Ed Notes Online: Today's Truths: The TRUTH vs. Distortion - I support the NAACP Rally Friday at Eva HQ

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Today's Truths: The TRUTH vs. Distortion - I support the NAACP Rally Friday at Eva HQ

“Because of the NAACP’s stand for all children, they are being criticized by those who seek to only divide our community, pitting parent against parent, and distorting the facts about the lawsuit against the NYC DOE.” - NAACP Press Release

UPDATE: UNCF Receives $1.6 Billion Grant From Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation(see story below on UNCF leader co-writing anti NAACP piece with Michelle Rhee)

Support NAACP Rally/Press Conference Friday at Success Charter Offices (posted at Norms Notes)

NAACP and Community Rally/Press Conference at Success Charter Offices at 310 Lenox, between 125^th and 126^th. Time is still slightly in flux – 8:30/9 am.

Call EVA MOSKOWITZ and tell her

You are STANDING WITH THE NAACP

(646) 597-4641

This one should be fun. WOW! Is the worm turning on charters or what? Some major Harlem politicians are supporting this: Rangel, Wright, Dickens, and of course, Bill Perkins, the dean of politicians challenging the charter lobby.

Two years ago (end of school year 2009) when GEM (only a few months old) went up to Eva invaded PS 123 there were few political forces willing to take on charters. Even Bill Perkins at that time seemed ambivalent (I remember having a conversation with one of his aides). But the PS 123 situation woke him up and he began to take a stand. Throughout the summer of 2009 he invited us to take part in discussion at his office. His hearings in March 2010 created a storm (I still have many hours of tape) and led to a charter supported primary challenge which Perkins beat back easily. That was a moment where the supposed parent "support" for charters in Harlem was exposed.

Now the charter lobby has tried to bully the NAACP into withdrawing from the law suit with the UFT to stop the closing of schools and charter co-locations as Gotham reported:

Parents visited the NAACP’s local offices to ask the group to exit the school closure suit. (GS, Post)
One of the parent spokespersons - Valerie Babb, a parent at Harlem Link (always makes me chuckle when I see this school mentioned) - was quoted. Leonie pointed out that she works for the New York Charter Center. I also had a communication from Babb as I mentioned in this comment I left at Gotham's report on a visit by 20 "parents" to NAACP head Hazel Dukes' office:

So I'm beginning to get it. "“We’re not going away,” said Valerie Babb, mother of a first-grader at Harlem Link Charter School." Valerie Babb is an employee of the NYC Charter Center. Babb sent out an email to charter school parents to attend the recent Brooklyn Premiere of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" sponsored by Mona Davids' competing charter school parent org. (I printed the email at ed notes: http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2011/05/to-charter-school-operators-you-want.html).
So, it's all about the children, eh? Politics and jobs don't enter into it I guess. How many other charter school parent activists have jobs connected to the charter school machine? Reminds me of the day when principals helped get jobs for certain parents who supported them. Link to comment: http://disq.us/24qbfb

I'm going to try to get up and shlep my way to this event with trusty camera. Here are some recent items I've been posting - just a select few.

Rich White Woman Tells Poor Black People to Rally ...

A Jamaica HS Student's Outrage Puts Dennis Walcott...

Report from the Field: Is Harlem Success Academy P...
The Harlem Success Tries to Turn White as the Worm...

To Charter School Operators: You Want the Truth? Y...

Gotham has a link on this story. Kitchen Sink is at it again - I left a comment - go leave yours.

It's actually a sad day for charter school interests looking to glom onto free real estate. I guess you were too busy planning your exit from the public schools to set up your own shop, but those of us who remained and fought that system would never classify what we did as failing black and brown kids by condemning an entire racial group.

In my school we had great success with a number of students (I can give you a tour of the colleges they went to) and also failures. It is the former group that you are all bragging about succeeding with - just like we did over the last 40 years. Instead of focusing all out efforts on reaching those kids, you have opted for a dual school system that makes conditions worse for the very kids who need the most help. And the charter school lobby has supported the onslaught by the DOE due to narrow self-interest - the self-interest of the adults I might add. Nice work!

But the charter lobby is out in force. This just came through:

United Negro College Fund head attacks lawsuit/NAACP

- an article Michael Lomax (a charter puppet) co-wrote with - DRUMROLL - Michelle Rhee, the Sarah Palin of ed deform as someone dubbed her.

Noguera Punts on HSA
The NY State Ed Dept, which Fred Smith exposes on their politically tainted testing procedures has also been complicent in the charter school invasions. John King who is taking over when Steiner leaves is 100% charter school. It really is invasion of the body snatchers. But HSA is chartered by SUNY and here is some back and forth on the NYCEd News Listserve regarding Pedro Noguera related to this item I posted yesterday - Success/Brandeis co-location comments due BY NOON ...

Leonie Haimson asked: Has Pedro Noguera (Chair of SUNY Charter Schools Institute) expressed an opinion on this co-location? Has he visited any of the co-located charters in D3, to your knowledge?

Here was the response:

Months ago, at the meeting where SUNY granted the charter (without a specific D3
location), Dr. Noguera did say that he wanted to look carefully at the site that
got chosen before approving it. I am told he didn't want SUNY to be a "rubber
stamp." That said, if he now has an opinion on this specific co-location, I have
not heard it, nor of any Success-related visit by Dr. Noguera to the Brandeis
complex.

It is so odd to me, now that SUNY held this hearing to do a final site
evaluation, that the SUNY Charter Schools Institute is responsible for receiving
public comments and making a recommendation to the SUNY Board about approval. As
far as I know, there were no Board members at the location hearing this week.
The CSI would seem to be in the business of supporting charters, and I find it
weird that they are the buffer between the overwhelming community opposition and
Dr. Noguera/the SUNY Board.

And, oh year, it is a good time to bring back one of our favorites about Meryll Tisch, who is the leader of the pack.

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, June 2, 2011

Today's Truths: The TRUTH vs. Distortion - I support the NAACP Rally Friday at Eva HQ

UPDATE: UNCF Receives $1.6 Billion Grant From Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation(see story below on UNCF leader co-writing anti NAACP piece with Michelle Rhee)

United Negro College Fund head attacks lawsuit/NAACP

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