Ed Notes Online: July 5 Rochester Parents/Students Travel to Malcolm Smith's New York City Offices to Demand Autonomy and No Mayoral Control

Sunday, July 4, 2010

July 5 Rochester Parents/Students Travel to Malcolm Smith's New York City Offices to Demand Autonomy and No Mayoral Control

UPDATED - Sun, July 4, 11pm

In NYC, mayoral dictatorship has led to parent voices being shut out; growing class sizes, manipulation of data and statistics, massive chaos and school overcrowding; school closings and privatization as charter schools are given space in district school buildings. Arbitrary and damaging decisions are repeatedly made for our kids by people who have never sent their own kids to public school.

Please join Rochester parents if you can;

Thanks, Leonie

July 5, 2010

*** MEDIA ADVISORY ***

ROCHESTER PARENTS AND STUDENTS TRAVEL TO QUEENS AND MANHATTAN OFFICES OF SENATOR MALCOLM SMITH TO DEMAND LOCAL AUTONOMY IN DECISIONS ABOUT ROCHESTER CITY SCHOOLS: NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL IN ROCHESTER

What: Press conference and rally with The Rochester Community Education Task Force. Rochester parents, students and community leaders will travel six and a half hours to Queens and Manhattan to express opposition to Senator Smith's high pressure tactics pushing mayoral control in Rochester. Senator Smith introduced a senate bill for mayoral control last month at the request of Governor Paterson. Both Rochester area senators Joseph Robach and James Alesi have refused to sponsor mayoral control legislation, as they are well aware of the overwhelming opposition to mayoral control of Rochester schools.

The Rochester delegation will be met by New York City education activists who will express solidarity based on years of failed reform under mayoral control. They are anticipated to express concern with Malcolm Smith's involvement in charter school scandals in Queens.

Part One: Visibility Event / Rally at Queens Office

Where: 205-19 Linden Blvd, St. Albans, outside Malcolm Smith's Queens office

When: 12:30pm Monday, July 5

Part Two: Press Conference at Manhattan Office

Where: 250 Broadway, opposite City Hall, Malcolm Smith's Manhattan office

When: 3:00 pm Monday, July 5

Contact: Mary Adams, representing the Community Education Task Force

Parent of two current RCSD students

585 317-2367 or 585 615-1626

Maryb_adams@urmc.rochester.edu (no access on Monday, use phone)

About the Community Education Task Force (CETF)

The task force of students, parents, grandparents, teachers, community leaders and education activists assembled in January 2010 as a coalition of groups responding to the Mayor Robert Duffy's announced plan to eliminate the elected Rochester City School District School Board and take control of the city's public schools.

Addendum from Leonie
See below message from Rochester parent activist Mary Adams; all NYC parents are invited to join her and other parents and students who are travelling all the way from Rochester to protest Sen. Malcolm Smith’s introduction of a bill in the legislature to impose mayoral control on their schools.

Right now Rochester has an elected school board (lucky them!), and neither of the Rochester State Senators could be convinced to introduce such an unpopular and un-democratic bill.

Instead, in violation of long-standing practice to allow local legislators to have priority over laws that will be imposed in their districts, Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith has introduced a bill modeled on the law that extended mayoral control in NYC, creating parent community councils with only “advisory” powers (we know what that means), and a rubber stamp board that the mayor would control through a majority of appointees.

Smith has declared that the State Senate would vote on this bill as early as Tuesday.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Smith has also received thousands of dollars in contributions from the hedge fund privateers and charter school lobby, and is under investigation for numerous ethical and legal violations.

All NYC parents are invited to join Rochester parents in protest at one or both the two events listed below; the first in front of Smith’s office in St. Albans, Queens at 12:30 PM; the other in front of his office at 250 Broadway in Manhattan at 3 PM, near City Hall. A special invitation goes to Smith’s constituents to attend these events. Let him know how you feel, about his standing in the way of democracy and the rights of Rochester parents to have a say in their children’s education.

From Mary:

We welcome SOLIDARITY SPEAKERS at either or both locations, and have not yet confirmed any for certain -- if you have a story to tell about mayoral control or about public school issues in NYC , or the Senator's charter schools, etc. we would like to have you make a brief press statement of solidarity with us. We would also like to get to know you, so maybe we can plan on a brief debrief after the event at a nearby park or coffee shop.

Thanks!

Mary Adams (parent) at MaryB_Adams@URMC.Rochester.edu
for the Rochester Community Education Task Force

585 615-1626 or 585 317-2367

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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, July 4, 2010

July 5 Rochester Parents/Students Travel to Malcolm Smith's New York City Offices to Demand Autonomy and No Mayoral Control

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