Ed Notes Online: Occupy

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Friday, January 20, 2012

GEM Film Fires Up John Dewey Teachers and Teachers and State Legislators in Albuquerque/ Three NYC Screenings this Weekend

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

Lots of screenings in NYC and around the nation, with 3 here in NYC this weekend. Last night I hear between 20 and 30 people viewed the film, including "Battle for Brooklyn" director Michael Galinsky, whose film has been on the short list for an Academy Award nomination. Michael, whose child is in a school that came under Tweed interference has been a promoter of our film and the support and advice of a pro to us amateurs has been inspiring.

My question is why more NYC school-based people who read this blog are not showing the film which seems to have had such a positive impact on teachers under assault?

I was at the picket line at John Dewey this morning and had a great response from the small group of people who stayed after school yesterday to watch our response to WFS. I heard there was a standing ovation from people at a school under severe attack by the ed deform crowd at Tweed that they were inspired. One teacher told me she was hoping to show it to the entire staff during regent week next week.

Of course the UFT continues to snub a film that people say has been the best film response to ed deform and an inspiration for activism. Oh, that's right. The UFT doesn't really want working classroom people active. Only retirees. We made the film that the UFT with all its money should have.

At least some AFT locals are free to hold screenings and here is a great report from two teachers in New Mexico whose local president held a screening and invited 6 state legislators.

They sent this with a $20 check:

My husband and I are both teachers. We saw a viewing early on and wanted a copy of our own. This past week our union had invited members and state legislators to a viewing (it was very well received by all) to which we brought our copy just in case. It happened that our president's copy was scratched so we used ours. It was a rewarding evening. There were six senators and reps there --- we all got fired up.
I have gotten permission from my principal to play it for interested staff and others after school one day. Thank you for making it so readily available.
F and R
Albuquerque public schools
Albuquerque Teachers Federation #1420

There are 3 screenings this weekend and another at 6PM on Thursday at PS 84 in Williamsburg just 2 blocks from MS 50 which held a raucous hearing on Jan. 17 opposing the Moskowitz invasion:

Sat: Jan. 21, noon: Labor Goes to the Movies

Special Saturday Screening of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman-- both films with WFS first so if you saw that go later.

January 21 - 12:00pm ,PSC Union Hall, 61 Broadway, 16th Floor
Please join us for our special back-to-back Saturday screening/discussion on January 21 of Waiting For Superman and The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. One has received massive publicity and funding to promote charter schools as part of a neoliberal reform. The second one is a local NYC response, made by NYC schoolteachers, exposing the inaccuracy and inequity driving the charter school movement. We will view both films and have a discussion featuring Julie Cavanagh, one of the Inconvenient Truth producers, and PSC's Treasurer and author on the charter school movement, Mike Fabricant.
The screening is sponsored by the PSC and is open to the public.
PSC Union Hall
61 Broadway, 16th Floor
$2 donation
Refreshments served
RSVP Phone Number:
212 354 1252 ex 270
Email Address:
shughes@pscmail.org

Occupy Williamsburg sponsors 2 screenings:
Sunday at 2 and 4PM at Spectacle Theater in Williamsburg
124 South 3rd St. near Bedford Ave.

Sponsored by Community Education Council District 14
Thursday, Jan. 26 at 6PM
PS 84 - 250 Berry Street (between Grand and South 1st).

-------
Tonight: PS 215 School closing hearing in Rockaway at 535 Briar Place.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

TODAY: Occupy Brooklyn Charter Schools Teach-In and Film Screening of TITBWFS

Occupy Brooklyn Charter Schools Teach-In

Charter Schools and the Impact on Public Education
Thursday, January 19th 2012
6pm   Occupy Brooklyn General Assembly
7pm   Film Screening: The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman written and directed by NYC public school teachers and parents
8pm   Panel and discussion with NYC educators and parents

The Commons388 Atlantic Avenue (between Hoyt & Bond)
Brooklyn

Refreshments Available
Organized by Occupy Brooklyn’s Education Working Group

www.occupybk.org

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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, January 20, 2012

Thursday, January 19, 2012