Ed Notes Online: Randi Gives Up Some Gates Dough -- And She's Being Praised?

Monday, March 10, 2014

Randi Gives Up Some Gates Dough -- And She's Being Praised?

Oh, Jesus, when will it end? Diane Ravitch posts the "good news" that Randi will no longer accept Gates money and there are some cheers - but also critiques.

Breaking News: Randi Says AFT Will No Longer Accept Funding from Gates Foundation for Innovation Fund

There are a bunch of comments you should read. I left one but it is awaiting moderation. In case it doesn't pass muster, here it is:

norm scott
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March 10, 2014 at 11:10 am
Rowdy delegates to a national teachers convention Saturday gave several standing ovations to Bill Gates, whose billions in foundation grants for experimental-education-overhaul efforts over more than a decade have sparked widespread controversy and debate. There were scattered boos and hisses among the 3,400 attendees at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Seattle, and a small group of dissident teachers walked out on Gates’ speech, but many at the Washington State Convention Center seemed to welcome the Microsoft co-founder’s message that teachers must be partners in any efforts to improve student achievement… Seattle local report
At what point do our leaders take responsibility for their actions and be accountable for their errors? Remember how Randi and her horde mocked the people who walked out on Gates at the AFT convention? I shot the video of the sing-song “good riddance” shouts.
Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Ezri0pVOg
We have seen well over a decade of AFT/UFT collaboration and only the weight of resistance has forced — and I say forced– Randi to take actions like this — but does is it good news and a real change in the way the leadership which persists in promoting the common core and other ed deforms until forced to change direction? and often for PR reasons? Why does Randi always have to be forced?
Here are links:
laugh yourselves silly — remember the Unity caucus hooting and booing those who walked out on the Gates speech at the AFT convention.
Only when the AFT and UFT which is the tail that controls the AFT become democratic institutions of change will we see a true change in policy that will allow the unions to lead rather than tail the fight for public education.
I only have to point to the big battle over charters in NYC over rent and co-location and how the very body that should be organizing against the Eva Moskowitz monster – the UFT – is toothless because of Randi’s folly – a co-located charters pushing out public schools — one middle school in the same building was closed by Bloomberg and the parents and teachers blamed the UFT charter.
Will we get cheers when Randi one day gives that folly up? Really, when will this end?
If you need a refresher google links to stories about that walkout in July 2010
Here is one:
Gates’s controversial speech to the AFT – Substance News
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1529‎
Jul 11, 2010 – A video of the protests against the Gates speech has been posted … [A separate report in Substance will cover the walkout and protests from some of the delegates]. ….

I also asked:
Did Randi also disavow any Gates money to support the Common Core?
Just sayin' - oh, and who is giving the UFT money for its charter? Just askin'.

Some more comments:

I appreciate that Randi Weingarten is doing this, but please read Mercedes Schneider analysis. http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/a-schneider-debriefing-on-weingarten/:
Weingarten implied that “so little” Gates money does not matter. However, it apparently does since not accepting “the next round” for the AFT Innovation Fund means a dues increase. The current Gates grant for the Innovation Fund and CCSS ($4.4 million) expires in May 2015.
Note: There was no mention of returning any Gates money. There was also no agreement to not accept Gates money in the future– just not for the Innovation Fund.
The Gates money matters to those who take it. However, the connection to Gates and the power that such connection brings matters to those benefiting from his circle of power more than does his money.
A five-cent annual annual dues increase for all 1.5 million AFT members yields $75,000 in additional revenue.
A two-dollar annual dues increase for all 1.5 million AFT members would yield an additional $3 million in AFT revenue.
I would like to challenge Weingarten to offer AFT members the total amount that AFT dues must rise in order for her to say no to all corporate-reform-associated philanthropic money given to AFT.

Reply
Janna

March 10, 2014 at 10:57 am
Thanks to Mercedes, Diane and all of the people who have been speaking loudly about this. Unions are our best hope to fight corporate reform and if our unions are misbehaving then we need to speak up and put pressure on them. I think the recent conference, and Mercedes recent posts and many private and public conversations demonstrated to Randi where her mistakes had been. And she has never been a fool. She knows where the wind blows. Great news!

Reply

2 comments:

flerp said...: Ravitch basically functions as a public relations firm for Weingarten based on their personal relationship.; Monday, March 10, 2014 at 12:56:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: Let me know when Randi starts representing the interests of teachers.; Monday, March 10, 2014 at 1:35:00 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

Monday, March 10, 2014

Randi Gives Up Some Gates Dough -- And She's Being Praised?

2 comments: