Ed Notes Online: John Elfrank

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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Congrats to John Elfrank-Dana who has now successfully battled two abusive principals

If this were Atlanta, Almonte would be leaving in handcuffs..... Ed Notes

Bergtraum HS principal leaves after caught pushing kids into substandard online courses & violating sped rights; sadly she will now likely go and ruin some adult ed program. Congrats to John ElFrank-Dana who has now successfully battled two abusive principals now…hope the school gets someone good finally!... Leonie Haimson

The school’s “blended learning” program, launched by Almonte, let hundreds of students take online courses at home in place of classes they failed or didn’t want to attend, prompting a state Education Department investigation....The state found the school failed to provide required services for special-ed students. Teachers reported constant threats and assaults by out-of-control kids during Almonte’s tenure. Dozens of staffers fled....The school had a 51.2 percent graduation rate in 2013.... NY Post

And the principal is rewarded:

Almonte, who made $144,777 last year, will become a city adult-school principal.

So she can go screw up another program. I know all about Almonte, who worked for a network and knew all about blatant cheating that went on at a school. If this were Atlanta, Almonte would be leaving in handcuffs.

We reported on the Bergtraum situation the other day: It's an exhausting enterprise getting rid of a principal, especially when you get NO help from 52 Broadway.

I'm glad Leonie acknowledges the work John has done in defending the teachers while the UFT told him to try to get along with the principal as she chopped away at his staff.

I have another piece to put up from John that will enrage everyone.

Speaking of Class Size by John Elfrank-Dana

John is the chapter leader of Murray Bergtraum HS in Manhattan.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http://laborslessons.blogspot.com/

Here I sit at the DOE hearing on the new Fair Student Funding scheme in the Project for Excellence (or something like that).

I made the following statement, facing the parents in the audience, which required me to turn my back on the Chancellor's panel (no disrespect intended).

Statement for Hearing on NYC Dept. of Education Contracts for Excellence

Millennium High School

7/11/2007

Good evening parents, students and colleagues. My name is John Elfrank-Dana. I am a social studies teacher at Murry Bergtraum High School, UFT Chapter Leader, Adjunct Professor at Fordham University and Carnegie Scholar. I am here tonight as a matter of conscience. I am here because I believe the success of the public school system is essential to preserving and extending our democratic society. And I am here especially because I am concerned your children are being systematically disenfranchised.

I came to teach at Murry Bergtraum in 1986. What I saw there was a vibrant educational community; a community to which I was hoping to send my own children some day. However, I am sad to report to you that it is no longer the case. My own children now attend school in a suburban district with class sizes of twenty-five or fewer students in buildings not over-crowded. My children, as did the children of many of the corporate bureaucrats who now run this City’s education system, have an educational advantage over my students at Bergtraum. This disparity is immoral and undemocratic.

The result of this injustice has landed Bergtraum on the No Child Left Behind’s hit list of failing schools. Once a model school, recognized nationally for its business program, Bergtraum is now a holding pen for large numbers of students the DOE doesn’t know what to do with as a result of the its rushed and reckless move to create small schools. As a result of this imposed injustice on our school we are required to take corrective action. We are told to evolve into a complex of “Small” Learning Communities. At Bergtraum we are taking on this challenge full steam. However, the prospect of successfully carrying out the required cultural change is not auspicious, as we are a school of 3500+ students and staff, in a building designed for 2400, with class sizes remaining at 34 and hallways swelling with students in the heart of a three-session school day. The term “small” is meaningless for us.

At Murry Bergtraum we demand a chance to succeed. The Mayor is obligated to provide the means for us to do so. The overcrowding must stop and class sizes must be brought down to levels comparable to surrounding suburban districts. We parents, students and educators, must continue to combine forces and mobilize using the methods of the great civil rights struggle against the corporatization of the school system. Over-sized classes are one component of a broader injustice taking place in our school system. It’s class size reduction that is the first and essential step in wresting control away from Mayoral tyranny over our schools and brining the “public” back into public education here in New York City.

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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 Online

Ed Notes Extended