Ed Notes Online: MORE Weekly Update #70: Are you coming out for Win Back Wednesday?

Monday, October 7, 2013

MORE Weekly Update #70: Are you coming out for Win Back Wednesday?

You should be getting the idea of why you should drag your ass over the 52 Broadway this Weds (Oct 9) for the 4PM "Win Back Wednesday" rally. Certainly if you read my earlier piece on what is going on in Newark where the pressure of an insurgent social justice oriented caucus has led to the Unity style leader, who only won re-election by 9 votes, to take a position against RTTT. And you should sign up to distribute the MORE newsletter in your mail boxes. We ran out of our first run and 5000 more are being printed. My goal this year: To have 25,000 MORE Stuff in Your Mailbox going out to - well - UFT member mail boxes.

And it you are a chapter leader or delegate there is no excuse not to be in the dynamic MORE Chapter Leader (discussion for chapter activists) CL/Del listserve where you can get expert help on contract items and other issues in your school.

Time to stop the test-based evaluation system!

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Weekly Update #70

October 7, 2013

Join MORE Today

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)

Day of Action Against Test-Based Evaluations
Wednesday, October 9th
Outside DA @ UFT HQ
52 B'way - 4pm-6pm
City-wide at schools

FALL GENERAL MEETINGS
3rd Saturday - Noon to 3:00pm

October 19
224 West 29th St 14th fl.
(btwn 7th and 8th ave)

November 16th
Location TBA

COMMITTEES:
Contract Committee
contract@morecaucusnyc.org
Wed. Oct 9th at 6:15pm
Au Bon Pain - 60 Broad St.
Meeting Minutes here

Steering Committee
steering@morecaucusnyc.org
TODAY Mon. Oct. 7th at 8pm
Phone Conference - reply for details
Mon. Oct. 21th at 5PM
CUNY Grad Center, Rm. 5409
Meeting minutes here

Newsletter Committee
news@morecaucusnyc.org

Membership Committee
membership@morecaucusnyc.org
Wed. Oct 9th at 6:15pm
Au Bon Pain - 60 Broad St.

Chapter Organizing Committee
chapters@morecaucusnyc.org

Media Committee
media@morecaucusnyc.org

High Stake Testing Committee
testing@morecaucusnyc.org
Monday, Oct. 14th, 2:00-4:00pm.
CUNY Grad Center, Rm 5414

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

Facebook

Twitter

OCTOBER 9th Day of Action!

Check out the toolkit and stickers (PDF, doc)

Mobilize your coworkers, parents and community to take a stand against test-based teacher evals.

Wear RED and stickers to work
Distribute this flyer to coworkers
Join us at the UFT Delegate Assembly at 4:00-6:00pm (52 Broadway, 4/5 to Wall St. A/C to Fulton)
Make copies of the flyer to distribute there (will be posted tomorrow on MORE website)

On October 9th at 4:00 p.m., activists from all over the city will gather at UFT headquarters to protest the emphasis on high stakes testing that is harming our children, educators, and public schools. Read more at MOREcaucusNYC.org...

RSVP on Facebook here

High Stakes Disaster Around New York

MORE's Jia Lee and CTS' Fred Smith speak out at HST Forum in District 15.

Lisa North points out that the UFT said not to evaluate based on test scores

Almost 40% of Syracuse Teachers need improvement plan under new eval system.

Common core textbooks still not delivered to New York City schools

2500 teachers, parents and administrators protest high-stakes testing in Buffalo

Educator under attack? Join MORE's "Don't Tread on Educators" support group by emailing dtoe-subscribe@googlegroups.com

MORE's next general meeting is on

Saturday, October 19th [at 224 West 29th St 14th fl., btwn 7th and 8th ave].

Discussions will include the our campaign against the high-stakes test based evaluation system and MORE's strategy and tactics in the UFT Delegate Assembly.

MORE Newsletter

Sign up to help distribute MORE's newsletter, "MORE Stuff in Your Mailbox," to your colleagues.

Reply to this email if you can pick up copies or would like to help distribute it, or pick up copies at our general meeting.

And read the newsletter online:
morecaucusnyc.org/newsletter

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, October 7, 2013

MORE Weekly Update #70: Are you coming out for Win Back Wednesday?

OCTOBER 9th Day of Action!

Check out the toolkit and stickers (PDF, doc)

No comments: