Ed Notes Online: MORE Weekly Update #66

Monday, September 9, 2013

MORE Weekly Update #66 - Sept. 9, 2013

Lots of info packed in here. The highlight is that I picked up the first edition of our newletter: MORE Stuff in Your Mailbox.
This is the one committee in MORE that I have tried to be fairly active on. How nice to have all these young whippersnappers doing all the work while old folk like me rest.

Let me know if you will distribute the newsletter in your school. The only way to beat the Unity machine is to get info countering their propaganda with info of our own, not just every 3 years in the election cycle, but on a regular basis. I've been pushing for this type of initiative for a long time and how nice to see it become reality -- thanks to the great MORE newsletter committee: Brian Jones, Don Doyle, Megan Behrent and Bill Linville. (And how great as an ICEer to be working with TJCer Megan -- so far the synergy of putting lots of smart people from different groups together in MORE is working).

... help distribute the new MORE Newsletter to your colleagues!

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Weekly Update #66

September 9, 2013

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DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!
Tuesday, Sept 10th

Read the results of MORE's survey and position on the Mayoral race.

FALL GENERAL MEETINGS
3rd Saturday - Noon to 3pm
Sep 21 (Evaluations)
224 W. 29th St., 14th Fl.

Oct 19 & Nov 16
Location TBA

Make Sure You Are On Our Listserves!
Click below to join:
News (announcements/articles)
Discussion (debate/back-and-forth)
Chapter Leader (discussion for chapter activists)

COMMITTEES:
Contract Committee
contract@morecaucusnyc.org
After the citywide CL meeting
Wed. Sept. 12th at 6PM
Au Bon Pain
70 Myrtle Ave

Steering Committee
steering@morecaucusnyc.org
Mon. Sept. 16th at 5PM
CUNY Grad Center, Rm. 5409
Meeting minutes here

Newsletter Committee
news@morecaucusnyc.org

Chapter Organizing Committee
chapters@morecaucusnyc.org
Happy Hour/Discussion: Evaluations
Thurs. Sept. 26 at 5pm - Killarney Rose
Meeting minutes here

Media Committee
media@morecaucusnyc.org

High Stake Testing Committee
testing@morecaucusnyc.org

STAYING IN TOUCH:
Comments? Suggestions?
Email update@morecacusnyc.org with items for future updates

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MORE Newsletter

MORE's newsletter, "MORE Stuff in Your Mailbox" is hot off the press, with articles on the New Evaluation System, the Contract Fight, "Ask a Chapter Leader," and Community Voices.

Sign up to help distribute it to your colleagues.

Reply to this email if you can pick up copies or would like to help distribute at the Citywide Chapter Leader Meeting on Thursday September 12th at the Brooklyn Marriot t

If you can't make it there, email our Borough Distribution Centers:
Brooklyn: jcavanagh15@gmail.com
Bronx: peter.lamphere@gmail.com
Manhattan: brianpjones@yahoo.com
Queens/Staten Island: donal@mindspring.com

And read the newsletter online:
morecaucusnyc.org/newsletter

Most teachers, students, and parents agree that the city's new teacher evaluation system is a misguided attempt to distract New Yorkers from the real challenges faced by our schools and students. But what's a teacher to do?

Take Action - Share the video and sign the petition for a moratorium on the new evaluations system

Brooklyn Back to School Happy Hour

Friday, September 13th*

3:45 to 6:00

Franklin Park

618 St Johns Pl

Brooklyn, NY 11238

Phone Banking!

Sunday, September 15th*
11am to 3pm in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

To attend (or host your own) email rosiefrascella@gmail.com.

*We understand that many will not be able to attend because of Yom Kippur, but we are hoping that those who do not have holiday engagements will be able to join us)

Brunch Fundraiser:
Saturday, October 5th – 11:30AM-1:30PM
Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew
520 Clinton Ave (betw. Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave.) C train to Clinton/Washington
Clinton Hil, Brooklyn

First MORE Meeting:
September 21st - 12-3PM NYC location
(pick up hard copies of the petition and newsletter; focus on explaining eval and how we are fighting back against it)

Day of Action Around Evaluations
October 9th – outside/city-wide at schools

Moving?

If you are changing schools, phone numbers, or addresses, make sure we can stay in touch by updating your information with MORE.

Copyright © 2013 MORE Caucus, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you are excited about changing the UFT and signed up at a MORE meeting or our website, MORECaucusNYC.org.

Our mailing address is:

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New York, NY 10001

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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 9, 2013

MORE Weekly Update #66 - Sept. 9, 2013

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