AFT Endorses Obama -- See Randi Run to Explain It

Watch Randi explain why. 

What this means I believe is that the UFT members have no say or vote but correct me if I am wrong. Randi says AFT members overwhelmingly support the privatization of the nation's public school system. Randi does mention the Obama ed policies of the Obama/Duncan disastrous policies for the nation's teachers, students and parents. She claims Obama has supported workers' rights  – by cheering the firing of all those teachers in Central Falls?

Now, is there really a choice here? I guess it was hopeless to expect that holding an endorsement hostage would work. But I know one thing ---- I ain't getting up early on a Sunday morning to travel to Allentown PA to spend a day working for Obama this year. And I bet a hell of a lot of teachers won't be doing the same either.

Dear Norman,

This morning the AFT executive council voted to endorse the candidacy of Barack Obama for president in 2012. Watch this message from AFT President Randi Weingarten on the endorsement.

	Watch why AFT endorses Obama!

Education, jobs and the economy continue to be the top issues confronting our members and the country. When President Obama took office, he inherited an economy on the verge of collapse. Over the past three years, he has proposed and fought for legislation—despite an implacable Congress—that has worked to stabilize the economy, save jobs and prevent cuts to vital services that Americans depend on.

See where the candidates stand on issues that matter to our members by visiting AFT’s new 2012 Election website.

The Republican candidates are promoting a view of America that differs greatly from those concerned about economic and educational fairness. These candidates seek to repeal healthcare legislation. They have supported efforts to strip workers of collective bargaining and a voice in the workplace by jamming through so-called “right to work for less” legislation, as we saw in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere. And they support tax plans that don’t ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.

These are not minor differences. Re-electing Barack Obama will move our country forward in a direction that is fundamentally different from that of any of the contenders still in the running for the Republican nomination.

Watch President Weingarten’s video on the recent endorsement here.

This does not mean that we agree with every decision the president and his administration have made, particularly those education policies that place more emphasis on competition and measurements than on promoting what frontline professionals and parents know will improve teaching and learning in our classrooms. We recognize there is still work to be done. When we have disagreed with the Obama administration, the AFT has made that known, and we will continue to do so.

We hope you will join us in supporting the re-election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. Together, we can work to restore a strong middle class and a strong economy, and ensure that everyone has a fair shot at achieving the American dream.

For up-to-date information on the 2012 election, be sure to visit the AFT 2012 Election website and check out its Members Only section.


In unity,
John Ost
AFT Political Director

The Next Education Secretary: Another Horror Story?

UPDATE: Buried in this post and the comments section is my comment that Bill Ayres was an anti-union leftist (based on the elitism of the weather underground). Fred Klonsky disputed that. I backed off. Then Michael Fiorillo followed up and nailed Ayres as an arrogant elitist supporter of the Chicago school model of "reform". I'm posting Michael's comment as a stand alone right above this.

Susan Ohanian posted this Cleveland Plain Dealer article dealing with the next Education secretary with this comment:

On education, attention is focused on who McCain, Obama would name education secretary. We know McCain's possibilities are scary and most of Obama's are too. Just enter the names in a 'search'.

Susan has been a major supporter of George Schmidt's struggle against the Chicago 14 years of the mayoral control/corporate model of educational reform. The very same basis of the Educational Equality Project being trumpeted by Al Sharpton, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg, and John McCain. Obama hasn't signed onto it but supports some of the thrust.

Remember, his connections with Bill Ayres* was due to serving on an educational commission that has supported this Chicago model.

Underlying much of these "reforms" is removing schools from union influence (closing schools, creating charters, forced school choice that destroys neighborhood schools, etc., etc.) The two Chicago Superintendents in all these years have been Paul Vallas (failure in Philly and now heading the New Orleans mess that resulted in firing just about every union teacher) and former pro basketball player Arne Duncan whose mom had influence.

So I'm scratching my head over these excerpts from the Plain Dealer:

In a city where so much works well, Chicago's public schools seem to have improved little since the days a decade ago when Obama headed a philanthropic drive here that spent $150 million but did little to improve the educational opportunities for the city's children.

And don't forget Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan [for Ed Secty], a friend and adviser with whom Obama often plays basketball. Obama recently accompanied Duncan on a visit to Dodge Renaissance Academy...

You mean the same Obama's buddy Arne Duncan who has been in charge of a school system that is still failing under mayoral control after all these years?

In spite of the dismay people involved with education in NYC at all levels feel about the prospect of another 4 years of BloomKlein, one of the positives will be the loss of their legacy as having improved the schools as the number of better performing kids are wrung out of the system and into charter schools. What happens when most of the large large high schools are closed and there are few union rules left, if any and there's no one to blame? There's only so much manipulation of statistics and phony grad rates they can squeeze out. Kids who were in the 1st grade when they took over will supposedly be graduating from high school in 2013. If researchers explore this cohort they will discover the true horrors of the BloomKlein years when many of these high school "graduates" will find themselves in remedial college programs and the very same business community that supports Bloomberg with such fervor will find their potential hires with as few real skills as they had 12 years ago.

See Manhattan Panel for Educational Policy (Bloomberg's illegal renaming of the Board of Education) Patrick Sullivan, the only BloomKlein critic, outline what he sees for a Bloomberg 3rd term at the NYC Public School Parents blog.

Oh, there's one more nugget in the Plain Dealer article:

"Now you have an interesting array of people whom you can't really characterize," [Randi] Weingarten said. "You have to talk in shades of gray. Things never get implemented in education when you talk about litmus tests." That's why Weingarten is spending every weekend on the road campaigning for a guy who talks about performance pay.


*Bill Ayres [probably one of those anti-teacher union lefties- I jumped the gun on this one - see Fred Klonsky comment and my reply. I took some license here based on some of the attacks I've seen on teachers by the so-called progressive left. I accept Fred's point of view.]

Howling at George Will Who Knows How to Close the Achievement Gap

This spot on selection from Friday's Daily Howler, bears reproducing in full. (There's more on journalism and politics. Here's the link.) The Daily Howler is a must read as it goes beyond education, though ya gotta love the way he has taken apart Wendy Kopp and Michelle Rhee over the past year (check the archives.)

No self-proclaimed ed policy pundit and empty suit, Howler Bob Somerby spent a number of years teaching in the Baltimore school system in elementary school. Sorry you high school teachers, I think elementary school teachers who get closest to the kids, their families, their homes, their neighborhoods, have the best take on what is really happening and the solutions that might work. And what won't work. And to expose idiocies from the likes of George Will and David Brooks (see our posts here, here, here) when they speak Eduese.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008

GEORGE F. WILL, SLOW LEARNER: Is there any other subject where so many know-nothings pose as experts? Yesterday, George F. Will displayed his vast brilliance about the state of elementary ed. In the following part of his column, Will is discussing Benjamin Chavis, who runs a well-known public charter school in Oakland:

WILL (8/21/08): He and other practitioners of the new paternalism—once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism—are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.

That highlighted statement is simply astounding. And trust us: Will knows as much about this subject as you know about the space shuttle program. We know how to close the achievement gap! It’s amazingly easy to say—and many hustlers now constantly say it. For all we know, Will may be channeling Wendy Kopp, well-known biggest hack in the land.

Sorry, but no—we don’t “know how to close the achievement gap” at this time. When people parade about saying we do, they commit an unfortunate act. But then, every dumb-ass on earth seems to say this now—often on the flimsiest “evidence.” In large part, Will seems to be basing his uplifting claim on the high test scores at Chavis’ school (the misleadingly-named American Indian Public Charter School, which kids of all races and ethnicities). Many kids have achieved great success at the school. But does that mean we know how to achieve such success as a general matter? Will seems willing to say it does. But right at the start of his column, this “know-nothing know-it-all” dumbly describes one part of this school’s success:

WILL: Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too, is 13. Both wear the uniform—white polo shirt, khaki slacks—of a school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses to go away.

The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS's benevolent dictator, told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up to the rigors of AIPCS, which is decorated with photographs of the many students it has sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. So the boy asked, what must I do?

We often deride “slow-learner” students. But could anyone show less capacity for learning than George F. Will, right in this piece?

Why does Chavis’ school send so many students to Hopkins? Duh. In part, because it picks and chooses the kids who attend! The 13-year-old whom Will describes is already “doing well at school,” we seem to be told. Not only that: He’s so motivated that he’s paying another student to tutor him—and he’s already purchased the uniform of a school which won’t let him in! We’ll applaud that student, just as Will does. But if Will would only submit to paid tutoring, even if he could probably see that public schools, as a general matter, don’t select their students this way. The average school must accept all the kids who arrive—not just the brightest, most determined students, the ones who “refuse to go away.”

Friends, for just $5 a month, you can provides books and equipment for Will. Won’t you consider making that small donation to give him the help he deserves?

And while you're checking out the DC scene, read this July 28 post on union busting from DC City Desk. Pro-Rhee teacher blogs have suddenly appeared, which we wrote about here and here.

Dorothy Brizill, DC 7/28/08

http://www.prorev.com/2008/07/dc-shorts_28.htm


Watch Now - the Fenty-Rhee-Reinoso team may be on a collision course with the council over the proposed contract that Rhee will submit to the Washington Teachers Union. Rhee is seeking to bypass WTU's Executive Board and Delegate Assembly and take her proposed contract directly to the union membership. To accomplish that goal, Fenty and Rhee have launched a public relations campaign, both nationally and locally, to discredit the union and badmouth Washington teachers. The contract is a real union buster, asking current teachers to give up job security in exchange for potential pay bonuses. The government will not fund the bonuses, however; Rhee and Fenty are seeking startup funds from foundations such as Gates and Broad and the District's business community, such as CareFirst and developers. As a result, funding for the possible bonuses will only be guaranteed for the first year of the contract, while teachers will have given up tenure and job security, both for themselves and all new hires, permanently. However, the council has traditionally been very pro-union, and if councilmembers don't come out against these provisions in negotiations with teachers they will signal to all government employee unions that they can't be trusted to support them against Fenty's future union-busting initiatives.

How Serious Are These Conversations on Ed Policy....

.... if they leave out class size?

UPDATED: Friday, Aug. 21, 8AM

Philissa Kramer over at Gotham Schools writes:

If I hadn’t been battling illness all week, I would have beaten Kevin Carey over at the Quick and the Ed to the punch on Good Magazine’s current cover story, “School Wars,” by progressive educator (and blogger) Gary Stager. Though his criticism could have been gentler, Carey nails the big point: There are serious conversations going on right now about the source of trouble for urban schools and the best strategies for how to address them; these conversations have very real policy implications, but sentiments that, like these concluding Stager’s apparently interview-less piece, ignore both policy-level and day-to-day realities, just aren’t constructive.

No Philissa. The big point is this:

The “serious conversations” taking place often don’t include teachers who would in most cases say, “Don’t talk seriously about urban education until a real attempt is made to invest in a massive campaign to give urban kids the kind of education people like Kevin Carey would want for their own kids.” Note how often the Carey and other ed policy wonks supporting the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton EEP and leave out class size as anything more than an attempt by teacher unions to swell their ranks. The next thing out of their mouths are the magic words, “teacher quality.” As if massively lower class sizes would have little impact on TQ.

I don't necessarily agree with Gary Stager (who I first met in LOGO workshops decades ago when he was teaching computers in New Jersey) that the answer is parent activism. It would take a parent movement for sure but we also need to create a progressive teacher union movement that would fight for the resources to make this a battle for a true Marshall plan for ed reform. The current AFT/UFT and to a great extent the NEA try to straddle the "we want to be accountable" EEP position while having one foot in the Bigger, Bolder approach. They cannot have it both ways, as we in NYC have seen with such disastrous consequences.

Kramer and Carey nit pick while ignoring the big ideas in Stager's piece:

Traditionally, corporate philanthropy in education consisted of a speaker on career day or sponsorship of a softball team. I’m all for generosity, but I’m also for accountability. And I wonder, to whom are the Gateses and the Broads of the world accountable? They were not elected or even appointed, but their money is changing the ways public schools operate. They may do this for altruistic reasons, but what is a citizen’s recourse if their ideology harms children? And, worse, what happens if a billionaire finally throws up his or her hands and publicly exclaims, “Even I can’t fix the public schools”? Our schools may not be able to survive the sudden cash withdrawal—or the backlash.

One way to navigate this new era of “giving” is by asking a simple question: Would these folks send their own children or grandchildren to their “reinvented” schools? Is a steady diet of memorization, work sheets, and testing the sort of education the children they love receive? Of course not. If affluent children enjoy beautiful campuses, arts programs, interesting literature, modern technology, field trips, carefree recess, and teachers who know them, I suggest that we create such schools for all children. What’s good for the sons and daughters of the billionaires should be good enough the rest of the children, too.

A perfect example is James Eterno's fabulous letter to Richard Mills "Stop Academic Aprtheid at Jamaica HS" (posted today at ICE) where he points to the shortchanging of students at the bigger high school, while an elite small school gets preference. James writes:

According to the New York City Department of Education Website, Queens Collegiate is starting up with 81 students in the fall. They will receive $884,544 to run their school for 2008-09. Meanwhile, Jamaica is projected to have 1,484 pupils and was slated to receive an allocation of $11,636,267 this year. After extensive lobbying by the Jamaica High School community, our budget has recently been increased to $12,263,497. While we acknowledge the Chancellor and his financial officers for increasing our allocation, a huge per pupil spending gap between Jamaica and Queens Collegiate remains.

When the supplemental allotment is included, Jamaica, a traditional comprehensive high school that has many more high needs students, will be funded at $8,264 per pupil while the new selective school, Queens Collegiate, will be funded at $10,920 per pupil. This means that per student expenditures will be $2,656 greater at Queens Collegiate compared to Jamaica High School. This amounts to 32% higher spending for a Queens Collegiate student. Even taking into consideration start-up costs for the new school, this still adds up to separate and unequal schools within one building.

The promotional literature being produced by Queens Collegiate advertises lower class sizes. If Jamaica had a per pupil allocation similar to Queens Collegiate, we could easily lower class sizes to under 23 instead of having class sizes as high as 34, the level that we are currently projecting; we certainly could improve the student to counselor ratio and enhance other support services as well.

Despite the clear need for smaller classes, and the new state mandate to achieve them, particularly in low-performing schools, Jamaica High School In addition, valuable classroom space that could be utilized to provide room for this is being taken away from Jamaica to house the new school. is being denied the funding that would make this possible.

Gary Stager, (read Gary's entire piece at Susan Ohanian) like James, expresses the passionate anger that progressive teachers feel about these phony conversations that leave out real solutions. These are the true serious conversations that are taking place, not what Kevin Carey thinks they are.

Richard Rothstein has been putting his ideas out there for a long time on how to attack the problem and even has conjectured as to what it would cost. Seriously less than $20 billion for Fannie Mae, or billions for Bear Sterns. And need I mention Iraq?

"Serious" conversation over.