Ed Notes Online: A Day Off - But still gotta duck from the incoming

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A Day Off - But still gotta duck from the incoming

I played hooky from the Oct. 7 rallies and protests and the PEP somewhere in the Bronx today after getting wiped by hot yoga this morning. A nice cigar, the NY Times, starting a novel, a batch of gardening, dinner with lots of wine and retirement to my man cave for some serious Yankee baseball, though my 19 year old female cat Pinky is allowed in and is watching the Giant/Brave game with me right now, though she is a Tigers fan.

Here is a gaggle of stuff coming in like mortars - and I'm just grazing the surface. I urge you to check out the active blog roll for some additional wonderful stuff. They are ordered by the latest updates on top. I can't keep up with it all myself.

This stuff is better than Gotham's Nightcaps.
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A quick report from tonight's PEP:
This place is sick. Klein went on a diatribe about how charters must b doing something right bc of the long waiting lists even if they r substandard by his own accountability reports

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Ed Deformer Jay Matthews loves Randi - now it's over her lovely Baltimore contract

(Former Tweedie Andres Alonso is another Kleinite placed in charge of a school system - it's like the invasion of the body snatchers.)

Baltimore teachers contract could be great

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten called me last week full of excitement over her Baltimore local's new teachers contract. Education leaders often exaggerate when talking to journalists, but Weingarten has taken some bold steps in Colorado and D.C. that were not popular with all of her members, so she is very credible, at least to me.
The contract between the Baltimore Teachers Union, led by Marietta English, and the Baltimore city schools, led by Andres Alonso, embraces the new Maryland state requirement that 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation be based on student achievement. That is not something union leaders welcomed, so the AFT decision to go with it suggests Weingarten and English are willing to meet school officials half way.

Sure, it's not something Randi welcomed. One day Jay and others will listen to me - watch what she does not what she says. Read it all and weep - for the Baltimore teachers.

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Louis Black on John Stewart in a hilarious bit on the public and charter schools. Best bet: Ripping NBC Educashon Nashon, especially when David Gregory has the brilliant idea for how to support public schools.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-5-2010/back-in-black---education-crisis

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Mona Davids sent this
Ross Global Academy Charter School wants help recruiting students/victims to their failing charter school and get more money!! Could they be under-enrolled?

This is the "official" worst school in NYC.

RGA is up for renewal. They should be shut down! Let's see if their authorizers, the DOE and SED finally hold this school accountable for their performance. Bad charters MUST be shut down.

Click here to learn the truth about this school.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/10/were-still-waiting-for-superman-here-in.html

SHUT IT DOWN! Our kids are more than dollar bills.

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Perdido Street School is always on the case

Bloomberg/Cuomo Are Coming For Your Pension

Here is one of the reasons Bloomberg endorsed Cuomo:

Charter School Steals Money From Teacher

This is why teachers at charter schools need work protections:

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Here's a fun one from the NY Post. My principal used to try to hide me away when visitors came.

'Hidden' teachers
By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
Last Updated: 6:06 AM, October 7, 2010
Posted: 12:32 AM, October 7, 2010
They were cast out like the crazy uncle.
Three teachers who have sparred with their principal said she banished them from their Brooklyn school for the day solely to keep them away during a visit by top education brass.
The PS 282 educators said they were handed 11th-hour letters from Principal Magalie Alexis, telling them to report elsewhere yesterday for "instructional support" -- on the same day State Education Commissioner David Steiner and city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein were coming.
Ironically, the officials were visiting to honor great teaching.

"I think [the principal] singled us out because we will tell the truth -- [that] we need the money to be in the classroom, not for show-and-tell," said Norman Rollock, who questioned spending school funds to paint the gym before the visit rather than to replace broken computers and old textbooks.
Rollock, who has butted heads with Alexis since becoming the union chapter leader in March, said he spent the day observing teachers at a Queens elementary school.
His colleague, veteran social-studies teacher David Canty, passed the time similarly. The name of the third teacher was not immediately available.
"With the chancellor and [commissioner] touring the building . . . maybe she felt as though I would not give a response that would be favorable to her or favorable about the running or management of the school," Rollock said.
"It wasn't a coincidence that I would be taken out of there."
Alexis, who oversaw the day's main event, at which teacher Natasha Cooke-Nieves was awarded $25,000 from the Milken Family Foundation, did not respond to e-mails seeking comment.

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Finally, here is one great letter to Summit charter school parents. Click to enlarge.

No comments:

"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

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A Day Off - But still gotta duck from the incoming

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