Ed Notes Online: The Wave: Hey Bob Turner! Where’s MY Tax Credit?

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Wave: Hey Bob Turner! Where’s MY Tax Credit?

Appearing in the print edition, March 16, 2012, www.rockawave.com

By Norm Scott

I was heartened to read in the March 9 edition of The Wave that our soon to be ex-Congressman and future Senator Bob Turner was pushing the idea of a $5000 direct tax credit for any parent paying parochial or private school tuition. In a spirit of religious harmony, leaders of both Yeshivas and Catholic Schools jumped on the bandwagon in supporting the bill. The Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Taosists, Shintoists and Voduns (Voodoo) can’t be far behind. Who can resist the entitlement money tree, especially when it comes out of our taxes? Didn’t Republican District Leader Joan Deacy brag about how Turner has sponsored 30 pro-business bills? This one should be a real winner. (I tried to count the number of bills Turner sponsored that support unions or people who don’t own businesses but haven’t come up with any yet. But I’m sure they’re coming.) I join both of them in supporting the concept of “choice”, especially when it comes to public services.

My sanitation guys do a great job but they come Tuesdays and Fridays. I really prefer Mondays and Wednesdays. I was about to sell my house and buy a home on a street with those pickup days but thanks to Bob Turner and that tax credit I can have my choice of a private carting firm which will come any days I want. Boy, do I love this choice thingie.

I know how overworked the police are in Rockaway and I’d feel more secure if I could hire a private security firm to assure my safety. Thanks for the five grand Bob.
And then there’s the fire department, which is no closer to my house than a mile. I want a fire engine on my block full-time. That five grand will certainly help when I get all my neighbors to sign on to the tax credit idea and we pool our money. We might even be able to afford a truck with a ladder.

And then there’s all those countries my taxes have paid for to invade and occupy, certainly not my top pick in nations to invade. My choice is to invade Luxembourg. But five thousand will only go so far. So I need help in financing the invasion. If we can get lots of people together Bob has promised to deliver on those tax credits. I’m already loading the kayaks.

But education is where there is gold in them thar hills. I might as well jump in myself by opening a school aimed at teaching children not to believe in religion: The Academy for a Godless Education (AGE). Shouldn’t atheists have choices too? And if I can’t get a tax credit I can always go the charter school route where I can get $1500 for every child I recruit. What me worry about separation of church and state? I have people like Bob Turner and every single potential Republican nominee for president to back me up.

I wanted to join Rick Santorum in a vomit fest when I read Howie Schwach's critique in The Wave last week of Santorum’s being sickened over John F. Kennedy’s guarantee in 1960 that he would not impose his Catholic faith on the rest of America. OK, so I’m a Jewish atheist. But if Santorum is elected and redresses Kennedy’s blasphemous statement, I’ll convert. Twice.

Before I invade Luxembourg (the reason is we once spent two days in 1978 in a hotel over a bar where the noise kept us up half the night), Chris Pavone, the son of one of my best friends Vera Pavone, has written a very hot spy novel, “The Expats”, based in that tiny nation. The book got a wonderful review by Janet Maslin on this week’s NY Times. The story is about a CIA agent who gives up her job to become a stay at home mom when her husband, who knows nothing of her past life, gets a high paying job in Luxembourg and they move there with their two children. In real life, Chris was that “mom” when his wife got a job and they moved with their twin boys. So Chris got to know a lot more about Luxembourg than he wanted to. Out of his boredom came a great novel.

I've known Chris since he was 3 years old. His mom and I have been part of educator activists groups for over 40 years. Chris survived endless ed-political meetings throughout his childhood and lived up to his guarantee he would never become a teacher, (his brother has become a NYC teacher). Chris is back in NYC and a public school parent. How about a novel about a CIA agent who becomes a member of the PTA in the WalBloomBlackKlein era and discovers that closing schools and privatizing the entire public school system is part of an international Al Qaeda plot?

When Norm is not coming up with schemes to steal money from the evil government he blogs at ednotesonline.com.

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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

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Wave: Hey Bob Turner! Where’s MY Tax Credit?

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