Union Dues Mandatory in NY State - Not a Great Thing for UFT Democracy

Gov. Patterson made the agency shop a permanent law in NY State, which means people must pay union dues even if they don't join the union (it had to be renewed regularly for 30 years.) The agency shop makes sense in that the union negotiates for everyone. Union supporters, even those in opposition to the leadership, generally support the concept, which goes along with dues checkoff where dues are automatically deducted from the paycheck.

And I still support it.

Sort of...

....when I see the wonderful use of those dues to fuel the Unity patronage machine. And those all expense paid junkets to AFT and NYSUT conventions for 800 Unity Caucus members. (Check those wonderful salaries posted from the 2006 LM2 on the bottom of the sidebar.)

....and when our union is a monarchy, we wonder if there might be a tad more democracy and accountability if the UFT actually had to compete to get people to pay dues.

Sean Ahern has a few more words over at ICE-mail where he points out that transit worker's TWU Local 100 still hasn't had its dues checkoff rights returned since their strike a few years ago, which has caused tremendous stresses in the union. While the dues checkoff is a major convenience to unions, it also functions as a noose and is a major deterence to the right to strike, which means unions have no real weapon in negotiations. The stacked courts can even use job actions as an excuse to cripple a union. I guess truly "permanent" would mean just that, as Sean points out - meaning, dues checkoff can't be taken away.

I'm sure UFT members can come up with variations of this cartoon.

Sean touches on the accountability issue:

The dues stream, the real estate holdings, the insurance plans, the retirement system of the UFT, the city's largest union local, is a web of interests defining the "bottom line" to be protected by the leadership. Our union assumes a corporate identity, another self serving 'special interest', a collection of trade union bureaucrats and hangers on, instead of a mass organization for the advancement of mutually agreed upon goals. Our union today is an institution that can not simply be changed by voting in new leadership. A change in leadership, a strike and subsequent detachment from the dues stream is not a sufficient guarantee that a union leadership will be accountable to the membership.


The UFT has lost dues checkoff in the past and there is no way we will ever see the leadership go near a strike again with that threat hanging over them. Can you just imagine the chaos in the halls of 52 Broadway when people might actually have to go back and work in a school?

As usual, Sean finishes up by drilling right down to the race issue with his unique single-minded approach.

Read the article and Sean's comments over at Norm's Notes.

Spellings on Colbert, Who Says "Why Not Just Bomb Failing Schools

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?episodeId=176381

Is Mulgrew Really the One?

No reporter tracks goings on in the UFT like the NY Sun's Elizabeth Green. Friday (July 18) she wrote, "Ms. Weingarten named [Mike] Mulgrew the union's new chief operating officer [COO] in a memo sent to union officers yesterday [July 17] evening." Mulgrew will run the UFT while Randi is out of town, but I do not think he will be the UFT president in the foreseeable future for reasons I have laid out in the past. (See the 2-part "Randi's Succession Obsession" in the sidebar on the right. Also read our June 16th post "Unity Tail Wags the AFT Dog.")

Of course, if Elizabeth had been reading Ed Notes regularly, she would have learned of the staff changes in our July 3 posting, "UFT Staff Changes: Mulgrew is the Boss."

She seems to think highly of Mulgrew as she gave him a premature promotion by titling the article, "An Apparent Heir to Weingarten Emerges at N.Y. Teachers Union."

In the old Shanker days, we used to see the heir apparent of the month.

Randi reorganizes as often as Joel Klein
Just note how many staff directors (one of the most stable pre-Randi positions in the UFT with Feldman and then Tom Pappas occupying the job for decades) the flighty Weingarten has run through in the past 3 years since Pappas retired.

I count 6, including the new tripartite Leroy Barr/Ellie Engler/Gary Sprung arrangement, which we also sprung on our readers in our July 3rd post. Sprung was often despised as Pappas' hit man and will play the role Pappas played for Sandy and Randi.

Sprung has apparently survived the Unity critics carping at his talking and joking with me (I think I was the only one who liked him), but he has wised up and now makes sure to ignore me when passing. But Gary is in my age range and we can't expect him to be there forever, though they could embalm him and leave him standing as a statue to continue to scare the staff.

One interesting aspect has been the down-grading of Michael Mendel (who last year was designated as Randi's 2nd in command) and recently resigned elementary school VP Michelle Bodden who for years was viewed as Randi's logical successor. (Ed Notes also broke this story on June 26 even before many people in the UFT knew.) Michelle will now run the UFT elementary charter school.

That these were two of the most liked and respected people in the union hierarchy should not go unnoticed.

Ed Notes has been predicting all along that Weingarten will be very reluctant to hand over the real power in the UFT/NYSUT/AFT.

Once Randi gives up the UFT presidency, she becomes a head without a sure body of support. Shanker was able to do that after 11 years of doing both jobs because he became such a big player on the national scene. The NY Times column played a major role and Randi is trying to establish the same credentials. But she has along way to go until she reaches that status and her notorious paranoia and micromanaging will be a big factor.

In a recent conversation I had with Green I repeated my thesis that with the real power in the AFT and UFT resting on the control of the UFT's Unity Caucus, Weingarten, like Shanker before her, would not let go easily. If she intended to have Mulgrew run for the presidency in March 2010, she should have moved much faster to declare Mulgrew as the heir. We would have to see her resign from the UFT and appoint Mulgrew within the next 6 months to give him an opportunity to function as UFT President. Both Shanker and Feldman resigned soon after they were elected. So the timetable for a 2010 candidacy for Mulgrew must be executed ASAP.

"But didn't Sandy Feldman turn over power to Randi when she became AFT president," Green asked?

"Yes she did," I replied. "But she groomed Randi for almost a decade. Everyone in the union, in the DOE and in the halls of power in the city treated Randi as the heir apparent, so she didn't just walk into the job after Sandy left. Despite that, there were some conflicts when Randi ignored her advice. Randi also moved quickly to replace some of Feldman's people with her own. That is not lost on Randi and with Mulgrew being an ambitious fellow, what would stop him from doing the same thing?"

You can't compare the relationship between Al and Sandy with that of Randi and Mike. There would be no way the same level of trust. Clear signs will be whether Mulgrew gets to run UFT Executive Board and Delegate Assembly meetings, a role Mendel has filled very effectively.

Green says a few interesting things about Mulgrew:
Mr. Mulgrew is known in the union as a "fighter" who stands out for being bold enough to stand up to Ms. Weingarten when he disagrees with her.

Sure. We've seen what happens to people who disagree with her.
"I think he's extraordinarily talented and the right person," a union vice president, Leo Casey, said.

Now there's a good source of independent thinking, Leo Casey, who could find justification for UFT policy even if it included devouring children for lunch. (Can't you just see, "I think Jeffrey Dahmer is extraordinarily talented and the right person," said Casey.)

Green adds:
Mr. Mulgrew seems already to have won the disdain of the union's internal opposition caucus, the Independent Community of Educators, or ICE. An ICE leader, Jeffrey Kaufman, said Mr. Mulgrew allowed the department to get its way in its overhaul of special education schools.

I don't know enough about Mulgrew and have had limited personal contact to hold him in disdain, but give me a chance (see Randi, like I told you 7 years ago, it's not personal.)

In the meantime, you can read more of Jeff Kaufman's take on Mulgrew at the ICE blog, "What Is a Chief Operating Officer Anyway?"

Jeff, I think a COO is the guy who turns off the lights at night.

Or the chief pigeon.

Follow-up: Mulgrew: Effective leader or typical Unity hack?
We'll explore this question in an upcoming post.

A Great Debate on Teach for America

...over in the comments section at The Chancellor's New Clothes (click here) where TFA's and critics duke it out.

TFA focuses on the narrow educational issues ignoring the other issues such as health and poverty that come into play. Maybe there's a sense that touching on them becomes an excuse. Klein says that all the time. Certainly they never raise the class size issue and the kind of political battle it would take to have an impact. But TFA's supporters are anti-class size reduction as a union ploy to get more members.

This ties into the social justice theme that some TFA's who stay in the system are beginning to take a look at. Fighting the bigger fight while doing your best to address educational needs (believe me, just a focus on this narrow aspect will never be enough) is the next logical step. If TFA truly believed in closing the achievement gap, they would also encourage their people to work to close all the other gaps. But when you are being used as part of a campaign to privatize the schools, while also undermining the concept of teacher unions (think: don't they undermine your individualism) the social justice aspect will never be part of a TFA program.


TFA Rose makes some good points:
I agree that the issues of inadequate nutrition and health care should be addressed, and that resources ought to be spent in finding those answers. However, as an individual and a professional I am not at all qualified to do any of those things. I am not a politician, a doctor, or a social worker. Instead I have chosen to take the path of a teacher to help show my students the opportunities they need to find their way out of poverty.

That Rose considers herself not qualified in other areas but somehow qualified after 5 weeks, is puzzling.

A Voice in the Wilderness responds:
In the years since TFA started, with all of the teachers who have been sent in to schools, has it not occurred to anyone to say to Wendy Kopp-”Look at the conditions of the low income neighborhoods. Look at the conditions of the low income schools. Something needs to be done to improve these conditions?”

If something were done, maybe the conditions that Kopp likes to cite over and over again as being an “injustice” would not be there.

I find it hard to believe that such conversations have not occurred given the amount of intelligent people who are recruited by TFA.

Another aspect of this debate are the traditionally trained teachers vs. the TFA's, who make the point that if they weren't there even for 2 years, classrooms may remain empty.

TFA Sarah has the line down pretty well:
If teaching is to be a respected profession, as so many educators implore it to be, then why shouldn’t teachers be held to similarly high standards as every other profession? In the real world outside of the gripping union contracts, if a person is not adequately performing their job function, she is removed from that position. Why should it be any different for teachers? Who made teaching the one profession where it’s virtually impossible to get fired? And who thought that was a good idea for the students? At least in corporate America, someone sucking at their job isn’t usually affecting dozens of children’s lives.

Anti-progressive teachers: if you want your work to be respected and valued, be willing to hold yourself to high professional standards - and that means showing quantitatively AND qualitatively that your students are learning! If you can’t or won’t do that, then find another job. Our kids don’t need warm bodies collecting a paycheck at the front of their classroom.

Deborah responds:
This is exactly the kind of clueless rhetoric I expected to hear. How miserably disappointing. If you think for one splint second that lousy employees and cronyism doesn’t occur in the private sector, that you truly have lots to learn.

Head over and chime in with a few comments of your own.

Phase Two...GHI/HIP

During the next 4-6 weeks, CAP will ask that every politician in NYC go on record regarding this issue (especially politicians involved in primaries).

If Randi and Mike are reading this, remember it was ICE that took a stand and not the very leaders who are supposed to protect us.

BTW: The AFT has endorsed HR 676........Hmmmm...the AFT endorses HR 676 and our union leaders are lining up for a piece of the pie of the conversion money from the possible privatization of GHI and HIP. Now that's unionism!!!!

Click this link...

http://www.tomduane.com/news_2008/letters_2008/Emblem%20Health%20Letter.html

State Senator onboard...

John Powers

Planning to Change the World

From NY Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE)

Planning to Change the World, the social justice teacher’s plan book published by the network and NYCoRE, is an enormous success. In the first six days of sales, we have sold more than 550 planners. We are well on our way to making this book an underground hit!

I have attached a flier that you can copy and put in teachers’ mailboxes or pass out at relevant events.
We also have a new Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=681828705360.

You can help spread the word by checking out the page and becoming a friend. If your organization or school would like to place a bulk order, please contact bree@nyu.edu or tara@edliberation.org

Remember, all proceeds from sales of this planner support the work of the network and NYCoRE, so we very much appreciate your participation in this exciting project.

Thanks.
Bree and Tara

Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers
Order your copy today at www.justiceplanbook.com.

NEA & AFT Compared

Ed Week blogger Vaishali Honawar had some comments on the differences between the NEA and AFT at her blog.

Compared with the NEA, the AFT's convention looks decidedly less education-focused...

A good number of the [AFT] delegates were from professions outside teaching...

Contrast that with the NEA, whose delegates, after protracted debate at this past convention, refused to admit private K-12 workers into their membership ranks, claiming it would cause the union to lose focus of its mission to improve public schools.

Here in NYC in the UFT, with the recent addition of home care workers and over 50,000 retirees, the percentage of working teachers is now in the minority.

The AFT/UFT is much more about things other than education. Which maybe explains the disaster that has hit NYC teachers.

A. Russo Asks the Question We Have Been Waiting For

How Long 'Til Mayoral Control Falls Out Of Favor?

Not As Long As You Think.

how long... until a mayor (or candidate) in one of those places suggests that things would be better the other way around -- without mayoral control. Chicago might be first. Thirteen years in, much has changed, but the overall situation.

On the day Randi Weingarten came out in favor of it (May 2001), I raised the issue of mayoral control in Chicago at a UFT Exec. Bd meeting (by handing out a leaflet since I couldn't speak.) Chicago had already gone through 6 years and the attacks on teachers were so vicious, they led to an overturning of the structure in the union with Debbie Lynch getting elected. We can echo Russo in NYC after 6 years: much has changed, but the overall situation.

Warnings to AFT'ers on Weingarten

AFT members around the nation who might have been impressed with the militancy of Randi Weingarten's words, should examine the impact of her decade of leadership of the UFT which has resulted in a union at its weakest point in well over 3 decades.

A Voice in the Wilderness at CNC in "Dear UFT Leaders" writes

I am a career teacher who has always shown commitment and support to our union. From the time I was a fledgling teacher, I have attended executive board meetings and rallies, organized and assisted with voting, created and distributed fliers, and generally supported our union in any way possible. I will always support the right of the American worker to unionize.

However, with all due respect, I must ask you a question:

What the hell are you doing?

While Under Assault asks if Randi as a teacher union pres. is a fish out of water.

I see a self-serving union president who loves playing in the political pool but who wasn't born a fish. Without the instinct for the job we do, she can't really defend us. Heck, she can't even recognize what's killing us.

See all the Under Assault fish swim.

Ed Note:
Why is Weingarten a fish out of water when her bio says she taught for 6 years at a Brooklyn high school? Context. She taught only 6 months full-time. The rest was part-time. It is important to note that her so-called teaching career was fabricated to give her credentials as the successor to Sandra Feldman.

Weingarten was the perfect Teach for America candidate - but even more short term
Many of us knew as far back as the early 90's - before she ever set foot in a school - that she was the next UFT president when some Unity Caucus members were upset at a lawyer jumping over so many teachers. (I got to know her when I became Chapter leader in 1994 and certainly approached her as the next UFT president.)

Insiders were scratching their heads as to why a lawyer and not a teacher was being tapped to run the United Federation of Teachers. How is someone tapped outside a democratic process? In a monarchy like the UFT and AFT, that is the way it is done.

She was assigned a full-time UFT staffer as a coach to get her through the teaching license procedure and began teaching at Clara Barton HS in Prospect Heights where Leo Casey was the chapter leader. This was a hand-picked "safe" school a few minutes from her home in Park Slope. The much more dangerous Prospect Heights HS, next door to Clara Barton, was not an option.

Friends as Clara Barton told me the entire staff knew Weingarten as a celebrity amongst them. "Wow," said one, "she even did lunch duty one semester." She was given the debate team to coach as comp time and a few classes to teach. The rest of the day was spent as a UFT official at UFT HQ and around the city. She even negotiated the disastrous 1995 contract that was turned down by the membership while supposedly teaching full-time.

With it being clear that Feldman would be moving up, Weingarten put in a 6 month term of full-time teaching to create the sense she was a teacher, not a lawyer.

You have just a slightly different "teaching" exerience when you are a "celebrity teacher." You sort of miss 99% of the stuff that gives you insight as to what teaching career means.

NYC teachers who have been paying attention are painfully aware of the difference and that sentiment is what A Voice and Under Assault have expressed as Weingarten doesn't have the instinctive outrage that teachers feel about what is going on.

All too often I have watched her tepid defense and waffling "yes, we are not afraid of accountability" or "we too want to get rid of bad teachers" without placing all of it in proper context. Real teachers feel the pain of the destructive acts of the phony ed reform movement and know full well Weingarten uses PR to muddle things to give the impression she is somewhere in the middle - supportive of teachers but also supportive of reform.

The result is a misdirection of any teacher militancy that would resist the trend. Even people outraged by what is going on still succumb to the appeal to them as professionals who want to purify their profession. Only the very few like Susan Ohanian and the other test resisters are willing to say the witch hunts to root out so-called bad teachers is just a front for an attack on teacher unions, an attack that Weingarten and her supporters are all too willing to allow to occur.

Jonathan Alter on KIPP: Distortions, Misprepresentations and Outright Lies

This was sent out by Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education Listserve:

Jonathan Alter blusters in a column in Newsweek about what Obama should do to reform our schools:

Here is the response of Caroline Grannam, a SF parent and blogger who is one of the few people to independently assess KIPP’s claims:

In the current Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter earnestly claims that 12,800 alumni of KIPP schools have gone on to college. Here's what Alter wrote: At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids. The actual number, according to KIPP itself, is 447.

It turns out that that 80% figure was derived from calculating the matriculation rates at only two KIPP schools.

Alter also omits to mention the self-selection process involved in applying to KIPP, well as the rigorous interview process the school uses that discourages less motivated students from enrolling, including making them promise to attend school six days a week and most of the working day. Nor the high attrition rates, with some schools losing 50 percent of their students over three years.

Yet Alter continues to spin wildly:

[Obama] …hasn't been direct enough about reforming NCLB so that it revolves around clear measurements of classroom-teacher effectiveness. Research shows that this is the only variable (not class size or school size) that can close the achievement gap. Give poor kids from broken homes the best teachers, and most learn. Period.

Where is the research base for this? Don’t bother to ask, as there is none.

We don’t even know how to identify potentially effective teachers, not to mention how to make them more effective once they’ve been hired. Aside from treating them like professionals, giving them a smaller class and persuading them to stick around in the profession longer.

More from Alter:

To get there, Obama should hold a summit of all 50 governors and move them toward national standards and better recruitment, training and evaluation of teachers. He should advocate using Title I federal funding as a lever to encourage "thin contracts" free of the insane work rules and bias toward seniority, as offered by the brilliant new superintendent in Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee. He should offer federal money for salary increases, but make them conditional on differential pay (paying teachers based on performance and willingness to work in underserved schools, which surveys show many teachers favor) and on support for the elimination of tenure.

What? Surveys, including this one from Education Sector, which generally favors such proposals, show that teachers overwhelmingly oppose basing salaries on performance (read test scores.): “…one in three teachers (34 percent) favors giving financial incentives to teachers whose kids routinely score higher than similar students on standardized tests. Most teachers today (64 percent) oppose the idea, up 8 percentage points from the 56 percent who opposed it in 2003.”

Nevertheless, Alter continues in this vein:

And the next time he addresses them, he should tell the unions they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction.

Good luck with that one. I’m sure the NEA and the AFT are quaking in their boots.

As Grannam points out about Alter’s error in reporting the number of KIPP students that have gone to college that could also be applied to his false claims about teacher surveys and class size:

It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.

In case you’re interested, Alter lives in Montclair NJ, where no doubt the class sizes are small, and teacher tenure reigns supreme, along with high salaries, and performance pay is nowhere in sight.

But in a school district like NYC, with lots of immigrant and poor students, it doesn’t matter what overcrowding exists or what class sizes they are crammed into. All will be well and teachers will magically be able to reach all thirty plus kids per class, as long as the people in charge crack the whip loud and hard enough and can threaten them with losing their jobs if they don’t deliver.

A sure fire formula for success if ever I’ve heard it.

Comments? Write to webeditors@newsweek.com; copy to jalter@newsweek.com

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/

And leave it to Leo

to hand his lede on the Chicago AFT convention at Edwize over to Hillary. The AFT may have finally endorsed Obama, but to Leo what’s most important is that Hillary spoke to them.

Comments on UFT VP Leo Casey, Obama and the AFT.
Fred Klonsky at PREA Prez.

Klein and Weingarten On the Road

Elizabeth Green has another interesting piece in the NY Sun:
Schools Chancellor Reaches Into Presidential Contest

"In a speech to the National Council of La Raza's convention in California yesterday, Mr. McCain said he supports charter schools, efforts to "weed out" incompetent teachers, and plans to "hold schools accountable" for their results. He also called improving schools attended by poor students "the civil rights challenge of our time" — the same phrasing Mr. Klein often uses."

It looks like McCain will endorse their campaign.

Klein and Sharpton met with Obama yesterday.

Obama will be a little more careful but will sign on to a lot of this plan since most politicians love to talk about accountability and quality teachers. And the tough liberals like Kahlenberg (include the AFT/UFT/Clinton wing) bring up student/parent accountability to justify their support for a phony system of school and teacher accountability.

Green also reports on Weingarten's plan to call for revisions in NCLB.

Speaking at the union's national convention in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten yesterday laid out a vision for a revamped federal education law that would promote "community schools."

She said such schools would serve needy children by incorporating many government services into one building, services that do not just include schooling but medical care, child care, and homework assistance.

Funny how Weingarten did not propose these ideas all these years in NYC where the union could have used its muscle with the state legislature to try it out in a few schools. Just one reason why I view the entire plan as a PR move to make it appear she is for the more comprehensive Richard Rothstein approach to educational reform, while in NYC she went along with much of Klein's plans.

I mean, if you never tried to get this done in NY where the UFT was one of the major lobbyists, why would you would people take it seriously when it is proposed on a national level?

I guess on the national level she can take stronger stands since she will never have to negotiate a contract. This will lead to favorable press similar to what BloomKlein have gotten - much of the praise has been due to their ability to get Weingarten to capitulate in exchange for money.


Ed Week's blogger reports on the convention (live feeds on the sidebar) also talked about how Randi attacked NCLB in her speech.

She called the federal law a four-letter word, and vowed to work to overhaul it. NCLB, she said, is not about teaching, but about testing.


The Ed Week blogger even used the word, "Ouch!"

I would use multiple 4 letter words to describe just how much bullshit this is.

Watch what Randi Weingarten does, not what she says when it comes to testing and NCLB. Note she says she will work to "overhaul" not abolish NCLB. She and her predecessor Sandy Feldman were supporters of the original NCLB and Sandy sat on the commission to draft it. Has Randi ever said it was wrong to play this role?

She talks about the evils of testing in NYC but then signed on to an agreement that will give teachers bonuses for raising test scores that have proven to be bogus.

When mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein bragged about their high test scores, who was standing on the podium with them?

When Eli Broad gave Bloomberg and Klein the Broad prize for raising test scores and phone grad rates, who was there in Washington with them to accept congratulations? Guess?

TRIPLE OUCH!

La Rhee en Rose

I have to do some more parsing of Wash DC Supt Michelle Rhee's appearance on Charlie Rose Monday night but check it out and won't you just love that little anecdote of the TFA 2nd year teacher who sat in the burger joint buying kids burgers and helping them with their calculus while his colleagues were more interested in their pay checks and chided him for making them look bad by working so hard. Will he stay she asked him? He's not sure. Is that because of the 14 hour days and spending part of a meager pay check on burgers? Nahh! It's because of his colleagues' attitudes. Let's change that good ole school culture. But wait a minute! How did these dregs manage to get the Washington DC scores up so much? I mean, Rhee hasn't even gotten to fire them yet or get her end of tenure contract in place. Imagine how those scores will soar then: End of achievement gap in DC on the way.

In the meantime, check out The Daily Howler's 4 part series on Wendy Kopp's appearance on Rose which reports:

Kopp herself received a salary of $250,736 in 2005, the last year for which such data are available—though this fact is almost never mentioned in profiles or interviews (including Dillon’s.) Six other TFA executives received salaries ranging from $125,000 to $202,000 in 2006.

Whatever! For that $120 million annual outlay, Kopp and her staff of more than 800 recruited roughly 3700 teachers this past year—teachers whose salaries are paid by the school systems which employ them. In short, Teach for America spends roughly $32,000 per teacher just to send its young hires to their schools. That strikes us as an astounding amount, though we’re willing to see our reaction challenged. And of course, you might not mind burning through that kind of money—if the program in question really worked.

Wow! You really can get rich in education. What a country.
I think I actually saw some real teachers en Rose last week. Not exactly your average middle of the bell curve types - more like all teachers of the year, a very special kind of cat. You know the drill - we want a teacher of the year in every classroom in America - and then we'll talk about reducing class size. But then again why would we have to with a quality teacher in every class we can pump em up to 50. Even pay them for every extra kid they take over 40.

Kahlenberg on Shanker: He's Baaack

Vera Pavone and I reviewed Kahlenberg's "Tough Liberal" for New Politics and you can download a pdf or click on the link at the top of the sidebar on the right. We focused on the education reform aspect of Shanker's policies and how it has been destructive of teacher unionism. We reminded people that his book was funded by the likes of Eli Broad, who has been in the forefront of blaming teacher unions for education failure.

That the AFT and UFT has widely promoted Kahlenberg should be a clue as to where they are ideologically.

In How the Left Can Avoid a New Education War, Kahlenberg continues his theme by offering a middle ground between what could be termed the Richard Rothstein and Klein/Sharpton view of education:

....a major new fight has broken out between competing factions in the liberal education-policy community. One group argues that poverty should not be used as an excuse for failure and sees teacher unions as a major obstacle to promoting equity through education reform. The other group says education reform by itself cannot close the achievement gap between rich and poor and black and white without addressing larger economic inequalities in society. The battle, which can broadly be characterized as one between portions of the civil-rights community and teacher unions, is a movie we've seen before -- most explosively in the New York City teacher strikes of the 1960s -- and it doesn't end well. Sen. Barack Obama should follow the lead of legendary teacher-union leader Albert Shanker and recognize that both sides in the debate need to bend.


Kahlenberg raises the old "we should hold students accountable" argument. You know - hold them back. Maybe water boarding. Or shoot them.

But what about holding government and the business community accountable?

When he says Shanker never said unions should be blamed, he leaves out the fact that by going along with the accountability movement without ever talking about conditions - like the words "class size" have been banished from just about anything Kahlenberg writes - just as they were from much of Shanker's later writings - the AFT and UFT have abandoned the fight for the funding needed to truly have an impact. Read "Tough Liberal" and you will see that Shanker had no such compunctions about unlimited funding for defense budgets and wars.

He says Shanker wanted the unions to fight for better health care. But Shanker put real energy into fighting for merit pay and a standards and accountability movement that without other aspects in place, distract us from a progressive ed reform movement.

I'll leave it to Susan Ohanian's comments below to nail where this gang is coming from. But beware the empty words emanating from the final day of the AFT convention in Chicago and follow the Broad, Rotherham, Haycock, Romer, Klein, Clinton, Sharpton, Weingarten alliance. (Wars of words between Klein and Weingarten are just that - words.)

How the Left Can Avoid a New Education War
Richard D. Kahlenberg
American Prospect 2008-07-09
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=8106

Ohanian Comment:
When people are in the pockets of corporate raiders, it doesn't matter whether they call themselves liberals or conservatives in matters of education policy. As I have pointed out before, with great foreboding, these so-called liberals/progressives at The Center for American Progress wrote Barack Obama's education policy a few years back. Here's more, if you can stand it. And more. Take a look at whom Kahlenberg calls "sensible education reformers": Andrew Rothertham, Kati Haycock, and Roy Romer. And then there's the oddity of labeling teacher unions as "left" and "liberal." The whole emphasis on "bad teachers" is a red herring. Yes, there are some inadequate and even "bad" teachers, but what is rarely acknowledged these days is that they are so far outnumbered by the good ones. . . or at least there were until teachers started following the scripts shipped in from Reading First.

Russo also had a comment on the Kahlenberg piece at TWIE:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2720236/31045894

NEA too big for its britches?

Here's an attack by Richard Whitmire on the NEA for "dissing" the mis-using of phony "accountability" to privatize the schools. Watch how the AFT under Weingarten will be distinguished from the NEA as being more reasonable and reform-minded as Randi reprises the Al Shanker role of the 80's and 90's. The NEA at the time,which had been holding fast for proper funding, blinked under the joint assault of business, politicians and the AFT. Let's hope for a firmer stand today- but don' t get your hopes up too far.

I understand the Broader, Bolder argument that schools can’t do it all. But some things, especially semifixable things, can’t be put off until poverty is “solved.” And as Core Knowledge, KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Green Dot and other schools have demonstrated, it is possible to make a difference by changing what can be changed.

By dissing successful charters and tough school accountability, the NEA has drifted so far leftward that even the Rev. Al Sharpton has drawn a line in the sand. Teaming up with reform school leaders such as New York’s Joel Klein, Sharpton’s Education Equality Project is calling out the teachers unions on issues such as protecting incompetent teachers and tolerating the widespread school failures among African-American boys.

The full piece is at:
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=093201A0-3048-5C12-006CF8EA735A1A70

NEA too big for its britches
By: Richard Whitmire
July 9, 2008

Does Teach for America Have a Future - In Handcuffs?

Must see video over at Chancellor's New Clothes from CBS asking the magical question, "Where did the money go" and will the upcoming $12 million in fed funding to TFA be monitored a tad bit more closely?

She's Not There

I had planned to go to Chicago for the AFT convention but when friends bought tickets to see the Zombies this past Friday night, I knew I had my priorities straight. The four of us went to London in March to see their 40th anniversary concert.

I mean, why go see 800 plus Unity/UFT zombies - they do all vote as one - yucking it up at our expense in Chicago? Has anyone calculated what this junket costs? Figure at least $2000 a person times 800+ – I bet it's closer to 1000- the reason so many people join Unity.

Unity Caucus/UFT AFT delegates in Chicago celebrating Weingarten's election

Yikes! Is that like $2 million? (Someone do the math.) No wonder UFT dues are always going up. And they went up at the AFT too.

By the way, many AFT locals cannot afford to send their full complement of delegates so they send a portion equipped to cast more than one vote each. The UFT could do the same - like send one delegate to cast 800 votes, since they will all be the same anyway - at least for those Unity Caucus delegates who are not shopping.


My favorite bitter sweet Zombies song was "She's Not There" which always reminds me that at the time it came out around 1965 I messed up with the girl I liked, leading to her no longer being there. The song still reminds me of her.

On the other hand, in today's world of UFT politics, the song could also be about Randi Weingarten who will no longer be there - meaning here in NYC all that often as she races around the country as AFT president (her acceptance speech is Monday.) Here are some lyrics and you can watch a Zombies performance of the song from the 60's here and from the March '08 London reunion here.



Well, no one told me about her
The way she lied [about the 2005 contract]
Well, no one told me about her
How many people [ATRs and in the rubber room] cried
Well, it’s too late to say you’re sorry [for agreeing to merit pay]
How would I know, why should I care [hell, I'm retired]
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there....


I was not necessarily a wild fan of the Zombies but once seeing them in person they are hard not to like. (Our friend is close to being a Blunstone groupie - she cornered him on Friday to autograph a picture.) Awesome enthusiasm and tremendous skill. Maybe because Blunstone and Argent were apart for 40 years- the group had already broken up when the Odessey and Oracle album was released.

Ron Argent on the organ and Colin Blunstone on vocals are the only originals from the touring group, which has the bass player from The Kinks with his son on drums. All the surviving members were at the London concert, where they played the entire Odessey and Oracle album. Here is some video filmed by, Mark, my partner in NorMark productions in March. He is putting more up from Friday and I'll add the links to this post.

Which Comes First- Class Size Reduction or Teacher Quality?

There has been no more persistent theme of Ed Notes throughout our 12 years that teacher quality or effectiveness or whatever they are calling it today is affected by the number of children in a class. Of course to the "outcome" oriented gang, the sole judge is the test score, ignoring about 75% of what teachers do, from nurturing the whole child to scrubbing dirty desks.

Here's a nice video at AfterEd TV with Leonie Haimson, the NY Sun's Elizabeth Green, Columbia's Doug Ready (make sure to check out Leonie's comment if you hit the link.)

They talk about the study in California that showed that despite having to hire 3 times as many teachers due to class size reduction, the "quality" of all these teachers hired was about the same. But what do they mean by quality? Again it comes down to scores and I don't believe that is the relevant factor. Maybe we should use "number of kids that contact the teacher over a 5 year period after they graduate." It's as good a judge as any other factor. Lots more with Ready making some great points. I was at his presentation at Columbia a few months ago and his research is dynamite -it blows up the regressive ed reformers who push gimmicks like merit pay and ignore the class size issue.

Seymour Papert

Today's Boston Globe has an article on Seymour Papert's attempt to recover from a severe brain injury. Papert has been one of the major figures in educational circles since the early 60's.

Photo from the Boston Globe of Papert at his home in Maine.

In December 2006 Ed Notes reported on the accident Papert suffered in Hanoi that put him in a coma. Since then we received reports on his recovery from Laura Allen from Vision Education who is a very close friend of the South African born educator who pioneered the use of computers in education with his invention of the Logo programming language (using the famous turtle.)

When computers hit the schools in the early 80's they arrived with one basic piece of software: Logo. I used it to teach kids from the 2nd grade through the 6th to program in Logo. What empowerment they felt when they could make the turtle move just by typing Forward [whatever number of steps] and then change direction by turning it by typing LEFT or RIGHT with a number from 0 to 360 degrees. There were so many teaching opportunities - ie. figure out how to make a square or a circle.

Logo also contained lots of language arts possibilities. We designed a program to act out nursery rhymes - Humpty Dumpty was the most fun. All the king's horses and all the king's men came marching in after Humpty fell off the wall. However, we were able to put Humpty back together again by running the program backwards.

I got my first start in robotics when LEGO and Logo teamed up, to no small extent due to Papert, when they created LEGO/Logo which gave us a language that could turn on motors and read sensors. That was the beginning of robotics in the schools - at least at the lower levels. LEGO/Logo evolved - some say devolved - when programs came out that did not require kids to do any coding - drag and drop motors. They still require a basic understanding of programming and they are easy to use but not as rigorous.

There used to be a Logo users group in NYC where teachers from all over the city met every few months, mostly at one of the private schools in Manhattan. At one meeting at the Spence School Papert thrilled us with a surprise visit. I remember that day around 17 years ago because I met a computer teacher from the Brearley school and she offered me about 30 Apple IIGS computers they were about to replace with Macs. I went up there twice and loaded my station wagon and that is how we got our first rudimentary computer lab.

I was as turned on by that first computer in my classroom (the first I ever saw) in 1984 as the kids – to the extent that very soon after I began to take computer science classes at Brooklyn College which ultimately lead to a Masters and a few years of adjunct teaching of programming languages.

But teaching kids to learn some programming (I can go on for hours on how valuable this is) faded very quickly in the schools. Too many teachers and administrators didn't see it as valuable. (See Wired Science- Forward 40: What Became of the LOGO Programming Language?) There are probably few if any public schools in NYC doing much today, but many private schools still use a souped up programming environment which incorporates Logo, now called Microworlds. There are also many other varieties of Logo around.

Seymour Papert's contributions to theories of learning that engage kids has been invaluable. Unfortunately in today's climate of test, test, test, the benefits of his views are being denied to children in urban areas who might be most in need while they are being implemented in the most elite private schools.

Philadelphia Story

A Washington Post article on June 26 talked about the failure of privatization efforts in Philly.
Another failed school system that Paul Vallas ran into the ground (see Chicago, New Orleans.) yet nothing sticks to Teflon Paul who is contemplating getting out of New Orleans before the shit hits the fan, as it usually does when he is involved and running for political office in Illinois.

Is Edison dead-ism?

Is the article below a sign Philly Supt. Arlene Ackerman is a closet leftist status quoer who believes in throwing money at the problem with lower class sizes and other things that might make a real difference? Note that the program expires after 3 years, just little enough time to claim failure:
See, throwing money at the problem does no good. Let's continue to close schools, open up charters, have a revolving door for teachers and all the other regressive ed reforms.
Leonie Haimson wrote:

Arlene Ackerman, new superintendent of Philly school district trying novel experiment – to put smaller classes and more support and guidance into "persistently violent schools" rather than more police and scanners. Seven Philadelphia schools received grant money out of the US Labor Dept.; NYC did not receive any and doubtful if it even applied for any.

Ackerman is also pulling back from privatization like the Edison schools, giving more scrutiny to charters, and just gave the heave-ho to the "interim chief academic officer, chief accountability officer and deputy chief academic officer. On top of that, the district eliminated more than 200 academic-coach jobs."

Let's hope that this reflects a new educational trend that may come our way someday soon – reversing the build-up of the bureaucracy and police at the expense of the classroom.

Read about it here or here.

In a sidelight, Diane Ravitch wrote to the NYC Education listserve:

Interesting that Philadelphia, known as a district with lots of problems, has a graduation rate no lower than NYC's.