Feds, State and City Gang Up on Teachers and Union

Throughout the Race to the Top process, state officials have behaved erratically.
In May 2010, the teachers’ union and department officials, including Dr. King, agreed that student scores on state tests would account for 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.
In August 2010, Mr. Duncan visited the state union’s headquarters in his Race to the Top bus (he really has one) and told union and department officials that New York had won a grant “because of your collective leadership, your act of courage.”
In May 2011, with no warning, Dr. King and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rammed a measure through the Board of Regents making state tests worth up to 40 percent of teacher evaluations.
In August, a state judge ruled that they couldn’t do that.
For the last month now, as federal officials have pressed for a resolution, the governor and the commissioner have been berating the union. Like children who change the rules in the middle of the game, they appear to be counting on a lot of screaming to distract the crowd.
“It’s not about the adults, it’s about the children,” Mr. Cuomo keeps saying. “The children come first.”

Thus Mike Winerip in today's Times lays waste to the duplicitous actions of NY State Ed led by Tisch and King and Cuomo, etc. I can remember Mulgrew last year waxing poetic about Tisch and Steiner, King's predecessor, when the UFT originally agreed to the 20%

I heard NYSUT Pres. Richard Ianucci on an NPR program early Sunday morning where he basically called for abolishing the Board of Regents. He sounded pretty fed up but he praised Cuomo despite the fact Cuomo is trying to force NYSUT to drop the court case that NYSUT won based on the violation of the law passed by the state legislature.

If you haven't noticed, rank and file teachers are fighting a 5-front war. Government at all levels from Bloomberg/Walcott to Cuomo to Obama/Duncan (Don't you just love those Dump Duncan campaigns as if Obama has nothing to do with it -- reminds me of the UFT dump Klein stuff as if we will get someone better).

Then we have the generally hostile press with even our reporter friends playing the neutral game -- like a quote from each side even if one side has 90%. And then due to the attacks, there is the general public. (See Buying The Lie).

I might add a 6th front. Our own colleagues, as you will see in following this link to an article written by a teacher who is leaving teaching in Colorado. The majority of teachers either go along like the good soldier or suffer the anguish by complaining but refuse to get involved in any action.

And that issue relates to the role the union is willing to play in educating and organizing people.

I often fault the UFT/AFT for going along with the high stakes testing game --- oh, they will mouth things to throw red meat at the rank and file ---- even Obama mouthed a few words on testing --- but their actions belie that. I was proposing at UFT Delegate Assemblies that the union should not get into the high stakes testing game as far back as the late 90's but was ignored.


More from Winerip's column which is titled: In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom.

Even if you think the Obama administration’s signature education program, Race to the Top, will not help a single child in America learn more, you have to admire its bureaucratic magnificence.

First, it has had a major effect — reaching into most public schools in America — while costing the Obama administration next to nothing.

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