Did Mulgrew Sign On to Recent NYC Race to the Top Application?

NYC applied for a district RTTT grant, as revealed in Ed
Week. Did UFT sign onto this and if so, what does it contain? The statewide RTTT grant is supposed to contain funds for the data dashboards or “EngageNY portals” to be populated with data from
the inBloom cloud.

Given that the Newark Teachers Union recently scuttled the RTTT application (Newark TU Rejects RTTT as Randi/Del Grosso Contrac) and the requirement that unions sign on, this is a very pertinent question to ask the UFT leadership.

NEW MORE VIDEO: MORE Teaching, Less Testing!

I am wowed by this film by the MORE Media committee.



Posted at:
http://morecaucusnyc.org/2013/09/02/more-teaching-less-testing/

Sign the petition here: MORE Petition for Moratorium on NYC Teacher Evaluation System « Movement of Rank and File Educators

 

MORE's Brian Jones, Secretary of Department of Education, Will End TFA Contracts and Repeal NCLB and RTTT

In his spare time Brian is running for UFT Secretary on the MORE slate in the upcoming UFT elections.

The Indypendent newspaper "appointed" me US Secretary of Education and asked me "what would you do?" My reply will be in the print edition that comes out soon, and is online here: http://www.indypendent.org/2013/01/21/no-school-left-behind ---- Brian

Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Brian along with MORE presidential candidate Julie Cavanagh, narrated the film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman."

By Brian Jones

January 21, 2013

Issue # 183

Brian Jones
Secretary
Department of Education

As the new Secretary of Education, my first priority will be to reverse the trend toward the privatization of the public schools, to end the pervasive climate of fear and demoralization among the nation’s educators and to urgently promote desegregation and genuine equality of resources and opportunity in all K-12 schools.

Toward this end, I will seek an immediate repeal of No Child Left Behind legislation and of the Race to the Top competition. Together, these have raised the stakes of standardized assessments beyond any reasonable proportion; narrowed the curriculum; created a culture of corruption; cheating and competition between schools; and have increased the trend toward teaching as a short-term job, not as a long-term profession. I will call for an end to high-stakes standardized testing and a moratorium on school closings. Just as we commit ourselves to teaching every single student, we will likewise commit ourselves to improving every single school.

Teachers must be trained in the very best practices and must be given the opportunity to learn from experienced educators during their training. In our highest-needs municipalities, students only rarely have teachers who are from their community, and teacher turnover is high. Teach for America cannot be the model of teacher training for our schools. Therefore, I will seek an end to Teach for America contracts with municipalities nationwide. Shortages must be addressed by strengthening our schools of education and by developing pathways to train community members to serve as educators in their schools.

READ MORE

---

Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Breaking @AFT - Before Biden Speech: STOP RACE TO THE TOP From Chicago Teachers

NO to Overtesting, NO to Merit Pay, NO to Privatization.
YES to small class sizes, YES to early childhood education, YES to wraparound services.

Leaflet was passed out outside the hall by members of the Chicago Teachers Union as Biden is about to speak. But most delegates do not have it in their hands.

CTU people tweeting it.
The amazing Jen Johnson Jennifer Johnson ‏@jenj2399

CTU is a solutions-based union.

 #AFTConf12 @CTULocal1 http://pic.twitter.com/TQTos2Aa

Members of AFT Exec Council invited to stage.
Lots more to report but it is already 3:45.
===========
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Who Will Cast the First Stone?

by Norm Scott
Posted Aug. 20, 2010, last revised, Aug. 21, 9am.

Arne Duncan today announced a one billion dollar supplementary Race To The Top competition. 

The winner will be the first state to have a teacher with extremely low test scores stoned to death. "This technique has been highly successful when used by the Taliban," said Duncan. "While we don't have data – for obvious reasons  – we are guessing that test scores have improved in the areas of Afghanistan where this has been tried."

"Brilliant," proclaimed The Wall Street Journal.

Brent Staples of the NY Times was more reserved. "While this is not a proven tactic to close the achievement gap, we feel the plan holds a lot of promise."

Duncan explained the details. "The money will come from private funding so it will not cost the government a cent – other than the cost of the stones, which we will provide. We will have an auction and the winner will get to cast the first stone."

Hedge fund millionaires and charter school operators, whose teachers are exempt, were already lining up for the bidding war. Bill Gates and Eli Broad are expected to have the advantage.

"We will insist that the people most hurt by the teacher chosen to participate will play a major role in the stoning. Children and their parents MUST be included as part of the process," said Duncan.

"Children First," proclaimed Joel Klein in dissent. Klein later rescinded when Duncan said New York City would be one of the cities allowed to compete. Klein said he would go along with the plan to allow the highest bidder to be the first to toss a stone but clung to a Children Second program. Mayor Bloomberg offered to pick up the cost of the stones to give New York an edge.

AFT president Randi Weingarten was critical. "We don't feel this is productive. Teachers need a seat at the table and should be part of the process in choosing the teacher to be stoned."

Weingarten made the  point that the union had managed to convince the Obama administration to put a limit of one stoning a year.

"Outrageous," said UFT high school VP Leo Casey. "Incredibly, they wanted to stone 10 teachers. TEN!" he screeched. "But we stopped them in their tracks."


After burn
For a critical look at the LA Times article revealing teacher names:
http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/test-scores-and-ethics-outing-teachers-1097#comment-3634

For support see John Merrow, PBS correspondent- a sign of where Gates funding controls the debate on public TV and radio

Friends,
The LA Times article linking teachers by name with student scores has caused a firestorm among educators and reporters, but I maintain that every savvy person has known for years--long before bubble tests and so-called 'value added' measures, which teachers were cutting it, and which weren't. Think how hard parents fight, and always have, to get certain teachers for their kids. I think administrators are getting off lightly here--they've known who their bad teachers were but haven't done enough to retrain them or move them out of the profession. It's not 'the big bad unions' that deserve all the blame, much as some would like that to be the story. Here are my thoughts, and some strong disagreements from readers too:  http://bit.ly/9t6Eq9  Please respond on the blog itself.
Thanks, and best wishes,
John

John Merrow
Education Correspondent,
PBS NewsHour, and President,
Learning Matters, Inc

What a Union Can Do: 'Hey Barack!... Race to the Top Is a Crock!'

MAKING FOR A VIBRANT UNION:


IN THE 2ND ARTICLE, NOTE THE HEALTHY INTERNAL DEBATE IN CORE, SOMETHING THAT CAN NEVER HAPPEN IN UNITY IN NYC. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE THE UFT LEADING SUCH AN ACTION?

But then remember- CORE is a caucus within the Chicago Teachers Union - the caucus that runs the union but not the union. There is an important difference and it looks like they know what they are doing.

Organized by CORE, Chicago teachers and others protest Obama's education policies during August 5, 2010 Chicago visit

Sharon Schmidt - August 07, 2010
Substance - http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1583&section=Article

Chicago's Labor Beat covered the CORE demonstration against Race To The Top during Barack Obama's visit to Chicago and has produced another video scoop covering a major Chicago story. This time, the Labor Beat video is covering the August 5, 2010 protest during Brarack Obama's fundraising visit to Chicago.


Part of the protest against President Barack Obama's education policies picket the Chicago Cultural Center on August 5, 2010 while the President spoke inside at a Democratic Party fundraiser. Substance photo by Susan Zupan.In addition to showing the large and militant protest against President Obama's policies during the President's recent Chicago visit, the video features a speech by teachers Nate Goldbaum (editor of the CORE newsletter) and Carol Caref discussing what is wrong with "Race To The Top."

"You're not going to fire your way to good schools..." says Caref, responding to an editorial that appeared in the Chicago Tribune that day, criticizing new CTU President Karen Lewis for demanding due process for teachers who have been declared "unsatisfactory" by often corrupt principals.

To view on YouTube, readers can cut and paste the following into their browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM_WqraHAsU

The Labor Beat introduction to the video follows:

"As President Obama spoke inside Chicago's Cultural Center on Michigan Ave. on Aug. 5, 2010, outside a group of Chicago Public Schools teachers and other public workers protested. They were demonstrating against the Race to the Top (RTT) policies that Obama (and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) is pushing nationally in dismantling public education and attacking teachers unions. The demo was organized by the Caucus of Rank And File Educators (CORE, coreteachers.org) and also attended by CTA workers. 6:30 min..."

Teachers, other workers protest President Barack Obama's 'Race to the Top' during President's Chicago visit on August 5, 2010

Substance Staff - August 05, 2010
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1582&section=Article

More than 100 teachers organized by CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) protested the visit of President Barack Obama to Chicago on August 5, 2010. The teachers assembled with picket signs at the Chicago Art Institute and then marched down Michigan Ave to the Chicago Cultural Center, where Obama was speaking. Signs read criticisms of Obama and his education plan.

Teachers were not the only people protesting. They were joined by anti-war activists and other union members, including some from the Chicago Transit Authority who had previously been under attack from Mayor Richard M. Daley and current Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman (who was President of the CTA until Daley appointed him to the CPS job in January 2009).


Nate Goldbaum, a Chicago elementary school teacher and editor of the CORE newsletter, spoke to the August 5 crowd outside the Chicago Cultural Center while Barack Obama was featured at a Democratic Party fundraiser inside. One of the signs read: "Hey Barack! Race to the Top is a Crock." Substance photo by Susan Zupan.The plan for the protest was approved unanimously at a CORE meeting at Chicago's Operation PUSH headquarters on July 26, a week earlier, and was implemented by CORE members while the caucus was undergoing reorganization. After a lengthy debate, CORE members (more than 100 of whom were at the July 26 meeting) voted unanimously to protest during one of the fundraising parts of President Obama's visit. The CORE members defeated suggestions that the protests be held at President Obama's Chicago home, which is four blocks from PUSH in Chicago's Hyde Park-Kenwood community.


Members of the protesting groups march on the sidewalk on the Michigan Ave. side of the Cultural Center on August 5, 2010. Substance photo by Susan Zupan.Following the July 26 decision, there was heated debate about who should protest and how much the protest should denounce Obama's education policies (as opposed to just discussing the policy called "Race To The Top").


The group first assembled at the Art Institute of Chicago at Michigan and Adams Streets. Then it marched (above) to the Chicago Cultural Center at Michigan and Randolph three blocks to the north. Substance photo by Susan Zupan.Obama's Race To The Top is being viewed by a growing number of people as an attack on public education, while the demand that public school districts across the USA embrace charter schools, a form of privatization, is highly controversial.

CORE distributed hundreds of copies of a factsheet (above) downtown during the August 5 protest. The leaflet distributed by CORE not only outlined problems with the President's education policy, but also explained the situation in Chicago, where CORE leaders, now serving as officers of the Chicago Teachers Union, are facing off against Chicago Board of Education attorneys. The Board is demanding concessions from the CTU.

Prior to his election as President of the United States, Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator and United States Senator from Illinois. He was elected President in November 2008. One of his first cabinet appointments was to designate the controversial Chicago Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan to be U.S. Secretary of Education. Duncan began serving in January 2009, and by the summer of 2009 he had published the basic elements of "Race To The Top", which bore a strong resemblance to the failed "Chicago Plan" for so-called "school reform." 

Randi Races to the Bottom: Don't Expect the UFT to Rise Above

Here is another in our "UFT/AFT as Vichy collaborators" series:

I hope no one was surprised that Randi Weingarten today made it clearer than ever that she was an education deformer. Now some people have been fooled by her successor's phony militancy - there is a UFT election coming - and Mike Mulgrew has to look more militant than Weingarten. Well, it wouldn't take much.

What people must understand is that the AFT and UFT are one - the UFT totally controls the AFT and Unity Caucus controls both organizations. And both Weingarten and Mulgrew are creatures of the caucus. So do not expect Mulgrew to distance himself too far from Weingarten's statements today, though the dance he will make around it should be fun to watch.

Some reactions to the speech from teacher Marjorie Stamberg and parent Leonie Haimson:

Randi Weingarten is slated to give a speech in Washington today, accompanied by Obama's education secretary Arne Dunacan, where she will "unveil new approaches to teacher evaluation and labor-management relationships, and discuss a fresh approach to due process."

Meanwhile, a column by Bob Herbert in today's New York Times reports on an interview he had with the AFT president over the weekend in which she reportedly said "standardized test scores and other measures of student performance should be an integral part of the evaluation process." She also reportedly "is urging school administrators to observe teachers more closely and more frequently," and if teachers "did not measure up, they would be fired, whether tenured or not."

I don't usually comment on individuals, because the real problem with the labor movement is not this or that misleader but a union bureaucracy that is beholden to the Democratic Party and more generally to the interests of capital. But I'll say flat out, this is a crass betrayal of the teachers Weingarten claims to represent and an attack on the students we educate. Instead of fighting the teacher union bashers she is outrageously joining them.

Hooking teacher evals to student test scores is wrong -- for kids, for teachers, for everybody EXCEPT the privatizers, corporatizers and union-busters. This opens the door to massive victimization of teachers, as we are already seeing in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

We can't be surprised by this, since the union has had an experimental "voluntary" program on this for the past year, and since they tried to shove it down our throats with the so-called "bonus pay." I also expect this is one of Bloomberg's demands in the current contract bargaining that the union leadership is most likely to cave on. The UFT bureaucracy has been opening the sluice gates on this for some time, as with the introduction of school-based "merit pay.".

How is linking teacher evaluation to student scores on standardized tests wrong? Let me count the ways:

1) Teachers are already pressured into doing endless "test prep" which is a different animal than teaching. Can you fill in the bubble sheet or can you think? Endless test prep is bad for kids -- stressful, repetitive, and what does it teach?

2) Teachers are not responsible for how kids come into the classroom, their past learning experiences, their personalities, their diverse and amazing lives. We are dedicated, tireless and do our best to teach every student, using multiple methods, reaching every child. However, we must not be scapegoated for how this translates on bubble sheets!

3) For example, English language learners and special needs students may learn at a different rate, taking longer to process the information. That's a good thing; they are learning.

4) Hooking teacher evals to test scores necessarily means the low performing students will be pushed out of schools. Why? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. Even the most dedicated, tireless teachers will feel pressured to find positions in schools where kids get the highest scores --- it will be an economic reality if their jobs and raises depend on it.

5) Ergo --- the student dropout rate will increase, as it already is doing despite the attempts by the DOE to mask this by taking them off the roles as "transfers." Public education for all will continue to be whittled away; we will go to a system of higher education for the "elite" and McJobs for everybody else.

6) Am I making this up? The National Center for Education and the Economy, a Clinton-era think tank which Mayor Bloomberg says inspired his education program, published a 2006 report (financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that said that in order to meet the manpower needs of businesses, public education for all should only go up to the 10th grade.

7) This is racist, it is segregationist, and along with the push for charter schools it is "educational colonialism." It is of a piece of the program to close 20 schools in our city to make room for the charters. Jonathan Kozol has written powerfully that our schools today (50 + years after Brown v. Board of Education) are "American Apartheid) are more segregated than ever.

8) Corporatization, privatization, turning the schools into test prep academies; treating education like a business, not a process of teaching and learning. This program is designed to meet the needs of capitalism, not kids.

9) This program is coming from the top; not just Bloomberg/Klein, but Arne Duncan and Barack Obama. Thus, just to stand up for the democratic program of public education for all, integration of schools and "equal opportunity" we need a break from the Democrats and Republicans and a struggle for an independent class struggle workers party. It can't be done "piecemeal."

10) More information on this viewpoint can be read in "Class Struggle Education Workers." I invite you to check it out

--Marjorie


Leonie writes to her listserve

Randi Weingarten announced that linking test scores to teacher evaluation is acceptable to the AFT.

I just learned that she will be on "To the PoInt" today, a nationally syndicated call-in radio show about these proposals. In fact, I was due to be on the show to give the parent perspective on this show, about the Race To the Top grant program coming out of the Obama administration, and just learned I was bumped off by her.

No surprise there. When are any parents listened to at the national level -- or even locally?

The program will be aired live from California, starting 3 PM our time; to hear this live and call in, go to http://www.kcrw.com/schedule and click on listen live.

The show will be aired later tonight on WNYC at 10 PM..

Articles about Randi's announcement are here; (USA Today, Washington Post) and here (Times) . The WaPost article is below.

FYI, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences have said in their comments on Race to the Top that the research on tying value-added test scores to teacher evaluation is too unreliable to be used at this point, and that:

At present, the best use of VAM techniques is in closely studied pilot projects. Even in pilot projects, VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness should not be used as the sole or primary basis for making operational decisions because the extent to which the measures reflectthe contribution of teachers themselves, rather than other factors, is not understood.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12780

If you want to know what we think of the Race to the Top, you can check out my posting here or Patrick's (Sullivan) here.

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2009/08/comments-on-race-to-top-proposal.html and

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2009/08/susan-neumans-comments-on-race-to-top.html

Low Class Size is Precious

I saw the galvanizing movie "Precious" last night and it was riveting. I heard a lot about it but hadn't realized how much it was about teaching and education. Precious, a black teenager who had two children after being raped by her father and suffers from one of the most awful mothers imaginable (I saw a few myself- I'm working on one story which I'll post this weekend and link back here), is given an opportunity to go to an alternative school, where a dedicated teacher helps save her and her classmates.

Now we know all the ed deformers – and we have to make note that Oprah was a key person behind this film and her Chicago roots and attachments to Obama probably put her in that category – will make the amazing teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, the key element. But note how small the group she is working with and ask if she could do anything like that work with a full-size class. But just watch how this factor is ignored.

Contrast that situation to Precious' former school where her favorite teacher struggles to control a rowdy math class and is presented as being ineffective. But if he and Ms. Rain were to switch places, I wonder how things would work out? Would Ms. Rain be able to have 30 rowdy kids multiplied by 5 classes work on their writing and be able to read and comment on every one every day? Maybe. Maybe for a year or two before burning out. Could she take into her home the numerous kids in trouble she would face?

In all the hubbub over the film "Precious," don't forget one of the keys to the film is the extremely low class size and the support mechanism the school provides.

Think of the enormous effort on the part of one teacher to save this one child and add the multiplier effect. Too expensive will say the ed deformer Joel Kleinites as people like Christopher Cerf whine, "It has been shown that throwing cash at the problem doesn't solve it." Well they threw cash at GM, AIG, Bear Sterns, but alas not at Lehman Bros. The Precious people of this world apparently don't deserve to have cash thrown at an attempt to solve their problems by those deformers claiming to be fighting for civil rights.


The 4th season of The Wire also showed a troubled class of low class size and more than one adult in the room as being effective. Note how in all the discussion by the ed deformers for solutions to education, the idea of small groups is left out. Unless it involves charter schools, of course. BloomKlein with all the money they have been throwing around, never tried one case of inundating a poorly performing school with piles of teachers before closing it.

Expensive? Hell, yes. But they are throwing around 500 billion in stimulus money. Ask why they don't offer it to systems that figure out ways to reduce class size and you begin to understand how the true agenda is to move the control of schools out of public control and into private hands.