally with supposedly 75,000 people and says - "Thank you, now go home and write letters to politicians." It's basically a one shot deal instead of building militancy and an activist network for further actions. The UFT leadership is afraid of activism because then questions might be raised as to how undemocratically the organization is run. Ed Notes and ICE believes in many of the positions of CORE in the CTU. Read these excerpts from the CORE newsletter in Chicago or click link below. See Ed Notes' previous post on LA Teacher Union action (Periodic Assessment Boycott by LA Teacher Union).

The parallel here in NYC (though we are years behind and have to deal with the monster Unity Caucus machine that is capable of cooptation and destroying of militancy) has been the recent activity on the part of ICE and NYCoRE (NY Collective of Radical Educators.)

The CORE Mission:

A group of dedicated teachers, Retirees, PSRPs and other champions of public education. We hope to democratize the Chicago Teacher's Union and turn it into an organization that fights on behalf of its members and the students we teach.

Angel Gonzalez sent this to ICE-Mail.

Let's build our NYC militant grassroots organization so that we can unite with Chicago, LA, Puerto Rico, and other regions to fight the privatization of schooling with the onslaught of School Closings, Charter Schools, High Stakes Testing, Deskilling of Students & Teachers, Lowering of worker wages & benefits, teacher firings & harassments, loss of union rights, etc. etc. etc. Let's organize the local struggles so that we can mobilize for the global fight for public education.
- Angel Gonzalez, ASC-ICE, JNJT-NYCoRE

(excerpts below)

Protest February 25th at the Board of Education

As opposition grows city-wide against Mayor Daley's undemocratic “school reform”, the Chicago
Teachers Union, CORE, and the GEM coalition will show its growing strength at the next meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. The last hearing saw over 500 protesters fill the streets around 125 South Clark Street and this month we hope for more.

Teachers should take a personal business day, if possible, and attend the Board meeting. Contact the Union to arrange buses from your school for the protest, which will begin at 3:30pm. Go to
COREteachers.org and join our e-mail list for updates on the opposition to Renaissance 2010!

Get Involved with CORE!
Visit COREteachers.org to read about the hearings on closing schools and upcoming actions, to join our mailing list, and to become a supporting member. The fight for quality public education needs CORE and CORE needs you!

GEM Coalition Unites Teachers, Parents, Community Groups
Dubbing themselves the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) six parent, community, and education activist groups joined ranks with CORE and the Chicago Teachers Union to form a new coalition opposing Mayor Daley's attacks on quality public education. The groups first began organizing together in the run-up to CORE's January 10th community hearing at Malcolm X College.

Friendly relations turned to energetic collaboration in preparation for the January 28th demonstration outside the Chicago Board of Education meeting that drew over 500 protesters.

GEM's web site strongpublicschools.org has fact sheets, alert bulletins, and links to coalition groups: Blocks Together, CTU, CORE, Chicago Youth Initiating Change (CYIC), Designs for Change, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), Pilsen Alliance, Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), South Side United, Local School Council Federation, South
West Youth Collaborative, Substance News and Teachers for Social Justice.

http://coreteachers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2009-02-21-newsletter-core.pdf

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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

Sunday, March 15, 2009

CORE: Chicago Teacher Caucus Makes Waves

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