Oh What a Tangled Web: Millot, Russo and Rotherham Battle As Millot Charges Arne with Conflict of Interest

I somehow am involved in a national blogging story that involves some pretty well known bloggers, with lots of intrigue tossed in and I'm probably in over my head.

The skinny is that Alexander Russo at TWIE pulled down a post by Marc Dean Millot charging Arne Duncan with conflict of interest after coming under pressure from Andrew Rotherham, one of the slugs of the ed deform movement. (Well, I don't like Andy because as I documented a few years ago he sent the attack dogs after the great blogger Eduwonkette. (I wrote about the day two years ago that I and Kette (Jennifer Jennings), who was anonymous at the time, sat in on an Aero session with Russo and Rotherham and the Times' Jenny Medina. See aeraplaning - don' need no stinkin' research))

Millot sent out a request for bloggers to host his response and Ed Notes was on the list. I responded and Ed Notes will be hosting part 2 of his report, though I warned Millot that we do not exactly exude the kind of classy research-based reporting he is used to. Well, he doesn't seem to mind a muckraking rag, though if he takes a close look he may run away screaming.

Now I should point out that Millot is a pro-market ed guy and has connections to Rand so we are not on the same page and our interests do not often intersect. But he's done some very interesting work on charters at TWIE and this can turn out to be an important story.

This will take a couple of posts over the next few days, but try to keep up because this story may go deep.

So, here goes:

Ken Libby at Schools Matter posted this on Friday

From Dean Millot over at ThisWeekInEducation (Three Data Points: Unconnected Dots, or Warning?)

I have now heard the same thing from three independent credible sources - the fix is in on the U.S. Department of Education's competitive grants, in particular Race to the Top (RTTT) and Investing in Innovation (I3). Secretary Duncan needs to head this off now, by admitting that he and his team have potential conflicts of interests with regard to their roles in grant making, recognizing that those conflicts are widely perceived by potential grantees, and explaining how grant decisions will be insulated from interference by the department's political appointees.
...

We do know that the Secretary benefited from a strong relationship with the new philanthropy in Chicago. We know that the Secretary is high on charter management organizations and the new teacher development programs that benefited from the new philanthropy. We know that RTTT czar Joanne Weiss was senior staff member at New Schools. We know that Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement Jim Shelton was a senior program education officer at the Gates Foundation and NewSchools. We know that both managed investments in the organizations' Duncan favors.

Be sure to read the entire entry here - it's good and juicy.

(I clicked on the link and it didn't come up but then I found the URL on TWIE)

Read the rest of Libby's post here: Millot Asks About Conflict of Interest in Duncan's DOE


Below the above post was a comment from Millot:

Marc Dean Millot

At 1:45 Friday afternoon, I posted a brief commentary in This Week in Education, where I have been a guest columnist. "Three Data Points. Unconnected Dots or a Warning?" was one of many appearing in the edu-blogosphere over the last two week's expressing concerns over the lack of transparency in the Department of Education's implementation of the Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation discretionary grant programs. Within a few hours the commentary generated a modest amount of interest from some of our community's leading bloggers.

A little after 5 pm that day it was taken off the site by TWIE editor Alexander Russo. Russo informed me that he had been directed to do so by TWIEs sponsor, Scholastic as the result of a call from Andrew Rotherham to someone at the firm that Russo thought might be Rotherham's friend.

Over the weekend Russo struggled mightily to fix the problem. He emailed me, "Please be assured that this isn't really about you or the substance of your post." I agreed to sit tight till Monday. Sometime around 10:15 Monday evening I was fired by Russo or, to be more precise, he activated TypePad software on TWIE prohibiting me from publishing. The act was in breech of a six-month contract giving me "complete editorial control" over my columns as well as the princely sum of $200 a month.

I've been asked by my readers to explain what happened. I'm posting here because Kenneth Libby was the first. I intend to tell my story from start to finish. Yes, I have something at stake here. Yes, I intend to draw on materials that don't normally see the light of day - like emails and private conversations. But this situation is also an opportunity for readers to gain some insights into the personal side of Washington policy debates, the ways people with influence use it, the challenges faced by those who seek a commercial model for the new media, and the role of the blog in public discourse over education policy. These are worthy goals, rarely pursued.

I could go out and start my own blog, but I ran one for a year at edweek.org and prefer to be a columnist. I would be grateful for perhaps five days access to an edublog as a guest blogger. In return, I can only offer my best efforts to provide the facts, a good faith interpretation, and the full record in my possession for readers can come to their own conclusions.

Millot came out with part 1 of his story today at Schools Matter:

Millot: Sound Decision or Censorship at TWIE? (I)

Millot closes part 1 with:

The defense rests

Russo did not pull the post on substantive grounds. There are no substantive grounds. TWIE's editor pulled it because of Rotherham's influence over a colleague at Scholastic, and that Scholastic employee's order to Russo.

Next: the pressure-cooker Rotherham created for Russo. Watch for me at EdNotes.

Oh, joy. Ed Notes gets the dope on Rotherham.

Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard.

The Millot, Russo, Rotherham Caper

I am truly thankful for your support. I am especially thankful because I know many of you do not share my views on markets in public education. What I think we share is a willingness to engage in debates on the merits and a sense of outrage that too many of those in power - political, financial, social, communications - are too willing to use it on their behalf whatever the merits.

I am a (moderate, North Shore Massachusetts, Rippon Society, small businessman,"crunchy") Republican, but I also read and have somewhere in storage somewhere my heavily marked up copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, alongside Clauswitz, Machiavelli, and Halperin. And I think that we might leverage this incident to bring more of a spotlight on RTTT, etc.

I dont want to say "no thank you (your'e not neccessary)" to anyone. You're all necessary. What I would like to do is be a guest blogger on each of your sites for one essay in the series I'm writing. Each essay would link back to the earlier posts and note the location of the next. I think there's much more punch to the message this way. And I would urge you to use my guest post as as place of departure for your own discussion of the issues.

Jim Horn offered his site first, so I propose to put the first essay on Schools Matter.

Going in order of offers, the second essay would be at Norm Scott's EdNotes.

The third, Tom Hoffman's Tuttle SVC.

The fourth at The Frustrated Teacher -

Doug Noon at Borderland says he's definitely interested, and if he wants, I'll close there with a review of this effort and reactions to it.

What I like here is that your blogs cover the nation: California (TFT), Rhode Island (Tuttle SVC), Alaska (Borderland), Massachusetts (Schools Matter), New York (EdNotes) and you are all educators engaged the policy debate - frustrated but doing you part to engage, exchange and rally. It may help get the message to more people, and demonstrates grassroots concern about transparency to any ed reporter looking for a story.

I promise not to betray your trust in offering me your blog as a platform. I intend to keep my remarks solidly ground in facts and the records I have. Because some may be in my sole possession, and If released selectively would open me to attack, I intend to release whatever I have that's relevant - starting with everything from the time I published the post to my last exchange with Alexander Russo today. Some is trivial, some is silly, some will undoubtably be used against me. But in the end its the right thing to do.

Tonite, I plan to explain why I wrote what I wrote. It covers the substantive issues - did I charge official with corruption whether my use of anonymous sources was ethical. This covers from roughly noon, to roughly 5 pm when Russo took the post down from TWIE. There were no communications during that time. I will end that post with Russo's Friday afternoon email informing me of his act.

After this, email communications are essential. Russo and I had one conversation on the phone Saturday, after that circumstances led us to communicate only be email. So I'll have a transcript of these communications in a file, and send that to you and some reporters.

The second post is about the sense of stress Russo expressed to me about Rotherham's pressure on Scholastic, and that Scholastic was putting on Russo. I believe Russo tried his best to walk the cat back, but came to see no good way out. His sense of the choices was to disavow me and keep the business he's worked hard to build or back me and lose the business. We exchanged a lot of views from many angles. I suggested alternatives that might let everyone get out of this without damage, I had no goal of hurting anyone, but I made it clear from the start that I would accept no solution that in the least suggested I was at fault. I set a deadline for resolution, extended it, and offered to extend it again if Alexander could see any reason. In the end Russo could not, made his choice, and our relationship deteriorated in the usual pathetic fashion. This is really a story about efforts to monetize blogsites, a classic tragedy.

The third post is about Rotherham's role in all this. Russo and I have independent and shared histories of intellectual rivalry and/or personal tense with the eduwonk, and some knowledge of his behind the curtain tactics against others. He has some motives to attack me, and Russo through me. So this about motive, means and opportunity. My situation offers a chance to get this problem into the sunlight of public discourse. Russo and I are hardly the first victims and Rotherhams hardly the first of his kind.

I'll write a fourth post of observations and conclusions. At this point, I'm not precisely sure what I'll say.

I cant forsee the reactions so I cant say much about the final post.

As far as I'm concerned you can draw as much as you want from this to give your readers a heads up.

Millot: Sound Decision or Censorship at TWIE? (I)

The Longest Day: A TV Show and the End of UFT Petitioning

You'd think that a retiree would barely notice a glorious snow day. But I am revelling in it almost as much as my former colleagues.

I had quite a busy day yesterday, with a morning trip to downtown Brooklyn to do a TV show, a trip back to Rockaway for lunch and then back to the city for what was originally supposed to be 3 events. Here's the skinny on the day, which ended with an embarrassing senior moment.

BCAT TV Show
I was asked to appear on Intersects, a Brooklyn cable access TV show (BCAT) hosted by Brian Vines with educator and commentator Joel Shatzky and Brooklyn PEP appointee Gbubemi Okotieuro, who teaches at Medgar Evers College. We had an invigorating half hour discussion about closing schools. Joel has the handle on the negative impact of high stakes tests and seems to agree with many of the points that the ed deform movement is about a political and not an educational agenda. Nigerian born Gbubemi, who made the motion at the Jan. 26 PEP to table the motion to close the schools pending further study, voted against closing the schools but still has hopes of getting BloomKlein to be reasonable. His recent activity on the PEP gives us hope he will join with Manhattan's Patrick Sullivan and the Bronx' Ana Santos in standing up to the Klein Klones.

It was a pleasure to meet Gbubemi in person and he has a great presence. I'm looking forward to seeing how he does on the PEP and he knows I'll be the first to jump on him if he stays too near the BloomKlein flame. Joel and I have been in touch a few times over the past few days and he has a lot to offer on many issues. He blogs at Huffington's Educating for Democracy blog.

The show airs - in Brooklyn only - on the following schedule:
PREMIERES
1st and 3rd Mondays of the month at 9:30pm- look for it on Monday Feb. 15

ENCORE PRESENTATIONS
Mondays and Thursdays at 1:30pm & 9:30pm; Wednesdays at 3pm & 11pm

CHANNELS
Time Warner Cable 56, Cablevision 69, RCN 84, Verizon 44

It will be in the internet a week after the premiere.


UFT Election Petitions DONE!!!!!

Yippeee! Yesterday afternoon ICE and TJC handed in our petitions to get on the ballot for the UFT elections (ballots go out March 7) - two days early. Not too shabby to get this annoyance out of the way.

We were delayed in getting started on the tv show, so my plan to go back to Rockaway to pick them up and head into the city put me on a very tight schedule. I ate a hurried lunch and headed back into the city with my backpack loaded up with petitions. I drive half way and take the subway the rest of the way. I shlepped my backpack into the train and plopped it down on an empty seat - covered with water. I had visions of thousands of petitions with runny ink but was saved by the toughness of the back pack.

My first stop was at Murray Bergtraum to pick one last batch of petitions and then down to the UFT.

Each of the two caucuses did the petitions their way, helping each other out when needed. ICE held petition signing parties in various schools and the response was wonderful. Thanks to the teaching and non-teaching (secties, paras, social workers, guidance, etc) at Francis Lewis, Murray Bergtraum, PS 193, Jamaica HS for hosting these parties and to all the UFT members at so many other schools that made the process fairly painless, though I don't think Ellen Fox of ICE, who did so much of the leg work, would agree.

This was the first time I was so involved in the process and what started out as an annoyance became an interesting exercise as I went to many schools to pick up and deliver.

I raced over from Bergtraum to meet Megan Behrent from TJC and Ellen in the back of the UFT lobby to bundle the massive stacks of petitions, which we then delivered to Ray Frankel, who is a UFT institution. (I think we used to deliver petitions to her in the 1970's.)

If you didn't know it, putting together a slate is the only way to really get involved in UFT elections. Carmen Applewhite is running as an individual for president and the petitioning (she needs 900 to get on the ballot) must be a nightmare. But the process does give her a chance to get the word out and I would bet that even if she doesn't have all the names the UFT might allow her to run - why not confuse people even more and she would probably draw some votes from ICE-TJC, though I also think her candidacy might mobilize some people to vote who otherwise would ignore the election. I always think - the more the merrier. In Chicago they have 6 caucuses running- but they have a runoff there if you don't get 50% of the vote.

Candidates are allowed to "buy" chapter leader lists for $10 and I had ordered a batch. Ray handed me piles of cards (1500) that were heavier than the petitions. I couldn't pawn any of them off on Megan or Ellen, so I ended up shlepping them home. (They will make good traction for my car in the snow.) Before she would give me the chapter leader cards I had to sign an agreement we would not use the information in any way other than for the election. Sure, and what will they do to us if we misuse the info? Do I have to cancel that plane we hired to write every single chapter leader's name over the skies of New York? This is a new wrinkle -the need for me to sign a document stating I would not use the CL list for purposes other than the election, which we never had to sign in the past. I intend to use the CL cards to clean up cat vomit. Think the UFT will sanction me for misuse?

This new wrinkle, was apparently aimed at Carmen Applewhite for some reason, who rumor has it, is - or was - a Unity Caucus member and her candidacy supposedly did not make them happy, though I don't understand why. Ellen Fox represented ICE-TJC at an election committee meeting- with New Action's slug Michael Shulman, who of course voted with the Unity hacks for this provision. Ellen was the only "no" vote.


After turning in the petitions, I intended to head up to a GEM meeting at CUNY, where I was supposed to meet Columbia journalism student Katie Simon for an interview. But an email came cancelling the GEM event. So I drifted up to J&R and perused 40 inch internet ready TVs and bought some headphones. I was real hungry and started looking for a pizza place but those chapter leader lists were weighing heavy in my back pack and I hit the subway home.

As I was walking to my car in Brooklyn ready to drive back to Rockaway, my phone rang.

It was Katie, looking for me at CUNY.

Oy!

The National Nature of the Attack on Public Ed

Before you read one word there are two must follow links:

Read LA Teacher Dennis Danziger's: Shut Up and Strike in which he says he ain't marchin' anymore - unless it's to strike

and Susan Ohanian's posting of this wonderful (and long - but it's a snow day so you have time) of Danny Weil's wonderful assault on Arne Duncan. Weill closes with:

Conclusion

It is the Obama administration that gave us Arne Duncan, but he was probably dropped in Obama's lap by the privatizers who realized the federal, state and local governments are broke. Enchanted with his paranoid schizophrenic behavior and policies, charmed by his athletic prowess and familiarity with Obama, they embraced him like the lap dog he is.

So now what do we see? Corporatized health care, corporartized education, corporatized war, corporatized social services, and corporatized surveillance and incarceration to name just a few of the increasingly privatized policies. The whole Obama administration is deranged and their behavior, both individually and socially, would put them right into the straightjacket with Arne, or at least in the 'day room'. But to get Arne the help he needs it will take organization and effort on the part of the American public that day by day sees the social and economic horror mouthed, applauded and implemented by the Obama administration and especially the chainsaw massacre of public schools and education promoted by Duncan.

This is why we must mobilize on March 4th to tell the maniacs who now own America and its institutions that we’ve had enough; that schizophrenic economic and social policies that favor the egocentric and pathological needs of a ruling class bent on turning America into a low-paid gulag is not acceptable. And we need to tell them loud and clear, for they don’t seem to be taking their medication, forcing us instead to accept their evil prescriptions and their corporate medicine for social life.

Enough is enough: Duncan must go. His statements betray his interests and his interests are not those of working people, they are aligned with the interests of the powerful elite bent on destroying America for private profit. The same elite who display the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia one can find in any medical journal. The inmates are now truly running the asylum. It is time to lock them up and get them the help they need.

---

Karen Horwitz, teacher activist and author of White Chalk Crime, responded to a comment I made about not putting all the emphasis on Joel Klein and even Michael Bloomberg:

Norm
Although NY does lead this nation on most things, even if we were able to pin the corruption on the NY gang, the rest of the nation has it in full swing and it would be back with a vengeance without mayoral control. Mayoral control only makes it easier, but is far from the only path for ravaging our schools.

Emphasizing Bloomberg makes it appear as a NY thing when it is national, diabolical epidemic that is positioned to totally undermine our democracy with its helpful companion, the latest Supreme Court decision.

After all when lousy schools produce brainless people, I can't say citizens since citizenship isn't taught either, the corporate money will easily influence them against their own interests. (Actually the decision is not all that significant since special interests have been doing this for years illegally; perhaps this decision is a blessing that will wake up more people to what is going on so they will unite against this calculated end of democracy.)

Although I appreciate and respect all the hard work activists put into exposing their own systems, it is important to keep all of this in context within the intentional destruction of our democracy that it promises to accomplish. You are so correct that Vallas was replaced with Duncan and Klein can be replaced with another White Chalk Criminal. This will keep happening until we the people rise up to protect our democracy, not just our schools.

Karen
I agree that this is a national attack on public schools and teacher unions and the focus on Bloomberg and Klein can be misleading at times. But the answer goes way beyond joining NAPTA. Last summer activists from 5 cities met in LA and formed a loose alliance. People went back to their local areas to build the movement. Some are getting together again in Detroit at the Labor Notes Troublemakers conf in April. Others are going to the tri-national meetings of 3 nations - Canada, Mexico and US in May and some are hooking up in Seattle at the AFT convention in July.

March 4 all of these cities and more are joining in a national day to save public education. Oakland teachers voted to strike that day. LA is in a state of flux. Chicago's CORE teachers caucus is challenging for union leadership. Detroit teachers who got the worst contract in history - which Randi helped broker and has praised - voted to recall their union leader, a Randi ally but he is refusing to go. In Washington Nathan Saunders is running for union president.

In NYC, things are in the early stages of organizing, galvanized by the massive closing of schools and the charter school invasion. Many groups are forming and some are coming together in various configurations to join with parents and even students. The Jan 21 rally at Bloomberg's house was a success and of course the massive outpouring on Jan. 26 opened a lot of eyes.

Stay tuned.

Norm

WAVE Editorial Calls for Investigation of Malcolm Smith

Flake, Smith - The crew in this piece are all up to their ears in charter schools. Below the editorial, see a list of powerful articles by Wave editor Howard Schwach. Or go to then Wave web site and search the archives (www.rockawave.com). If not for this corrupt political system, they all - and I include many Tweedies here - would be taken out with coats over their heads. Anyone have a teabag to lend me?

Published February 5, 2010 (www.rockawave.com)

It’s Time For An Investigation

There have been many disquieting stories about State Senator Malcolm Smith, who serves as both the Senate’s President and our representative to the legislative body.

Any one of the stories, taken alone, should be enough to spark a state ethics investigation. Taken together, they reveal a picture of greed and unethical behavior that surely should trigger an investigation. However, our state ethics laws are so skewered toward protecting the wrongdoers, that such an investigation is anything but certain.

Just two weeks ago, Smith’s earmark of $100,000 for the Peninsula Preparatory Academy, a charter school he founded and to which he maintains strong ties, came into question, as did his push to pass a state law that would allow double the number of charter schools in New York City.

Tied to those questions is the growing belief that Beach Channel High School is being closed primarily to clear the room for another Smith-founded charter school, this one a high school to accommodate his PPA students once they graduate from the middle school.

On the heels of those questions came allegations from a national group that recently filed a state ethics charge against Smith in connection with a non-profit organization that he and Congressman Gregory Meeks founded in 2001.

Two of the original board members for that non-profit were Smith’s wife and the wife of a former business partner, Darryl Green, who had been convicted in 2004 of stealing money from those who purchased his expertise about minority hiring. Green is also a partner with former Congressman Floyd Flake in the Aqueduct Entertainment Group, which was just awarded a multi-million dollar contract from the Senate and the Governor to run a gambling Racino at Aqueduct Racetrack.

Smith worked for Flake and remains a close friend. In addition, Smith, Meeks and City Councilman James Sanders Jr. brokered a deal that required the developer of a huge cargo facility on Rockaway Turnpike to provide $250,000 for community development in southeastern Queens. That money was given to the non-profit started by Smith and Meeks, reportedly on Smith’s “suggestion.” Records show the money going in, but little coming back to the community.

The Aqueduct deal also raises red flags because the Flake group was not the highest bidder. In fact, all three incidents raise red flags and indicate that an investigation is due and due soon.


More articles:
Senator Malcolm Smith’s Mentor Wins Aqueduct Racino Bid Paterson Pulls Winning Lever For Flake

WAVE Editor Howard on State Senator Malcolm Smith's Ties to For Profit Victory Charter School and its $750,000 Slice of Public Money

Howie Schwach: It's All About Charters And Breaking The UFT

The DOE says that Victory Schools is paid by PPA through fundraising, but I am willing to bet that Victory Schools is being paid by taxpayer dollars funded by Malcolm Smith and his cohorts in the State Senate.

Joel Klein is Not the Culprit!

The emphasis on Joel Klein as the culprit and not on Bloomberg (one of the biggest misleading roles the UFT has played) is dangerous in that Klein could disappear and nothing will change or things will get worse - he plays the role Paul Vallas played in Chicago from 1995 through 2001. Who replaced Vallas - the slicker and less offensive Arne Duncan who is leading the Obama attack on public schools.

The problem is mayoral control and the national attack on public education not Joel Klein. There is a version of Joel Klein in every big city under attack. Let's keep our eye on the prize.

Klein may be on the ropes due to the pounding he is beginning to take from the Black and Latino/a community (teachers' voices as critics don't count.)

Let's not be fooled if they pick what looks like a benign educator. They did that in LA where Ramon Cortines is doing exactly what Klein is doing here.

Sort of reminds me of how many people are getting fooled by Randi's hand picked successor whose differering style plays better but we will see as time goes by, with the same results. Unfortunately, he will be able to skate by through this UFT election cycle. Don't you love those cute "militant" UFT ads running at the cost of millions?

Michael Fiorillo on Duncan's Katrina statement

Michael has been one of the key people speaking out at forums and the UFT Delegate Assembly about the threat the public education and the role the UFT/AFT has played.

Teacher, historian, activist, and chapter leader Mike Fiorillo, who is running with ICE-TJC for one of the six HS seats on the Executive Board in the coming election, writes frequently about NYC schools and the state of our labor union.

His perspective on current school events is not only informative but essential reading.

The following paragraphs are in response to a post at GothamSchools after Sect'y of Education Arne Duncan remarked that Katrina was the "best thing" for the New Orleans school system.

This despicable statement by Duncan represents a common motif among Democrats and Republicans alike, and validates Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine thesis, namely, that ruling elites create or opportunistically use crises to implement policies that would otherwise be blocked. In the case of New Orleans, it’s the wholesale privatization of the school system, with the schools being turned over to large charter school chains. Teach For America — closely affiliated with KIPP — is the Human Resources Division and employment agency for this hostile takeover.

Obama, who received most of his campaign contributions from Finance, is the Trojan Horse brought in to bring this about; it’s Nixon Goes to China in reverse, with a purported “liberal” elected to do what a Republican never could get away with. It’s his job to impose the structural adjustment policies that the IMF has used to dominate developing countries undergoing debt crises over the past thirty years: shrinking the public sector, privatization of resources and public services (note that he just announced the privatization of the space program), elimination of subsidies that support domestic production and social welfare, etc.

Disregard Obama’s faux-populist rhetoric of recent weeks: it’s little more than a shift in his overall marketing campaign

Read more of what Michael has to say at the ICE UFT Election blog:

Michael Fiorillo on Duncan's Katrina statement


There's a reason why many of ICEers are excited at the prospect of having Michael Fiorillo (along with Francis Lewis HS CL Arthur Goldstein and Tilden CL John Lawhead plus 3 more from TJC) getting elected to the UFT Executive Board (ballots are sent out March 7). If you're not in a high school you won't see their names on the ballot (except as an AFT/NYSUT delegate) because these positions are the most likely to be in contention and we focused on getting well-known and articulate spokes people on the board to challenge the Unity/New Action nexus. It will still be a tough challenge as they have to get more high school votes than Unity and New Action combined. So if you are in a high school, make note and get your colleagues to vote the ICE-TJC slate - which is a vote for all 6 HS candidates. We will say a lot more about this but if you pick out candidates individually, you risk having your ballot invalidated if you also accidentally put a mark near a slate, something so many people did in 2007, two thousand ballots were invalidated.

Also be sure to read ICE-TJC presidential candidate James Eterno's piece on the elections at the ICE political blog: UFT Election: Victory won’t be Easy

The Battle for Fremont High

From an email:

Our education leaders have decided that one way to improve low performing schools is
to shut them down, and make everyone working their reapply for their jobs. Education Secretary Arne Duncan did this to 60 schools in Chicago, and has plans to put the 5000 lowest performing schools in the country into a process that could lead to reconstitution.


This week we hear from Chuck Olynyk, who allows us to witness this process as it unfolds. Things are heating up in LA.

Today is Day 152 of my time remaining at Fremont High School.


The workshop on "How To Transfer" really drove home how serious this situation at Fremont, which means other "loser" schools in LAUSD has become: ninety minutes on how to move out or be evicted from a place you dedicated the past sixteen years to. The library was packed, the facilitators bombarded with earnest questions. It's funny how we talk daily about doing it, about strategies like not reapplying, of signing petitions (or, more properly, pledges, I guess) not to do so, then the inevitable that comes with such gestures.


"I don't want to leave." Picture a whining voice in your ear. "I want to stay here..." Yeah, guess what? We all do (well, mostly). A number of us envisioned finishing out our careers here at the Mont, but Superintendent Cortines would have it otherwise in his grand publicity stunt. Yes, Dr. McKenna (III, in case you need to figure out which one) "encourages" us to all "reapply," if you were at Tuesday's meeting. Does it actually make sense to ask us all to reapply if having us all
together is such a bad thing for Fremont? Oh, wait, I remember... "Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not logical." Yes, Mr. Balderas also is asking us to reapply. Can you blame him? What might look like a dream-come-true for a principal--hand-picking your faculty--is really a nightmare, with a bunch of us with experience saying, "Okay, pick a school for me, since I suck so bad and have no idea what I'm doing." My sister is an M.D. and she likens having the
majority of experienced people leaving to staffing a hospital with interns and medical students; sometimes experience matters.


"I'm not worried. I'm so good I know they have to hire me back. Only the bad teachers have to worry." Assuming you are re-hired, under what working conditions will that be? Dr. McKenna says that it's "a work in progress, subject to revision." So you want to sign on, while the "contract/compact" is under revision? If so, can I get you to sign a blank check for me? Won't you already be committed to working here and THEN you find out what the conditions are? What do plan to do then--leave? We need to know what the conditions are--and one of the
conditions is that WE stay. (I think I'm channeling Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen--"This is one time we're going all the way with the Army's starting line-up?" "Even Maggot?" "Even Maggot.")

If we are all being encouraged--no, begged--to remain, then we cannot be the problem. But if we are not the problem, then why the wholesale forced exodus, why the Trail of Tears, why the Stalinesque deportation to an educational Siberian gulag? Dr. McKenna, you need to stick to one
story. If we're being removed from Fremont because we have created a "culture of failure," then why are we being encouraged by you to reapply? Why has it become so important for us--teachers, counselors, clerical staff, food services, security, school police, custodial, and
assistant principals--to reapply?

--Chuck Olynyk

Note: This was written over the weekend. Today, an update from Chuck:

Lots going on at Fremont. Thursday is Parent Conference Night, so we've got networking with parents going on. Saturday, there is a neighborhood walk scheduled, with teachers going door to door. Tuesday will be a rally in from of the Mont after school. Thursday there will be another
meeting on our football field.

And the petition/pledge now has something like 120 out of 240 (more or less) faculty, who will not be reapplying.

More news on this battle can be found at the Save Fremont! web site.

What do you think? Would you reapply for YOUR job if your school was reconstituted?

Removal of Paul Robeson Principal a Sign of DOE Manipulation

The removal of Paul Robeson principal Ira Weston for alleged drinking and excessive absence is an indication that though the alternative to closing a school is leadership change, the fact that that option was not considered – until the schools' closing was announced, that is– is an indication of the real motives for closing Robeson: to give way to a brand new local charter school in the area. Lindsey Christ at NY1 reported that, "Sources in the department say Weston's performance as principal has been disappointing for years..."

DOE spokesperson David Cantor was quoted in the Daily News article: "If we thought a school could turn around simply through a leadership change, we would simply change the leadership."

Duhhhh, David! So if you really believe that (and who knows what they believe in Tweedy Land) then why not try a new leader first rather than close down an entire school?

See stories in the Daily News, and NY Post.

Feeling Peppy: The Meaning of January 26

Updated, Feb. 5, 8am
[Jan. 26 activated people in a way we have not often seen. See a parent voice of defiance at the top of the EdN sidebar. If that is one voice of many out there (an interesting sidebar is that high school student leaders attended the GEM meeting on Tuesday) then this could be a game changer.]

I wrote the column below about the implications of the Jan. 26 PEP meeting for publication in today's Wave newspaper in Rockaway a few days ago and even since then things have been moving forward. One of the most significant things about the UFT lawsuit is that the NAACP has joined in. BloomKlein have been playing the race card and the trick is turning against them. Their panic mode response has been to unleash the press in an attack on the NAACP and use their stooge Dennis Walcott as front man.

I didn't have the space to write about it, but a major outcome (and don't the Ed Deformers love to use that word) of the Jan. 26 PEP is the constant pounding the charter school movement took, in particular from people of color. (I'm efforting to get some of that video up). That seems to have been a turning point in the debate on charters. Note these two posts on Norms Notes

Charter Schools' Political Success is a Civil Rights Failure

and the headline from the Amsterdam News:

EDUCATION WAR

....“We’ve been patient. We’ve tried to reason,” continued [NYC NAACP head Hazel] Dukes. “To me, they are hell-bent on knowing everything that is good for the children. That’s disrespectful to the parents, to the community and to our children.”


In the last few days, people, even politicians - sometimes they're people too - have been contacting GEM with requests for sit downs. We're proud that GEM was a strong voice opposing and exposing charter schools for what they were - attempts to undermine public education and divide local communities.


Feeling Peppy: The Meaning of January 26
by Norm Scott

The event inspired exhilaration and despair, disappointment and hope. One day books may be written about it. Class Size Matters' Leonie Haimson called it "the ugly naked face of mayoral control," referring to the now legendary January 26 meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) at Brooklyn Tech HS. Nine and a half hour meetings can get pretty ugly. I got on the speakers' line at 4:30pm on Tuesday and didn't walk out until 3:30am Wednesday.

For the uninitiated, the PEP is the rubber stamp NYC Board of Education. The mayor gets to appoint eight out of the 13 members who serve at his pleasure. Each of the five borough presidents appoint one and even these people are often forced to go along with the mayor because the BPs are so dependent on the mayor for their budgets. Until recently, only Manhattan's BP Scott Stringer had the cajones to appoint someone (Patrick Sullivan) who would stand up to the Tweed goons on a consistent basis. By the end of this PEP meeting, 3 other borough reps had joined Patrick, including our own Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who said, “There very well may come a time when I will raise my hand in support of one of these schools being closed. But I am not there, not because I think closing a school should never be a considered choice, but because I think in order to get to that point, we must first ensure that it is the last choice."

Leonie, who attends an enormous number of meetings, thought this one "was one of the most inspiring and awful events I have ever witnessed. Inspiring because there were thousands of people there to protest the closing of 19 schools, and hundreds spoke out, for more than eight hours: eloquently, angrily, passionately and intelligently, about why their schools should not be closed and why the administration's blind and reckless policies would hurt our most vulnerable children. These English language learners, special education students, poor and homeless, will likely be excluded from the new small schools and charter schools that will replace their schools, and will undoubtedly be discharged in huge numbers as these schools phase out, never to receive a fair chance at a high school diploma. Parents, students and teachers cited facts and numbers, personal experience, trenchant analysis and damning evidence of the DOE's malignant neglect and botched statistics."

Inspiration came from the fact that 2000 people came out to the meeting, with the UFT organizing 50 buses. Hundreds of articulate spokes persons -numerous students, teachers and parents, many young, black, Latin/a. "I'm not a failure," proclaimed one student and after another as they listed their accomplishments and how their school had helped them. Loads of alumni, many in college, also came to support their schools. Many seemed to take the branding of their school as "failing" as a personal affront.

Paul Robeson seemed to have the largest and most organized contingent, along with Jamaica HS and Columbus. In my rough calculation, the size of activity in the school community seemed related to how much the school principal supported them. The Beach Channel turnout seemed very low in comparison. I'll leave you to form your own conclusions. Did you know leadership change was an option to closing Beach Channel, but was not considered?

Most of the activists in the NYC branch of the growing Resistance to the market based education deformist policies of BloomKlein showed up. The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), one of the groups I helped found a year ago which has been one of the leaders of the Resistance, came out in force with their banner, whistles and high energy. They sat with the mostly Black and Latino/a group, the Coalition for Public Education (CPE), and alliances were being built throughout the meeting.

In addition to the closing schools, the meeting rubber stamped a five year extension of the PAVE charter school (whose founder is the son of a billionaire who gave $10 million to Bloomberg projects) within the PS 15 building in Red Hook despite the pleas of the parents and teachers from the Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE). While being severely disappointed at the deaf ear of the PEP, they came out swinging a few days later: "...one month, culminating in one nearly 12 hour meeting, can both be inspiring and depressing, both a confirmation of our belief in humanity and a questioning of it. If we were spiritually empty, if we were cynical, we would believe that 'the people' should just give up, clearly the game is fixed. Luckily we are not, instead we vow to fight, until our last breath, to protect and preserve public education for our children."

I've been attending PEP meetings since the early years and they mostly took place in a sea of anonymity with little attention being paid by both the press and the public. The January PEP and the December PEP before it have drawn much greater attention with lots of press coverage. This outpouring of interest has shone a light in the dark corners where the roaches gather and hopefully there will be greater scrutiny, though don't be shocked if they try to bury these meetings in the furthest corners of the galaxy (anyone for a meeting on Alpha Centauri?)

Joel Klein and civil rights? Not
Of the significant outcomes of this meeting, none will prove more long term than the breaking of BloomKlein's' manipulation of the Black community, where the claim that closing the achievement gap (sure, by lowering standards, credit recovery and juking the stats) is the great civil rights issue of our time and they are leading the struggle. All the years of Klein traipsing to Black churches every Sunday to cultivate the community came down around his ears on Jan. 26 as one person of color after another condemned Tweed as being divisive and racist, repeatedly using the term "separate and unequal" in relation to the DOE's favoring charter over public schools. When Bloomberg's appointee chairman David Chang turned the mic off on a speaker from the NAACP, as pointed out by Patrick Sullivan, the shield set up by BloomKlein seemed to have been seriously breached.

Klein tried to recoup by appearing on a black radio station, leading one black parent to write "Shame on you KISS FM. Another wrote, "Joel Klein had the nerve to go on KISS FM radio station and try to explain why he is shutting down schools in the Black Community... Joel Klein should be indicted for what he has done to education in New York City. He has been allowed to have 4 major reorganizations. He has shut down the Chancellors district. He has closed over 90 schools and plans to close at least 100 more over the next 4 years. Our students are not failures, they were failed by the Billionaire Mayor and the unqualified Chancellor."


The beginning of a death spiral for mayoral control?
Many people had their first exposure on January 26 to the frustration of seeing hundreds of speakers have their voices ignored. Some felt helpless and walked away in despair. But for many the learning experience through mass activism energize them and may start the ball rolling toward ultimately putting a stake through the heart of mayoral control.

There is no better example than our own BCHS student activist Chris Petrillo. As the vote for Beach Channel closing went through he was in tears at having failed to save his school. NY 1 reporter Lindsay Christ asked him why he was so upset. "My parents met as students at Beach Channel," he said (school closings ignore the important role schools play as community anchors). By the time I dropped Chris off at his house close to 4am, he was back on his feet, ready to fight.

A few days later Chris called from the press conference at the UFT, where the NAACP and many other groups had joined the UFT in filing a law suit contending that "the department violated state law by failing to do the required analysis of how school closings would affect the more than 13,000 students who would potentially be displaced, particularly special needs students; by failing to analyze the effects of the closings on other already overcrowded public schools nearby; by failing to give communities and interested groups appropriate notice of local public hearings; and by failing to answer questions at public hearings."

I have 5 hours of videotape from the meeting, which I have been putting up on my blog (http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/). One of the fun pieces to watch is Joel Klein undergoing five minutes of booing and howling while he tried to give his opening statement. Come on by get a cathartic experience as you watch.

Is UFT telling teachers to withdraw U rating appeal b/c NONE HAVE BEEN WON?

From an angry teacher:

teacher I work with - 17 years in system, no prior U ratings - principal went after him immediately on her arrival, last year - he got a U last June, and appealed - he was just contacted by a union rep to call about his appeal - I don't think he ever got a letter (which I did, for my U appeal hearing) - just a call from the union - he met with the rep - prior to the meeting he wrote up a very well-written statement which he read to me (he wrote it in our staff room and shared it with whoever would listen) - when he met with the union rep he was told that he should "try to get the principal to give him as S "(!) - and then was advised that he should rescind the appeal because NONE of the U ratings have been turned over on appeal! which he did!!!!

I think it is amazing, considering the record number of U ratings, the odds of NOT ONE of them being overturned on appeal is quite mind-boggling!

does the union believe that having teachers rescind their appeals will result in principals - who, as this teacher indicated to me, was given the impression by the principal - when he met with her (as I also did, separately) on the last day of the fall term, about his current "mid-year U rating" - that she was on the carpet for the U ratings she gave last June (3 of us at this small school) - giving such teachers S ratings this year???

is this an actual strategy??? or simply desperation???

anonymous was a teacher

UFT Election Back Stories

Gotham Schools' Anna Philips has a report on the upcoming UFT elections (ballots go out March 7 and must be returned by April 6 - count is April 7 and is open to UFT members). I left a comment.

The reason Randi got 74% in her first election was that New Action, the main opposition at the time, was still a force and able to pull a quarter of the votes. Now they have sunk to below 10%, with many of those coming from retirees.

For a comparison of voting patterns over the lst few elections, see a spreadsheet we prepared 3 years ago at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pgxRf3gM4qtyBFmTshSW1fQ&hl=en

You wiil note that Randi's % dropped in 2007, but her vote total really dropped from 42,000 to 35,000 between 2004 and 2007 while the number of retirees voting for Unity remained constant at over 18,000 votes. Can it be that half if Unity's votes come from retirees? It's late and my eyes are bleary. But here's the skinny on the HS vote.

Elaborating on the high school executive board seats and why they are up for contention:

First of all, our 6 great candidates.

From ICE
Arthur Goldstein, CL of Francis Lewis HS, who you all know very well from his writings on Gotham.

Michael Fiorillo, former CL and current delegate from Newcomers HS who has also commented very astutely on many issues at Gotham.

John Lawhead, CL of Tilden, a soon to be closed school. John used to be at Bushwick HS which also was closed, so he is an expert on the politics of closing schools. He is also has been an expert on the high stakes testing issue for many years and has taught many of us in ICE the implications of the high stakes testing game.

From TJC
Kit Wainer, CL from Leon Goldstein HS, who headed the ICE-TJC slate in 2007. Kit has been a long-time activist and is one of the founders of TJC.

Marian Swerdlow, FDR HS, also a long-time activist in UFT politics and a former delegate.

Peter Lamphere, CL of Bronx HS of Science, who has been active for many years.

Some facts about this particular piece of the election

These 6 high school seats have been Unity's problem for over 20 years (the high school vote always split around 50/50), as they consistently lost them to the opposition, which used to be New Action.

But in 2003/4 New Action started making deals with Randi - they wouldn't run against her if she wouldn't run Unity candidates for these 6 seats, thus ceding them to New Action. Many New Action members also got part-time jobs at the UFT.

This dirty deal led to the formation of ICE (many from the Education Notes circle) for the 2004 elections and an alliance with TJC, which had been around for a decade but had never run in an election before 2003. Both groups had a lot to learn and had to build a new infrastructure from scratch.

With Unity not running candidates for these seats, the direct confrontation with New Action led to ICE-TJC winning those seats, which placed people like Jeff Kaufman and James Eterno (who has been on the EB as a New Action rep but left them over the Unity deal) on the EB. As someone who had been attending the EB meetings for a while, they brought a breath of fresh air to the meetings over their 3 years on the board, forcing Unity to address many issues, including the rubber room (Kaufman's short trip to the RR as an Ex Bd member made some headlines and his experience there and support for his colleagues, plus his legal background, brought many issues into the light.) Their voices were loud and strong in fighting the disastrous 2005 contract.

In order to still these voices, in 2007 Unity guaranteed New Action 3 of the HS EB seats by co-endorsing - which means a Unity vote counted for New Action- and took 3 seats for themselves. ICE-TJC got 36% of the vote and could not top the combined New Action (12%) /Unity (51%) totals, though ICE-TJC outpolled New Action in every division of the union except retirees. (Since New Action sold out their vote totals have dropped consistently amongst working teachers from the mid 20% to single digits in 2007). To make it clearer. New Action got 3 HS EB seats while getting only 521 votes while ICE-TJC received over 1500 votes and got no seats. UFT democracy inaction.

You can see a vote comparison of the 2004 and 2007 elections at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pgxRf3gM4qtyBFmTshSW1fQ&hl=en

New Action also received 5 additional EB seats for a total of 8 as a reward for keeping the independent voices of ICE-TJC off the Board.

We assume that a similar deal will be in operation in this election. If ICE-TJC can increase its vote in the HS to 50%, not an impossibility given the conditions, then the 6 people mentioned above, although an extreme minority out of 89 EB seats, would serve on the Board and give voice to a large group of disenfranchised teachers, paras, secretaries, etc.

And it would further drive a stake through the heart of New Action's bogus claims to be an opposition. If they lose, will it threaten their jobs at the UFT? Probably not, but if you detect an air of desperation on the part of New Action, you know why. Unity will probably offer a similar deal like last time and hand them additional seats in order to make phony claims of bi-partisanship. If ICE-TJC does win these seats, just watch New Action EB members line up on most votes with Unity.

Unlike ICE/GEM people, New Action has been absent from the line of fire of closing schools and charter school invasions (they supported the UFT charter school invasion of 2 public schools in East NY). Will the rank and file be aware of these differences? While the word has been out about New Action to some areas of the UFT, we theorize that a batch of New Action votes come from people who still believe they are the old New Action.


You can follow the UFT elections at the new ICE blog: http://uftelections2010.blogspot.com/

PEP Jan. 26: NAACP Mic Turned Off, Sullivan Makes His Point

In this 3:37 second extract, Patrick Sullivan chastises David Chang after mics are turned off from speakers from the NAACP.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR0eHLefS5k

Excuse video quality: Lousy location to shoot from - constantly having to move around to avoid blocking isles, bad lighting, cheap camera and downsized quality for faster processing.

Exposing the Corporate Puppet Masters... and Some of Their Puppets

Below, just in from Angel Gonzalez. John Tarleton of the Indypendent has done an amazing job. Get in touch and get copies for your schools ASAP. This is the kind of information and reporting the NY Teacher should be doing but doesn't.

Note the role Bill Gates has played. Though people ask me why I always harp on the AFT/UFT connection to these characters, I will keep doing it until people fully understand the complicity of our union. The AFT put Gates and some others on some board. "How could you do that," they were asked? "Oh, we're going to coopt them," was the response. You just can't make this stuff up.
Norm

Below (& on link) are the the privateers, the PEPpette(puppet) Masters, behind the School Closings & Privatization with Charters. Thank you, John Tarleton & Indypendent, for your excellent coverage on this drive to privatize schools with closings & charterization. http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/faces-of-school-reform/

If one traces the background of most of the DOE, the State Regents and the Federal Obama Department of Education, most of these chiefs are linked directly to corporate profiteers of some sort. There is somewhere on the internet (I can't relocate it), a web-chart that list the names of all these local, state, & national education officials and their corporate links. If anyone can find it, please circulate. It illustrates well the big monied-monsters that we fight.

These corporates below need to become the targets of our protests & organizing work. Follow the money & here are your targets.

Thanks again, John T.

Angel Gonzalez

The Faces of School Reform

By John Tarleton
From the January 29, 2010 issue | Posted in John Tarleton , Local | Email this article

ILLUSTRATION: GUERRUNTZ

Led by a band of billionaires, the school-reform movement has gained increasing momentum during the past decade, spreading its reach into urban communities across the country. But instead of truly transforming public schools, private funders want to restructure them. They insist running schools like a business is the solution. At stake is not only control over hundreds of billions of dollars in local, state and federal funding, but also the future of the next generation of schoolchildren.

Bill Gates
Net Worth: $50 billion

Using the Gates Foundation as his instrument, the Microsoft co-founder has channeled tens of millions of dollars into transforming large high schools through the schools-within-a-school model. Critics say boutique public schools tend to enroll (or “cream”) the best students while receiving more per-pupil funding than their large-school counterparts. Gates has also allocated large sums of money to help fuel the growth of charter schools.

During the 2008 presidential election the Gates and Broad foundations teamed up to spend $24 million to influence public education policy. Their shared message: Expand charter schools and tie teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests. President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has tapped top Gates Foundation officers to be his chief of staff and to head the agency’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. Foundation officers are also spearheading the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which promises aid to cash-strapped states that eliminate caps on charter schools and agree to place even greater emphasis on standardized testing. “It is not unfair to say that the Gates Foundation’s agenda has become the country’s agenda in education,” says Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Duncan led the Chicago school system from 2001 to 2008. He oversaw more than 60 school closings, primarily in people-of-color neighborhoods, while rapidly opening privately run charter schools. The Gates Foundation funneled $63.2 million into the Chicago schools during Duncan’s tenure and now Duncan is taking the “Chicago model” nationwide with the help of top aides recruited from the Gates and Broad foundations.

Spencer Robertson

The son of a hedge-fund billionaire who has donated $10 million to Mayor Bloomberg’s school projects since 2003, Spencer Robertson opened the PAVE Charter Academy in 2008 inside P.S. 15, a successful elementary school in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Tensions further escalated when the DOE recently announced that PAVE would be allowed to expand inside P.S. 15 over the next five years, even though Robertson has received $26 million from the DOE to build his own school. Robertson’s wife Sarah, the head of the board at Girls Prep Charter School, was at the center of a similar controversy when the school recently sought to expand inside public school facilities in the Lower East Side.

James Shelton
Assistant Deputy Director of Education, Director of Office of Inn ovation and Improvement, DOE

Following Obama’s election, Shelton moved seamlessly from deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation to a post at the DOE as assistant deputy director overseeing a variety of grant programs that assist charter schools. Operating at the nexus of the public, private and nonprofit sectors, Shelton previously worked at Knowledge Universe, where he launched, acquired and operated education-related businesses. Shelton’s former Gates Foundation colleague Margot Rogers now serves as Duncan’s chief of staff.

Eli Broad
Net Worth: $5.4 Billion

Broad, a Los Angeles-based billionaire who made his fortune in insurance and real estate, has been at the forefront of the school restructuring movement over the past decade. Using the foundation that bears his name, he has pushed aggressively for schools to be run more like businesses. The Broad (pronounced like “road”) Foundation has seeded charter schools across the country, including in New York. It has also developed a number of programs to train school administrators, including the Broad Superintendent Academy, which instructs business, nonprofit, military, government and education leaders in how to manage urban school districts. A number of top officials at the New York City’s Department of Education have received Broad training. Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in New York City last year, Broad summarized his approach: “We don’t know anything about how to teach or reading curriculum or any of that. But what we do know about is management and governance.”

The Waltons
(Christy, Jim, Alice, S. Robson)
Net Worth: $79.4 billion

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter schools in the United States, giving a total of $150.3 million during 2007-08. In New York, the Walton group has provided $15 million in construction funding plus more than $1 million per year for operating costs in recent years to help the Brighter Choice charter school network establish eight new schools in Albany, according to the Albany Times Union. Meanwhile, Gov. David Paterson has received contributions totaling $55,900 from Christy Walton, as he pushes legislation to lift New York’s current statewide cap of 200 charter schools.

Eva Moskowitz

Moskowitz, a former Upper East Side councilmember with close ties to the Bloomberg administration, earns more than $300,000 annually for running a chain of four small charter schools in Harlem. Like Spencer Robertson, Moskowitz has sparked protests in the predominantly people-of-color community she operates in as her schools move into existing neighborhood schools. Last April, the Broad Foundation awarded Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network $1 million over two years to support its four existing Harlem Success schools and to help it open 40 new schools in the New York City area over the next 10 years.

Joanne Weiss
Director, Race to the Top program, DOE

Joanne Weiss served as a director and chief operating officer for the New School Venture Fund from 1998 to 2008 before being appointed to head the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. Using venture philanthropy largesse provided by Broad, Gates and other wealthy individuals, Weiss helped incubate networks of privately controlled charter schools and charter management organizations as well as organizations to mold new teachers and principals in the education reform movement’s technocratic image.

Michael Milken and Larry Ellison
Net worth: $2 billion and $27 billion

Michael Milken dominated Wall Street in the 1980s using junk bonds to fuel that decade’s merger mania before landing in federal prison for violating securities laws. Now, Milken has gone into the education business as chairman, co-founder and driving force behind Knowledge Universe, a multinational conglomerate that operates for-profit day-care centers and schools and makes interactive educational toys. Ellison, CEO of Oracle, co-founded the company with Milken.

Democrats for Education Reform

Established by four New York-based hedge-fund millionaires active in the charter school movement — Whitney Tilson, Charles Ledley, John Petry and Ravanel Boykin Curry IV — this political action committee seeks to build and solidify support for corporate educationreform initiatives inside the Democratic Party, lest it be tempted to heed the concerns of teacher unions or other critics of running schools like a business.

Michael Bloomberg
Net Worth: $17.5 billion

Bloomberg spent $75 million to win the New York mayoralty in 2001. Since then, he has used his Midas-like wealth to dominate the city’s political process while pursuing a top-down, data-driven vision of school reform. When New York won the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education, education historian Diane Ravitch described it as “a prize conferred by one billionaire on another.”

Rev. Al Sharpton

Sharpton began preaching the gospel of school reform in 2008 when he joined forces with New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to found the Educational Equality Project (EEP). Last fall, Sharpton went on a five-city road trip with “odd couple” buddy Newt Gingrich as well as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to tout the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program. Sharpton’s support for the school reform cause has also yielded its earthly rewards. According to a March 2009 report by Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News, Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) received a $500,000 donation immediately following the establishment of EEP. Sharpton’s benefactor: Plainfield Asset Management, a Connecticut-based hedge fund, where former schools Chancellor Harold Levy is a managing director. The donation came at a time Sharpton was set to pay $1 million in back taxes and penalties he and NAN owed.

Sources: Forbes 2009 Fortune 400, Gates Foundation, newschools.org, The New York Times, Broad Foundation, gothamschools.org, Walton Family Foundation, Albany Times Union, Chicago Public Schools, rethinkingschools.org, wsws.org, U.S. Department of Education, Knowledge Universe, forbes.com, Ed Week, New York Sun, edwize.org, New York Daily News, ednotesonline.org.

For more information see the following articles in this issue of The Indypendent:

“Taking the Public Out of Schools” by John Tarleton

“Inside Columbus High School” by Mary Annaïse Heglar

“Bloomberg’s 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools” by John Tarleton

“New York City Schools by the Numbers” by John Tarleton

“FIRST PERSON: Stealing the Best and Brightest from Public Schools” by Seung Ok

Juking Police and Ed Stats

A NYC teacher at Perdido Street School blog has two recent posts that form a perfect square. He breaks down Obama's rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law, which is even worse than the George Bush version:

One section of the current Bush-era law has required states to certify that all teachers are highly qualified, based on their college coursework and state-issued credentials. In the Race to the Top competition, the administration has required participating states to develop the capability to evaluate teachers based on student test data, at least in part, and on whether teachers are successful in raising student achievement.


Educators who have talked to the administration said the officials appeared to be considering inserting similar provisions to the main education law, by requiring the use of student data in teacher evaluation systems as a condition for receiving federal education money.

I don't have the time to pin it down now, but I think I read somewhere that Randi Weingarten said the Obama NCLB modifications were heading in the right direction. Figures. For the Mulgrew fans, keep an eye out for any response from him. Silence means.... well you decide.

In today's post PSS deals with a related item: Bloomberg's NY: Cops Manipulate Crime Stats

Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct recorded felonies as misdemeanors and refused to take complaints from victims - all in an effort to drive down the crime rate, sources said.

A man who said he was beaten bloody and robbed - and then told by cops he was the victim of a "lost property" case because he didn't get a good look at the suspects.

That is what you get when the data munchers get going. As long as measured outcomes as determiners of success are used, people will discover ways manipulate data. The Wire so aptly pointed this out when a former cop went into teaching and when told all about the testing game made an instant connection: juking the stats.

PSS jumped on the story in early January when it was announced that NYC had the lowest murder rate in history in 2009, in essence predicting the current scandal of police precincts juking the stats:

...New York City has the most edumacated kids in the country even though many can only pass the dumbed-down, in-house graded state tests but not the more rigorous federal tests and graduation rates have been massaged by a credit recovery program that offers failing students a semester credit for reading a Spiderman comic book.

Just as schools are forced to show improved test scores and graduation rates every year or be closed down and replaced by charters, police precincts have to show improved crime stats every year or the city fires the existing brass at the precinct and brings in new brass.

Given the ease with which schools use Klein-metic to massage stats, I just have to wonder if police precinct captains aren't doing the same thing.

You know, like declaring a guy with four bullet holes in his back an "accident victim" ("We think he accidentally shot himself in the back four times...") or just miscounting the number of dead bodies at the end of every week to keep the math nice and neat (i.e., at zero.)

Ed Notes also blogged on the same story on Dec. 29 and just plain accused Bloomberg of being a body snatcher:

NYC Murder Rate Down? Where Did Bloomberg Bury the Bodies?

Today's good news was that this year NYC will have the lowest number of murders since record keeping began. Bloomberg is crowing. But those of us in education who know how Bloomberg jukes the stats, cannot help but be skeptical.

But how can he juke the number of murders, you might ask? When you're dead, you're dead.

If you are a fan of The Wire, you will remember how Marlo Stanfield's hit crew somehow managed to do over 20 people and leave no bodies by sealing them up in abandoned housing? Don't bet against Bloomberg's having a couple of hundred missing persons being "housed" on empty city property.

Marlo Stanfield and his crew Chris and Snoop hired as consultants by Bloomberg to "keep" murder rate down.

Womb Testing

Updated 12:25pm, Feb. 2, 2010

See piece in NY Times by Susan Engel, Playing to Learn.

How far can we be away from pre-birth testing? I can just see it. Someone comes up with a standardized test where certain phrases are read into a future mother's belly button and a stethoscope is placed in strategic areas to read the unborn baby's responses.

This thought came to mind last night at my wife's retirement party at the Water Club where a couple of people with kids in the first grade, one in a public school in Queens, were talking about all the homework their kids were bringing home. One of the ladies present asked if they had play things in their classrooms and both parents said "No." I chimed in that no elite private school where people like Bloomberg sent their kids too (Spence in his case) would allow such a system to engulf their children.

As we hear the refrain of "separate and unequal" coming back into vogue when describing the education kids get at hedge fund drenched charter schools vs. the public school, often in the same building, one point made is that the children at both types of school are children of color, with the lottery winners getting the better end of the stick. But the basic test driven education goes on in both types of schools.

Not so in the halls of elite private education. where the idea of test driven is laughed at. Wealthy people spend $30,000 a year to assure they keep laughing.

Join in for 5 Minutes of Booing Uncle Joel - Go On, Get it Out of Your System

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3km1iIY0MQ

NAACP NYS Joins UFT Law Suit Against DOE - Press Conference

So much for BloomKlein, those great civil rights activists when the NAACP jumps in. Where is Klein buddy Al Sharpton now?

Note the call:

PLEASE WEAR YOUR NAACP CAPS, JACKETS, ETC.

That will make some photo-op.

In Meredith Kolodner's story in today's Daily News, it is pointed out that last year when the UFT sued to stop the closings of 3 schools, the DOE backed down, though they chopped at the schools by cutting the grades they covered and Klein sent out a letter to parents urging them to place their children elsewhere. While the UFT law suit is a good thing, it should not be the only strategy as courts can take some time. But if there is an injunction of sorts issue to stay the closures, that would throw all the balls in the air. The UFT should also start pressuring the state legislature to take some kind of action on this issue. But with people like State Senator Malcolm Smith having an interest in their own personal charter school and with charter school supported throwing all kinds of money at them, we cannot expect much. But the UFT has to start pulling support for these characters in upcoming elections.


DATE: Monday, February 1, 2010
Place: UFT Building
52 Broadway
New York, NY
Time: 1: 00 p.m.

To announce the joining of the NAACP New York State Conference in an education law suit with MICHAEL MULGREW, as President of the UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, Local 2, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, and THE ALLIANCE FOR QUALITY EDUCATION, [THE NEW YORK STATE CONFERENCE OF NAACP], [Individual Petitioners],

Respondents
THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF THE CITY OF NEWYORK, and JOEL I. KLEIN, as Chancellor of the City School District of the City of New York,

PLEASE JOIN US !

PLEASE WEAR YOUR NAACP CAPS, JACKETS, ETC.


Ed Note:
Make sure to check out our buddies on the radio today.
PS 15 parent and teacher on WWRL at 8am and James Eterno om WBAI 7pm

Radio Show ... Monday 8 am 1600AM

WWRL Morning Show -Errol Louis

You can listen in live at http://www.wwrl1600.com/live_stream.asp

James Eterno on WBAI Monday Evening

Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash host Building Bridges on 99.5 FM radio: WBAI. James will be one of three guests talking about school closings. The program airs between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Tune in.

NOTE: Carmen Applewhite will also be on the show. She sent this out:

"Carmen Applewhite the first African American Candidate for President of the UFT will be on WBAI tonight from 7:30 p.m. until 8:00 P.M. along with Mr. James Eterno the other Presidential Candidtate."

Carmen is incorrect in stating she is the first African American candidate for president. Michelle Macklin ran for President on the PAC slate in either 1999 or 2000 or 2001 and Hillcrest HS Chapter leader Marilyn Beckford headed ICE's first election slate in 2004.

Historical Perspective of ICE and GEM: Getting the Message Out

I don't write enough about how proud I am of the role the Independent Community of Educators (ICE) has played over the years in the resistance movement.

With our large-scale petition signing event going on this afternoon and the time I have spent in helping to organize it, time I often resent because I am just not super interested in dealing with UFT elections and view it as worse than a trip to the dentist, I thought it useful to share a few thoughts.

ICE has all too often been viewed only as a UFT caucus battling over internal UFT politics, something we have not always been too effective at doing.

But ICE was founded more as a group to analyze the state of public education and has done a great job at bringing the issues to attention. It was only the sell-out and collaborative policies of the UFT that forced us to get into the pit with Unity Caucus and its sell-out partner, New Action.

Since this the attack on public education began in NYC 7-8 years ago we have seen a big jump in getting our word out. Note how many speakers - even the UFT - are using our analysis.

ICE began in Nov. 2003 (and Ed Notes years before that in 1996) motivated by getting the word out even to our colleagues in the opposition, people who told us mayoral control and testing were not their issues. When ICE people attended all the UFT mayoral control meetings over the last few years and put out a minority position, even someone as astute as Angel Gonzalez said he was beginning to understand the big picture. Michael Fiorillo has been sharing the "big picture" with us for years. Now Leo Casey is giving Michael's speech about privatization at PEP meetings. But over the years, the UFT leadership has consistently coopted positions we took. Some think that is a good thing - look, you all had some influence. But they only took those positions on paper for PR purposes and to undercut the influence ICE might have.

Recently, though we are a tiny voice, our positions on testing (ED Notes as raising resos at the UFT DA as far back as the late 90's), mayoral control, charter schools, merit pay, etc, have been reaching a crescendo.

ICE has attracted deep thinkers about education, some of the highest quality people I have met. What we were missing were people who were activists with experience in organizing. When Angel Gonzalez joined us over a year ago (his retirement in July 2008 made him available) he brought that edge to ICE. Angel suggested ICE form a committee to address the ATR issue. The always amazing John Lawhead added the element that ATRs came from closing schools and closing schools came from the high stakes testing regimen.

A year ago a few of us from ICE held the first committee meeting in a diner. There were 4 of us. At that point I was attending meetings of Justice, Not Just Tests, a NYCORE group focusing on fighting high stakes tests. We invited Sam Coleman to attend our meetings. Others joined in and the concept of GEM was born. Following on the work CORE in Chicago was doing, we held a conference in March, reaching out to some of the Harlem schools under attack by Eva Moskowitz and a march and demo at Tweed in May. Somewhere in this time we picked up the GEM name.

In late June/early July when PS 123 came under attack by Moskowitz, GEM came out in force and started making contacts all over the city.

GEM has been a totally different experience from the more cerebral ICE. Most of the ICE core has jumped in. That has left ICE with less time and resources to devote to the UFT election, which we committed ourselves to a year ago. But I view it all as one movement over the long run. GEM is involved with ICE, NYCORE, TJC, ISO, Teachers Unite, CAPE and goodness knows how many other organizations involved. GEM is not a UFT caucus and is working with student and parent groups.

That TJC and ICE chose James Eterno as our presidential candidate last May has turned out to be a good thing. While James cannot campaign (Mulgrew naturally can visit numerous schools every week) due to the closing of Jamaica HS where he is chapter leader, he has risen to new heights as a fighter for his school. Despite his candidacy, he has worked closely with the UFT leadership and has in no way tried to make hay of his situation vis a vis the campaign.

The election has spurred interest by a batch of younger teachers through the work of Teachers Unite's Sally Lee (just returning to action after giving birth in September) and some members of NYCORE. Some have signed on to run with us and this is a major change from past years. Are there enough to make a big difference in terms of the vote? Hard to say. But in terms of organizing a core of committed activists, we are very early in the game. If the people who are praising Mulgrew as being very different from Randi are correct we will see a turn of the UFT and that would establish a different relationship between ICE, GEM and the UFT/Unity caucus.

But I believe in the long run people will see the differences are due to Mulgew's style and over time he will "evolve" into the traditional UFT leader. In the meantime, he seems to be getting a bit of a honeymoon with even severe critics of Unity in the blogging world seemingly impressed. (Actually, there is no one, including me and even her most adamant supporters in the past, who do not feel Mulgrew is an improvement in style over Weingarten, who has just about wore everyone out.) With people like Leo Casey getting up at public meetings and making speeches that channel ICE's Michael Fiorillo, one would think the UFT has changed. But they have always adopted and adapted ICE and now GEM positions for rhetorical purposes.

Mulgrew has made the union even less democratic than Randi did with new restrictions on the delegate assembly. Until there is a move to democratize the UFT and add diversity to the Exec Bd (Mulgrew would have to end the phony alliance with New Action that allows them to get 8 Ex Bd seats and ICE/TJC none despite their out polling New Action) nothing will change.


Ed Note: I know that new readers, and even some old ones, may have trouble following the acronyms of all the groups. I may have to put up a guide on the sidebar if there are requests.

But here is a guide:
ICE- Independent Community of Educators
GEM- Grassroots Education Movement
NYCORE- NY Collection of Radical Educators
TJC- Teachers for a Just Contract.
CAPE - Concerned Educators for Public Education
CPE - Coalition for Public Education

There are many other groups active currently that we are dealing with and if you were left out email me.