Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Chicago Chats/UFT Giving Up Co-Location of Charter - With a Little Help From Friends

Weds., July 6

We just woke up to the news that the UFT made a deal with Christine Quinn to move its charter out of a public school in East NY Brooklyn into a new building - with the help of $2 million. At least that is the way the NY Post is framing it. But watch the UFT try to spin this one to teachers after they lost teachers choice - my 3 roomies are already screaming about it. The argument that other charters are already getting money for new buildings is a lame excuse. "This is our union" they are saying and we have been screaming about not only the co-loco issue but the fact that charters are destroying the fabric of the public school system. (See the Post article below.)

"This is capital fund money that should NOT be going to charters, it should be going to building more public schools," said GEM's Julie Cavanagh (one of the directors of the critically acclaimed film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman", who has been battling the invasion of her school, PS 15, while also being critical of the vast amounts of public money being funneled to charter schools to the detriment of public schools.

Note how this is revealed when school is out - not a word at the Delegate Assembly - note how "council aides said the grant was being discussed months before negotiations with the Mayor."

This cements the idea that the UFT will endorse Quinn for Mayor and also continue to support mayoral control. I may just bet my Tier 1 pension on it.

Chicago news
We were up late last night at a dinner hosted by Chicago Teachers Union caucus CORE - Caucus of Rank and File Educators. For those not aware, CORE is sort of the Unity Caucus of Chicago in the sense that they are in power. CORE people are proud to show their colors as opposed to Unity which tries to hide the fact they they even exist from the members - except during elections.

People were coming in last night from all over the nation and conversation flowed around many issues, but the NEA endorsement of Obama was causing quite a stir. I'm sure that will come up again today at the conference. It is interesting that the NEA convention just left town and remnants will be at the conference today.

Oh, in case you haven't been following, I wrote about it yesterday:

In Chicago for National Educators' Conference to Fight Back for Public Education

My 3 wives are dragging me down to breakfast. More tonight. Maybe some video.

Here is the NY Post piece:

$weet deal on UFT charter

By SALLY GOLDENBERG

Last Updated: 3:46 AM, July 6, 2011

The City Council awarded $2 million to the politically powerful United Federation of Teachers for its Brooklyn charter school amid intense negotiations with the union to avoid teacher layoffs.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Brooklyn Councilman Erik Dilan sponsored the allocation, to be distributed in Fiscal Year 2013.

The funds -- part of a $375 million capital-projects budget -- will be used to plan "a potential new building that would incorporate the UFT charter schools with a community center and health clinic" in East New York, union spokesman Peter Kadushin said.

The union's charter school shares space with traditional schools, and the money would help the school relocate to an independent location.

Council aides said the grant was being discussed months before negotiations with the UFT to avert Mayor Bloomberg's threatened 4,100 teacher layoffs.

The UFT and the council signed off on a deal to avoid layoffs by giving up a year of teacher sabbaticals, making both the union and Quinn look like victors in the budget battle.

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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

6 comments:

Pogue said...: Oh, please, not Quinn. Anyone but the Bloomberg-puppet Quinn.

Lui, De Blasio, Avella...NOT QUINN.; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 8:14:00 AM EDT
Online Education said...: I really don't know about it.; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 8:58:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: I wonder if Quinn would be able to get majority of the votes in NYC. I do wonder about that.; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 10:21:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: Remember this:

"As for how to conduct teacher layoffs, should they be necessary, Quinn said that selecting instructors for dismissal solely through seniority, rather than on teacher effectiveness, is plainly nuts. Bloomberg had pleaded with Albany to end the so-called last in, first out system, but Albany told him to take a hike.
"Having a system that is based exclusively on seniority does not make any sense," Quinn said.
She also backed the concept of letting go teachers who are paid to do nothing because they were excessed from positions and have been unable to find new jobs in the school system."

Can't wait for the UFT to endorse her. Vichy Unity!!!

How will "Mikey Hammer and Nails," "Leo the Two-Faced Red-Baiter," "LeRoy Water Boy Barr," "Big Mouth Paulie," and "Mendel the Menace," spin us the Quinn pill?; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 6:42:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: Look for Quinn to help broker a contract in 2012 and then come up with millions for teachers choice in June 2013
UFT will then endorse during the summer of 2013 without including the delegate assembly; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:01:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: @sweet girl
Stein, vallone, miller
Where are THEY now?
They're dusting off the welcome mat to oblivion for Quinn; Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 11:05:00 PM EDT

"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 Online

Ed Notes Extended