More on Obama and Education in Chicago

Finally, we are getting some hard core information on Obama and the Chicago school issue from someone involved in the front lines and this looks like somewhat of a plus for Obama. (See my comment below after Julie Woestehoff's points.)

Leonie Haimson has gone to a source and sent the following to her listserve:

As you know, I have always been reluctant on this list and elsewhere to get involved in partisan politics; for one thing, my organization's non-profit status depends on not endorsing any candidates for elective office.

But I think because of the previous discussion of Obama on this list and assorted claims that he supported or was somehow involved in some of the worst aspects of the so-called education reform agenda in Chicago, its important to set the record straight.

I turned to my friend Julie Woestehoff, the president of Parent United for Responsible Education, who has worked in Chicago in support of parent rights and parent involvement in the public schools for many years. Julie is a fantastic advocate, and she co-authored our letter to the parents of LA which we wrote in June 2006, when they were considering Mayoral control in that city. (For a copy of this letter, which received a lot of media attention at the time, see http://www.classsizematters.org/lettertoLAparents.html)

Just a little background – LSC’s or Local School Councils are like our School Leadership Teams – teams made up of parents and staff that are supposed to make important decisions at the school level and that the administration in Chicago has been trying to weaken over many years (sound familiar?)

I urge you to read Julie’s unedited observations about Barack Obama below.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Hi Leonie-
Glad to offer my 2 cents, and I don't mind your sharing any of it.

First of all, Sen. Obama is my neighbor (we vote in the same polling place), and he has also been my state senator and currently my US Senator. I've always voted for him and we have a nodding acquaintance. He is just as charming, funny, straightforward, and thoughtful in person as he seems. Our community is absolutely thrilled with his candidacy -- but it's the senior African-Americans who seem happiest ("Never thought in my lifetime..."). In addition, my husband is a minister in the United Church of Christ and has enormous respect for Obama's church and its pastor, both of which are major influences on him. So I'm not unbiased. But I do have some history to relate.

As a state senator, Obama supported our elected, parent-majority local school councils during a time when we were under attack by Paul Vallas, the schools CEO at the time. Vallas wanted to be able to veto LSC principal selection decisions in cases where the LSC decided not to rehire a principal when his/her contract was up. PURE proposed a compromise, to bring in independent arbitration. There's an entry on my blog that quotes Obama in support of that process, which was made law and has worked well for almost 10 years now:

http://pureparents.org/index.php?blog/show/Obama_on_LSC_principal_arbitration_process

We wanted him to take up the LSC cause more vigorously than he did, and he disappointed us from time to time, but never on anything major. As a sidelight, I encountered Michelle Obama when she was a member of the Chicago Board of Education's Accountability Council, a now defunct group whose responsibility at the time was to review schools for potential interventions. She and a couple of other women on the council were the only ones who stood up against CPS's efforts to get them to rubber stamp any intervention that Vallas proposed. Again, she didn't get out and rock the boat, but she was strong and intelligent.

As our US Senator, Obama made the effort to get onto the Senate Education Committee and his office has been very responsive to our communications about NCLB and related matters. I've had some extensive discussion with his education aide. Where we agree most is on the importance of parent involvement. If elected, I believe that Obama will direct the USDE to take significant steps to promote and strengthen the role of parents. Obama also gets the problems with testing and has begun highlighting that in his speeches and campaign themes.

It's not true that Obama supports Renaissance 2010. He has been publicly supportive of charter schools, but his support developed prior to the wholesale appropriation of charter and other new school strategies that undergird the disaster Mayor Daley calls Renaissance 2010. Even the heretofore positive notion of small schools is tainted, at least in Chicago, by their being used to justify massive school closing and privatization. This is all fairly new stuff and even we have to work hard to keep up with the various mutations. I believe that Obama is aware of what's really going on and that he gets the issues.

Finally, the fact that Obama was recently excoriated for having Linda Darling-Hammond as one of his education advisors speaks pretty well for him. If you haven't read Mike Klonsky's blog on this topic, here's an example:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-6z6IhP08cqXp9kfshYQPv87gCfJyFg--?cq=1&p=1924

I hope this helps!!
Julie

Norm's follow-up:

On this point:

Even the heretofore positive notion of small schools is tainted, at least in heretof, by their being used to justify massive school closing and privatization. This is all fairly new stuff and even we have to work hard to keep up with the various mutations. I believe that Obama is aware of what's really going on and that he gets the issues.

It seems I've veen hearing about some of this for years, way before this occurred in NYC. Schmidt's Substance has been running stuff on this for many years. Debbie Lynch ran and won in the Chicago Teachers Union election back in 2001 I believe partly on the school closing issue. I ran articles in Ed Notes around 2001/2 addressing this issue in Chicago and that was one of the lessons we tried to bring to the UFT when the small schools business started in NYC. So I would love to hear more than a belief he is "aware" and "gets" the issue. Silence is still complicity and if we are electing a president I would sure like to know where he/she stands on the kind of educational malpractice we've seen in Chicago and NYC and other places.

Comment on out previous post from anon:

So let me get this straight. You want Klonsky to join George Schmidt in attacking Obama in the middle of campaign against Clinton and McCain? And on what issue? Mayor Daley's school reform plan. Have I got that right?

Response: Al

I want to put up as much information unfiltered on where Obama has stood on the Chicago school - I won't honor it by calling it a reform plan. I would like to see Schmidt and Klonsky and others give us some hard info on where Obama has stood if anywhere at all over the past 13 years. Klonsky was correct to crit. Russo but provides nothing much more than that. By the way, I don't consider Schmidt's criticism more of an attack on Obama than on Clinton.

Read more on Chicago school un-reform at Under Assault in this post.

Smearing Obama: More Wind from the Windy City

George Schmidt's critical look at the Obama Ed program which we posted here seems to have been joined by Alexander Russo. I get the feeling Schmidt is not an admirer of Russo. But neither is he an admirer of Mike Klonsky. So, who is lining up where? Klonsky at his Small talk blog accuses Russo of a smear job and if you take his narrow slice, it sure looks that way. He also hints that maybe this is part of the Clinton dirty tricks campaign.

Interestingly, Randi Weingarten raised the issue of Obama's positions on education - gently, but negatively - at the Delegate Assembly on Feb. 6. Maybe not exactly a dirty trick - a slightly smudgy trick. Like the Clintons with their buddies Joel Klein and Andrew Rotherham are not in the phony Ed reform movement up to their ears.

Though right now I am inclined to support Obama, though I am also concerned about the things Schmidt pointed to. I mean, silence on the part of Obama in the face if the Richard Daly/Paul Vallas onslaught is complicity. I wish Klonsky would comment on this aspect of George's statement:

There has been no difference between Barack Obama and Mayor Richard M. Daley on any of the corporate "school reform" plans foisted on Chicago since Daley pioneered the "mayor control" dictatorial model of school governance (thanks to a vote of a Republican dominated Illinois General Assembly, a la the Gingrich Congress) in 1995.

Despite the fact that many community leaders and even some public
officials have challenged Mayor Daley on "Renaissance 2010" -- especially the wholesale relocation of children as schools were closed and often flipped for charter school use, Barack Obama was not public with any criticism of "Renaissance 2010." In fact, his positions are indistinguishable from Mayor Daley's or those of his Hyde Park neighbors and the people pushing privatization, charterization, and corporate "school reform" out of the University of Chicago and elsewhere in corporate Chicago. Rumor locally has been that Barack Obama has included Arne Duncan [the Joel Klein of Chicago] and others of that ilk in his informal educational brain trust.

Here are some excerpts from Klonsky's post which you can read here in full:

Russo won't get the job

Is Alexander Russo auditioning for a job in the dirty-tricks department of the Clinton campaign? One might think so after reading his latest attempt to smear Barack Obama and his school reform supporters. On his TWIE blog, Russo claims that Obama’s co-sponsorship of a bill promoting a Teacher Residency Program, in effect, makes the senator a supporter of school closings, teacher firings and turning over public schools to “outside organizations.”

Klonsky closes with:

Whether or not one agrees with the TRP narrative’s positive description of AUSL, or with Obama’s candidacy, it would be pretty hard to give any credence to Russo’s pitiful anti-Obama smears. Sorry, Alexander. You don't get the job. They already have hired the best in the business.

Rally to Oppose Budget Cuts or Another Sell-out?

Excuse my cynicism, but is this the same coalition that sold us out in the Keep the Public in Public Education Coalition?
- a NYC parent on the nyceducationnews listserve.

My God! can't we get a weekend off? Things keep popping up like a faulty toaster. I'm trying to get a handle around different coalitions forming to fight the budget cuts, competing rallies at Tweed, and all kinds of other goodies. As usual, there is an historical context to everything and that's the place we always go so as not to leave you guys out there in the cold.

I'm on deadline for a short story I'm writing for my fiction writing group so I may not get to all of it, but check back for updates to this post (I'll leave a permanent link on top corner on the right hand side and add to this post as info comes in.)

For starters here's a time line, all of which has been covered in Ed Notes (I'll get links up later):

Feb. 28, 2007: Coalition of groups led by UFT holds extraordinary rally in Manhattan. Decides to hold a rally in May to protest the policies of BloomKlein.

April, 2007: Most of the groups make a deal with the Mayor and agree to call off the rally.
(Note: aspects of The Deal are violated, in particular class size agreements. Other parts of the deal, possibly the Lead Teacher - see our recent post on this angle a few days ago - will be violated in the budget cuts announced in January.)

May, 2007: Manhattan High School chapter leaders vote 19-1 to call for the rally to be reinstated because Twee cannot be trusted. They bring the issue to the May Del. Ass. UFT Leadership opposes and they lose by a large margin.

Jan./Feb. 2008: Bloomberg announces budget cuts which Klein admits Tweed knew about since November but never told the principals. They are more pissed off than just about anyone. Empowered, indeed!

Feb. 6, 2008: At the UFT Delegate Assembly, a UFT Resolution on budget cuts calls for the UFT to participate in the reinstitution of the coalition to fight the cuts and announces a meeting will be held the next day. Randi asks if people will support a rally if they decide to call one. The audience, already numb from her President's report, with some saying they would prefer water boarding, nods/mumbles assent.

Jonathan Lessuck from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) offers a series of amendments to strengthen the resolution and calls for a rally to be held on Feb. 14. Another PL speaker talks about how important it is to bring students into play. (This is a common PLP theme, something I'm not always comfortable with, but more on that another time.) I should point out that some PLP members also work with ICE but while ICE agrees with some PLP positions, it does not endorse all the actions of PLP. ICE had no involvement in the PLP amendments.

Randi and Unity Caucus speakers oppose the amendments, mostly on the Feb. 14 date, saying it is too short a time. Lessuck says the date is not crucial but doesn't make a formal amendment change. Randi takes a vote with the Feb. 14 date included, to PLP's chagrin. She shrugs and smiles a disingenuous Cheshire Cat Smile.

Feb. 7, 2007: The coalition meets with 150 people present and there are reports that it is very successful. A decision is made to hold a rally in mid-March,prompting the comment on cynicism from the parent that we lead this post off with. Reporters are banned but Elizabeth Green posts the most comprehensive story for the NY Sun. Read it here: http://www.nysun.com/article/70970

Feb. 10 (Sunday): The Coalition will hold a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 12:30. I'm going to my niece's daughter's baby naming in Philadelphia, so if anyone has a report send it along.

In the meantime, the Feb. 14 date has resurfaced for a rally at Tweed in this email:

Hey Folks,

You don't need to be told how outrageous these budget cuts are.
What are we going to do about it?!?!?!?

Next Thursday, February 14th at 4:00 PM we are taking it to the steps of Tweed.

BRING PARENTS, STUDENTS, TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS!

We demand an immediate return of the money taken from school budgets for this year and next.

Bloomberg needs money? Eliminate the $400 million in homeowner rebates.
We demand economic justice and democracy in our school system!

Tell king Bloomberg: Give back what you are stealing from our kids!
We want as many parents and students as possible to come on Thursday and be heard. Talk to your students about it, get them to organize and bring their parents.
My third graders are already MAD!

Sponsors so far include:
State Senator Eric Adams, Time Out From Testing, NYCORE, district 15 CEC, PS 24 Teachers for Equity in Education.

A group of students from Brooklyn called Students Against DOE Budget Cuts are leading the way with the support of the groups above. They are organizing a march on Tweed for Thursday, Feb. 14th and need all of our support.

LET'S MAKE THIS BIG!!!
Sam Coleman
PS 24
sam_p_coleman@yahoo.com

Should they back off and support the March rally? Or are they correct to mistrust the coalition which in April backed off a tremendous opportunity and killed the momentum for the May rally? Will Randi Weingarten (who everyone knows is the mover and shaker behind this coalition) play Let's Make a Deal again if Bloomberg puts 10 cents on the table?

You can follow this soap opera (Call it the Coalition of Our Lives) on the ednotes blog. I will try to attend the rally on Thursday as part of my Valentine Day celebration (can you spell "divorce?") and get some pictures.

Dear Lord Chancellor Klein

This email was seen floating around inboxes. Don't know who wrote it, but Kudos:

Dear Lord Chancellor Klein,

Tis I your humble servant Taylor. Forgive me for addressing you directly but desperate times embolden the meek. We are struggling to cope with the Grimm budget cuts levied upon us by the fair and bodacious Kathy. Tis true, we were not starving, but methinks the tariffs a bit too high Lord Chancellor. When you gave us the copper and silver coin at the beginning of the seasons it was only to lift us out of squalor and starvation. And now that have come and taken away our barley and Snapple, how will we feed our students? How will the young'uns grow straight and tall with narry enough food on the table?

But enough of dark times, tell me about Tweed? How is the freshly brewed coffee and the donuts? Tis true the fruit still served fresh? Are apricots and bananas in season?

I hope the Grimm news of our farmlands have not dampened the spirits of Tweed. Invite me to your next photo op. I will behave properly and shower. While other peasants who've lost their farms have begun to curse your fair and just rule, I know what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The nay-sayers have gone off to join the monastery. Other's still have feigned sickness to gain admittance into the rubber rooms. Those people have given up but I am a proud and empowered principal.

Out of the budget cuts that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank D.O.E.
For my empowered soul.

It matters not how strait the bulletin board
Or whatever mark receive my school,
I am the master of my cohort,
I am the principal of my school.

(I apologize but I couldn't think of another word that rhymes with school.)

I am the principal of my school desperately seeking a cozy position at Tweed. One with requires the sharpening of pencils or perhaps the vacuuming of the DOE's horseless chariots? Perhaps I could be the one who runs out and fetches you warm pastries by the dozens. Or better still, many of my colleagues praise my fine voice. Let me be the one who stands behind you and sings of your many great deeds, of which you could remind me when I get there. Summon me to Tweed, "put me in coach for I am ready to play". (Shit, a student just stole my blackberry.) Perchance have ye grown weary of your court jesters? If none of these services interest you I am not beneath bending over so you can kick me in the ass when it delights ye. But summon me soon please, for the students grow restless and already have taken to searching the hallways for food instead of attending their classes.

Your humble servant,

Taylor, James III
PhD in Nothing from Harvard U.

The Conscious Classroom and Social Justice

This year I have shifted my priorities from working mostly on union related matters to broader-based activities, like working with Sally Lee of Teachers Unite on the Privatization forums and other concerns. Sally has certainly given me a heightened awareness of social justice issues through the groups she is working with and I am proud to have been asked to join the TU steering committee (I accept the nomination.) Her goal is to bring teachers into greater touch with some of these core issues. Teachers Unite is dedicated to building an intergenerational movement of progressive and left teachers to fight in the larger struggle against injustice.

Reaching this group of teachers, which we have not been successful in doing in ICE, is part of the reason for my shift in direction. Many of these teachers either see the UFT as irrelevant or, worse, as an obstruction to good teaching, mistakenly assuming a defense of teacher rights is the reason. (Not that the UFT truly defends teacher rights.) But the UFT has been an obstruction to building a progressive movement for educational change. And always will be.

I have come to believe that change in the UFT and in the educational structure can only come from a core group of teachers committed to basic change and not just from people who are worried about narrow trade union issues. I've heard a lot of disparagement about young teachers, but I am pleased to have met many who are socially conscious and view teaching as a calling. Their fervor has created hostility amongst some vets.

Some of these teachers, however, view caucuses like ICE and TJC that address internal UFT politics as being part of the structure - the "new boss, same as the old boss" concept. (People joke in ICE that if the opposition ever won power, I would become part of a new opposition – The anarchy within me.) That doesn't mean I am not as involved as ever with the work ICE has been doing in the union, but have been freed from doing the day to day stuff I used to do. (Thanks to the ICE steering committee for a great job.)

Teachers Unite hopes to put together a coalition of people who want to reform education in the proper way by capturing the idea of "ed reform" from the likes of the Eli Broads, Michael Bloombergs, Joel Kleins, etc. We want to address questions as to why the protection of teacher rights is an important component of any movement for change. We want to hold "bridge the gap" meeting between newer and veteran teachers. The group we are working with includes ICE'ers and TJC'ers, amongst others, so working with Sally and TU has opened up a big tent. If you're interested in the work of TU, Sally can be contacted at sally@teachersunite.net.

I met Sally through NYCORE (The NY Collective of Radical Educators) whose work I have admired. Over the years I attended some of their events and recently have worked with their Justice Not-Just-Tests group. They will also be working with the group doing the Radical Math conference in Brooklyn April 4-6. (See sidebar for details.)

In an article in The Nation, the story of social justice schools is told and NYCORE is mentioned.

With more education schools assigning the works of Freire and Jonathan Kozol, a growing number of teachers, with the help of local teachers' organizations, are infusing their curriculums with liberatory theories too. One such group is the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE), an organization of past and present public school teachers founded in 2002 that gives teachers the chance to discuss larger issues of social justice while formulating ways to bring those topics into the classroom. "We find that there are a lot of teachers who are highly politicized, but they are isolated in schools where they are being forced to implement curriculum or policies that are really antithetical to their own belief system," says Bree Picower, a NYCORE member and an assistant professor at New York University's Department of Teaching & Learning. "And we look to try and network those teachers."

This full article is worth reading and can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080225/doster

I unintentionally played a role in bringing NYCORE's attention to Sol Stern, who at the time I was on friendly terms with. He read my account of a meeting I attended and saw an opportunity to attack the idea of social justice movement in schools. He started bugging me for information and I put him in contact with Bree, who wisely, refused to talk to him. He actually contacted the superiors of some NYCORE members to see if they were "indoctrinating" the kids. He was probably concerned they were teaching kids about what's really happening in the world instead of pounding them with phonics. He actually attended the Radical Math Conference looking for bear. We ran into each other and engaged in a brief courtyard debate. The attendants were forewarned there was someone not there to learn anything about radical math but trying to find a story that could be used to fit the conservative agenda. What he did write was certainly not objective. But then again, nothing you will read here is either. Better to read all sides and figure out where to land.

Lead Teachers should be chosen by....

With the Lead Teacher program, supported strongly by the UFT and the DOE, being threatened by budget cuts, we are hearing demands for it to be maintained. The Coalition for Educational Justice in the Bronx has strongly supported the Lead teacher program and demonstrated at the last PEP meeting at Tweed calling for the program to be expanded in middle schools.

The Community Collaborative to Improve Bronx Schools, composed of CEJ groups in the Bronx, created the Lead Teacher Program, which puts master teachers in low-performing schools to support the development of other teachers. The program begin in District 9 in the South Bronx in 2004 and has since expanded to include more than 100 schools citywide.

While we support their calls for reducing class size amongst other initiatives that support the work that teachers do, we are skeptical of the Lead Teacher program.

When I first got to PS 147 in Sept. 1970 I heard of a guy who had left the June before after 10 years of teaching. John Gali was his name and he was revered as the ultimate Lead Teacher, a master craftsman who had enormous influence on the vast number of new teachers who entered the NYC school system in the late 60's. But people said he got burnt out. I always hoped to meet him but he was killed in an automobile accident a few years later. The school created an award at graduation in his name.

From the day I started teaching, there were people everyone looked at as "Lead Teachers: and we learned from them. But they were recognized by their peers, not appointed by a principal with an agenda.

In the mid-90's I got involved in a program at Rutgers to develop leadership skills in Discrete Mathematics – Pascal's triangle, map coloring, Fibonacci, recursion – all kinds of goodies. We did the same kinds of problems adapted for elementary kids as we did in my grad level computer science courses. (Too bad I wasn't teaching math at the time - I was the computer lab teacher. That stuff was great.)

The idea was not just to learn math, but to be able to bring the concepts back to colleagues. Now, this was a Lead teacher program that made sense and we had people from all over the country from K-12. (They're still doing it and have programs going in many states.)

But the way it was implemented by the DOE (ETTS - Everything Turns To Shit) ICE took a stand against the Lead teacher program as a form of merit pay and also a divisive "we will put an overseer on you" attitude. Another diversion from doing the kinds of reforms that will make a difference. But of course, this is a core part of the UFT program. And of course, guess who first advocated the Lead Teacher program? AL SHANKER. (Leonie Haimson suggests I go to a Shanker Anonymous group for counseling over my obsession.)

The idea of putting "better"- which often means "suckups to the principal" teachers in charge of others is part of the Ed reform movement. Hey, it's all the teachers' faults so they need constant guidance as much as little children. Right along with the Ed reform ideology with not so subtle undermining of teacher unionism.

I'm sure there are some superb Lead Teachers, but also quite a few duds. Geez, when I think of the possible Lead Teachers my principal would have chosen...

An email from an activist in the UFT said:
There are only a few schools that I have personal knowledge of the lead teacher program. For those the lead teacher position is used as another supervisory level and resented by teachers. As for taking good teachers out of the classroom….I don’t think so. The lead teachers chosen were principal pets and in some cases Chapter Leaders.
While I am certain someone can point to anecdotal evidence where the lead teachers actually improved student achievement but I would still question not only the waste of money but the need to further alienate our teachers.

When will we trust the teachers?
I have no doubt that teachers would make a better choice of Lead Teachers than school administrators. If teachers made the decision, the idea would be viable. But the UFT (under Shanker OR Weingarten) would/will never fight for true teacher power. Teacher empowerment is as much a threat to union leaders as to people running school systems. The CEJ ought to consider promoting a system of teacher choice.

Speculation on Randi Weingarten's Successor

Part 1. See part 2 here.

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Green at the NY Sun nailed a very interesting story on Randi Weingarten's "successor" when she moves on to the AFT Presidency this July at the AFT convention in Chicago. Do I smell a road trip to the windy city to "celebrate" Randi's succession as an excuse to hang out with George Schmidt and the Substance gang? Hmmm. Maybe even provide the AFT delegates with some info on their new leader.

Titled "Which Rising Star Will Be the Next Randi Weingarten?" Green hit on a very important point -

"Another possibility, if Ms. Weingarten seeks the AFT presidency, is that she will not initially give up her role as UFT president, but hold onto it while she seeks the new job. Both Shanker and Feldman presided over both the UFT and AFT in their first years leading the national union."

Let's explore why this is a very likely scenario, at least until the next UFT election in 2010. Of course, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility for Weingarten to run for UFT President one more time, but that depends on a bunch of factors, including the outcome of the race for US President, especially if Hillary Clinton wins.

To flesh out Green's piece, we need to delve into the relationship between the UFT and the AFT, the particular way the UFT has been run over the years, and Randi Weingarten's methods (and madness.)

The AFT is dominated and controlled by the UFT
How does the tail wag the dog? Sheer numbers. The Unity Caucus controlled UFT (approaching 200,00 members), controls the entire NY State United Teachers (NYSUT) – 575,000 members and this one state has around an enormous percentage of all AFT members*

*EIA's Mike Antonucci reported in Oct. 2005:
"The disaggregated membership numbers also suggest AFT's "more than 1.3 million members" include an awful lot of people who no longer work in public education, or may have some other asterisk to merit their inclusion.
AFT reports 695,000 full-time members, 103,000 part-time members, 22,100 one-quarter, contingency or laid-off members, and 8,400 associate members for a grand total of 828,500. The union also has about 33,000 agency fee-payers. Source: http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20051024.htm
In a follow-up in Oct. '06 Antonucci reports:
AFT reported 828,500 members on its LM-2, and in 2005-06 reported 822,504.
The AFT must be spinning out numbers like the NYCDOE spins grad rates.
The AFT looks more and more as an outpost of Unity Caucus. Randi will be right at home.

So, the key to controlling the AFT is controlling Unity Caucus. And therein lies the danger to Weingarten if she were to pass on the presidency of the UFT to someone else – the risk of losing control over her power base. But Al Shanker and Sandy Feldman eventually let go. Why not Weingarten?

Let's digress for a minute.

Some insiders think the AFT Presidency is not Weingarten's cup of tea - it is often looked at as a somewhat ceremonial position where the President goes around the country making speeches. Shanker and Feldman were comfortable in this setting, trying to shape national Ed policy. But Weingarten as a policy maker? Barely a step above all those Ed policy wonks that never spent a serious day in the classroom. (For those who don't know, Weingarten barely spent a serious day in the classroom either. Just a bit of a show – the school of "I'm going to be union president, so I'll do a little teaching so it looks like I was a teacher.")

One has to scavenge far and wide for signs of an original thought from Weingarten. She is not too farsighted and those of us who have seen her in operation for the past 10 years are often astounded at the narrowness of her vision and her attention to petty details (read the posting on the ICE blog to see the attention she paid to our obscure resolution on Letters in the File.) Weingarten clearly relishes the action and there's no more action in the ed/pol sphere than right here in NYC. (She will miss us. But I am willing to go along to Washington and continue my attacks so she'll feel right at home.)

Thus, the feeling she is looking beyond the AFT and is aiming for the Secretary of Education cabinet position in a Hillary Clinton cabinet. (And Joel Klein is aiming for either Labor or Education Secty. in a Clinton admin.)

If Randi were intending to go this route, then holding onto the reigns of power in the UFT/AFT is not all that important. A cabinet position means prestige, but then what? Once she is out of the labor movement, there is no turning back.

I tend to think NOT. Who wants to be the next Margaret Spellings? Or Rod Paige, who by the way praised Weingarten as a "responsible" union leader. Klein wants to be both, so good luck (and good riddance.)

There is enough action in the labor movement to keep Randi busy for years. First would come an attempt to merge the AFT and the much larger NEA and then emerge as the head of a united 4 million-member national teacher union. Would the NEA accept Randi as the leader? Once a merger takes place, her first job would be to install a Unity Caucus like machine (as exists in the Progressive Caucus in the AFT) and capture power. It might take time, but it will keep her off the streets.

In part 2 we will examine the local scene in the UFT and take a look at potential successors and explore the thesis that Weingarten wants to prevent a strong successor from emerging. Et tu Mike, Carmen, Michelle, Mike2, Leroy, Leo?

Mayoral Control: what we can and cannot learn from other cities

Gotbaum's Commission on School Governance report.
Lots to wade through but it might be worth a look.
Download it here:
http://pubadvocate.nyc.gov/advocacy/schools/files/csghenig%20p.pdf

Obama's Race Trap, Affirmative Action and the UFT

A fascinating piece (thanks to David B for finding it) in The Nation blog by Richard Kim on Obama's tightrope walk on race. Albert Shanker biographer Richard Kahlenberg surfaces in this Richard Kim piece in "The Nation" blog piece calling for Obama to come out for an end to affirmative action as part of "Tough Liberalism." Kahlenberg has been all over the place, promoted (and funded) by some of the foundations supporting BloomKlein on education (ie. Broad). And of course, the UFT has also celebrated the Kahlenberg bio. So where does the UFT leadership today stand on affirmative action?

Tough Liberal = neo-liberal = 75% of the way to neo-con.

[I]n yesterday's Slate the ersatz liberal Richard Kahlenberg made an appeal to Obama to win the working-class white vote by selling out blacks and Latinos on affirmative action. As Bill Clinton ended welfare as we know it, could an Obama presidency end affirmative action? Kahlenberg practically salivates at the possibility. It's a move, he argues, that would befit the "tough liberalism" of RFK--who took a "colorblind approach," opposed "racial preferences" and "called for a crackdown on violent crime." By ending race-based affirmative action in favor of class-based affirmative action, Obama could not only demonstrate that he is, once again, "forcefully reject[ing] identity politics" but also win over that key Hillary contingency--the white, working class.

As a matter of strategy, who knows if Kahlenberg is right; he's clearly masking an ideological agenda as merely savvy tactics. But it's not hard to imagine a scenario where President Obama is confronted with such choices. Already on the ballots this year are five state initiatives (in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma), to ban affirmative action.

You can read Kim's piece in full here:
Read the Kahlenberg article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2183591

Responding to New Action

Do they ever mention how many of the NA leadership are on the UFT payroll?

The New Action leaflet distributed at the January DA claimed we reported on their demise. Au contraire. We used the term “irrelevant.” They will never die as long as Unity Caucus is willing to breathe life into them. How often is it that you can buy your own home-grown phony opposition caucus and use it to as a tool to try to create confusion in the minds of the members? New Action MUST continue to exist so they can appear on the ballot in future elections even if Unity must perform a heart transplant. And probably a few other missing anatomical parts, but we won’t go there.

The leaflet went on to talk about how much they have been doing for the members, with their 8 seats handed to them by Unity as opposed to what ICE/TJC accomplished. Do you think getting Unity support to pass some resolutions, part of the life-giving “breath of Unity” has something to do with it? Think that ICE/TJC never got anything passed at Exec. BD meetings because they were actually an opposition and critical of the leadership? Has NA been critical of even one action on the part of the leadership from merit pay on?

They claim to have been against the 2005 contract, but their co-leader Michael Shulman voted for the contract as part of the negotiating committee, allowing Weingarten to claim the vote was unanimous.

So how well has their deal with Unity worked out? Very well for the leadership of New Action who are on the UFT payroll. As for the members: In the 2001 elections the last time NA ran as an real opposition to Unity they received 10,000 votes (21%).

The active membership expressed their opinion of New Action’s deal with Unity in the 2007 elections: combined totals from Elem + MS + HS: Unity: 9,934 68% ICE/TJC: 3,305 22.6% New Action: 1,356 9.3%. Help me with my math. It looks like a drop rivalling the stock market crash of ‘29. But NA doesn’t need the support of working teachers. They only have to keep their constituency of one – Randi Weingarten – happy. And so they have.

What Teachers Make

Taylor Mali makes you proud to be a teacher in this video. If you have trouble viewing, go directly to the link.

Teachers Surveys and the UFT

From a Chapter Leader:

In the principals weekly there was instructions for principals to assign someone to be in charge of collecting the teachers surveys about the schools environment. When they arrive, my principal assigned an F status AP to be in charge of collecting them. I think this is ridiculous because she is obviously not a UFT member and the teachers will be fearful to write the truth. What is your take on this?? I asked my Dist. Rep. and he doesn't seem to have any opinion. I think it is a total conflict of interest. Could you ask around and see what other schools are doing? Last year I was in charge of collecting and mailing them, but now I think the DOE is trying to intimidate teachers because as you know many are afraid of retribution if they are critical of the administration.Thanks so much!

Politics Are Us: Follow the Money

A recent comment by a reader on the NYC Education News listserve after I posted a link to George Schmidt's comments on Obama's education record in Chicago:

From what we've seen being played out in NYC public education, I've wondered if Barack's primary votes and money have been coming just from Democrats. After all, Republicans skewed the 2006 senate race in CT by crossing party lines so they could vote for Lieberman, and thus block his Democratic opponent. They were able to cross lines in Fro, independents could vote on either side in several of the early states, plus anyone can e-mail money to a candidate.

My suspicions are sadly confirmed by the ednotes article you sent. We already know that the GOP is incredibly active in privatizing the public school system, and, from Schmidt's perspective, Barack evidently supports that movement, along with its chief instrument, No Child Left Behind. Perhaps Ted Kennedy is supporting Barack as a way to preserve NCLB, which he co-sponsored. However, does that mean Kennedy is also inside the privatization loop, or is he too oblivious to see the uses for which NCLB has been co-opted?

That prompted this response:

Sorry, but this is absurd. Anyone who thinks that Obama's support is "Republicans crossing over" hasn't been paying attention, to what he says, to who is supporting him, to what is happening in our country.

I heard him speak a few weeks ago and he said, "we have to support our teachers, and pay them more. They should not have to only teach to the test. Children should have art, and music, and gym, and languages...,

Obama is running against the right, against Bush's policies, all down the line. Because he has excited and activated so many people, including young people, independents and those who are turned off by politics as usual, he actually could beat the Republican, in a landslide. And a landslide is what we'll need to turn the country around, including away from the attack on public education.

Which prompted this response from me:


I am pretty cynical about most politicians and subscribe to the belief expressed by that great political theorist Pete Townshend of The Who: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss/ I'll get on my knees and pray we don't get fooled again.

It is oh so easy for Obama to say teachers should get paid more.
Bloomberg said that too - as long as they put more time in and gave up chuncks of their contract.

And he thinks teachers shouldn't teach to the test?

Where did he ever take such a stand in Chicago his home base where that's what they do?
Chicago, where the BloomKlein style of reform began in 1995.

Has he played any role at all in diverting the attack on public education in Chicago?

The writer says to pay attention to who is supporting him. I say: "Follow the money."

George Schmidt, who clearly liked Obama as a man, squarley put him in the same camp as Daley/Bloomberg/Joel Klein camp. If you didn't get to his piece yet you can read it here.

Pray we don't get fooled again.

And if you admire Clinton, do not forget where Joel Klein came from. It is so easy to use rhetoric but always examine what politicians have done.

Trying to compare anyone to Bush makes them look good.

My wife works in the health field and she read Paul Krugman today and said she likes Clinton's universal health care plan better than Obama's and will vote for her on that basis.
I disagree. So what if Clinton says all the right things. I will bet a chunk of her money comes from the pharmecuticals and health care industry which will have to make a big buck out of any plan. Will Clinton/Obama be more loyal to the voters or to the people funding their campaigns? Any plan will be what the people who can profit from it says it will be. Follow the money.

But there are some differences if you believe the rhetoric. Take Cuba for instance, a place I got to visit legally in the late 70's when Jimmy Carter opened a brief window of liberalization.

John McAuliff, Executive Director. Fund for Reconciliation and Development writes:
Barack Obama has pledged unrestricted family travel and remittances, not just "easing" Bush restrictions of one visit every three years. He also has called for negotiations with Raul Castro without preconditions.
Hillary Clinton is Bush light on Cuba, seeming to take her cue from Sen. Bob Menendez and her Miami based Cuban American sister in law.Both candidates would do well to listen to the 2/3 of Americans who support normalization of relations and the right to travel to Cuba.

McAuliff's entire piece is here.


Two articles in the NY Times this past week on Bill Clinton and Obama were illuminating.

One delves into the actions of Obama when it came to a nuclear leak.

An excerpt:

"The history of the bill shows Mr. Obama navigating a home-state controversy that pitted two important constituencies against each other and tested his skills as a legislative infighter. On one side were neighbors of several nuclear plants upset that low-level radioactive leaks had gone unreported for years; on the other was Exelon, the country’s largest nuclear plant operator and one of Mr. Obama’s largest sources of campaign money. Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns.

The complete article is here.

The other one is about Bill Clinton and a uranium deal in Kazakhstan that led to praise for a dictator, a big deal for a Canadian who contrubuted millions to Clinton's foundation in exchange for lending his prestige to the arrangement. I think Borat may have been at the same meeeting.

The article is here:

While the Obama piece is not as bad as the Clinton article, rereading both of them side by side makes me want to take a shower. Despite all this, there's a good chance I'll vote for Obama because no matter what he said or Clinton said, as someone who was 15 when Kennedy was elected and turned my generation onto politics, there is something in what Elena said about activating and inspiring young people. It probably won't last, but I'll get on my knees and pray they won't get fooled again.

The UFT has NOT endorsed Clinton...

...but that doesn't stop the people using the UFT phone banks from telling people they have.

I told the caller it was a lie and that just becaue Randi Weingarten endorsed Clinton, the UFT still has rules and no body – the Exec. Bd or the Delegate Assembly – endorsed her. Only the AFT and NYSUT have endorsed.

The caller said she was reading from a script. "The script is telling you to lie to people," I said. She insisted there was an endorsement. I asked for specifics – a date of endorsement. She went to ask someone and came back and said it was in the last issue of the NY Teacher. WOW! That makes true, I guess. "I know it's hard to imagine, but they lie too," I said. She told me she would get the exact date of the endorsement and call me back. I'm keeping the line open.

A wow comment from a teacher on performance pay

At Eduwonkette, who says:

I had to excerpt this passionate comment on teacher performance pay. Rather than asking what its implications are for student achievement, this reader focused on what it means for teachers' personal and professional identities. This is an angle I'd never considered before - thank you, anonymous reader.

It starts out this way:
Look at places where teachers have been lured into these plans with money. The experiment always begins with apprehension, a sort of reluctance. The policy wonks explain that this fear is because the teachers have been brainwashed by the unions and don’t understand the science at work. Perhaps. It is also possible that experienced professionals know in their gut when something just feels wrong, even if they can’t explain why.

You can read the full comment here.

Will comments like these have an impact on the merit pay supporters in the UFT, the business world, or the ed commenter/policy wonk world? I doubt it. When you have an agenda, you have an agenda. Cogent arguments and logic be damned when you have all too ineffective teacher unions to kick around.

Leonie Haimson kicks this in:

You might take a look at this report on merit pay from Univ. of Ark.– the no. of teachers who felt duped even after initially approving the plan – and this of course is a very conservative bunch of researchers.

http://uark.edu/ua/der/Research/merit_pay/year_two.html.

Report w/ appendices here: http://uark.edu/ua/der/Research/merit_pay/year_two/Full_Report_with_Appendices.pdf

Excerpt:
A review of teacher statements revealed that 13 of the 22 teachers who commented on the climate of their school felt that the environment had become more negative as a result of merit pay. This was likely attributed to the fact that a large number of teachers did not receive a bonus (see Table 3), even though many of them stated that they were told that everyone in their school would receive something. …

“Teachers were handling things in their own classrooms. Everybody was happy to be here. And then...the merit pay fiasco. And it’s been hell here ever since.”

“I mean...it was ugly...it was just constant people mad. The people that didn't get anything were upset, and I don't blame them, especially since we were told that everybody was going to get something.”

However, seven teachers asserted that merit pay had a positive effect on the environment of the school, resulting in an increase in collaboration and staff morale.

How I Joined Teach for America — and Got Sued for $20 Million

Just came across this article at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/924317/posts

It pretty much lays out so many issues new teachers face, but this one is a nightmare.

Not only new teachers face this as my old friend and colleague, 22-year teacher Kathy Blythe, found out a year ago when she sat a 2nd grade girl who had already run out of the room twice (and was eventually moved to a special ed situation I am told) down in her seat and was arrested by 5 cops a few hours later. I posted the story here back in April. Kathy still sits in the Brooklyn rubber room awaiting her 3020A hearing to terminate her despite the fact that the arresting cop said the entire case was "bullshit."

Get a LIF

The UFT leadership will do everything it can to disparage the ICE campaign to reopen the 2005 contract provision that doesn't allow teachers to grieve letters in files (LIF) even though Randi Weingarten told people back in 2005 this would be possible if there was a spike in LIF's. But we all know that was part of the selling of the '05 contract. They will attack the ICE proposal by denying there has been any such increase (check the numbers of rubber room denizens who haev been written up and removed.)

How will the leadership manipulate people at the Delegate Assembly this Wed. Feb. 6 to keep a full discussion of the ICE resolution from taking place? Make sure to avoid calling on an ICE person to speak during the New Motion period? Shift the agenda so the New Motion period is pushed to the end of the meeting? Or just ignore the NMP altogether, as Weingarten has done so often (her legacy will be taking an already undemocratically-run union and making it even more undemocratic.)

You might be asking why the LIF issue is important? The atmosphere in so so poisonous in so many schools run by dictatorial/abusive principals who, with their new "empowerment" - which is limited to power over the teachers and parents in their schools - have all too often gone hog wild.

Here is a story I heard at yesterday's Super Bowl (Yea Giants, even though I am a Jets fan) party:

A principal is throwing a dinner to honor herself. Besides the high cost, the teacher who I spoke to at the party dislikes this principal intensly - a short, trumped up rubber room visit didn't help - and doesn't want to go. Many of her colleagues are, only half-jokingly, telling her to expect an observation and a letter in her file the morning after the party.

This is the mental state of so many teachers. And for the usual teacher bashers out there, NO, we are not talking about lousy teachers who are afraid. I am hearing this from some of the finest teachers I have known. I have so many of these stories, I could devote an entire blog to them.

When the UFT gave up the right to grieve LIF in the 2005 contract, it was more of a blow to teacher morale as much as a loss of a right that many people never used in the first place. But at least those who wanted to felt they could at least get their day in "court" (a court stacked against them) and force the principal to explain themselves to a higher up. ("The teacher didn't come to my party, so I wrote her up.")

In my 4th year of teaching (1970) I transferred to a new school. I was just becoming active politically and the word was out from the higher ups to "get" me. I was lucky in that the tyrant principal was on terminal leave and the AP who was acting in his place was a milquetoast type. But he gave it a shot and wrote up a U-observation for me.

I may have been stupid, as I was not yet tenured, but I couldn't let this pass. Now, I wasn't necessarily the greatest teacher, but I had just come off a very successful year and a half of teaching and thought I was a hotshot. I hand-wrote a 7 page response and not only attached it to the observation, but posted it over the time clock. Crazy! But it worked and I was never bothered again.

Now I hear that the UFT is telling people not to even bother writing up a response, as what they say could be used against them. I still think in the right situation a teacher should consider doing what I did and go public. If you're a target, maybe going public will serve notice you are not going down without a fight and a principal might move on to a different target. Imagine if everyone banded together and supported each other?

Here is a version of the Leaflet ICE will distribute at the Delegate Assembly, February 6, 2008.

It repeats our points numerous times, but we feel we have to do that to get our points across. Urge your chapter leader and delegate (if they're not Unity Caucus) to support this resolution on Wed. Email me if you want a pdf to share with your colleagues.

After the meeting, the usual suspects are gathering at a local watering hole to celebrate - getting through another DA without snoring. I'll be there handing it out. Stop by and get the secret password for entry.

Independent Community of Educators – ICE

Phase One of ICE’s Plan to Fight Back Against the Givebacks:

Win Back the Right to Grieve Negative Evaluations & File Letters

Since December, ICE has been trying to raise a motion at the Delegate Assembly calling upon the UFT to reopen the Contractual provision so we can win back the right to grieve material in our files. Unfortunately, in December we didn’t get called on and in January there was no new motion period.*

*In the past 10 years, the New Motion time, the only opportunity for non-leadership positions to be presented, has been moved around the agenda or ignored altogether. Throughout the history of the Delegate Assembly under Al Shanker and Sandy Feldman, the New Motion time was always the 3rd item on the agenda after the President’s report and the Question period. Let’s preserve that long-standing UFT tradition. Roberts’ Rules of Order calls for members to have an opportunity to bring new motions before a body. Support our efforts to uphold Roberts’ Rules.

We urge every delegate to support our call to win back the right to grieve material in our files and to have the right to challenge supervisory judgment. We intend to bring this up at today’s new motion period. It would need a majority vote of delegates to be placed on the UFT DA agenda in March.

City Labor Relations Commissioner James Hanley wrote to the union stating that the city agreed to negotiate on the issue (reopening the letters in the file provision) “if there is a disproportionate increase in the number of letters to the file.”
– NY Teacher, October 20, 2005

If you hear the argument that it is dangerous to reopen the contract, let’s make it clear: ICE is asking for this one provision to be reopened as per labor commissioner Hanley’s written agreement with Weingarten, not the entire Contract.

Randi visited our school before the ‘05 contract and stated that she spoke with the mayor about a possible spike in LIFs, and he told her that they would renegotiate that provision.
– Comment on the ICEUFT Blog

Letters in the File Grievances: Resolution to Reopen the Contractual Provision

WHEREAS, in selling the 2005 Contract to the members, UFT President Randi Weingarten answered objections to the removal of the right to grieve letters in the file by claiming the Contractual provision eliminating grievances for unfair and inaccurate letters could be reopened if there is a spike in letters to the file; and

WHEREAS, The Chief Leader reported recently that there was a 36% increase in teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07 (the first full year under the 2005 Contract), a 39% increase in tenured teachers receiving U ratings, a fourfold increase in the number of teachers forced to extend their probation and a doubling of teachers denied tenure; and

WHEREAS, the UFT reported that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of teachers resigning compared to just a few years earlier; and

WHEREAS, it is reasonable to conclude that the spike in unsatisfactory ratings and resignations would not have been possible without a huge increase in negative letters to the file; be it therefore

RESOLVED, that the UFT reopen the Contract provision on letters in the file as per James Hanley’s 2005 agreement with Randi so this provision can be modified to allow members to grieve negative material in a timely manner and include the right to contest supervisory judgment to an impartial party, in addition to demanding that any material removed from a file can never be used in any proceeding of any kind against any UFT member.


Why Support Our Resolution?

The NY Teacher stated the following in the October 20, 2005 issue: “City Labor Relations Commissioner James Hanley wrote to the union that the city agreed to negotiate on the issue (reopening the letters in the file provision) ‘if there is a disproportionate increase in the number of letters to the file.’”

The evidence on increased discipline of teachers is in and for the first year under the 2005 Contract it is not a pretty picture:

1,333 Unsatisfactory ratings in 2006-07 compared with 981 in 2005-06. U rating increase of 36%;
(Source: Chief Leader)

918 tenured teachers rated U last year up from 662 the year before. U rating increase of 39%;
(Source: The Chief-Leader)

The number of teachers denied tenure more than doubled last year compared to the year before. (Source: The Chief-Leader)

The number of teachers forced to extend their probation increased almost fourfold in 2006-07 compared to 2005-06. (Source: The Chief-Leader)

The UFT’s own figures show that 4,606 teachers resigned last year, up from 2,544 who resigned just a few years earlier; it is sensible to conclude that many of those 4,606 were forced to resign.

Chancellor Klein in 2007 created a “gotcha squad” of lawyers and retired administrators to help build cases against tenured teachers.

There had to be a disproportionate spike in negative file letters to support all that increased discipline. We have to fight back now. The November 26, 2007 candlelight vigil was a good start but it was not enough. Let’s demand a letter in the file grievance process that is better than what we had before so we can challenge supervisory judgment. This Delegate Assembly should take a giant leap toward winning back our rights by putting this resolution on the DA agenda for March. Tell Hanley and Klein we mean business. Klein’s “gotcha squad” makes it “open season” to hunt teachers; we say close the hunt down now!

We are fully aware that if a letter stays in the file for three years, it can be removed if disciplinary charges haven’t been filed. However, the DOE keeps a copy and can still try to use it against you. Three years is too long to wait. Material that is over three years old is not normally admissible in 3020A cases against tenured teachers, but the DOE doesn’t have to wait three years to go after us. Finally, non-tenured teachers can easily be terminated at any point in their first three years of service and having a grievance procedure for unfair letters is their only hope for fighting back against abusive administrators.

If you hear the argument that it is dangerous to reopen the contract, let’s make it clear: ICE is asking for this one provision to be reopened as per labor commissioner Hanley’s written agreement with Weingarten, not the entire Contract.

School Chapters Signal Support

I informed my school and chapter leader at a meeting we held last Friday. I asked for a vote of support and everyone raised their hands (thank g-d).

I’m going to make copies of the resolution and hand it out at our chapter meeting on Friday.
–Comments on the ICEUFT Blog

Bloomberg Presidentital Bid Stillborn?

The rise of McCain seems to have nailed the nascent Mayor Bloomberg independent presidential campaign to the wall according to Saturday's NY Times. Darn it! We were so looking forward to having the entire nation get the full details of his disastrous attempts to remake the NYS school system into model of a corporation while alienating teaches, parents, principals and just about anyone who has any knowledge of education.

But this news is not necessarily a good thing for us. Without the distraction, Bloomberg can now focus his attention on finding a replacement for Mayor in his own image – a wealthy business/corporate type who will not reverse the BloomKlein damage.

Who Ever Thought Stressed Out Teachers...

.... is a good thing for kids?

In the corporate world stress may be looked at as a beneficial (I don't agree). But stressed workers doesn't have an emotional impact on widgets. But our widgets walk and talk - and are little or even if big, still not fully mature. Think they're not affected by the national mania for turning schools into mini-corporations?

Middle school blogger Have A Gneiss Day writes:

Administration is barely holding it together. Most of the staff is living on the edge (except for the ones that are either too new or too arrogant to care). What bothers me most is our stress is slowly but surely finding its way to the kiddies.

And NYC Pubic School Blue wrote:

chronic teacher fatigue?

CTF? I doubt the AMA recognizes such a condition, but if they did - I suspect I'm suffering from it.

Perhaps it's just the ELA prep that's getting to me. The simulation exams, the "incorporation" of testing skills in all subjects, the "pumping them up for the exam" hype ... it's all a bit much. The kids are trying their best; that I have to admit. But even they begin to become tired and need an outlet. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly at the time of my class. So today's chatty class got the consequence for not completing their work. A 30 minute lunch detention. 30 minutes of agony for me. But once you say you're going to do issue a consequence, you have to follow through. Even if that means a loss of one's own lunch.

I'm slipping further and further behind in the curriculum due to this damn test. I can't wait for it to be over.

Here's an idea for all the gaggle of Whitney Tilson-like ed reformers. Let's do stress tests on kids and rate schools A-F based on the lowest (or highest in BloomKleindom) scores.

The UFT Says " Support Hillary Clinton this Weekend!"

I want to invite you to please join our UFT team and Hillary Clinton supporters at the following locations this Saturday, February 2:

Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah!

I look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Marvin Reiskin
Director of Legislation/Political Action

Q: from someone receiving a call from the UFT phone bank:
Why are you calling for Hillary when the Clintons made those attacks against Obama?

A: You're right. I'm doing it because I have to.

Translation: I'm in Unity caucus and I have to follow the party line.

How do they get away with using UFT resources, mailing lists, the building, phone banks, personnel (think Randi does her Hillary work on her own time) etc. when they have not given the members any opportunity at all to discuss who they want to support? Not at the Delegate Assembly. Not even at the rubber stamp Executive Board where the New Action rubber stamps (most of whom probably support Obama) would just sit there and go along.

The leadership says that the AFT and NYSUT have endorsed Hillary. The UFT doesn't have to.

Do you think there aren't a number of UFT members who support Obama, particularly African-Americans? And what of the Black members of Unity Caucus who just might have a bit of pride in Obama's achievements and would love to share their thoughts? Not allowed.

Will the Clinton endorsement without allowing for open discussion one day come back to haunt Unity Caucus? More importantly, will Obama supporters among the membership call for a recount?

Room With a View: The Queens Rubber Room

I had an out of body experience yesterday when I was invited over to the Queens Rubber Room by the gang who went to federal court last Monday with a lawsuit. They are calling themselves "Teachers 4 Action."

Going in. Video posted below.

I got off the Van Wyck at Linden Place and looked for the ugliest building I could find – where was the sign proclaiming I had reached Shit's Creek? Part of the DOE punishment manual - put 'em in places with bad architecture. Also, not exactly near good public transportation. I parked – illegally – behind the building but no one seemed to be watching.

I was greeted by the T4A organizing committee (I'm not mentioning their names here until they give me the ok, but they know who they are). I will mention Florian Lewenstein who has been out front with his lawsuit. You can read more about Florian and the suit in a story written by Meredith Kolodner in The Chief, posted at Norm's Notes.

What are they shredding over there?


Their lawyer, Ed Fagan, led the charge into the building and I followed his blocking, dodging and ducking like any good running back in the Super Bowl. We got up to the 4th floor where the detainees hang out. I will say, they do have a room with a view – of highways.

It was clearly not a normal day at the office for the confinees. I started taking pictures, which always make people nervous. But I was careful to focus on Ed and the background. Ed talked to people briefly to tell them about the lawsuit and to announce a lunchtime meeting at a nearby church.

There followed lots of milling about as the powers that be began to get organized and an order finally came down from the lady in charge, who was not on sight, that we had to leave. Teachers organized themselves into cars to go to the church.

Ed scans the sheet listing where people are "supposed" to be.

About 50 people, some from Rubber Rooms in other boroughs, showed up. After an introduction by Florian, Ed Fagan explained what this was all about. (RR activist and lawyer Joy Hochstadt was also on board.)

Using the metaphor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he reprised the words of the past: "They have awakened a sleeping giant with a terrible resolve. We will fight to win with righteous anger. If we lose, we will still win by shining a light and raising awareness. We are facing a Goliath but we have a mighty slingshot."

That pumped up the crowd, which having faced so much demoralization, certainly could use a pep rally. Fagan went on to the details.

He didn't shy away from the issue of there are people who may have done things that are serious. But he focused on the issue of no matter what they did, they still have a right in this society to their due process rights. The DOE MUST play by the rules. Is the way they were removed from their schools without charges or any information such a violation? Is the very existence of the rubber room, with its humiliating rules and procedures, such a violation?

Ed and Florian at the church.

The two judges involved seem pretty decent. The Federal judge is Victor Marrero, who struck down provisions of the Patriot Act – twice. A good sign for due process. There is also a Discovery Judge. (Legalese like "discovery" gives me the heebies. All I know about "discovery" is Columbus "discoveried" America - maybe.)

The Judge (one of them) asked for the case to be tightened up and they have to return to court next week.

Fagan asked people to conquer their fears and stand up for their rights. "Until you do, you will lose." The judge has assured if there is any retaliation, it is against the law.

As to exactly which people and agencies to sue, that is still being determined. The UFT is still a candidate to be sued.

The audience at the church.

Teachers4Action can be reached at: teachers4action@gmail.com
Thanks to DB for video processing and editing.

Scoring ELA's for Dollars

From the ICE Mailbag:

I am scoring the ELA tests every day after school and Sat. and Sundays as well for two more weeks. I've already done it for nine days. There must be hundreds of teachers involved in this important task of making sure that as many kids as possible score as many 4's and 3's as possible irregardless of the quality of their work. Lots of money is being spent on this activity which is probably why the DOE is cutting 100 million from the school budgets.

Email from Time Out From Testing:

Last night the DOE slashed $100 million from school budgets. No discussions, no input from those working in schools. This morning principals woke up to find how much had been removed from their school budgets for THIS SEMESTER. Without any prior discussion; what an outrage!

Time Out From Testing would like to propose that each one of us write Chancellor Joel Klein, with copies to City Council Member Robert Jackson, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Jennifer Medina at the NY Times arguing that if there must be a $100 million cut, it should not be taken from instruction, but from the interim assessment contract (Acuity costing $80 Million and ARIS ($80 million), the system now in place to track every students' personal information. Those two contracts cost the DOE $160 million. That would leave $60 million for the schools to invest in teaching and learning.

In addition, we should DEMAND a listing of all those who work at TWEED along with their salaries.

Teachers rally at unsafe public school
BY JESS WISLOSKI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Teachers and parents picketed a Far Rockaway school Wednesday to protest what they said were increasing outbursts of violence in the school.

On Mayoral Control and School Governance

The more I think about mayoral control the more I think of some kind of decentralized system. The issue will always be keeping the politicians out of it. One intriguing idea is to use the Klein idea (bogus of course) of truly empowering the school as the basic unit. Empower SLT's to choose a principal. Each school has one rep (or base it on a ratio of number of students) to create a district. And each district sends a rep to a central level. The central operation would provide services and monitoring to the schools. They could also choose a chancellor to oversee things but that would be fairly powerless. However since money is always at the central level there would be allocation powers.

Now there are elements of what Klein says he tried to do in here but with this plan the power doesn't reside on top but at the place where it is needed.

ICE is going to address this issue at Friday's meeting. I don't see how we will come to a conclusion at that point but the discussion will clarify things. Anyone interested, come on down. 4:30 at Murray Bergtraum HS.

And be sure to check out Meredith Kolodner's excellent piece in this week's Chief on the UFT Governance meeting last week featuring excellent points made by our buddies Josh Heisler (left) and Michael Fiorillo. Josh teaches at Vanguard HS in the Julia Richman Complex and has been part of the Teachers Unite Forum Planning Committee. Michael, one of ICE's founders, is CL at Newcomers HS in Queens. The article is posted at Norm's Notes.

Rumor on 55/25

Just in from a chapter leader:

Have you heard rumors that the 55/ 25 pension is being held up because those that be in charge want to raise the amount of money we would have to pay to opt in??

If you've heard anything, let us know.

When Weingarten announced the merit pay plan she said it was teamed with 55/25. Merit pay has been voted upon and is being put into effect while 55/25 pension plan is delayed. She spun this as a good thing at the last Del. Ass. – see, the longer the delay, the less you have to pay. But she promised there would not be one without the other. I'm just shocked she might have been a shade less than straightforward on this. Just shocked!

THIS JUST IN: Pension plan changed from 55/25 to 95/75. UFT argues this is a good thing as the DOE will allow those who die on the job to be buried on school grounds free of charge.

UPDATE: Sunday Feb. 3 from a CL:
At Middle school chapter leaders meeting last week, vp said that 55/25 is expected to be signed at the end of February or the beginning of March.

Mayoral Control and the UFT

Over at NYC Educator, Schoolgal asks:
Will you be attending any of the UFT's meetings on the subject of mayoral control? I want to go, but after the last 2 contracts I always feel decisions are already made ahead of time and Randi will either support it or some version that still gives the mayor some power.


I think you may be right though there is some value in your going and reporting back to the gang here on what happened.

UFT events like this are basically venting mechanisms.

I missed the one at MLK HS in Manhattan last week which I wanted to attend. They are basically dog and pony shows like the high stakes testing committee was and that the UFT has a commitment to a system based on some form of mayoral control which they will not be moved off no matter what people say. Expect some tweaking of mayoral control. Remember, the UFT will support Bill Thompson for mayor and sell it as a way to have mayoral control with your own mayor.

When you say to Randi you are opposed to mayoral control she often will come back with : We don't want to go back to what we had.

I'm not so sure anymore.

The trick to is to come up with an alternative which we are beginning to struggle with in ICE. ICOPE is doing a bunch of stuff too. And we are going to do forums on this issue with Teachers Unite probably in the fall and we hope to attract teachers and parents. But I'm concerned that might be to late.

Lucy Woodward Performs Friday

One of the fun things about this teacher activism business is meeting people with interesting backgrounds and families. One of the original founders of ICE, a former opera singer, happens to have a daughter who also went into music. Not exactly opera, though.

I've seen Lucy Woodward perform a few times and she is worth a visit. Her new album includes songs she co-wrote with Itaal Shur (who won a Grammy in 1999 for co-writing the song "Smooth", recorded by Santana).

Friday can be an afternoon of ICE (meeting at 4:30) and Lucy at 7:30.
Mom sent these pictures along.

Samples of the music can be heard on www.lucywoodward.com and on YouTube (e.g., Use What I Got) Geographical Cure and Slow Recovery

Tickets at: highlineBallroom

Concert starts @ 7:30PM
Doors open @ 7 PM
Tickets $18.00 in advance
$25.00 at door.

Buy Tickets Online