Ed Notes Online: E4E's Lori Wheal Declares Herself a Replaceable of the Highest Order

Thursday, August 2, 2012

E4E's Lori Wheal Declares Herself a Replaceable of the Highest Order

Gee Lori Wheal, how about "advancing" by just teaching? Maybe focus on advancing the kids rather than yourself.

Lori Wheal is leaving because she can't keep her little job and will now go into ed policy.

"The decision to leave the classroom was among the most difficult I’ve ever made, but I feel like my career is stuck in neutral, with no clear path of advancement."

Leonie Haimson: The "Irreplaceables"; another flawed report from TNTP

South Bronx School on Lori Wheal: Lori Wheal Is Not Only a Master Teacher, But Master of Her Domain

Check the comments in this Gotham piece: City dissolves fleet of “master” and “turnaround” teachers

Wheal is one of the "master" teachers losing her job.

What's the matter Lori? being an ATR doesn't appeal to you

‏@DianeRavitch tweets

@SoBronxSchool @loriwheal You are right. This was no sudden decision. E4E is a Gates-funded anti-teacher org.

Educators 4 Excellence: A Corporate Suck-up Voice Against Teachers

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

E4E In the News

E4E-NY teacher Lori Wheal: Why NYC can't keep great teachers: In a New York Post op-ed, Lori reflects on her own career path and teacher retention in light of the new TNTP report (see below for more). »

E4E co-founders guest blog on EdWeek: On Rick Hess Straight Up, an Education Week blog, Evan Stone and Sydney Morris recount their story and share teacher reactions to "The Irreplaceables". Check back this Thursday and Friday for more. »

Learn

New TNTP report urges smarter decisions about teacher retention: "The Irreplaceables" shows that the most and least effective teachers leave at identical rates (SchoolBook), including in New York (NY Daily News). Read the report. »

In changes to teaching licensing, more teaching and less testing: As The New York Times reports, New York's licensing processes will include new measures, endorsed by both state officials and Michael Mulgrew, the UFT president. »

Report: Calif. school facilities need funding, roadmap: A state-commissioned report highlights the information barriers to addressing school facility needs. (Also, sign our petition calling for fairer school funding.) »

Court ruling may challenge Bridgeport, CT school system efforts: A court-mandated school board special election could challenge reforms being put into place by Superintendent Paul Vallas (The Wall Street Journal). »

Network

New York

Policy Roundtable #2: The Future of Special Education: Join fellow E4E members for the second of three teacher-led conversations to examine the coming changes to classrooms that serve students with special needs and discuss how to ensure that all students’ needs are being met.

Regardless of what you teach, these changes will affect all classrooms. We encourage all teachers to join us.

TOMORROW: Thursday, August 2, 2012 | 5 p.m.
Educators 4 Excellence, 333 West 39th Street, New York, NY 10018

Subway: A/C/E at 42nd St-Port Authority Bus Terminal;
1/2/3/7/N/Q/R/S at 42 St-Times Sq

Take Action

Sign the California Fair Funding Petition to show Sacramento's leaders and our fellow taxpayers that we need reform through revenue. »

Join the E4E team: Through E4E, you can be part of a dynamic team that helps to grow this movement every day. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis - learn more on the Careers section of our website. »

Like Us on Facebook

Watch Us on YouTube

Upcoming Events

New York

TOMORROW - August 2 Policy Roundtable #2 5:00 p.m. Educators 4 Excellence
333 West 39th Street,
New York, NY 10018

E4E Teachers
Talk Back

Brooke Wacha

Brooke Wacha discusses the need to ensure that all students’ needs are considered and all teachers’ voices are included when making education policy.

Brooke teaches high school in a 6-1-1 setting at PS223Q, a District 75 school in Queens.

Did teaching meet your expectations?

I expected to be working with low-income students from tough situations, but I ended up working in a District 75 school with a lot of students with autism. ...My job now has really opened up my world to what autism is and what it can be – there’s always something new, someone’s always going to surprise you.

About E4E: For far too long,education policy has been created without a critical voice at the table – the voice of reform-minded classroom teachers. Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), a teacher-led organization, is changing this dynamic by placing the voices of teachers at the forefront of the conversations that shape their classrooms and careers. To learn more, visit Educators4Excellence.org.

Right now, educators are working through E4E to drive positive outcomes for students and elevate the teaching profession. Help grow this movement. Please donate today.

Unsubscribe your email from any future educators4excellence.org mailings.
333 W. 39th St. | Suite 703 | New York NY 10018

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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

2 comments:

Michael Fiorillo said...: Where do they get these people? The arrogance, vanity, self-delusion and willingness to step on others to get ahead is just off the charts.

Or perhaps they are some kind of evil, three dimensional Bots, or Replicants that have been engineered in the sub-basement laboratory of The New Teacher Project?; Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 9:37:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: The prerequisite clothing for the male Bots can be found on the pages of JCREW (ie. Ludlow suits type...slim fit tailored look). Very thin. Glasses. Two days worth of beard ala George Michael.

It is so frightening. My bet is on the weekend these same male Bots wear small fedoras. Oh so hip, these "hipster" educator Bots.; Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 12:33:00 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 Extended

Thursday, August 2, 2012

E4E's Lori Wheal Declares Herself a Replaceable of the Highest Order

Educators 4 Excellence: A Corporate Suck-up Voice Against Teachers

2 comments: