Ed Notes Online: Sunday on Monday, June 18

Monday, June 18, 2012

Sunday on Monday, June 18 - It's a Wrap

This past week was a bit lighter on activism than the busy week of June 4. I won't bore you right up front but you can read about the week that was with some commentary below.

Here are some connections to check out from the blogs on issues I would have blogged about. If you don't check out our extensive blog roll you are missing a lot. Really, I should just cull from all the great blogs and never actually have to write anything myself.

Last Stand for Children First
Anything written on this great satirical blog out of Chicago is a howl.

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A School Too Far: Is School Choice Unraveling Education Reform In New York City?

Marc Epstein nails the de-coupling of schools from the surrounding neighborhoods.
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James Eterno at the ICE blog:
CAN YOU BELIEVE WE'RE GOING TO FACT FINDING AGAIN?
And his report of the Delegate Assembly (which I still hope to report on):
SPECIAL DELEGATE ASSEMBLY: UFT ENDORSEMENTS & MULGREW RESPONDS TO LAWSUIT
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Gary Rubinstein discovers secret of charter schools that claim success:
....the strategy that charters have proved effective is: Keep the bottom 15% of the kids away from the top 50% of the kids. What charters teach us

My comment
Some charter school charlatan will come up with this: we will take the 15% if you pay us a lot. Then they will do something analogous to the New Jersey half-way house scam the NY Times has been talking about -- cut services to the bone and treat the kids like prisoners. No one will rally care much anyway --- the operators will make a lot of money, the public schools -- whatever is left of them can compete with charters on a more equal basis, but ultimately they will disappear too since the only reason to keep them around was to service those 15%. A nice tidy package for the privatizers.
Might take another generation but it will come.
One of the big culprits in all this has been the teacher unions trying to straddle the line and refusing to challenge the very idea of charters as having that ultimate aim.

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Perdido Street School:

AFT, NEA Need To Pressure Obama To Stop Teacher Bashing And Race to the Top

My comment:
Before pressuring Obama we have to pressure the teacher unions. But good luck with that when dealing with the UFT/AFT a top-down monopoly of power. The only pressure they will understand is when there are thousands of teachers in the streets screaming for their heads. See Chicago. Now that union might still endorse Obama but as a local political tactic given the war that is going on in that city. Or maybe not. If they go on a strike in the fall, it will be fun to watch Obama's silence in the midst of an election campaign and a labor war in his own city. The CTU seems able to gather community support at the grassroots level -- they have been working on this since the CORE caucus was founded 4 years ago so they have foresight.

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Accountable Talk takes apart Walcott's arguments for giving him sole right to fire teachers accused of sex-related issues.

Love this one:

if Walcott is correct, what he is saying is that the city knowingly agrees to hire arbitrators who send sexual predators back into the classroom. And since he is in charge of the DOE, the buck must stop with him. He is as guilty as anyone of what he claims is true.

Dennis Walcott, Debunked
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Diane Ravitch who has a new toy with her new blog where she is prolific sent this link to a hilarious 11 minute video that features a conversation between a teacher and supervisor that nails the essence of the ed deform view of teachers.

Race from the Axe

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Ms. Katie's Ramblings

Rahm's Longer School Day Tearing an Elementary School Apart
Another great blog out of Chicago

Ed Notes posts over the past week (in reverse order):

Here is the week that was -- if you're interested

Monday June 11: Hang out at home

Tuesday June 12: I work with a group called Active Aging that produces a TV show at Manhattan Neighborhood Network and we are doing a story on an artist/musician/and lots more named Leo Witlarge --- what an interesting guy and it should make a great story. He lives on Bushwick Ave. in what could pass for a museum. Check out some of his work: www.witlarge.com.
In the evening it was off to Leonie Haimson's Skinny Awards dinner, which was packed, mostly with people I didn't know. The UFT had a table for 8 and I knew a few of them. I got to talk to a very interesting, a 2nd or 3rd careerer in the 9th year in our wonderful system working at a closing school. She said she has worked in a number of different jobs and systems and the NYCDOE is the most dysfunctional. "Intentionally dysfunctional," I told her to assist in its destruction so it can be privatized.

Weds June 13: Only item was the UFT Delegate Assembly where I offered free dvds of our movie on condition of holding a screening in the school. Twelve people took me up on it. Even though online, we want people to see it in groups and that is why we ordered another thousand. Check it out if you haven't seen it and let me know if you want to hold a screening in your school and I'll get you a dvd.

Thurs June 14 - Flag Day. I think we used to get off when I was a kid. New air conditioning system installed, just in time for the small memorial/party we are holding for my dad this Thursday when it will be 97 degrees.

Friday June 15 -- electrician came to hook up the system. Interesting conversation about unions with the worker doing the installing. His whole family are union but he works for a private contractor, a guy who used to coach his teams as a kid and also a grad of Brooklyn Polytech. When the boss came by we had a nice chat --- a real down home guy with a great sense of humor. He even custom made a few small brackets I needed for another job, right on the spot.

Saturday June 16 -- The gala MORE happy hour.

Sunday June 17 -- out to Philadelphia area for our niece's fathers day invite. Two kids aged 4 and 1. They did lots of chasing around. And there was some water flying around. Got into the usual discussion with her father in law who is adamant that Obama is a socialist. If he only read what the left is saying about Obama as the ultimate supporter of capitalism.

Throughout the week there were lots of visits to my dad's apartment -- we have to have it cleared out by June 30. Put up a note there was free furniture available and the calls have been coming in. Need a 40 year old stereo system?

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

Monday, June 18, 2012

Sunday on Monday, June 18 - It's a Wrap

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