Revised With Vichy Notes - #AFT 14 Video - Leo Casey At the Bat - Don't Let Tea Party Seduce You From Supporting Wonderful Common Core

No one seems to care why progressives are against the Common Core.  ... Susan Ohanian

UPDATE: I'm reposting Leo's speech at the AFT where he brands common core opponents as tea party influenced after reading Susan Ohanian's comments on the Bobby Jindal/ John White battle in Louisiana. Leo comes down on the side of White, the ghoul of closing schools here in NYC under Joel Klein.

My posting of the Mulgrew "punch in the mouth" speech has caused a lot of comment, as much about the issue he chose to get "livid"" about. Certainly he is not angry about the numbers of discontinued teachers, or the political assault on teachers by principals who are members of the CSA, the UFT's pals.

One of the themes I have tried to prove over the years, even to most of my colleagues in the opposition movement, is that our union leaders are not on our side - that they are collaborators with a Vichy mentality - that they are in many ways hired hands - akin to agents - whose job is to manage the members and make sure the course of the union never veers towards the kind of militancy that might in any way threaten the power structure - a dirty deal for rank and file. And for those who say "sue them" for running their scams, I point out that the courts are part of that power structure, with judges coming from the same ranks.

Here are Susan's comments on the article in the AP, followed by my original post.

Dispute over Common Core gets personal
Ohanian Comment: Governor Jindal's opposition to the Common Core is likely based in his eying a Presidential run in 2016. Conservative opposition to the Common Core was fed by an overreach by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan when they equired states that wanted to apply for federal Race to the Top funds to either adopt the standards or adopt comparable ones that would be judged "college- and career-ready."
No one seems to care why progressives are against the Common Core.
by Melinda Deslatte, Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- The clash over whether Louisiana's public schools should teach to the Common Core education standards has devolved into a bitter public feud that will have one-time political friends sitting on opposite sides of courtrooms.
Dueling lawsuits have been filed. An ethics complaint is in the works. Contracts are being audited. Accusations have been lodged of illegal behavior, ethical impropriety and political pandering.
And while the attacks grow more personal, major questions about the educational path of the state's public schools remain unanswered with students returning to classrooms in the next two weeks.
The upheaval started in June, when Gov. Bobby Jindal issued executive orders seeking to undermine use of Common Core and its associated testing.
The Common Core standards are grade-by-grade benchmarks of what students should learn in English and math. They have been adopted by more than 40 states and were once championed by Louisiana's Republican governor.
Supporters of the standards praise them as a better method for preparing students for college and careers after high school. Critics say the standards are untested, raise privacy concerns about data-sharing and damage state autonomy.
Jindal now opposes Common Core as a federal intrusion into local education, echoing the concerns raised by tea party groups around the nation.
But while the governor changed his mind on the standards, a majority of members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, still support Common Core, along with Jindal's hand-picked state education superintendent, John White.
State lawmakers also refused to jettison Louisiana's use of the standards earlier this year.
When Jindal suspended the testing contracts, he said the education department didn't follow state procurement law and needed to seek competitive bids for the work. But he also said the move would help to get "Louisiana out of the Common Core."
White and BESE President Chas Roemer said the governor overstepped his legal authority.
Roemer accused Jindal of trying to govern by executive fiat and of changing his position on Common Core to bolster his support from conservative organizations for a possible 2016 presidential bid.
Education groups and business organizations that once were allied with Jindal accused him of political gamesmanship and misuse of his oversight of state contracts. Jindal's Division of Administration accused White, his department and BESE of refusing to follow state contracting laws and a pattern of possible contracting improprieties.
Seventeen state lawmakers who oppose Common Core - but who couldn't persuade their colleagues to shelve the standards - filed a lawsuit alleging the state education board and the education department didn't follow state law in enacting the standards.
Parents, teachers and organizations who support Common Core filed a lawsuit of their own, claiming Jindal's violated the Louisiana Constitution by meddling in education policy that should be decided by the Legislature and implemented by BESE. The education board has joined in that lawsuit, with even two of Jindal's board appointees agreeing to sue the governor.
Hearings for both lawsuits are scheduled for mid-August.
Outside the actions in District Court, Common Core opponents also say they intend to file an ethics complaint against White and several BESE members, raising questions about conflicts of interest and ties to organizations that they say hold "undue influence" in education policy.
BESE member and Common Core critic Jane Smith, the only Jindal appointee to vote against suing the governor, posted a message on Facebook talking of planned audits and alleging ethics violations in the Department of Education.
White issued a letter a few days later, saying he felt he was being personally attacked with suggestions of "unfounded malfeasance" within his office. He defended his support of Common Core and testing aligned with the standards, outlined how he's reimbursed for travel expenses and speeches to outside groups and said he's notified the ethics board of each transaction.
The nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a government watchdog organization, said the situation has reached a "crisis level" and blamed the governor for causing the educational chaos.
Whether the feud is rooted in education policy or politics, there doesn't appear to be a quick resolution on the horizon for those most affected by its consequences: Louisiana schoolchildren.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: Melinda Deslatte covers the Louisiana Capitol for The Associated Press.
— Melinda Deslatte Associated Press
August 03, 2014

This may be worse than Mulgrew's speech. Immediately after his speech, Leo went right to the Mendacino vinyards to pick grapes.

Breaking: John White Is Missing Link Between Vampires and Humans

John White emerged from a nonhomosapiens branch of robot-like hominids that show no emotion under any circumstances, especially when hearing the pleas of children of color to keep their schools open.

John White as he emerges at twilight

John White, side view

Former Tweedie (and TFAer) John White as the czar of New Orleans and Louisiana schools, has teamed up with Gov. Bobby Jindal to offer vouchers to schools, even those that will not teach evolution but creationism.

This led the crack Ed Notes sleuths to look deep into White's fossil history after reading this NY Times piece "New Fossils Indicate Early Branching of Human Family Tree," on the assumption that White may come from a branch formerly thought to be extinct.

We discovered that at one point deep in our past a branch of the hominid tree thought to be extinct consisted of people so white that even the name White doesn't do them justice:  Robot-like hominids that show no emotion under any circumstances, especially when children of color from closing schools plead to keep their schools open. But the key finding, that these hominids were nocturnal gave us the clue we needed:

John White is the missing link between vampires and homo sapiens.

There is hope. Bobby Jindal's views on exorcism indicate that he and White might hand over public money to schools that teach exorcism with the hope that White's bloodless look and lack of emotion might be cured by an exorcism that would enable White to emerge from his sleeping quarters during daylight hours.

Will Jindal exorcism allow John White to sleep in a bed?

Finally, we discovered this item that critical of the Ed Notes findings:

Tim White, an evolutionary biologist from University of California Berkeley said that it’s “(S)imilar to someone looking at the jaw of a female gymnast in the Olympics, the jaw of a male shot-putter, ignoring the faces in the crowd and deciding the shot-putter and gymnast have to be a different species.”

Afterburn: links to articles

Louisiana Voucher Program: Crazy 'Facts' Students Will Be Taught Under Bobby Jindal's Program 

14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools

John White's First Act in New Orleans: Fire 250 veteran teachers

I've been telling you for years that bloodless John White is a vampire who only comes out at night - really, I've never seen him in the daylight - just look at that picture. Oh, and he's another Teach for America grad and a Broad Academy grad. Yes, TFA and Broad ride the point of ed deform.

From: "Hill, Lance" <lhill@tulane.edu>

Louisiana contracts with Teach For America to bring in approximately 300 teachers to New Orleans every year, so regardless of the qualifications of the current veteran teacher corp, the state has to annually fire several hundred veteran teachers to make way for novice temporary teachers.  Some veteran teachers gain jobs back in the other state-run schools—largely replacing TFA teachers who leave the state-run schools to teach in charter schools.  

The layoffs are done under the pretext of closing down schools, but with a commitment of hiring 300 TFA teachers, the veteran teachers would have to be fired even if not a single school closed.  Of the 250 teachers slated to be “surplused,” the state will fire 87 under a new teacher evaluation program based on classroom evaluation by principals.  

 http://bit.ly/lCacjE

Recovery School District will use teacher evaluations in deciding layoffs

Published: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 8:15 PM     Updated: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 8:16 PM

By Andrew Vanacore, The Times-Picayune
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Almost 250 teachers will lose their jobs this summer at New Orleans schools run by the state's Recovery School District in what's become an annual occurrence as officials close down underperforming schools and convert others into charters.

View full sizeChris Granger, 

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Bill Perkins Charter School Hearing: The Longest Day

Updated, Friday, April 23, 7am and 8am

Just back from the Perkins charter school hearings. Shades of January PEP hades.

I took almost 8 hours of video - it didn't end until after 9pm I think - and I was the last speaker with about 6 people in the room. I just read the Gotham live blogging by Anna and Maura at Gotham along with comments. In the live blog they lost some necessary background (or being so young they missed some subtle points). Also in the attempt to be balanced there is some tipping and not enough skepticism over some things pro-charter school people say and some extra skepticism over what some anti-charter people say. It is nice David Cantor gets to testify to Gotham privately. Why don't I get to do that too? And actually taking the questions of Assemblyman Michael (I want vouchers - along with buying an Edsel) Benjamin seriously- give me a break.

For Gotham to make this the lead based on a typically biased article in the Post is tipping:

Rise & Shine: Could charter stance push Perkins out of office?

Was this the take away from 12 hours of hearings? I call it tipping. If people want to go there just watch the army of people who come out to defend Perkins if he comes under attack from Wall Street (see below.) I NEVER get involved in political campaigns but I would for this one.


Here is what I remember - I'll add to it in the morning if more comes back to me. (I WOKE UP AND ADDED A BUNCH).

I got there at 10am. The street around 250 Broadway was filled with a bunch of Harlem Success Academy people demonstrating.

Peter (I assume Goodman from the UFT - and father of the former UFT middle school charter principal) left this comment at Gotham.

Got to 250 Bdwy at 8 am … room was full and no one allowed in … charter school parents (?) arrived with anti-Perkins, anti-UFT signs, and young white guys in suits clearly in charge. I asked they who they were and who they represented, they scurried away.

TV crews identifying themselves as “independent” media were doing interviews. Saw NY1, WNYC, NY Teacher reporters interviewing … after an hour the “picketers” left.

Take whatever Goodman has to say with a grain of salt but I also saw signs of these HSA "shadow" organizers at previous events.

I was able to get in with my press pass from The Wave and some HSA charter school people, having seen me at various meetings, started screaming about it but the guards let me in.

Got up to the packed hearing room but as press I was able to squeeze my teeny camera and tripod down in front - thanks to UFT pfotog Jack Miller for making room for me - he was working hard all day. By the way, the room had a fair number of Unity Caucus UFT people so it looks like they filled the seats while Harlem Success was outside demonstrating. There were lots of complaints from HSA people about favoritism showed to the UFT but there were also plenty of non-UFT community anti-charter people present too.

I caught the end of Diane Ravitch and she was fabulous. Mulgrew did a good job - except when he had to waffle on the performance of the UFT charters - but he even didn't do too badly on that. He was so much clearer that Weingarten ever was so it was a breath of fresh air - and his wise guy attitude served him well when he came under attack. I liked his performance and shook his hand as he left. Next came the NYSUT guys and I turned off the camera to save tape but so much of their testimony on charter school malfeasance was so compelling I turned it back on.

The $10,000 UFT contribution to Perkins came up when Perkins asked Mulgrew to check his pockets to see if he was in there. I watched the Post's hitman Carl Campanile as this exchange took place. I was going to go over and ask why he didn't look into how much money pro charter school politicians received but he works for the Post (which also had Yoav Golen there - pretty interesting to have the same event but I think I also saw Rachel Monahan and Meredith Kolodner from the Daily News who did that story on charter school malfeasance that was referred to so often during the hearings, so this is considered a pretty big event.


One of the state senators, Craig Johnson, was totally pro-charter, so the pro-charters got their digs in through him. He was pretty well prepared and Mona Davids accused him of being a shill for the charter school association. An assemblyman from Harlem named Michael Benjamin was also pro charter - his questioning was somewhat ridiculous but it is so long ago I forgot why - I just knew I was seething to question him and break him down. Oh, I remember - he attacked the UFT over not supporting the community in 1968 - real grandstanding since the mayor got control because of perceived problems with community control.

Will the NY Post report how much money these guys got from pro-charter forces? I think someone said Johnson got $65,000, a paltry sum compared to the UFT giving Perkins 10 G's. By the way, I took some video of Post reporter hit man Carl Campanile when he wasn't taking notes on some testimony that might damage his boss.

Magnificent Mona (no longer moaning) Davids was there with her crew of charter school parents who are on our side (one person active on Leonie's list came over to whisper I should be nice to MM since she has shifted - I am being nice though we still disagree a bunch.) They talked about parent and teacher rights at the charters and stressed that they wanted to protect teacher rights to assure they speak out against the abuses of charters since they were the only ones willing to stand up for the kids and some were fired. That was the very reason for tenure in the first place and many of us have been arguing that it is teachers who defend kids, not supervisors who often are the ones who want to cover up.

There was some contention when John White and the SUNY and State Ed Dept reps were on the panel discussing how charter schools get approved and monitored, with most of the fire directed at White. In previous testimony, Councilman Jackson talked about how his constituents were getting calls and mail about charter schools, even at private numbers and Perkins wanted to know how that information got into the hands of the direct mailing company - Vanguard- that has a contract with the DOE. One of the few times I ever saw the usually inflappable White (one of the Tweedies parents seem to despise the most) show signs of sweating.

Things between Perkins and White flared up again over Democracy Prep's Seth Andrews' threat to raise money from his Wall St. buddies to go after Perkins with Perkins trying to get White to discuss whether there should be an investigation over the involvement of someone running a NYC chartered school in the political arena. White responded that only if school funds were involved. Perkins did not come off that well in this exchange but he was getting real hot over the issue, as were his colleagues Velmanette Montgomery and Inez Barron. This allowed White to regain the high ground and he recovered to defend the DOE against Assemblywoman Inez Barron's criticism of the results city grad rate and test results, which I felt she could have done more effectively. But her track record as an educator (teacher, principal) gives her great creds and she said she would track down stats for future fisticuffs.

As I sift through the tapes, some of the White segment should go up first.

By the way, the crew from District 15 and PS 15 were shocked to actually have Velmanette Montgomery actually recognize that PS 15 and Red Hook were in her district since she has never responded to their pleas for assiatance in their battle against PAVE. Maybe a sign the heat being applied by the CAPEers from PS 15 and strong allies like Jim Devor, CEC15 head, who also testified, is having some impact.

I ran out of tape after 5 hours so I took an hour off to get something to eat (a Cubano sandwich with rice and beans) and go to J&R and buy some more tapes - and check out the new Macs. I almost didn't go back.

But I was glad I did as a bunch of good buddies were about to speak. Bill from PS 123, Lydia from PS 15 (with what I consider the single most powerful testimony of the day - this should be the tape that goes up first), Akinlabi from CPE , Jim Devor from CEC15 and a bunch of others I am too tired to remember. I have to check the video. (By the way, they streamed the entire day's testimony as a webcast http://www.livestream.com/NYSenate_CorpAuthComm and the guys taping said the entire tape will be up on the web soon.

A bunch of pro charter school people came next - Peter Murphy who Perkins tweaked often about his editorials was one.

And Harlem Link founder Steve Evangelista threw in the kitchen sink as he trashed the two public schools he taught at as the reason he started his own school. He had a whole list of what seemed from my experience to be legitimate complaints but some seemed a bit off. He complained that he had all these pullout teachers coming into his room in his former public school and wasn't allowed to talk to these people. I wonder what would have happened to him if he did? I can't conceive of a teacher who felt it important to discuss kids with colleagues not doing so.

It seems he had 2 bad schools and has used that to bludgeon the public schools, teacher unions, etc. I heard lousy testimony about a few charter schools too and pleas to not judge all charter schools based on that. Did he try to find a better public school? It would seem that fighting to make the public schools a place for people like him to work in and to serve the 98% of the kids left out of charters would be a worthwhile political fight.

As someone who felt the same type of frustrations, I was equally frustrated by his testimony that used just about every Ed Deform buzz word - my favorite was OUTCOMES. You know what outcomes are Steve? Finding out what happened to your kids in 20 years. Many of us back then and the teachers I work with now in GEM did not run off to start our own schools and serve a little corner of 2 percenters while abandoning the rest. They stay and fight and even risk their careers.

The fireworks really flew when he called Perkins a liar and Perkins responded - I have to check the tapes for details.

One interesting comment he made: he is competing with Harlem Success to some extent now - and may the best school win. It is capitalism, isn't it? But I don't think he has to worry since Eva has enough schools in Harlem - how much creaming can you - and is moving on the skim off the south Bronx.

I was the very last speaker as the rumble of people's stomachs almost drowned me out and made the point that John White extolled charter schools as performing so much better that the public schools he runs. He also bragged about the enormous demand for charter schools - from people running away from the schools his bosses manage.

I was on a panel with 3 passionate charter school parents from HSA who are very proud of their kids and their school. I said I couldn't blame them for making a decision to not have their children attend schools they see as not being the best for their children.

There were many signs at HSA supported events talking about public school failrues. But then HSA use parents in a political manner to support mayoral control - at the big HSA rally they gave out cards to every attendee urging them to support the continuation of mayoral control - giving power to the very people who were managing the schools they were running away from.

As I often say, charter schools are about political ideology, not education.

One of the parents was a very nice guy who carries a pack of 20 books around that his daughter had to read. I told him next time we would get public school parents to come with a pack of 30 books their kids had read as proof the public schools work better than charter schools. I see HSA bringing fork lifts with stacks of books to upcoming meetings.

The parent is a policeman and I asked him what would be his reaction of he worked in a high crime area and the mayor said it was his and his colleagues' fault - their union you know - if only the cops would donate a few extra hours a night just think of how many more cops on the street and how crime could be reduced. So a solution would be to set up a competing precinct down the block run by private agency but using public money.

I hope he thinks about that scenario the next time HSA does its union bashing.

Oh, yes, I pointed out that HSA brought 2 nice shiny buses and a professional videographer and sound guy to the PEP meeting. A nice piece of change - I know, I know it is private money (that could have gone to the classroom but when you have everything why waste it on that?).

As I said - political, not educational.

In the end we had a very nice chat on the way to the subway and promised to keep the discussion going.

Add-on:
On the way into the hearing I heard, "Mr. Scott" and there was a former student from my school from around 1970-71 waiting on line for some other business. She told me her son was a special ed teacher. Now get this - I also had her son as a student - in the early 80's yet - scaaary. But she had him when she was even scarier young - like young teens, so not impossible. I think he may have been in the same 4th grade class as the other kids I have recently connected up with. He went through some issues I think as a teen so this was good news - YIKES - GOOD NEWS, WORKING FOR THE DOE? That's the 2nd student from that class to become a teacher. Didn't I learn them better? So far all of the kids I've connected up with recently have done pretty well in the world. Other than the one who got out of jail after 28 years. Makes me less pessimistic.