Ed Notes Online: Katie Couric

Showing posts with label Katie Couric. Show all posts

Friday, September 24, 2010

Katie Couric Assistant Comes Calling- Be at Lincoln Square Today at 6PM to See Real Reformers

I watched holding my sides laughing as Katie Couric interviewed WFS' Davis Guggenheim, who seems more pathetic every time I see him. (He loves unions by the way. Only not teachers unions.) If you read the review in today's Times they make the point that Randi Weingarten comes off as the villain in the film. What a joke when the Real Reformers also see her as a villain, but for entirely different reasons - like her abandonment of the fight for education equality - no matter what she says - remember the mantra - watch what she does - like appease the deformers on just about every single issue - and she was part of the deal with Rhee in DC. And Detroit - Oh, My! And Gates in Seattle.

So presenting Randi as our rep is beyond a joke.

Then there was that awful teacher who wants to give up tenure for money. Doubly pathetic. And they didn't exactly have a lot of screen time even if they had more to say.

So when I got this email from Erica Anderson who works at CBS with Katie urging me to promote her interviews with Guggenheim, I resisted the urge to delete.

Norm,

I read your post (http://bit.ly/9l9rjb) on Waiting for Superman in Education News Online. You brought up some very thoughtful points which is why I want to share with you the just-released interview on @KatieCouric today. Today Katie interviewed Davis Guggenheim and brought on a panel of educators from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College to pose questions to him.

I hope you will consider watching the videos and sharing with the readers of Education News Online. The only request I have is that you provide a credit to @KatieCouric on CBSNews.com.

Kind Regards,

Erica Anderson
DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS | @KATIECOURIC

Hi Erica,
Thanks for getting in touch. I would be interested in promoting Katie's interview with Davis Guggenheim but am ambivalent when there are so few voices in those videos. The people you had up there representing "our side" were fairly pathetic. It is not about salary to many teachers like the one you talked to.

For an educator like me who spent 35 years working in a high risk neighborhood in Brooklyn, mostly teaching elementary school, the things Davis Guggenheim has to say are almost laughable. Notice how he uses the term "status quo" for the old guard when in fact the new status quo has been the very "reforms", or deforms as we are referring to them, that have been in effect in places like Chicago for 16 years and in NYC for 7 years and have proven to be a failure. He talks about the 20% of charter schools that are doing great things. You don't think that 20% of the public schools are also doing great things? With unionized teachers with tenure yet.

It is no accident that Michelle Rhee has gone down in flames in DC. To call her a hero when the very community that she was supposed to be "saving" undermines Guggenheim's film.

We have a group of young dynamic teachers here in NYC who call themselves Real Reformers. I am working on a film with them called "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" and you can see the trailer at http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/. I urge you and Katie to watch it.

Today at the opening of Waiting for Superman" at the Loews 68th st theater, these teachers will be there to perform their rap version of Eminem's "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?". We are calling it "Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up?"

Many will be wearing homemade Superman capes and other logos. They include former Teach for America teachers who are staying in the classroom. Twenty and Thirty year old teachers who are committed to their students and also to saving the public school system from the charter school onslaught and market bases solutions (like merit pay - believe me these teachers would get merit pay because many of them are so good - ask them why they are against it) that have brought the US economy down in flames. Many have had their students negatively affected by the charter school invasion of their schools.

Read a fabulous review of Waiting for Superman by one of these teachers I posted on my blog:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2010/09/reviewing-waiting-for-superman-real.html

So if you want to talk to Real Reformers, send a crew over to the theater today or we can arrange for them to be available to talk at Katie's convenience. I'm betting she will walk away with a whole new point of view and see Davis Guggenheim's film for what it is.

Here is the press advisory.

Press Advisory

Date: Thursday, September 23, 2010

Contact:

Norm Scott: 917-992-3734

Parents and Teachers, the Real Reformers, Organize Response to “Waiting for Superman”

When: Friday, September 24^th, 6:00 P.M.

Where: Lincoln Square 13 Movie Theater, NY, NY

On Friday, September 24^th, parents and teachers will participate in a demonstration outside of the premier of “Waiting for Superman”. The film, which has garnered significant publicity in recent days, has taken the lead in framing the conversation about education reform. The Real Reformers reject this framework and intend to offer an alternative voice to the conversation.

Parents and teachers will be located outside of the Loews Lincoln Square movie theater at 6:00 P.M. The Real Reformers will stand up and present their demands and vision for real education reform. The Grassroots Education Movement will provide literature, a special feature, and will be releasing the trailer for their upcoming documentary, “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman”, which will be shown in New York City neighborhoods, and across the country, beginning in late October.

Together, parents and teachers are united in calling for Real Reform Right Now: Smaller Class Size, Excellent Community Schools for ALL, More Teaching- Less Testing, Parent Empowerment and Leadership, Equitable Funding for ALL Schools, Anti-Racist Education Policies, Culturally Relevant Curriculum, Expanded Pre Kindergarten and Early Intervention Programs.

View the Trailer for GEM’s upcoming documentary at: www.waitingforsupermantruth.org or www.grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com

Additional Contacts:

Lisa Donlan, Parent: 917-848-5873

Mona Davids, Parent: 917-340-8987

Sam Coleman, Teacher: 646-354-9362

Julie Cavanagh, Teacher: 917-836-6465

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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

Friday, September 24, 2010