This Was The Week That Was: Norms Social Notes

It's been a busy week at the ole homestead. So, given my disappearing

Mighty Max: 7 weeks old

memory, I'm doing a day by day chronicle of the last week so I don't do the same things this upcoming week where the only thing on the agenda is going to see Dirty Wars Monday and the MORE summer series: UFT leadership, Friend or Foe on Thurs. (Come on down -- $3 happy hour beers -- I may have a few BEFORE the meeting.

Saturday July 13

Brother, sister love

Brother in law birthday. Go to Jersey, the Highlands, for party. Hot. Hit lots of traffic in SI and on Garden State. Eat lots of hot dogs (one was fat free), cheeseburgers, drink lots of beer. Play Boce on lawn with 29 year old cousin Dan as partner while bro-in-law gets stuck with my wife who throws ball sideways-- see pic for reaction. I'm not bad and have a Boce future.

See niece's daughters (28 months and 5) get more interesting with every visit -- they lobby parents for another child, 5 year old complaining what hard work it is to be a big sister -- she has to do all the work. Wife ends up alone with them taking care for about 15 minutes. Nothing like watching her chase a 2 year old around.

See benefits of being only child as my wife and her brother do a love pose.

Sunday, July 14
Celebrate future testing opt-outer Jack Cavanagh's first birthday with Julie and Glen - and about 50 others. Jack has had quite a year, attending DAs, MORE meetings, etc -- if this kid becomes a teacher I will be shocked. Looked like great food -- but  still full from all the crap from Sat so miss out and eat little -- which I regret an hour later when I get home and am starving.  Mollie and Darren are there and we get to meet 6-week old Max for first time. (I gotta find some of the great Max --- another future opt-outer.) And how great to see Lisa Donlan who I don't see often enough. The whole Real Reform crew was there except for Brian. Making the Inconvenient Truth Behind WFS was one of the richest experiences of my life and the team will be bonded forever. Now let's get all those kids grown up so we can do another one.

Monday, July 15
Stay home and stare at garden of the future while smoking a pipe and reading "Dirty Wars" (looking for drones from Bill Gates) while doing no work. Too bad you can't dream a garden into life. I have all these grandiose plans to build, build, build but so far all I do is cut vines, brush - my inner George Bush -- and take down old trellises. At night I don't even watch the home run hitting event, which bores me to hell. So I sit on deck and smoke and read.

Tuesday, July 16
Ditto Monday (with a visit to gym) until leave for Change the Stakes steering comm meeting at 4:30 followed by regular meeting at 6. My fave group of people -- maybe because most are parents and not teachers. Screw the all-star game though I do get home to watch some of it. Snore.

Wednesday, July 17
College pal Dan and Australian wife Robyn do insane thing. Took a bus from Washington DC where they now live to Manhattan where they took the Jitney to East
Hampton for a few days. That entire process takes almost 8-10 hours and they get in Monday night. (Love this week's NY Jitney cover.)

So we do a more insane thing. Rather than go to our beach 3 blocks away, we drive 2 and a half hours to the Hamptons to go to the beach there -- which frankly didn't impress me much. We manage to eat lunch before the beach and dinner later (no missing meals in my wife's world), though we choked on the outrageously expensive food and surly service for dinner. Still a great view of sunset followed by another 2.5 hour trip home in the dark - can't they afford lights in EastHampton? No baseball to miss tonight so all is good. Love that XM radio.

Thursday, July 18
Julie comes to beach with 2 pals and no kids. I never go to the beach unless people come. So I head over to meet them in 95 degrees at noon. Surprisingly there is a nice breeze and it feels pretty good. Get 2 hour harangue about what a sexist I am -- I need to send her pics of my junk in my underwear and then ask for rehabilitation  -- hey, it worked for some people. It was fun to chat given how busy Julie has been and also get over to the beach and see the progress in repairing the wall.

Get home at 2:30 and head for deck to smoke and read more "Dirty Wars" while looking up for incoming drone from the AFT while checking back fence for signs of CIA assassination teams. At 4 wife says, "Hey, want to go to the beach?" So off we go for another 2 hours. More beach time over last 2 days than I've had in a year. My face is RED!

David, Gloria, Liza, Lisa, Moi, Pat

Still no baseball so stay up for Letterman and Craig Ferguson.

Friday, July 19
The big MORE air-it-out meeting where we get to bitch about the good, the bad and the ugly. Sorry, can't speak about it without worrying about a MORE drone. But kudos to Seku and Jia, 2 of the emerging leaders of MORE for doing a spectacular job.
Aside: Too bad people think of a caucus only in terms of elections. Most important: 30 people care enough give up a hot Friday afternoon (if people weren't away it would have been 60) to shlep into the city for what could have turned out to be a difficult meeting and to have 2 relatively new people a) be trusted to handle this and b) to have that trust reinforced beyond conception is what makes this work so rewarding.

Liza can make anyone feel happy- even me

Then it was party time as some of us headed over to a bar in Williamsburg for Liza and Vanessa's bachelorette party. I've never been to a bachelorette party before. "Don't worry," Gloria told me. "No one thinks of you as a guy." Gee thanks. David came along with Pat to make sure I wasn't the only guy.

Vanessa and Liza

The official wedding is in Maine next week which we can't attend. Turns out they got married officially on Friday so this was a very special evening for us all. Those who know Liza's awesome history of activism in GEM, NYCORE and the early stages of MORE miss her terribly since she and Vanessa moved to Seattle, where Liza has jumped into the test resistance movement.

Saturday, July 20
Last day of heat wave. So instead of going to the beach we head into Brooklyn to our friends' daughter and hubby's new apartment they moved into yesterday in Fort Greene near Washington Av and Greene St. Nice place in a gentrifying neighborhood. I can't get my head around an

at the ice cream stand minutes before downpour

apartment that costs 7 times what I paid for my house 34 years ago. (You can get an entire house in Rockaway for the price of an apt in Bklyn now). Then we walk over to a nice little restaurant a few blocks away, followed by a walk over to Dekalb near Vanderbilt for some ice cream. Where we get caught in a massive downpour and my wife has the only umbrella. While waiting it out under an overhang we meet a British/Scottish couple with a 4 month old and a dog. We all make friends very quickly before heading off into the rain, trying to walk between the drops.
Stay up till 2 watching Bourne something or other followed by The Newsroom.

Sunday, July 21
Gym and a day of just hanging out -maybe a movie and afternoon nap---

Sunday on Monday, June 18 - It's a Wrap

This past week was a bit lighter on activism than the busy week of June 4. I won't bore you right up front but you can read about the week that was with some commentary below.

Here are some connections to check out from the blogs on issues I would have blogged about. If you don't check out our extensive blog roll you are missing a lot. Really, I should just cull from all the great blogs and never actually have to write anything myself.

Last Stand for Children First
Anything written on this great satirical blog out of Chicago is a howl.

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A School Too Far: Is School Choice Unraveling Education Reform In New York City?

Marc Epstein nails the de-coupling of schools from the surrounding neighborhoods.
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James Eterno at the ICE blog:
CAN YOU BELIEVE WE'RE GOING TO FACT FINDING AGAIN?
And his report of the Delegate Assembly (which I still hope to report on):
SPECIAL DELEGATE ASSEMBLY: UFT ENDORSEMENTS & MULGREW RESPONDS TO LAWSUIT
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Gary Rubinstein discovers secret of charter schools that claim success:
....the strategy that charters have proved effective is:  Keep the bottom 15% of the kids away from the top 50% of the kids. What charters teach us

My comment
Some charter school charlatan will come up with this: we will take the 15% if you pay us a lot. Then they will do something analogous to the New Jersey half-way house scam the NY Times has been talking about -- cut services to the bone and treat the kids like prisoners. No one will rally care much anyway --- the operators will make a lot of money, the public schools -- whatever is left of them can compete with charters on a more equal basis, but ultimately they will disappear too since the only reason to keep them around was to service those 15%. A nice tidy package for the privatizers.
Might take another generation but it will come.
One of the big culprits in all this has been the teacher unions trying to straddle the line and refusing to challenge the very idea of charters as having that ultimate aim.

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Perdido Street School:

AFT, NEA Need To Pressure Obama To Stop Teacher Bashing And Race to the Top

My comment:
Before pressuring Obama we have to pressure the teacher unions. But good luck with that when dealing with the UFT/AFT a top-down monopoly of power. The only pressure they will understand is when there are thousands of teachers in the streets screaming for their heads. See Chicago. Now that union might still endorse Obama but as a local political tactic given the war that is going on in that city. Or maybe not. If they go on a strike in the fall, it will be fun to watch Obama's silence in the midst of an election campaign and a labor war in his own city. The CTU seems able to gather community support at the grassroots level -- they have been working on this since the CORE caucus was founded 4 years ago so they have foresight.

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Accountable Talk takes apart Walcott's arguments for giving him sole right to fire teachers accused of sex-related issues.

Love this one:

if Walcott is correct, what he is saying is that the city knowingly agrees to hire arbitrators who send sexual predators back into the classroom. And since he is in charge of the DOE, the buck must stop with him. He is as guilty as anyone of what he claims is true. 

Dennis Walcott, Debunked
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 Diane Ravitch who has a new toy with her new blog where she is prolific sent this link to a hilarious 11 minute video that features a conversation between a teacher and supervisor that nails the essence of the ed deform view of teachers.

Race from the Axe




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Ms. Katie's Ramblings

Rahm's Longer School Day Tearing an Elementary School Apart
Another great blog out of Chicago



Ed Notes posts over the past week (in reverse order):

• Pre-K Destruction: It is "children last " with the...
• Bill Gates Tells Us Why His High School Was a Grea...
• A Happy Happy Hour - We Want MORE
• Carol's Garden
• A Sign of the Times? Unity Chapter Leaders Losing ...
• TODAY! Join MORE June 16th for Happy Hour and Grea...
• Remarkable Video From Railroaded Rubber Room Teach...
• Portelos Wins Chapter Leader Election from Rubber ...
• Ravitch on Chicago
• UFT "Neutrality" in Jeffries-Barron Race is Suppor...
• NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam and NY ...
• Tuesday: Three Events Today - Press Conf on DOE Sp...

Here is the week that was -- if you're interested

Monday June 11: Hang out at home

Tuesday June 12: I work with a group called Active Aging that produces a TV show at Manhattan Neighborhood Network and we are doing a story on an artist/musician/and lots more named Leo Witlarge --- what an interesting guy and it should make a great story. He lives on Bushwick Ave. in what could pass for a museum. Check out some of his work: www.witlarge.com.
In the evening it was off to Leonie Haimson's Skinny Awards dinner, which was packed, mostly with people I didn't know. The UFT had a table for 8 and I knew a few of them. I got to talk to a very interesting, a 2nd or 3rd careerer in the 9th year in our wonderful system working at a closing school. She said she has worked in a number of different jobs and systems and the NYCDOE is the most dysfunctional. "Intentionally dysfunctional," I told her to assist in its destruction so it can be privatized.

Weds June 13:  Only item was the UFT Delegate Assembly where I offered free dvds of our movie on condition of holding a screening in the school. Twelve people took me up on it. Even though online, we want people to see it in groups and that is why we ordered another thousand. Check it out if you haven't seen it and let me know if you want to hold a screening in your school and I'll get you a dvd.

Thurs June 14 - Flag Day. I think we used to get off when I was a kid. New air conditioning system installed, just in time for the small memorial/party we are holding for my dad this Thursday when it will be 97 degrees.

Friday June 15 -- electrician came to hook up the system. Interesting conversation about unions with the worker doing the installing. His whole family are union but he works for a private contractor, a guy who used to coach his teams as a kid and also a grad of Brooklyn Polytech. When the boss came by we had a nice chat --- a real down home guy with a great sense of humor. He even custom made a few small brackets I needed for another job, right on the spot.

Saturday June 16 -- The gala MORE happy hour.

Sunday June 17 -- out to Philadelphia area for our niece's fathers day invite. Two kids aged 4 and 1. They did lots of chasing around. And there was some water flying around. Got into the usual discussion with her father in law who is adamant that Obama is a socialist. If he only read what the left is saying about Obama as the ultimate supporter of capitalism.

Throughout the week there were lots of visits to my dad's apartment -- we have to have it cleared out by June 30. Put up a note there was free furniture available and the calls have been coming in. Need a 40 year old stereo system?

This Week in Education Notes

It will be a busy week coming up.

On Tuesday, at 8 AM Ed Notes will be heading over to the Princeton Club for a Manhattan Institute (the right wing think-tank) breakfast conference. At least when you go to MI events they feed you. (See a report of my visit to an MI luncheon in Feb. '07 for Christopher Cerf at the University Club here and a recent visit last month at the Harvard Club for Chester Finn here.)

The topic is "Can Mayoral Control Fix Urban School Districts?" Joel Klein will be the featured speaker followed by a panel discussion with Michelle Rhee (former Tweedle, Teacher for America hot shot and now the head of the Washington DC schools) and Paul Vallas, privatizer supreme of 3 urban school systems (Chicago, Philadepphia and now New Orleans). Don't these people have school systems to run. The fact that they are gathered here is proof of the political over educational agendas they are pushing.

Gee, bet I can guess the outcome of this panel.

But there may be a fly in the ointment – Diane Ravitch is also on the panel. We'll report back and maybe get some pics of the food fight.

I hope Eduwonkette shows up to ask this question she raised on her blog on Monday:

Really!?! Joel Klein

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NYC's Panel for Education Policy voted tonight to require 8th graders to score above level 1 on reading and math tests and pass core courses in order to be promoted. Meanwhile, last week Joel Klein wanted to invest a hypothetical billionaire's bling in a research institute - "There are two things that I would do with this money. One, I would try to set up a national institute for educational policy that does serious research. This is an industry in which there are so many myths, and that’s because there are such large gaps in our knowledge right now."

Really, Joel Klein? That's surely true in some areas, but grade retention ain't one of them. Really. It's just that a recent paper by Brian Jacob and Lars Lefgren found that the 8th grade retention initiative in Chicago increased students odds of dropping out. That's on top of a boatload of other studies finding the same. Why waste that billionaire's money if you're not even going to read the research? And why are 18,000 8th graders projected to be retained if your 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade retention initiatives were so effective? Really.

AERA in NYC This Week
Wednesday through Friday I am checking out the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference being held in NYC. Eduwonnkette says "Weighing in at ~500 pages, the AERA program is a good weapon, but a crappy guide to a professional meeting."
Eduwonkette and Skoolboy have some suggestions as does Rethinking Schools.

This one might be fun Russo and Rotherham (Eduwonk) on the same panel - another food fight?

Disseminating Education Research Through Electronic Media: Advice from E-Journalists

Scheduled Time: Thu, Mar 27 - 10:35am - 12:05pm Building/Room: Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers / Lenox Ballroom, 2nd Floor

Session Participants:

Chair: Paul Alan Baker (Wisconsin Center for Education Research)
Participant: Alexander Russo (This Week In Education/Scholastic Administrator)
Participant: Andrew J. Rotherham (EduWonk.com, Education Sector)
Participant: Jennifer Medina (New York Times)
Participant: Richard L. Colvin (Columbia University)

And maybe this one later that afternoon at 4PM (after finding a good movie.)

Organizing Against Intolerance: Teacher Unions, Antiracist Education, and the Limits of Liberalism

Sponsor: SIG-Teachers' Work/Teacher Unions

Scheduled Time: Thu, Mar 27 - 4:05pm - 5:35pm Building/Room: New York Marriott Marquis Times Square / Majestic Complex, Palace Room, 6th Floor

Session Participants:

“Communism Is Jewish”: New York City Teachers Unions and Tolerance Education During World War II
*Zoe Burkholder (New York University)

What’s A Teacher Union for Anyway? Race, Community, and Organization in the Chicago Teachers Union, 1965–1973
*Kyle Westbrook (University of Illinois - Chicago)

Keeping the Peace: Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context
*Cindy Rottmann (OISE/University of Toronto)

A Critical Analysis of the BCTF Aboriginal Education Program: A View From Within
*Blanche Christine Stewart (British Columbia Teachers' Federation)

Discussant: Wayne J. Urban (The University of Alabama)
Chair: Lois Weiner (New Jersey City University)

Abstract:
By examining the tolerance education of New York City Teacher Unions during World War II, the adoption in 1971 and quiet disappearance in 1998 of an anti-racist program with the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, and the struggles within the Chicago Teachers Union over full inclusion of African-American educators during the late 1960s, this session will highlight the ways in which teachers’ unions have functioned as sites of struggle over race, power and privilege.


Labor Conference at UFT HQ
On Friday afternoon (4-8) and Saturday (8-2) there is a labor conference at the UFT building at 52 Broadway. Party Friday at 4.

Note: Lois Weiner will be on a panel on Saturday at 10. Lois has written extensively on the neo-liberal collaboration with business interests in the attack on the public schools. She will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming Teachers Unite forum om April 15.

See More This Week in Ed Notes coming up later today.