If you’re not an ATR today, you could be one tomorrow

From Marjorie Stamberg:

This is a reminder, we will be at the UFT Delegate Assembly on Wednesday, April 22 to highlight the the crisis of ATR teachers and school closings.

This is the critical time, before principals hire for September. We need an immediate moratorium on all school closings and for a hiring freeze until all ATR teachers who want positions are placed. If schools are in trouble -- fix them, don't close them! The UFT has already voted for both the moratorium and the freeze, in good part due to our pressure and mobilization. But we need the union to act on this, not just pay lip service.

The D.A. starts at 4:15, and we will have signs outside for “Stop School Closings,” “Hiring Freeze Until ATRs are Placed,” and “If you’re not an ATR today, you could be one tomorrow.”

We will have a motion to call for

No New Hiring Until ATR Teachers are Placed

No School Closings!


Four months after the “Side Agreement” was signed, a grand total of 16 ATRs have been hired, while 295 brand new teachers were hired! There are now 1,740 ATRs across the system. The Side Agreement is like putting a band-aid on a bursting artery. And at the April 6 E-board, it was revealed that the UFT dropped its age discrimination suit in return for the toothless Side Agreement. A secret deal that is only now coming to light...

The union voted last October for a moratorium on hiring until all teachers who want positions are assigned -- we need to act on this now; we cannot wait until September. And there will soon be far more ATRs with many big high schools on the chopping block. The ATR situation threatens the whole union -- the DOE wants a big teacher reserve so they can use it to try to get rid of our "no-layoff" clause, and experienced teachers who know their rights. But it's not enough to know your rights, you have to fight to defend them.

The UFT is not addressing the root cause of the crisis. When the union gave up seniority transfers in the disastrous 2005 contract, it opened the gate for the Bloomberg/Klein to drive this truck through as they go after tenure. That's why one big part of our fightback has to be to restore seniority rights in the contract. We know that the ATR crisis was allowed to simmer and stew in the UFT until we engaged the issue in a strong united way, school by school.

We need a meeting of all ATR teachers where these and other questions are answered. We need a UFT special rep for ATR teachers who is available for phone calls, in-person meetings, not just e-mail that doesn’t get followed up.

We need the UFT to put teeth in its motions for– No School Closings! If a School’s in Trouble – Fix it, Don't Close It!

A Moratorium on all New Hires until ATR Teachers are Placed!
Restore Seniority Transfer Rights in the Contract!

Take Back the Givebacks!

Charter Schools: The Solution to the Crisis in Public Education?

This conference on May 4 is an outgrowth of an informal gathering that took place a month ago on a Sunday afternoon attended by 20 people, mostly younger public school teachers very concerned about the invasion of public school space by charters. It is also an outgrowth of the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to save public education. Pass this information on to people in your schools as this is an issue not school is exempt from. For a perfect example read this from Leonie Haimson: Brooklyn Prospect Charter School Will Be in Sunset Park High School Building



****FORWARD WIDELY****

Charter Schools: The Solution to the Crisis in Public Education?

Do Charter Schools actually represent a genuine movement to re-establish community control, parent choice and equitable education for ALL students? Or are they part of a larger movement sweeping the country and turning the public sector of education over to hands of privately run organizations?

Do charter schools provide adequate channels for the democratic input of staff and parents? What happens when charter schools deny educators union rights, pensions and benefits?
At this forum, we invite teachers, parents, students and community members to consider the role that charter schools play in the larger national agenda to privatize education in the United States. We will discuss the validity of their popular claim to support civil rights by providing parents of “failing” schools other options. Please join us.

Charter schools are opening while public schools are closing or being placed in smaller spaces that hinder the expansion of public schools. Charter schools also have stricter admission policies. With all these “at-risk” or “failing schools” closing, where are their students going to go? Who will accept them?

Join a discussion on these important topics and more!

May 4 5:30 p.m. Pace University Student Union 1 Pace Plaza (look for signs) 2/3 to Park Place, A/C to Broadway/Nassau, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall

Sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to Defend Public Education, a newly formed coalition of NYC groups and individuals dedicated to defend public education, and the parents, students and teachers affected against attempts to privatize, underfund and undermine the system. The coalition is building this forum and is also building a rally on May 14 to oppose NYC school closings.

Co-Sponsored by (list in formation) the Independent Community of Educators (ICE), Justice not Just Tests - a NYCoRE Work Group, the International Socialist Organization (ISO)

contact: asc.ice.uft@gmail.com, 718-601-4901

Get involved in the next planning meeting:

Tuesday, April 21 5:00 p.m.
CUNY Grad Center – Rm 5409
34th Street and 5th Ave. Bring I.D.

A Great Debate: Fiorillo and Others on Charters, Unions and More

At Gotham Schools

Commentary on NAEP, Klein, Ravitch, and Pallas

Ed Notes responds to Columbia's Aaron Pallas' (alias Skoolboy) response to Joel Klein's response to Diane Ravitch. Got that? (We are still working on our own response to Ravitch, which will include comments from Sean Ahern.) As you can see in the cartoon, the Ohanian/Bacey crowd don't think it does matter much.

Responding to Joel Klein: Why NAEP Matters

Read Pallas' full response. He starts with:

NYC Chancellor Joel Klein’s response in Wednesday’s New York Times to Diane Ravitch’s op-ed last week provides a lot to chew on. Today, I’m focusing on his comments about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Many of us have issues with the NAEP because it is just another standardized test (JAST) being used to judge schools and teachers. There have been some calls to use it as THE measure as a way to create national standards, which would lead to a national test. Ravitch and Weingarten are pushing in this direction it seems.

I want to focus on this point. Pallas says:

Quoting Klein: "Our fourth-grade scores on those tests are strong."
Surely the Chancellor must know that, when a test is administered in both the fourth and eighth grade, and he claims that the fourth-grade results are “strong,” and says nothing about the eighth grade, a reasonable person might wonder about the eighth-grade results. In fact, there have been no statistically significant gains in eighth-grade performance in New York City in either reading or math between 2003 and 2007 on the NAEP assessment, and no gains in fourth-grade reading either. Fourth-grade scores in New York City are “strong” only in the sense that there were significant gains in fourth-grade math performance from 2003 to 2007.

One thing Pallas doesn't point to is that even the rise in 4th grade math scores are suspect if the same student drops back by the 8th grade. Did this indicate there was great teaching in grade 4 and poor teaching from grades 5-8? Or the middle school experience was just so lousy? If you're going to live by the sword of high stakes testing to claim how well you are doing, you're going to die by it. My middle school friends used to complain all the time that the scores our kids were showing up with were not real. They could always tell which schools cheated or manipulated the most.

Let me tell you about my experiences with testing in elementary schools. As the math test loomed we prepared much of the day. I always had great success in getting good math scores because it was so much easier to prepare kids than it was in reading. I used to collect questions from old tests and from the first days of schools in September, I would put up a Do Now every day with a few sample questions. The problem solving part was the most difficult to prepare because it involved reading. So we taught the key words like if you see the word "less" think subtraction.

Now I didn't consider this real math teaching, which we basically suspended in the weeks preceding the exam (today I hear they start prepping in September). Math is especially developmental, and teaching in a scattered approach by preparing for all areas of the test at one time is actually harmful.

Teaching fractions and percent are prime examples, as is teaching prime numbers. You can try to get them to understand the process behind division of fractions or you can just tell them to invert the denominator and multiply. "But why. Mr. Teacher?" "Shut up and do it. We have a test to take and there's no time to get into understanding this crap," might be a response. Prime numbers? Just memorize the first 20.

No. I actually did teach this stuff the right way but as crunch time came there was so much to cover. The worst was the stuff we hadn't yet covered and required the speedy cramming approach. Basically, it was all a waste of time. The tests I gave in class were so much more relevant and useful and provided instant feedback. Like, if almost no one got the primes right, do it again.

There are other reasons why the 4th grade math scores went up. By adding a math coach to every school, there was now someone who could focus all the teachers on the subject. This is not a bad thing, though we used to have a Title I math pull-out person who did some of the same stuff. But one would expect the scores under Klein to rise when there's a person who can focus on test prep. Why the coach didn't affect the math scores in the 8th grade is a good question. And why reading scores didn't go up due to the same attention being paid to testing is beyond me.

I view all test prep for reading and math as akin to going to the gym and doing ten sets of bicep curls. You can actually see a muscle – for about an hour. My test of Klein's claims would be to test 1000 kids at random in June and compare the results to the tests from a few months before. I would give the tests the first week of October and then get down to real teaching for the rest of the year.

Elementary schools are a much more controlled environment than middle schools with the teacher having the flexibility to spend as much time on a subject as needed. There are also more opportunities for manipulation and even cheating. My supervisors used to sit in the office for hours going over all the test papers – doing what we were never sure. They claimed they were cleaning up errant pencil marks which could lower scores. And this was in the 80's and 90's, so the ed deformers and NCLB did not discover accountability. Pressure in my school was INTENSE. And there was tremendous resentment when the principal singled out teachers who consistently got high scores but everyone knew were not great. There was one who was absent every year for about 30 or more days but scored high all the time. The joke was: Imagine how well they would do if it was 60 days.

Forcing us to teach in this phony way drove many of us out of the self-contained classroom, a place I thought I would never leave. My 25 years with a test prep principal (since 1979) has informed the strong anti-high stakes testing position of Education Notes and I started bringing this position to UFT delegate assemblies, especially when Randi took over as president. She would tell me how much she agreed with me, her usual style, and I was fooled for years, hoping the UFT would use its influence to raise the alarm.

But it became clear that the UFT would fall right into line with the testing regime and try to use it to claim how well teachers were doing –remember the UFT and ed deformer stand that teaching quality is the most important factor– and make the argument for more money, even if it meant various forms of merit pay.

Joel Klein is defending the indefensible and even if the results on the NAEP were great, the idea of measuring schools and diverting them from their mission of doing a comprehensive job of teaching would still be wrong.

Talk about closing schools, ATRs, teachers under attack, and all the other foolhardy aspects of the ed deformer crowd – the root of all evil is high stakes testing.

Related:
Gerald Bracey on 50 years of the manuafactored "crisis" in American schools.

Note, especially to subscribers: Make sure to check the Ed Notes side panel for daily updates and other important information.

Teacher Activist Course from Teachers Unite

How can we counteract the attacks on public schools and the teacher bashing that goes along with it?

Without a union willing to stand up to this onslaught and in fact a union that is a willing collaborator in so much of the program, a union that accepts the parameters set out by the corporate supported ed deformers, an undemocratic union run by a massive Unity Caucus machine, it will take an active and informed membership.

To accomplish that we need a core of educators that is well informed of the major issues affecting education and a willingness to become part of a core of organizers who will work with people in their schools and beyond to bring a message of true education reform. A message of progressive educators organizing to create a true movement for teacher power.

Besides coming out for the Grassroots Education Movement rally and march from Battery Park past UFT headquarters and up to Tweed on May 14, here is a more programmatic way to get involved from Teachers Unite.


Are you a teacher who asks:

*How can I be both an instructional leader and a teacher activist?

*How do teachers organize with NYC communities for social justice?

*What does the UFT, or a teachers contract, have to do with social justice?

*What is the history of public schools in New York City?

Register today for Teachers Unite's Teacher Activist Course! You can sign up for any combination of Sessions 1, 2, 3 and 4.


For full course descriptions, go to: http://www.teachersunite.net/register

Session 1:
Education Reform, Social Justice and Teachers Unions
Saturday, April 25, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Session 2:
Organizing to Transform Public Education
Saturday, May 2, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Session 3:
Effective outreach and organizing
Saturday, May 9, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Session 4:
Who controls the public school system in New York City?
A brief history of the city's schools
Saturday, May 30th, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

For full course descriptions, go to: http://www.teachersunite.net/register

Lunch is included in all sessions.

Free childcare is available for those who request it at least two
weeks in advance of their registered session.

Teacher Activist Course sessions are free for Teachers Unite members.

Sliding scale registration fee per session for non-members: $25 - $75

To register, go to: http://www.teachersunite.net/register

Teachers Unite is a membership organization supporting the leadership of NYC public school teachers committed to social justice and activism.

By leadership we mean:
1) a deep understanding of theproblems faced by educators, students and public school communities,
2) skills to organize a community to build power and make change, and
3) a willingness to take action.


Note, especially to subscribers:
Make sure to check the Ed Notes side panel for daily updates and other important information.

Weingarten Agreement to Schmoke as Mediator Means DC Teachers About to be Screwed

Rhee, Parker and Weingarten Agree to a Mediator

D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker just announced that a mediator will help settle differences over the shape of their contract.

Kurt Schmoke, Dean of Howard University School of Law and former Baltimore mayor, will work to resolve "outstanding issues" on the table, according to an AFT statement.- Stephen Sawchuck at Ed Week.

Agreeing to Schmoke, part of the anti-union ed deformer crowd ( I received an email with his background yesterday but can't lay my hands on it,) would be like having Joel Klein mediate the UFT contract. But we told the DC teachers to expect nothing less from Weingarten. Watch them be handed a contract and given 10 minutes to read and approve it before the contracts are collected. Count your teeth before leaving the room.

Debunking the Ed Deformer "School Choice" Argument

The phony "give parents choice" free market idea being pushed by the education deformers is finally being challenged. Why don't all parents get a quality zoned neighborhood school? Here is what the charter school operators don't want to do: Take over a few entire schools intact. For experimental purposes, let's allow them to change anything they want - teachers, supervisors, whatever. Anything except the kids. No lottery. Just take the zoned school and make them work. Edison has failed at this no matter where they try it.

Leonie Haimson takes a shot at the school choice argument after the Daily News revealed that the Carl Icahn run charter school in the Bronx accepted only 3% of the applicants. Leonie says:

All classes at the school are capped at 18, according to its website and an article in the NY Sun. Classes run to 4 PM, with Saturday help for any child who needs it.

And yet this administration, which promotes charter schools at every opportunity, allowed class size to rise in all grades this year but 4th – despite millions of dollars in state aid that was targeted specifically to reducing class size. More than 66,000 students-- or about one quarter of all NYC public school children in grades K-3 are now in classes of 25 or more– an increase of more than 11, 000 students compared to last year. There are nearly 14,000 students in grades 1-3 in classes over 28 – a 36% jump.

Charter school promoters like Eli Broad constantly say that charter schools are “laboratories for success that others can emulate within a public-school system. So I'm a very strong believer in mayoral control."

Not sure what the meaning of “laboratories for success” is when the Mayor and the Chancellor resolutely refuses to implement the same reforms that make charter schools successful in the regular public schools they control – even when state law demands it.

And I’m not sure what parental “choice” means, which the administration claims to support, when they are insistent on taking away the most basic choice of all from parents – to send their children to their zoned neighborhood public schools. Some might even see it as a right -- except for the people who run this city, who would rather see the dissolution of our public schools so that privatization can prevail.

The entire piece is at the NYC Public School Parents blog.

Oakland teacher Stephen Miller pointed out in his great piece Pimping for Privatization

The idea of school choice is another “get rich quick scheme” that sounds good until it is examined. What happened in America that should we even have to choose at all

Schools push out the students who take more time and resources to educate. Once privatized, schools compete for the “good” students. Middle-class parents, who have the time and know-how to work the system, get their kids into the “right” schools. Parents from poorer families generally lack these resources and usually wind up taking whatever they are given.

To paraphrase… the law, in all of its magnificence, allows poor parents, as well as rich, to drive their students across town twice a day in their Porsche SUVs to insure their kids are receiving a quality education. “Choice” benefits parents who have the resources to choose. It simply does not carry the same guarantees as a “right”.

The UFT Drops Age Discrimination Suit

There's a long story about the supposed UFT age discrimination law suit, which Ed Notes branded as bogus and just a publicity stunt all along. Here's some more background:

It seems I was the first to raise this issue in a public forum at an Executive Board meeting back in the fall of 2004 or 2005 when I and Betsy Combier helped defend a teacher from John Adams HS at a U-rating hearing. The UFT rep assigned was basically helpless and only wanted to address the letters in the teacher's file,not the underlying causes of why the letters were placed there.

When I raised age discrimination, even the hearing officer perked up, saying, "I'm older and that would be terrible." I angrily called the Queens borough office and got a run-around.

So that night I went to the UFT Ex bd meeting, livid at UFT inaction, asking why I, in no way officially connected to the UFT, had to be the one to use age discrimination as a defense. I think Betsy may have been there and she can corroborate the story if she was.

UFT leaders feigned surprise in the Claude Rains Captain Renault tone of "there's gambling here" that such a thing could exist and disingenuously announced at the next Delegate Assembly that teachers suspecting age discrimination should contact the UFT. Randi Weingarten emailed me asking for names and I sent her some. Then the UFT held a press conference with some teachers and announced a suit.

I knew it was bullshit because someone on the inside tipped me off that 25 teachers in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn has filed a suit a year earlier against District 20 Supt Vinnie Grippo, a political ally of the UFT, and their lawyer was not only getting no help from the UFT, but obstruction. The act of making it seem they hadn't heard of such a thing was academy award material.

Chaz writes about it here, Randi & Joel Do It Again - The UFT Secretly Dropped Their Age Discrimination Lawsuit When They Signed The Unenforceable ATR Agreement based on a report from JD2718, a New Action member of the Executive Board. (Since 8 New Action members only got on the Executive Board with Unity Caucus endorsement, you have to read between the lines. I read it as barely suppressed rage. Or at least, that is what I'm hoping, as it would be nice to see New Action, whose existence depends on being propped up by Unity as a bogus opposition, actually take some action.)

I wrote about this story numerous times and if you want to follow the trail, search the blog for "age discrimination suit."

Here is my October 2007 post:

What happened to the Age Discrimination lawsuit?

The UFT has been making the rounds of the Reassignment Centers. UFT Rep Jeff Huart was asked this question:

What happened to the Age Discrimination lawsuit?

Jeff Huart: The UFT is going forward with the lawsuit. People who believe they qualify should get their information in to the union.
Question: But information is out there that the UFT is not going forward with it.
Huart: The UFT is going forward with that one and the one for the people in the Reassignment Centers.
Question: Do teachers know about the general age discrimination lawsuit. Many teachers claim never to have heard about it.
Huart: District reps went to all the schools to tell about it.

How many schools do District Reps reach a week? Might as well use a milk carton and string to deliver the message. Not in the NY Teacher. Not in the UFT Weekly Updates to chapter leaders. Not a flyer handed out at the Delegate Assembly, or even an announcement to have senior teachers contact the union. But whispers from District Reps (those that are competent or awake). That's showing you are serious about age discrimination.

When your union functions as little more than a public relations factory, what can you expect?

Pimping for Privatization

The Perimeter Primate posts a piece by Oakland teacher Stephen Miller, who lays bare just about all the fault lines of the ed deformers. Here are a few excerpts:

[Right wing economist Milton] Friedman demanded the total privatization of schools. He claimed that the so-called “free market” is the best guarantee of efficiency, quality education and equality (not to mention modernizing the system) because it introduces competition, which provides “choice” for parents.

This is in essence the corporate model for education. It is being sold across the country to parents, especially minority parents, who are quite clear that the public schools are more segregated than ever, and who are desperate for something different. Nationally, a gaggle of reactionary billionaires (the Walton family, of Wal-Mart, Eli Broad, of KB homes and AIG Retirement, and Donald Fisher of the Gap) have suddenly become champions of equality and are pushing charter schools as the solution.

The government is getting out of the business of governing. So it should be no surprise that privatization is being forced on school systems across the country. The United States really has two highly segregated school systems. Suburban schools are the best in the world; urban schools are among the worst. Privatization is being forced on urban school districts alone.

What happens, then, when the government no longer handles public education? It is then absolved of this essential responsibility.

The big ideological push for a decade now is to make everything personal responsibility. Then it’s your fault if something goes wrong. Government no longer is even expected to provide equal access.

When was it that the problem started being described, as in the article above, as “the achievement gap” rather than the refusal of government to fulfill the historical demand for real equality? Why do we now just assume that corporations are somehow going to do this better for us and let governments off the hook? Where were these discussions held?

The idea of school choice is another “get rich quick scheme” that sounds good until it is examined. What happened in America that should we even have to choose at all

Schools push out the students who take more time and resources to educate. Once privatized, schools compete for the “good” students. Middle-class parents, who have the time and know-how to work the system, get their kids into the “right” schools. Parents from poorer families generally lack these resources and usually wind up taking whatever they are given.

To paraphrase… the law, in all of its magnificence, allows poor parents, as well as rich, to drive their students across town twice a day in their Porsche SUVs to insure their kids are receiving a quality education. “Choice” benefits parents who have the resources to choose. It simply does not carry the same guarantees as a “right”.

Markets have never solved social problems. They create them.

All we have to do is look around to find the answers. The “free market” Bailouts are creating social problems in all directions, not eliminating them. This is the inevitable result of turning the responsibility for public problems over to private forces. The privatizers are all about deregulating public schools by eliminating public control.

Markets are designed for profit making. Remember when Bill Clinton told us that corporations were the best institutions to tackle the national health care disaster? HMOs have made things much worse, producing the worst health care for the highest price in the industrial world – and – completely outside public control. Sharpton and Klein support the domination of EMOs (Educational Maintenance Organizations) and the elimination of the responsibility of government to address the concerns of society.

In a ironic fashion, the “free market” imposes an equality of sorts on all the peoples of the US. This is the equality of poverty and its misery.


Read it in full:
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/04/pimping-for-privatization.html

Where Arne Duncan Sends His Kids to School

When asked this question: As the second education secretary with school-aged kids, where does your daughter go to school, and how important was the school district in your decision about where to live?

Duncan replied: She goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education.

Check the class size in Arlington and also the per spending per pupil. I wonder why he didn't send his kids to DC schools under Michelle Rhee? Think his daughter is going to get enough test prep? Does Arlington have mayoral control of schools? Or does Duncan get to vote on school budgets and have a school board? Duncan sends his kids to schools where he gets the same parental privileges that he wants to deny parents in urban school districts.


Tipped from EIA: http://www.eiaonline.com

The Quiet Coup and the Coming Armageddon

Updated April 15, 2009

...or How I Learned to Live in a Banana Republic


Don't count this as rational. I'm a Terminator kind of guy and just finished watching an episode of the Sarah Conner Chronicles and am in the midst of John Gresham's latest, The Associate. So don't mind my paranoia. If Arnold were to show up as a robot from the future, I wouldn't be shocked. And if we faced the devastation in some apocalyptic films, I would nod and say, "see, told you so!"

Imagine the worst, as I often do. What Joel Klein or Eva Moskowitz or Randi Weingarten does may soon be irrelevant.

I saw on 60 Minutes how people were lining up to buy guns so they can defend their food in case society falls totally apart. I ran and buried my favorite nuts under the floorboard and started thinking about Cormack McCarthy's The Road. Imagine hordes of people going postal. Or will we start seeing educators taking hostages and have that term morph into "going pedagogic?" Do we worry about charter schools when we are all living in the woods?

Think Germany c. 1930. Things get really bad. Like 25% or more unemployment. Deflation. Or printing money leads to hyperinflation. I can't tell which, but either scenario looks like disaster. I mean, what if we're in a decade long hole that could make the lost decade in Japan look like a sunny spring day? Jeez, am I channeling Glenn Beck, who I consider a right-wing nut?

A black president who the left looks at as a front man for a coup by wealthy bankers and the right views as a socialist supported by a rabid youth movement that some loonies are comparing to Hitler Youth. That makes him a centrist where the word CHANGE has been changed to small change.

Some think the crisis is manufactured to create a sense that these bailouts, which will shift even more wealth in the hands of the few, are necessary, while that was the plan all along. As things deteriorate, some of the people on the left, who might have been rioting in the streets, are mollified by their guy in office – liberals who will try to keep hope alive. But what if Obama was part of the plan all along to enable this coup?

I see rioting from the right as more likely than from the left, which always seems so week in this country compared to places like Europe. Just a few years before Hitler took power, the left in Germany was stronger than the Nazis, who were looked on as a fringe. Hitler exploited that fear of the left and the German oligarchy came to see him as the less fearsome threat.

You already hear the right calling for people to take up arms, directed at the black president. Look at the names of so many of the "villains" of the financial crisis: Rubin, Bernacke, Madoff. It would not be hard to target a certain group to blame for the crisis – Blacks and Jews. Could be a hit with the right wing. Remember Father Coughlin's populist rants in the 1930's which turned anti-semitic and ended up with supporting Hitler? (No I really don't remember but I was a history major.)

From an article in The Atlantic,

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says [Simon Johnson] a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

The entire article is worth reading and is at The Atlantic

The difference from other recent situations is that it is occurring world-wide so there is no one left to bail anyone out. The essence of Johnson's thesis is that bankers have done very well in this crisis. In his experience with emerging market economy crashes in the past, the small oligarchy, which had a symbiotic relationship with the government, always managed to glom the lion share for themselves, which hindered the recovery. These markets did not recover until these forces were broken up.

Now that the US is moving into banana republic territory (not the store), our own oligarchy must be damaged before recovery can begin. Batten down the hatches. In the US this relationship is more than symbiotic. They actually are the government (see one Goldman Sachs).

Related: Anything Reality-Based Educator writes over at NYC Educator. Start with this one.

Does Gotham Schools Have an Agenda?- UPDATE

UPDATED

Elizabeth Green says "we really do not have 'an agenda,' besides good journalism."

NYC Educator and JD2718 think they do have an agenda. (And an added piece from NYCEducator.)

Good journalism is in the eye of the beholder. While the journalism of what gets covered can be great, what doesn't get covered is indicative of selective journalism.

To her credit, Elizabeth posted these links herself and often posts links to Ed Notes and the teacher blogger world. No one is more informed on the players from top to bottom in NYC Ed, as she ran rings around almost every other ed reporter in NYC at the NY Sun. For one of her first stories, she actually called me and quoted ICE's Jeff Kaufman in an article that got the dander of the UFT. Working in the belly of the conservative anti-union NY Sun, she did some great work in exposing the DOE and made many fans among NYC teachers.

Have things changed at Gotham? I have detected bias at times. Elizabeth recently had a story where she compared the ease with which Eva Moskowitz can get things done with the difficulty faced by the principal of PS 194 due to those nasty union contracts. Call it the "light bulbs to oranges" comparison. There was so much bias dripping out of that story, I had to wipe down my keyboard.

And the current lead side panel quote from Kitchen Sink, (supposedly a charter school principal who has a hell of a lot of time to blog at times one would expect someone to be working at running a school) a noted charter school defender, just might be viewed as bias.

I miss the idea of having a teacher's voice on Gotham. I know people who disagree, but I felt that Kelly Vaughan - former blogger Ms. Frizzle - at least brought the sense of a teacher to Gotham Schools. Now as a Teach for America alum, Kelly did bring some of those biases to the table, but her 7 years of teaching in NYC public middle schools gave her some perspective. She wasn't a hard news person, but she popped up at all kinds of events like ATR rallies, that are not being covered very well at Gotham at this time. Her leaving to go back to teaching, albeit at a charter school, was a loss for Gotham - and us.

Behind Gotham Schools is Mark Gorton. Wiki says:

The financial engine behind many of Gorton's business and civic interests is Tower Research Capital LLC, a financial services firm Gorton owns that he started in 1998, following a 4 1/2 year stint in the proprietary trading department of Credit Suisse First Boston (now Credit Suisse). At Credit Suisse Gorton traded stocks and built sophisticated hedging tools used to analyze markets. Tower evolved these models and specializes in quantitative trading and investment strategies based on proprietary trading algorithms using statistical methodology to identify non-random patterns in the stock markets. Buying and selling is done through an automated trade execution infrastructure, with many of trades placed through another affiliate, Lime Brokerage LLC.

Let's see now, a hedge fund kind of guy. Any chance of bias there?

One thing we would hope from Gotham Schools is a realistic picture of what is occurring in many NYC schools. I love that they have Aaron Pallas from Columbia, alias Skoolboy of Eduwonkette fame, but Ken Hirsch? With about a thousand teacher bloggers out there on the front lines, this is where they get commentary from?

Or how about the coverage of Arne Duncan without ever really examining the awful performance of Chicago schools under his 7 years there? Or the general failure of mayoral control in Chicago after 14 years of mayoral control? Or Paul Vallas following up Chicago with failure in Philly, followed up by the privatization of the New Orleans school system, making Vallas a 3-time loser?

But the UFT cue card case? WOW! What a scoop! Talk about elevating the trivial.

Related:
See Daily News reporter Meredith Kolodner's report on the UFT cue card caper with some perspective. Meredith may not be flashy, but since her days at The Chief, she has exhibited a nuanced understanding of major education issues – and without bias.

the City Council Cue Card Fiasco: Mulgrew was in charge

.... bet some lower species will get the blame as the Pres cannot publicly lambaste her hand picked successor. -- an anonymous comment.

Not ready for prime time
Hey Randi, that's just Mike being Mike. He went from school level Unity Caucus goon to union COO goon. Oh, please Randi, don't leave us in his hands. You just have to run for president again in next year's elections.

See Randi talk about it at Gotham Schools. Her changes in the union will amount to picking out a few new deck chairs.

Actually, I think the cue cards was a good thing. I changed my mind. Nice work Mike.
Good for UFT Cue Cards

Will the Real Jackass Rise? Charles Barron, Whitney Tilson, or Ben Chavis?

It's a tie between Whitney Tilson and Ben Chavis (not the same Ben Chavis who headed the NAACP. We've dealt with Tilson, who fancies himself an expert on education since he once went to kindergarten, when Ed Notes News reported

Whitney Tilson Chooses Ed Notes Editor to Manage Hedge Fund

This comment was left by someone named Andrew on our post linking to Angel Gonzalez' film:

Barron, Klein, Spellings, Sharpton Confrontation

One of KIPP's drooling mouth-breathing fans who blogs under the heading "Whitney Tilson's School Reform Blog" recently posted on an event which apparently occurred subsequent to Mr. Barron's brilliant dissection of mayoral control and the promotion of charter schools.

It points up that a sociopath is loose and running charters in the Oakland, CA area. Keep in mind that Ben Chavis would be in jail in a healthy society but wealthy people in this society have put him in charge of poor and working people's children.

Here's Tilson's idiotic blog entry:

"I owe NY City Council member Robert Jackson an apology for a case of mistaken identity. After I heard he spoke out against mayoral control during the morning panel of the Eq Equality Day on Friday, when I saw a City Council member go off on a rant on the same topic during the lunch panel, I naturally assumed it was Jackson. In fact, it was another City Council member, Charles Barron (I've never seen or met either of them).

Barron, by all accounts, is a true jackass -- he actually said during his rant that inner-city kids should be focusing on home ec and woodworking (this article by Elizabeth Green of GothamSchools.org on the idiotic things he had to say: http://gothamschools.org/2009/04/03/sharpton-cedes-time-to-barron-who-calls-for-klein-to-be-fired).

Barron is also a bully and, like most bullies, a coward. Here's more on the confrontation between he and Ben Chavis that I mentioned in yesterday's email, as recounted to me by Chavis and multiple witnesses:

Chavis observed Barron berating one of the conference organizers, bringing that person to tears, and didn't like it one bit -- he thought Barron was being a bully, so and went up to him and, face only inches from Barron's, started RIPPING him, saying (I'm not making this up): "You're a mother f-ing black pimp, you're f-ing our kids. Come to the reservation and I'll beat your ass. You want our kids to take Home Ec? YOU should wear a dress!"

Barron replied, "Well we're here, so let's do it right now." Chavis said OK and started heading for the exit. Barron, seeing Chavis was dead serious about fighting him, quickly wimped out and instead threatened to having Chavis kicked out of the hotel. They shouted obscenities at each other, with Chavis getting the last words as they separated, saying "You're a pimp! You're a pimp!"

I LIKE this guy!

Here's another story I heard about Chavis: when he became principal of the first American Indian Charter School, he went down to the street corner where the drug dealers were hanging out. They said, "What the hell are you doing here, white man." To which he replied, "I'm not white, I'm Indian -- and I'll pay you $5 if you bring back any of my students who should be in school." They said, "Hell, for $5, we'll not only bring them back, we'll beat them up for you!" "No need for that," Chavis replied. "Just bring them back."

As I said, I LIKE this guy! I'm not sure I'd recommend all of his methods, but they seem to work for him -- and, most importantly, his students!"

Wow Whitney. Ben Chavis challenging Barron to "settle it outside" is just the kind of guy we want running schools. And Barron's points about the killing of vocational education where most jobs will lie as opposed to the bullshit the ed deformers are throwing around about college jobs when we know most of them are geared for McDonald's and Walmart and data enty jobs. How much does Whitney have invested in those companies, I wonder? Keep those wages of those kids you supposedly care about real low.

Whitney, you are beyond a jackass. Try total idiot.


More on Chavis from Perimeter Primate:
Hello,

I am writing to you from Oakland, California, and hope you will pass this information to City Council Member Barron. It is about the man who approached Mr. Barron after the EEP panel last week and launched an abusive verbal attack, Ben Chavis of Oakland's American Indian Public charter schools.

I learned about the interaction here
http://edreform.blogspot.com/2009/04/apology-to-david-jackson-more-on.html

As an Oaklander who in interested in public school issues, and who has been living less than a mile from Mr. Chavis’ flagship charter school for the past 20 years, I am well acquainted with Chavis’ temperament and local shenanigans. Mr. Barron may like to read this article: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_6148011

Chavis took over the failing American Indian Public Charter School (AIPCS) in 2001-02. By his third year, a new course for the school was in place—the acquisition of more students from the higher performing subgroups and a reduction of students from the lowest performing subgroups. Here is the evidence of his demographic engineering at his award winning charter school (DataQuest at the CDE):

This is the changing percentage of the school’s students in one of the following subgroups: American Indian or Alaska Native, Pacific Islander, Filipino, Hispanic or Latino, or African American in the 13 school years from 1996-97 to 2008-09.

1996-97 = 100.0
1997-98 = 97.0
1998-99 = 93.8
1999-00 = 100.1
2000-01 = 97.0
2001-02 = 100
2002-03 = 98.7
2003-04 = 74.3
2004-05 = 55.4
2005-06 = 65.3
2006-07 = 51.1
2007-08 = 50.5
2008-09 = 42.3

The school's American Indian or Alaska Native percentage in 1996-97 was 100%. This year it is 1.1%.

And on the other hand, here is the changing percentage of the school’s students who are in either of the following subgroups: Asian or White.

1996-97 = 0.0
1997-98 = 2.9
1998-99 = 6.2
1999-00 = 0.0
2000-01 = 2.9
2001-02 = 0.0
2002-03 = 1.2
2003-04 = 25.7
2004-05 = 44.6
2005-06 = 33.7
2006-07 = 22.4
2007-08 = 38.4
2008-09 = 54.4

Of course, the demographic changes of the Oakland Unified School District are not aligned to this at all.

Around 2005, the school was starting to get a lot of press. Questions were being raised about Chavis' cherry picking tactics. Demographic reporting for 2006-07 suddenly showed an unprecedented number of students who did not specifying their subgroup (the multiple or no response category).

The percentage of students claiming to be in this subgroup had averaged 0.29 for the previous 10 years. In 2006-07 the percentage jumped to 26.4 percent. During the summer of 2007, Chavis abruptly resigned as principal of AIPCS. Most local people believe his departure was definitely connected to the incident which was reported in the article above.

Following his departure, the percentage of students in the multiple or no response category dropped to 11.1 in 2007-08. This year, it is 2.7%. The district average is 5.8%.

Although he is no longer a principal, Chavis oversees three charter schools in Oakland with the “American Indian Public” prefix. He calls his instructional program the “American Indian Method.”

Chavis' schools manage to avoid having to teach students w/disabilities. The combined enrollment in his three schools of students w/disabilities in 2007-08 was 1.3% (district average = 10%).

Chavis' schools also manage to avoid having to teach English Learners. The combined enrollment in his three schools of English learners in 2007-08 was 3% (district average = 30%).

He likes to boast how he is saving the low-performing groups, but his main technique is to seek out low-income, hardworking, high achieving students from local elementary schools.

Fortunately, Chavis' most recent charter petition was denied by the district; the denial report was quite interesting. Chavis' emotional response to learning the news about the denial is here: http://www.ibabuzz.com/education/2008/10/30/denied-new-american-indian-charter-school/

That wraps it up. In my opinion, Chavis is pretty much a highly competitive, scheming nutcase as far as I can tell, but I am quite certain that City Council Member Barron has been able to determine that for himself.

Most sincerely,
Sharon Higgins
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/

Barron, Klein, Spellings, Sharpton Confrontation: New Video by Angel Gonzalez

UPDATED Video Modified: Apr. 18

In a brilliant new video, Angel Gonzalez of ICE and the Grassroots Education Movement exposes the hypocrisy of mayoral control and the phony mantra that their critics are all about adults and they are all about children. And yes, that's Michael Fiorillo with the sign at the end. A must see.

Angel sent this along as an intro:

4-3-09 Sharpton-Klein NAN / EEP Forum with pro-mayoral control and pro-charter school panelists from across the US. Councilman Barron condemns their privatization of public schools agenda. After protests from the NO Mayoral Control Coalition, Sharpton conceded Barron's address prior to the speeches of the panelists. Barron condemns the profiteering & the educational devastation promulgated by the BloomKein Dictatorial Control of public education in NYC.

Angel Gonzalez


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2PW2iN_Yvw





Charter Schools: The Solution to the Crisis in Public Education?

All public schools in NYC are going to come up against this issue if they haven't already. This conference on May 4 is an outgrowth of the emerging coalition of grass roots activists, now known as the grass roots education movement. GEM. Circulate in the schools - email me for a pdf. Here is the text.


Do Charter Schools actually represent a genuine movement to re-establish community control, parent choice and equitable education for ALL students? Or are they part of a larger movement sweeping the country and turning the public sector of education over to hands of privately run organizations?

Do charter schools provide adequate channels for the democratic input of staff and parents? What happens when charter schools deny educators union rights, pensions and benefits?

At this forum, we invite teachers, parents, students and community members to consider the role that charter schools play in the larger national agenda to privatize education in the United States. We will discuss the validity of their popular claim to support civil rights by providing parents of “failing” schools other options. Please join us.

Charter schools are opening while public schools are closing or being placed in smaller spaces that hinder the expansion of public schools. Charter schools also have stricter admission policies. With all these “at-risk” or “failing schools” closing, where are their students going to go? Who will accept them?

Join a discussion on these important topics and more!

May 4 5:30 p.m.
Pace University Student Union 1 Pace Plaza (look for signs)
2/3 to Park Place, A/C to Broadway/Nassau, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall

Sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to Defend Public Education, a newly formed coalition of NYC groups and individuals dedicated to defend public education, and the parents, students and teachers affected against attempts to privatize, underfund and undermine the system. The coalition is building this forum and is also building a rally on May 14 to oppose NYC school closings.

Co-Sponsored by (list in formation) the Independent Community of Educators (ICE), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Justice Not Just Tests

contact: asc.ice.uft@gmail.com, 718-601-4901

Get involved in the next planning meeting:

Tuesday, April 21 5:00 p.m.
CUNY Grad Center – Rm 5414
34th Street and 5th Ave. Bring I.D.

Seder Sidekicks

Thanks to David for this follow-up to Tisch, Tisch, Meryl as Meryl, Joel et al. celebrate the holidays.

http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2009/04/seder-sidekicks.html




Make sure to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Public Schools, Private Money

Mary Porter has left a new comment on your post: The Broad Prize for Losers:

Here's a note I sent to a member of congress who sits on the Finance Committee. I'm hoping others will take up the financial approach to rein in Arne Duncan's massive giveaway to the eduprofiteers, and save public education from Eli Broad.


Please take a moment to look this over, it points to specific hearings the Finance Committee can hold. Similar efforts by the New York City Council are underway now.

The New York City Council met April 1 to investigate education funding contracting, and they have found an excellent example of the oversight gap:
The Bloomberg administration created a "non-profit" foundation, The Fund for Public Schools, which does not need to file financial disclosure statements, submit contracts for bids, or meet public disclosure requirements in its sub-contracts, because it is a supposedly private entity. Here are the specifics, with links to other sources:

Public Schools, Private Money
April 2nd, 2009
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/04/02/public-schools-private-money/

I am asking the Finance Committee to conduct hearings similar to the one in NY City, to investigate current public gifts to the edubusiness industry, and to draft legislation requiring that all foundations which are designated to receive the Education Stimulus money be required to file full financial disclosure statements. All their subsequent subcontractors must do the same, to account for who eventually receives the public money.

Nolan and Odonnell Toss the Ball in Klein's Court

Following the machinations of Joel Klein and the NYCDOE last week turned out to be more fun than a dull Final Four end to March Madness.

Klein responded to the UFT/NYCLU law suit on closing zoned schools in Brooklyn's Brownsville -PS 150 and Harlem's PS 241 with a letter to parents saying the schools will remain open, while openly urging them NOT to send their kids to these schools. Call it closing by starving them of kids. (See my posting of Klein's letters- Tweed Undermines Law Suit "Win" on Zoned Schools,
Klein Letter to PS 150 Brownsville Parents)

While it is OK to go to court if you have the resources, if that is all you do, you can only win a moral victory but lose the battle - and the war. But that is the way of the UFT.

We know what the DOE game is: force struggling schools that you are responsible for into closing by shifting the blame on them and open up charter schools in those buildings that will cream off the best kids, while forcing the struggling kids into neighboring schools which will then fall in a domino effect. By the time they all fall and the majority kids are under served, you will be out of office – and responsibility.

Use the Harlem Success charter school political operation (some of them will even admit this is all about politics, not education) to make it look like parents want the zoned schools shut. (Harlem parents say they want their local schools shut down)

NYC parent Steve Koss made a powerful indictment on the NYC Parent blog:

Why is this rush toward charters not seen for what it really is: a broad-scale indictment of Chancellor Klein’s failed tenure? If after seven years at the DOE’s helm, the best he can offer is an escape from the very schools he has failed to improve, isn’t that effectively a statement of surrender on his part? Or is failure the goal, part of a localized “shock doctrine” program that paves the way for a back door public school privatization program that would never have been approved by public referendum?

Read it all: What's Wrong with This Picture?


NY State Assembly members Nolan and Odonnell, two of the most responsive and critical of the DOE members of that often corrupt body, sent Klein a letter in response:

Obviously the support offered by DOE prior to this point has been insufficient for a school with such high percentages of English Language Learners (22.2%), students receiving special education services (22.8%), and students who qualify for Title 1 funding (80.9%).

Although it is not entirely clear from the above mentioned letter, we hope that DOE’s goals are to strengthen P.S. 241, improve its ability to prepare students, and prevent future phasing out. We would like you to specifically describe how DOE will increase its support of P.S. 241, including a targeted strategy to increase achievement, allocation of additional resources, and meaningful consultation with the school community about its needs.

Read it in full: Letter to Klein from O'Donnell and Nolan re PS 241

Angel Gonzalez of ICE and the new coalition of groups being formed, now known as the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) wrote in response:

Definitely an excellent letter to Mr. Klein. However, those insidious machinations of BloomKlein, who undermine our neighborhood schools and who cloak themselves in progressive civil rights rhetoric, need to be countered by increased pressure from below. We will continue to support the efforts of the Harlem & District 3 community as well as those of other school communities of our city. Our organization(GEM) believes that this campaign to defend and improve neighborhood schools must be a citywide effort. The DOE by installing the smaller schools & charters with smaller class sizes & greater resources creates these disparate situations in the neighborhood schools that precipitate tensions and a downward spiral in school performance.

This DOE sabotage of public education continues in all our communities, particularly in our Black and Latino communities. We are committed toward building that necessary groundswell of pressure to force the DOE to heed our demands. In the process, we will be pushing our UFT to take up to demonstrate aggressive leadership on our community/teacher/student/parent demands.

Some of our demands: Stop the School Closings - Fully Support Quality Neighborhood Schools. Smaller Class Size Now(in our UFT contract). Stop High Stakes Testing. Guarantee excessed (1700+) ATR Teachers their seniority right to permanent jobs. No Mayoral Control - Democracy Now.

We also invite the PS 241 and the District 3 community to join us on our May 14 Protest Against NYC School Closings. The planning is in the works and soon you will receive more info. Our next planning meeting for May 14 is April 21, Tues at the CUNY Grad Center(34& 5thAv) - Rm 5409, 5pm.

Keep us posted on your next meetings so that we too can attend and support D3 efforts.

In unity,
Angel Gonzalez,
Grassroots Education Movement (GEM)

Breaking News: New Grassroots Education Coalition to hold Save Our Public Schools rally and march up Broadway to Tweed on May 14 at 4:30 PM. We will pass by UFT headquarters and ask them to come out and play.

Make sure to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Good for UFT Cue Cards

I have not followed the details but from what I've heard the questions were very pertinent ones to be asked of the doe officials who have been given so much of a pass on all the games they are playing. We know that no matter how they damage children and take away parent rights, the press' main focus will be on the doings of the UFT even if they are right for a change. That BloomKlein have gotten away with murder all these years with the city council sitting helpless due to fear of Bloomberg, etc or total ineffectiveness, to have them show some spine for a change is a good thing.

The UFT needs endless critiicsm, but certainly not the few policies of BloomKlein they oppose - for PR purposes only I might add - they are reformers - or deformers.


Sources:
From Ed Notes on Randi as reformer:

America in Labor and Parsing Randi From Gotham Schools

• The Post and Daily News pick up on GothamSchools’ scoop about the UFT’s City Council cue cards.
• Both papers say the cards show that the union cares only about politics, not kids. (Post, Daily News)

And of course BloomKlein care only about kids, not politics.

Tisch, Tisch, Meryl

We get letters from people running schools too.

Some of my sources tell me that almost every principal they meet despises Tweed and Joel Klein. And I get mail from more principals and higher placed people, even some at Tweed, than you would imagine.

This one is about the outrageous puff piece in the NY Times on Meryl Tisch, who now heads the NY State Board of Regents which must rule on waivers for "do no nuttin bout education" chancellors. Look for a follow-up piece where I'll parse the article. I've been too busy doubled up with laughter to comment now.

From a NYC school supervisor:

Norm,

I am fascinated by the detail of your research and reporting! I feel fortunate to have you "in the trenches" reporting on everything- as I find many of your opinions right on target. I am only sorry that I am not retired so I could enjoy my freedom of speech – and perhaps write more and share opinions.

I was deeply troubled by the NY Times' very flattering piece on Meryl Tisch.

Though she seems like a nice lady and I have only seen her speak once, she is in the Mayor's pocket- she once was quoted as saying "I absolutely will support Mayoral Control as long as MICHAEL is going to be in charge". Then article talks of how she has shared several Seder suppers with Joel Klein and how she and her husband go on dinner dates with JOEL and his wife".

That would be like me as an accountant sharing Christmas dinner with my auditor every year.

The entire article is full of her connections to the wealth of a very limited number of people mostly very folks from the upper east side.. Seymour Fliegel is mentioned praising her-didn't he get a contract from JOEL to run the CIE PSO??? There is too much here that does not pass the smell test.

They talk about old school board corruption (which obviously existed) but was "small potatoes" compared to this-

This is the outright hijacking of parents' rights and voice to have a filthy rich upper east side "long time friend of the mayor's" who regularly socializes with the UNLICENSED UNCERTIFIED fellow running our schools- she will be called on to testify about Mayoral Control and should perhaps be asked to step aside as her opinions are certainly BIASED!!!

Keep up the good work!

NYC Educator recently wrote about Tisch: Who's in Charge Here, Anyway?

I wrote about the ridiculous NY Post editorial her "brilliant" daughter Jessica sent supporting Bloomberg's 3rd term: "Average Citizen" Jessica Tisch Calls For Bloomberg 3rd Term.

The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy

Call it vulture philanthropy

From Sharon Higgins

Here’s a scholarly and informative article to share with you: "The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy," by Janelle Scott (Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, formerly NYU) and published by SAGE. It will take a while to read (32 pages), but I believe it will be worth your time.

Scott explains the billionaires' strategy to push charter schools onto communities and how they are maneuvering their immense foundation-giving to achieve this result. She also describes the not-always-well-intentioned, and/or misguided, history of foundation "giving" which has targeted communities of color in the past.

The foundation-giving programs of today require an important trade-off from the local communities: namely, the relinquishment of interest and power over their own public schools to the public education notions of a few immensely wealthy oligarchs. What does it tell us that the communities where this is occurring necessitated first being placed under authoritarian rule?

Scott’s article explains how the "gifts" of these foundations are going to a broad range of charter advocacy groups, pro-charter research organizations, alternative teacher and principal training programs, charter school development organizations, etc. EdVoice, Center for Education Reform, TFA, NewSchools Venture Fund, NewLeaders for New Schools, KIPP, Green Dot, Democrats for Education Reform, and the EEP are just the teeny tiny tip of the you're-going-to-have-charter-schools-if-you-want-them-or-not iceberg.

Scott describes the flow of money to these organizations with the intent to have them work as a network in unison to further the billionaires' goal. Very few of the donations go directly to individual schools and their students, but just enough to make them look a lot better than their traditional school neighbors. The majority of the dollars go toward advocacy, propaganda, and the building of a national pro-charter school structure.

I've recently learned how Broad has bought off large, important portions of PBS, and how Ms. Gates is on the board of the Washington Post. The extent to which the media has been co-opted by this force would be a good topic for someone to track. We know how heavily they have influenced the White House.

I was especially interested to learn that one of the official techniques used to push charter schools, and described in a 2004 Philanthropy Roundtable donors guide, is "...the sponsorship of efforts that put parents of color out front instead of 'rich, white Republicans.' " The technique is exactly described here and here.

This general strategy may also explain why a deeply-in-debt-to-the-IRS Al Sharpton was persuaded to join the pro-charter force.

Another small item that may be of interest to some of you is that the Broad Foundation paid the Century Foundation $100,000 (in 2004) and $29,973 (in 2007) to "support research on the late union leader Albert Shanker." You may view The Broad Foundation 990's here.

Perhaps this is the "why" it has come about that pro-charter forces mention Albert Shanker so frequently for being responsible for the idea of charter schools. They use this statement to both justify the existence of charter schools, and to attempt to disarm the teachers' union complaints about them.

The details of these maneuvers are extensive, and won’t be easily grasped by the American public, not to mention the lesser educated parents in the communities now being targeted. The word about what is really going on desperately needs to get out more broadly.

Download the article here. But you have to register first. I have the pdf. Email me if you want a copy.

Related:

Susan Ohanian reports on Broad takeover of Phi Delta Kappan

Note: These are the people Weingarten and the UFT/AFT want to partner with.

America in Labor and Parsing Randi

In today's Week in Review in the NY Times, Stephen Greenhouse wonders why American Labor Has An Unusually Long Fuse compared to European workers, who were out in the streets at the G20 meetings.

"Unlike their European counterparts, American workers have largely stayed off the streets, even as unemployment soars and companies cut wages and benefits."

At one time, in the 30's, when a powerful Communist and other socialist parties were strong in organizing the labor movement, this was not true.

General strikes paralyzed San Francisco and Minneapolis, and a six-week sit-down strike at a G.M. plant in Flint, Mich., pressured the company into recognizing the United Automobile Workers. In the decade’s ugliest showdown, a 1937 strike against Republic Steel in Chicago, 10 protesters were shot to death. That militancy helped build a powerful labor movement, which represented 35 percent of the nation’s workers by the 1950s and helped create the world’s largest and richest middle class.

Today, American workers, even those earning $20,000 a year, tend to view themselves as part of an upwardly mobile middle class. In contrast, European workers often still see themselves as proletarians in an enduring class struggle.

And American labor leaders, once up-from-the-street rabble-rousers, now often work hand-in-hand with C.E.O.’s to improve corporate competitiveness to protect jobs and pensions, and try to sideline activists who support a hard line.

“You have a general diminution of union leadership that was focused on defending workers by any means necessary,” said Jerry Tucker, a longtime U.A.W. militant. “The message from the union leadership nowadays often is, ‘We don’t have any choice, we have to go down this concessionary road to see if we can do damage control,’ ” he said.

Ahhh, there's a key. the "general diminution of union leadership" which wants to be partners with management.

Which leads us to Randi Weingarten and her speech this weekend at the NY State United Teachers conference in Buffalo.

We can be partners to 'advance the smart approach'
Don't reject reform ideas out of hand but instead "take a fresh look at some of the more divisive issues in education.

What are these "reform" - or deform- ideas Randi is talking about?

Merit pay, judging teachers and schools on narrow outcomes based on high stakes tests, charter schools that undermine public education, teachers as cogs - the whole gamut of deforms.

You see, to Randi, the partnership means she is the partner, not the rank and file teacher.

Now true progressive educator/reformers know what real reform would look like and it's a far cry from what is being pushed. Teachers who have real control of schools and their classrooms, which would require a take-down of the all-powerful principal. Like, how about teachers electing principals like they do in parts of Europe?

If teachers controlled schools, they would make the best - not perfect - but the best decisions. No teacher wants to work in a lousy school, so they are the ones with the most long-term interests in making schools work for themselves and the kids. More so than even parents, many of whom have more interest in their child than in the school overall. Besides, they are only part of the school temporarily, while teachers may spend an entire career. Oh, I forgot, part of the ed deformer package that Randi wants to partner with is a basic end to career teachers, replacing them with a Peace Corp mentality.

How does Randi benefit from that? Few teachers will be there long enough to realize her partnership = sellout.

All that’s missing is a few hookers

Aaron Pallas fact checks the Klein/Sharpton Education Equality Project over at Gotham Schools.

Leonie Haimson talks about that was the week that was in NYC with the Klein/Sharpton/Bloomberg/Duncan/Biden/Fenty caravan in town at the EEP convention, renamed, "We're Not Really Crooks, at least as long as you can't prove it."

Read this in full to get a sense of the depth of corruption in education under BloomKlein control.
Posted at Norms Notes: Leonie Haimson on: That was the week that was!

A few choice tidbits from Controller Thompson on no-bid contracts:

CTB McGraw budgeted for $1 m; spent $4.2M.
Continental Press – textbooks etc; budgeted $15 K, spent $6.5 M! an increase of 43,000%!!!!
Creative Media Agency to place ads (for what?) was contracted for $589K and yet spent $6.9 Million!!!
According to the Comptroller’s office, in FY 07 and O8, there were 372 contracts – which exceeded the contract amount by 25% or more – w/ DOE spending over $1 billion on these contracts. 127 of these contracts had little or no competition – amounting to $525 million in all.

This year (FY 09) the rate of overspending on contracts is already at 27% -- with three months yet to go.

Follow the No-Bid doins from Columbia School of Journalism Students:
No Bid Tip Sheet Public Eyes on Public Schools

Chaz has a few comments:
Tweed Just Continues To Spend More Money On Non-Educational Items While The Schools Suffer

The Broad Prize for Losers

Though we totally reject the entire Broad prize concept as a political tool to undermine public education, isn't it interesting that Arne Duncan never got the prize in Chicago. And why aren't the Chicago schools after 14 years of the kind of mayoral control being raved about by so many, being given closer scrutiny before driving the urban school systems in this nation off a cliff.

Tauna makes some excellent points on the Broad Prize at This Little Blog.

Dear Eli Broad:
Does Eli Broad's peddling half-baked market solutions to education remind you of Johnny Carson's slick pitchman selling a vegematic? Johnny used to use charts too. Only they kept falling off the stand as he hit it with his pointer. Maybe that's where Broad got the idea on data manipulation.

Dear Eli Broad:

The days of the reckoning have arrived for you. Your soul died long ago but if your decrepit physical being survives just a little further into the future the full weight of justice will be meted out to you. And it will be the sweetest justice for the harm you have done to children of color in America's urban public schools is incalculable. No system of data collection is capable of quantifying it but there are an inexhaustible parade of human exhibits to be heard. Your crimes will be proven premeditated at trial. You've known all along what you were doing but the potential payoff drove you forward anyway.

See you in the docket of a people's court soon.

Paul A. Moore
Miami, FL


Follow up from NYCEducation News Listserve
I had a personal experience with Broad housing while living in Los Angeles in the late 80s/early 90s. To make a long story short, my husband and I drove up to Pacoima to tour Broad's hugh new condo complex (which received some mighty generous CA tax rebates, allowances, incentives.) We were shocked to find this brand-new complex already showing signs of deterioration, literally coming apart at the seams! We couldn't believe how shoddy the construction was. We didn't even bother going inside, just turned around and went home.

If the quality (or the lack thereof) of these Broad condos are any indication of the man and his principles, then why in the world would we entrust our educational system to him?

Nor do I understand why GE's Jack Welch is deified for being a titan of industry when he spent half his time polluting the Hudson River and the the other half avoiding cleaning up his mess.