Ed Notes Online: Karren Lewis Saying, Doing All the Right Things

Monday, September 10, 2012

Karren Lewis Saying, Doing All the Right Things

Include poverty, exposure to violence, which increased exponentially this summer; our students experience homelessness, hunger. Evaluate us on what we do, not on what we cannot control. -- Karen Lewis

Ich bin Ein Chicago Teacher --- John F. Kennedy (paraphrased)

Info coming fast and furious. Here is a video of the morning picket at the Chi board of ed http://youtu.be/nLjQZw8usq0

Ravitch reports on An Open Letter to the White House

President Obama must let the nation's teachers know that he is with them. He can do so by disassociating himself from Rhee's anti-teacher agenda, as well as from policies pushed by his own Race to the Top.

And he could go to Chicago and tell Rahm Emanuel to settle with the teachers and do what is right for the children of Chicago.

Hell, NO! I won't back down from refusing to vote for either anti-public education candidate.

President Lewis at news conference: we have failed to reach agreement that would have prevented a strike.

We must do things differently if we want to give students the things they need.

We've restored arts and language . . . .
Board has agreed that we will have textbooks on the first day of school, and not have to wait six weeks.
We are not far on compensation.

But are far apart on benefits.
The evaluations would result in almost 30 percent or our members being discharged in two years.
Still too much based on student test scores.
Too many factors beyond our control.

Include poverty, exposure to violence, which increased exponentially this summer; our students experience homelessness, hunger.

Evaluate us on what we do, not on what we cannot control.

We are facing a possible decrease in teacher training.

We have been lauded by district and colleagues across the country with teacher training to strengthen teachers' craft.

We need air conditioned classrooms. Sweltering 98 degrees classrooms are not acceptable for students or our parents.
We continue to stand in solidarity with parents, clergy,
For a better school day, an elected school board.

We have under 400 social workers.
We call for more social workers, audiologists, nurses.
Students are subjected to an unprecedented exposure to violence.
Need wrap around services.

Hope the board will consider this.

We are committed on staying in discussion.

This announcement is made now, so that parents are informed.

We ask all of you to join in our education justice fight.

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To stay informed about the strike, pickets and solidarity events via text:

Chicago Teachers Solidarity Committee - Text ctsc2012 to 23559

Chicago Teachers Union- Text ctu1 to 69238

The most important sources of information to go to will be the Chicago Teachers Union website (http://www.ctunet.com/ <http://www.ctunet.com/> ) and the CTU Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/ctulocal1 <https://twitter.com/ctulocal1> ), as well as the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ ChicagoTeachersSolidarity

Here are a couple other websites and blogs to look at over the coming days:
Substance News: http://www.substancenews.net/
<http://www.substancenews.net/>
Catalyst Chicago: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/
<http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/>
Teachers for Justice: http://www.teachersforjustice.org/
<http://www.teachersforjustice.org/>
Matt Farmer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/>

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Dear Supporters,

Tonight, Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) made it official: "In the morning, no CTU members will be inside our schools." This is the first time in 25 years that Chicago teachers are going on strike.

There are many ways to support the CTU as they go forward with this strike.Your support is crucial to winning. The city of Chicago needs to see that the people of the city will NOT accept anything less than the schools our students deserve. Please show your support in whatever capacity you can. There will be events happening throughout the city and throughout the day:

DIRECT ACTION & ORGANIZING:

Walk the picket lines with the teachers! Every school will have a picket from 6:30-10:30am. We encourage people to join pickets at the school nearest them, to connect with other parents and community members in their neighborhoods. Those coming in from out of town or who otherwise would like to picket at one of the schools that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will attempt to keep open during the strike, use this map.

Picket outside of CPS Headquarters! The CTU wants to maintain a presence outside of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) headquarters throughout the day. Beginning at 5am, head over to 125 S. Clark St. and join the picket!

Join the afternoon rally! At 3:30pm, the CTU will hold a rally, march, and speak-out, also in front of CPS Headquarters,125 S. Clark St. WEAR RED! RSVP on the Facebook event page and invite your friends and family!

Join the CTSC organizing meeting! If you want to be directly involved with our organizing work as the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, we will be meeting directly after the rally at 7pm, at 1642 W. Van Buren, Teamsters Local 705. This will be CTU Strike Headquarters for the duration of the strike.

ONLINE & OTHER WAYS TO SHOW SOLIDARITY:

Follow & Share! We have a website, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Follow us and share our updates with all your friends and family!

WEAR RED! Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, wear RED on Monday, to show that you stand in solidarity with the CTU.

Call the mayor and the school board! Tell them that you stand with the CTU and you want them to negotiate a fair contract that gives our students the quality schools that ALL students deserve! Mayor Rahm Emanuel: 312-744-3300; CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard: 773-553-1500

Get on our Text Alert System! Text "@ctsc2012" to 23559 to be added and get updates on negotiations, pickets, rallies, and other events.

Remember, this is OUR fight, the fight of working class people for the soul of public education. The Chicago Teachers Union is bravely leading us in this battle, but it will take all of us to win. Education should be a right, not a privilege. We must all stand together and demand a quality public education for ALL students.

In Solidarity,

Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign
http://ctscampaign.weebly.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

Monday, September 10, 2012

Karren Lewis Saying, Doing All the Right Things

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