Heckuva Job Mikey: RBE Writes MORE Campaign Lit

That's a heckuva job this union leadership has done selling you out and making sure your job is in jeopardy, you have lots more work to do, and your salary has stagnated.-- RBE at Perdido St. School

Really, this piece by Reality Based Educator should be printed and go into every teacher mailbox in the city. Or emailed out to every contact you have. Want to help organize for MORE? Gather ye colleagues' emails and send stuff like this out to them on a regular basis.

It is so good I am printing it in its entirety.

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013

Mulgrew Brags In Daily News How APPR System Is His Baby

Mulgrew has an opinion piece in the Daily News that attacks Bloomberg for not wanting to come to an agreement on a teacher evaluation deal.

He says Bloomberg was the one who blew up the negotiations and points out that both the principals union head and NYSED Commissioner John King have backed the UFT up on that.

Then he notes the following:

To me, all this is evidence that Bloomberg may have decided that it is not in his interest to have a new teacher evaluation system in place when he leaves the political scene at the end of this year.

But that isn’t true for the UFT, which went to Albany and Washington to lobby for the creation of such a system and has been working toward one even as the Education Department has not.

King has said that the city’s Education Department “has not prepared effectively for implementation of the evaluation system.” To meet that need, which we discovered when we surveyed teachers earlier this year, the union has on its own sponsored briefings in the new evaluation methods for hundreds of both teachers and principals.

We are now working on a framework of best practices that the Education Department can use as part of the training system it must outline to King by Feb. 15 if it wants to avoid the loss of even more state and federal funds.

And we are willing to sit down to negotiate the new teacher evaluation system by the governor’s new Sept. 1 deadline.

The UFT is not the obstacle here. We believe the current evaluation system is inadequate. We want a new one that provides educators more nuanced ratings that give them the chance to grow on the job — and, yes, remove those who consistently underperform.

But if we are going to be successful, we will need people on the other side of the table who are interested in creating a system that will truly help teachers improve, not in leaving a legacy of blame.

UFT members, please note that Mulgrew is taking credit for going to Albany to lobby for a teacher evaluation system that uses tests scores, value-added measurements, growth models and the Danielson rubric with the 57 page checklist.

UFT members, please also note how the union leadership wants to see teachers fired under the new, "more nuanced ratings."

UFT members, please note how the UFT leadership is bragging about both of these facts in the NY Daily News.

So next year, when you get Student Learning Objectives that start on September 1 and you must keep folders with standardized assessments and standardized rubrics for students all the year through so that you can be graded on your performance, please know who to thank for that.

And next year when you get a new Teacher Data Report based upon the "state assessments" with a high margin of error and wide swings in stability, as the NY State value-added measurement model is sure to have both of these, please know who to thank for that.

And next year, when you are observed without notice by your APPR with her/his 57 page checklist and you are found to be ineffective because you didn't get a check on 3 of the 57 pages of the list, please know who to thank for that.

It's Michael Mulgrew and the leadership of the UFT who have brought you these "more nuanced ratings" in the form of evaluations based upon tests scores, value-added measurements, growth models, Student Learning Objectives and a classroom observation rubric with a 57 page checklist.

And all this work come with no raise, no salary increase - in fact, you didn't even get the 4%-4% that the other unions got as part of the pattern without having to give any concessions back.

That's a heckuva job this union leadership has done selling you out and making sure your job is in jeopardy, you have lots more work to do, and your salary has stagnated.

I am amazed that Mulgrew is bragging about this in public.

Sounds like he wants to be the ed deform movement's second favorite labor leader (Weingarten of course being the first.)

The sell-out is coming.

MORE Pres Candidate Cavanagh in NY Times

"The ‘bad teacher’ narrative as a way of explaining what’s wrong with our school system gets really old,” says Ms. Cavanagh. “Our union has taken a stance that we will collaborate and compromise and that is shortsighted when the other side seems bent on destroying you." -- Julie Cavanagh in NY Times

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/scorn-for-unions-threatens-mayors-educational-legacy/

Anything Michael Powell writes is worth reading, though one must pity his passion for the Mets (I didn't tell him Julie is a Phillies fan) and I think the Jets. Now I don't know if he knew Julie is running against Mulgrew and I also know that Julie tends to downplay putting herself front and center but what an interesting sidelight to this article that Julie as President along the Karen Lewis mode would be Bloomberg's and the ed deformers' worst nightmare.

Gotham Extra January 23, 2013, 6:43

Scorn for Unions Threatens Mayor’s Educational Legacy

By MICHAEL POWELL

Teachers Julie Cavanagh and Adam Stevens listen to the mayor pour boiling oil on their union, to his talk of imposing more tests and using the scores to draw a stringent measure of each teacher, and they wonder what world he inhabits.

Gotham Extra

Michael Powell on government and politics.

Ms. Cavanagh, 34, teaches at the highly rated Public School 15, in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. She already loses 16 days each school year to our mania for federal, state, and city tests. (I write “our mania” but this noun rarely applies to the $40,000 per year private schools attended by the children of the mayor and many education reformers, where the emphasis is on essay writing and the “whole child,” and a distrust of standardized testing prevails.) 



“Our school has never been about churning out day after day of test prep; we try hard not to be that narrow,” Ms. Cavanagh says. “Slowly but surely, though, the definition of success becomes based on a test score.”

As for Mr. Stevens, 38, he teaches history with much-admired passion at one of the city’s nationally ranked public high schools. “I love teaching history,” he says, “but I don’t want to find myself pushed to the curb in ten years because some of my kids didn’t do well on a test imposed on us by administrators who have set us both up to fail.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg styles himself an education revolutionary. He can claim accomplishments, and many rebuilt schools. Like many of that self-assured breed, however, he can sound deaf to the observations of his best front-line troops. Twelve years in, he risks making purism his trademark.

Last week he went to war on two fronts, and neither was very successful.
He took on the school bus owners and union drivers and attendants, who each day take more than 150,000 children to school. The mayor insisted that only competitive bidding for bus contracts – which could eviscerate union contracts – would yield the dollar savings he desires. His adherence to the religion of competitive bidding is wobbly; his administration came to the precipice of disaster in 2007, when consultants holding a no-bid, multimillion dollar contract recommended new bus routes that made very little sense.

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a true negotiating carnivore, was threatened with a school bus strike years ago, but backed off after the companies and unions gave back tens of millions of dollars in savings.
(Comptroller John C. Liu also noted last week that the mayor’s education department planned to hand a no-bid, $10 million contract to track test scores to a company run by the former New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein).

But it was the mayor’s failure last week to reach an agreement with the United Federation of Teachers on a new evaluation system that poses a real threat to his educational legacy.

The teachers union, aware that teachers chafe at being tied tight to the wheel of test scores, reluctantly agreed to a two-year trial run for a new evaluation system. Mr. Bloomberg would hear nothing of it; he insisted that an agreement must extend for perpetuity. The mayor took the same line with the union representing principals and administrators.

Each negotiation foundered as a result, in the final hours.
The mayor mounted his horse of indignation afterward, suggesting that the teachers union wanted only to kill the evaluations. The teachers union is no team of angels; it can be a stubborn, frustrating negotiating partner.
But the mayor’s account trips over inhospitable facts.

State education officials said that the Bloomberg administration had indicated early on that it was open to a two- year deal. More than 90 percent of school districts statewide agreed to deals with their unions that lasted either one or two years.

The Bloomberg administration’s hard line carries a price tag: It now risks losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state aid.
The mayor has claimed that the teachers union’s leadership is out of touch with its members. He is perhaps half right.

Rank and file anger swells, some of it directed at the union itself. But trust in Mr. Bloomberg is an hourglass that has run out. Many teachers say the mayor has humiliated them, offering no raises since 2009 and last year releasing a database ranking 18,000 teachers based on student test scores. Mr. Bloomberg enjoys talking of bringing business practices to the public sector, but it’s hard to imagine top law and financial firms handing out evaluations of its partners to potential customers.

Ms. Cavanagh adores her Red Hook school and her children, 90 percent of whom come from families poor enough to qualify for free lunches. But she feels the walls of the system closing in.

“The ‘bad teacher’ narrative as a way of explaining what’s wrong with our school system gets really old,” says Ms. Cavanagh. “Our union has taken a stance that we will collaborate and compromise and that is shortsighted when the other side seems bent on destroying you.”
Her words speak to a revolution in peril.

UFT Elections: The Game is ON

I guess the UFT leadership feels they have a good election window given the breakdown of negotiations and Mulgrew coming out of it looking enhanced with Bloomberg clearly being proven as a liar.

So finally, at last night's UFT Executive Board meeting, an election committee was formed and expected to report back to the Feb. 4 EB meeting where the recommendations for ground rules will be voted on. That will probably kick off the petitioning campaign beginning at the Feb. 6 Delegate Assembly, usually a 6 week process, followed by a few weeks of campaigning, followed by roughly 3-4 weeks of balloting -- they are sent to the homes and returned by mail. So by my estimate, we are about 3 weeks behind previous elections, so expect April balloting with a count in the neighborhood of May 1. Just my guess.

MORE and New Action each get a rep on the election committee along with about 20 Unity people. Amy Arundel will head the committee. Thank goodness Ellen Fox relieved me of this task. I'll keep you posted on how this breaks out given the expansion of the Exec Bd.

Consider the spring break coming in the middle of balloting (if I am right about the time table) as a negative for MORE given that they will have free access to all school mailboxes during the election and will lose a week of campaigning. Unity will have its chapter leaders and District reps where they have no chapter leader stuff every mail box in the city with slick Unity lit a few times while New Action will send out its mostly retiree crew to do the same. While I used to do a lot of this too, I am mostly taking a pass this time  -- I will probably be doing my hair.

Though I am not always a fan of the traditional opposition tactic of spending the election running around from school to school stuffing mailboxes with lit, it is pretty much what will happen once again. My experience in the past was that we didn't get enough results out of this tactic but maybe times are different.

And as I am fond of saying, the Einstein definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But what do I know? I'll leave it to the next gen MOREs to figure this crap out and learn for the future.

One other thing each caucus gets is a 2-page spread in the NY Teacher for two successive issues. Since few people bother to even read the NY Teacher (me included) the opposition gets few results from that too. But lots of anxt-time spent worrying about it. Again, I'll take a pass.

The only thing that works is having someone on the ground in as many schools as possible --- and I don't mean a passive person, but a reasonably active MORE supporter who is aware of the issues and able to articulate a response to the Unity line of malfeasance.

It mostly takes a ballot return ground game since 75% of the working teachers don't vote --- many just toss the confusing ballot. So if you are unhappy with Unity MORE would need people in the schools to remind people to send back the ballot, hopefully with the MORE slate checked off. Not just remind people -- but even set up a "voting day" where everyone who didn't vote brings in their ballots and all get mailed out together.

If people actually voted --- say double the vote -- Unity would feel heat and in fact could lose some Executive Board seats which they desperately want to avoid, preferring to hand 8 seats over to their pals in New Action.

And another thing people in the schools can do is explain exactly who New Action is and what they are doing in this election --- the bidding of Unity to split the opposition vote -- and do not forget many of the New Action people are on the UFT payroll -- sort of reminds me of Bill Thompson's wife who had her museum receiving Bloomberg money while her husband was running against him. Thompson ran the worst campaign in history.

No wonder New Action made such a big deal about supporting Thompson last time and maybe they will again this time since Thompson seems to have a lot of money coming in from -- hmmm, think Bloomberg is abandoning  Quinn and supporting Lhota but pumping up Thompson, who will run another awful campaign again?

Coming UFT slogan: Only 12 more years of Lhota.

Leonie Haimson on Lisa Nielson

The testing rebellion and opt-out movement in NYC has a supporter -- inside Tweed

I did a piece on this yesterday with video of Deputy Chancellor Shael Polokow-Seransky endorsing the rights of parents to opt out which is no different than what Lisa Nielson has done. But the NY Post does not seem interested in THAT story. Here is Leonie's take on her blog.

Lisa Nielson

Robert Perry, announced that testing had become a "perversion of its original intent.” Over the last year, 86 percent of Texas school boards representing 91 percent of the state’s students, have passed resolutions against the use of high stakes testing. The view is now so mainstream that in his introductory remarks before the Legislature, Joe Straus, the new, conservative GOP Speaker of the Texas House recently announced,

"By now, every member of this house has heard from constituents at the grocery store or the Little League fields about the burdens of an increasingly cumbersome testing system in our schools…Teachers and parents worry that we have sacrificed classroom inspiration for rote memorization. To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing: The Texas House has heard you." 

Joining the movement is Joshua Starr, the superintendent of Montgomery County, Maryland, who has called for the nation to “stop the insanity” of  evaluating teachers according to student test scores, and has proposed a three year moratorium on all standardized testing.  Starr has joined forces with Heath Morrison, the newly-appointed superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, a Broad-trained educator no less, who calls testing “an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars” that won’t help kids.  

Then last week, the movement jumped into the headlines when teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle voted unanimously to boycott the lengthy computerized MAP exams, which take weeks of classroom time to administer; the teachers were supported by the school’s PTA and the student government.   Other Seattle schools have now joined the boycott, and yesterday, more than sixty educators and researchers, including Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, and Noam Chomsky, released a letter of support for the boycott, noting that "no student's intellectual process can be reduced to a single number." [Full disclosure: I was among the letter's signers.]

Even before this, more than one third of the principals in New York State had signed onto a letter, protesting the state-imposed teacher evaluation system, which will be largely based on test scores, and Carol Burris, a Long Island principal and the letter’s co-author, has more recently posted a petition that has now over 8200 signatures from parents and educators, opposing all high-stakes testing. 

Though many NYC teachers and principals have spoken out against the particularly onerous brand of test score-based accountability imposed by DOE, with decisions over which children to hold back, what schools to close and which teachers to deny tenure to, based largely on the basis of test scores, no one inside the halls of Tweed, DOE’s headquarters, has up to now been brave enough to speak out publicly against the system. 

Until now.  As reported in yesterday’s NY Post, Lisa Nielsen, the  newly-appointed digital guru at Tweed, has not only stated that she believes that high-stakes testing is severely damaging our children and schools, she has also offered creative suggestions of activities that parents can offer their children rather than allow them to be subjected to the state tests.  On her personal blog, the Innovative Educator, she writes:    “There are so many ways kids can learn on opt out of state standardized testing days.  All it takes is community coming together to take back our children’s freedom to learn.”

Lisa also runs the Facebook NY State Opt out of Testing page, and has pointed out the “12 Most Unconventional Reasons to Opt Your Child Out of Standardized Testing,” including the fact that they are a “horrific waste of money”, and cause unneeded anxiety and stress.  She adds: 

“Instead of spending billions of dollars on funding testing this money could go toward providing resources for children or lowering class size. Let the teachers do what they were trained to do — teach and assess. Keep big business out of the equation. Keep the billions of dollars out of the pockets of publishers and let it remain in the classroom.”

We now have our own anti-testing advocate at Tweed, and  we should all celebrate Lisa’s honesty and her courage in speaking the truth. 
 

Pasi Sahlberg, expert on Finland’s renowned educational system, had said that if his government decided to evaluate their teachers on the basis of test scores, the “teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn’t return until this crazy idea went away.”  

It’s time for all our educators to join the movement, follow the inspired leadership of Lisa Nielsen and the teachers in Portland, go public with their opposition, and refuse to participate in this oppressive system any longer.

MORE's Brian Jones, Secretary of Department of Education, Will End TFA Contracts and Repeal NCLB and RTTT

In his spare time Brian is running for UFT Secretary on the MORE slate in the upcoming UFT elections.

The Indypendent newspaper "appointed" me US Secretary of Education and asked me "what would you do?" My reply will be in the print edition that comes out soon, and is online here: http://www.indypendent.org/2013/01/21/no-school-left-behind ---- Brian

Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Brian along with MORE presidential candidate Julie Cavanagh, narrated the film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman."

By Brian Jones

January 21, 2013

Issue # 183

Brian Jones
Secretary
Department of Education

As the new Secretary of Education, my first priority will be to reverse the trend toward the privatization of the public schools, to end the pervasive climate of fear and demoralization among the nation’s educators and to urgently promote desegregation and genuine equality of resources and opportunity in all K-12 schools.

Toward this end, I will seek an immediate repeal of No Child Left Behind legislation and of the Race to the Top competition. Together, these have raised the stakes of standardized assessments beyond any reasonable proportion; narrowed the curriculum; created a culture of corruption; cheating and competition between schools; and have increased the trend toward teaching as a short-term job, not as a long-term profession. I will call for an end to high-stakes standardized testing and a moratorium on school closings. Just as we commit ourselves to teaching every single student, we will likewise commit ourselves to improving every single school.

Teachers must be trained in the very best practices and must be given the opportunity to learn from experienced educators during their training. In our highest-needs municipalities, students only rarely have teachers who are from their community, and teacher turnover is high. Teach for America cannot be the model of teacher training for our schools. Therefore, I will seek an end to Teach for America contracts with municipalities nationwide. Shortages must be addressed by strengthening our schools of education and by developing pathways to train community members to serve as educators in their schools.

READ MORE

---

Brian Jones has taught elementary grades in New York City’s public schools for nine years, and is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers). Brian is a doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, and has contributed to several books, including Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation.

Supporting Lisa Nielson: Leading DOE Official Shael Polokow-Seransky Affirms Parent Right to Opt Out

When I first heard the NY Post was exposing a DOE official for supporting the opt-out movement I thought they must have come across the video I made of Shael affirming the rights of parents to opt-out. Maybe the Post should take a look at this video.




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

But of course the Murdoch-owned Post would be outraged by any protest against testing that might hurt the boss's and his pal Joel's profit margins on the testing regime.

So, there was lots of chatter about the Sue Edelman's "exposure" of DOE official Lisa Nielson's support for the opt-out movement -- and I put "exposure" in quotes because Lisa, who I've known as an aquaintance for about a decade -- has never hid her activities from the Tweedies and I'm sure they know all about it. Of course, they are so concerned about what the Post thinks, they just may pull the plug but I hope not. (I hope Ed Notes support is not the kiss of death.)

Actually, Sue, who can be a snake, did not do a terrible job given that the work Lisa does was given lots of space. It was the vicious headlines and the photo of Lisa they used from her Facebook page that made it look bad.

Here are some links to the Post Article and Perdido Street School:

More Tweedies Like This One, Please

And some stuff from Leonie:

Here is a response to this NYP article by kris Nielsen ( no relation):

http://mgmfocus.com/2013/01/20/ny-post-is-shocked-by-opt-out/

This is my favorite line from the NYP article:  ““The department is always open to working with people with different ideas,” said spokeswoman Erin Hughes.” Really?  Could have fooled me!

NY Opt out group which she moderates is here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/OptOutNewYork/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Lisa here: http://www.facebook.com/InnovativeEdu?ref=ts&fref=ts

Go show Lisa some love.

And maybe one day we can get her to tell us the inside dope on how DOE technology really fared under Bloomberg admin over the last 12 years. As a tech guy myself in the last 20 years (roughly 1985-2005) I worked both at the school, district and region level my sources generally report a disaster with enormous sums wasted.

LEADING EDUCATORS SUPPORT TEACHER TEST BOYCOTT

Press Release

Date:  January 21, 2013

Contact:  Brian Jones, Teacher and Doctoral Student, 646-554-8592 bjones2@gc.cuny.edu 

Wayne Au, Professor of Education, wayne@rethinkingschools.org

LEADING EDUCATORS SUPPORT TEACHER TEST BOYCOTT

In a public statement released today, more than sixty educators and researchers, including some of the most well-respected figures in the field of education, pledged support for the boycott of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test initiated by the teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle, calling the action a “blow against the overuse and misuse of standardized tests.” Among the signers of the statement are former US Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, author Jonathan Kozol and professor Nancy Carlsson-Paige. While the MAP test is used exclusively for rating teachers, “the test’s developers (the Northwest Evaluation Association) have noted the inappropriateness of using tests for such evaluations” the educators wrote.

“We’ve had more than a decade of standardized testing,” Ravitch said, “and now we need to admit that it’s not helping.” She added: “By signing this statement, I hope to amplify the voices of teachers who are saying ‘enough is enough’.”

“On Martin Luther King Day, we celebrate people who are willing to take personal risks to act according to their conscience,” Lewis said. “The teachers at Garfield High School are taking a stand for all of us.” 

New York City public school teacher and doctoral student Brian Jones drafted the statement last week and received help with revisions and outreach from University of Washington professor Wayne Au. “I’m overwhelmed by the response to this statement,” Jones said, “I feel like this is the beginning of a real movement to challenge high stakes standardized testing.” 

"We contacted leading scholars in the field of education," Au said, "and nearly every single one said 'Yes, I'll sign.' The emerging consensus among researchers is clear: high stakes standardized tests are highly problematic, to say the least."

"When I look at this list of names, I see the people whose work helped to make me the teacher I am today," Jesse Hagopian, a teacher at Garfield High School said. "Their support really means a lot to me, and I know that many teachers at Garfield High School feel the same way."

Call on UFT to Release the MOU

Thanks, Marjorie. We should demand that the Union provide the MOU to the membership. We know that they will say that it will hurt their negotiating position but keeping the members in the dark will not soften the blow when the approved concessions are presented. This should be a major plank of our demands. --- Jeff Kaufman

Marjorie Stamberg does a nice job in calling out the UFT on releasing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) so we can see what they were willing to give up. But I'm sure we'll find out soon enough after the UFT signs whatever agreement they will sign while making sure the members never get to vote on it despite the fact that would change the contract. And given that Leroy Barr at the Dec. DA affirmed the right of members to vote on contracts, the UFT leadership will enter Leroy into the Bloomberg hall of liar shame.

But enough of my drivel. I too want the MOU, preferably with a quart of milk. I love Marjorie but get such a kick out of so many people on the left who always keep me entertained. At the very end Marjorie calls people like me who don't fight a revolutionary struggle against capitalism an instrument of capitalism. Guilty as charged. Scuse me, while I go check my portfolio, here is Marjorie followed by the great pretender, Leo Casey.

People should read the attached self-serving but revealing article from Leo Casey, formerly UFT vice president in charge of high schools, now executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute (!) at the AFT.

Even the big business press admits that a deal on teacher evaluations linked to student test scores fell through because Mayor Bloomberg complained it wouldn’t let him “fire bad teachers” wholesale. His “scientific” method for carrying out this union-busting scheme is teacher evals based on the junk science “value added model” which with its indecipherable algorithms is guaranteed to produce large numbers of “ineffective” ratings. In this, the billionaire Republican in City Hall is only following the lead of liberal Democrats Cuomo in the NY State House and Obama in the White House, who are trying to bribe and blackmail teachers into compliance.

In his presentation to the Delegate Assembly on Thursday, UFT president Mulgrew called Bloomberg a liar and went on at length about all the fabled safeguards that had been allegedly built into the tentative agreement that the mayor shot down. But he didn’t say a word about the content of the evals scheme that the union had agreed to.

In this piece from Casey’s blog Edwise, he gives an insider’s account of the negotiations. He reveals that at the last minute the NYC Department of Education sprung their draft application to the NYS Education Department, including “numerous scoring tables and conversion charts” which the union had never seen. Without a doubt, these scoring metrics would allow Bloomberg to fire at will, since that has always been his bottom line. But instead of breaking off negotiations, the union proceeded to negotiate with the DOE a “three-part agreement” saying that the union would have to sign off on student “growth formulas,” that “unfairly skewed ratings” would somehow be “recalibrated,” and a “special expedited appeals process” would be set up to deal with internally contradictory ratings.

The union leadership is afraid to tell us what the scoring criteria are, but all Casey is saying is that if there were a glaring contradiction between student test scores and principals’ “observations” (the other component of the evaluations) it could be appealed. Nothing about rejecting the DOE’s slimy metrics. So not only was the principle of linking teacher evaluations to student test scores agreed to, the DOE’s mathematical formulas for firing teachers were implicitly accepted, with an escape clause for when the principal disagreed. Basically, Mulgrew, Casey & Co. capitulated to Bloomberg and Walcott (backed up by Cuomo and Obama). The UFT tops were ready to sign off on a deal that would have been a betrayal of the teachers they supposedly represent, destroying any vestige of job security. But for Bloomberg, who has the mentality of a slave master, capitulation was not enough: he demanded total surrender.

Since according to Casey's account, a Memorandum of Understanding exists in some form, let the membership see what the union leadership was about to agree to -- publish the MOU!.

So in the end, it was the intransigence of the puffed-up dictator Bloomberg  which thwarted the treachery of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy. He and his fellow denizens of Wall Street really do consider themselves to be “masters of the universe,” entitled by “management rights” to do whatever they please with “their” wage slaves. But it is not enough to oppose the sellouts of the union misleaders. Without a program to take on and defeat a united capitalist ruling class through hard class struggle, liberal and reformist union reformers would end up agreeing to a variant of the deal the UFT leadership okayed (but Bloomberg torpedoed). 

Either wage revolutionary struggle against capitalism, or become an instrument of capitalist rule: as Leon Trotsky outlined long ago, those are the only alternatives in this epoch of decaying capitalism, the supposed middle ground of reforming capitalism no longer exists. 

Caught In Their Own Web Of Deception and Deceit:

Bloomberg, the DOE and Teacher Evaluation Negotiations
By LEO CASEY
After he blew up the teacher evaluation agreement that had been reached between the UFT and his own NYC DOE negotiating team, Mayor Bloomberg appeared at a hastily called press conference yesterday to spin an entirely fictional account of what had transpired. The UFT had made agreement impossible, he claimed, because of our unreasonable demands for more arbitration dates that would make it impossible to “fire bad teachers,” our “last minute” insistence upon a sunset clause that would have made the entire system a “joke,” and a “middle of the night” effort to change the scoring metrics for teacher evaluation so “no teacher” would be rated ineffective. Each of these claims is a lie, pure and simple. Here I will address the last two of Bloomberg claims, as I was personally involved in the negotiations around them.*
To finalize an agreement over teacher evaluations in New York, two different documents must be developed: a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which lays out in legal language the agreement between district and the union over the new evaluation system, and an application from the local school district to the New York State Education Department which provides scores of assurances that the specific evaluation plans laid out in the MOU conform to state law. Both the head of the school district and the head of the union must sign the local school district’s application. During the last week, as the UFT and the DOE met long into the night in an effort to reach agreement on the terms of the MOU, we asked, again and again, more insistently at each turn, to see the DOE’s draft of their application. It was not until late into Wednesday evening, barely 24 hours before the deadline, that the DOE finally gave us their draft of the application. When we read the draft, it quickly became apparent why they had resisted sharing it with us. Included in the draft were numerous scoring tables and conversion charts which the UFT was now seeing for the very first time. These tables and charts were very important: embedded in them were fundamental decisions about the shape of the evaluation system. By waiting until the very last minute to provide the union with these numbers, the DOE was trying to sandbag us: it was now impossible to properly vet those numbers before the deadline.
The UFT would have been completely justified in ending the negotiations, then and there. But we did not. Our Measures of Student Learning team met with our DOE counterparts and I met one-on-one with Deputy Chancellor Shael Suransky in efforts on our part to put together an agreement over the scoring numbers and ratings that would ensure that teachers would receive fair and accurate scores and ratings. Bloomberg’s description of these discussions could not be further from the truth: far from a last minute effort on the part of the UFT to change agreed upon scoring metrics, the union was doing everything it could to rescue the negotiations from a bad faith maneuver on the part of the DOE that could have easily derailed any agreement. We agreed to a three part solution: a joint UFT-DOE committee would have to approve the growth formulas which would be used for all of the measures of student learning; any scoring metric which unfairly skewed ratings would have to be recalibrated; and a special expedited appeals process would be established for final ratings which were not concordant with the different component ratings. On Thursday morning, I confirmed this three part agreement in a telephone conversation with Suransky. Over many years of working with the Bloomberg DOE, through the chancellorships of Joel Klein, Cathy Black and Dennis Walcott, I have seen a great deal of cynicism on the part of the mayor and the top DOE leadership, but Bloomberg’s lie that the UFT engaged in an 11th hour effort to undo agreed upon scoring metrics in an effort to protect “bad teachers” is surely a new low in misrepresentation.
The Mayor’s claim that the UFT introduced a “last minute” demand for a sunset clause on the agreement is refuted by the very draft application shared with us. On the very last line of this section of the draft application, the DOE itself had written that the agreement would only last through the 2013-2014 school year. The preponderance of applications from school districts around New York approved had similar sunset clauses: given the sheer complexity of the new teacher evaluation systems required by New York State law, they reasoned that it was only prudent to revisit their implementation in a year or two. All of these applications have been approved by the New York State Education Department. It was the Mayor who, after an agreement had been reached with a sunset clause, insisted on undoing that clause and blowing up the entire agreement. The Council of Supervisors and Administrators, negotiating for a new principal evaluation, also had their agreement blown up by Bloomberg on the very same issue.

18 January 2013

After two years of continuous efforts on the part of the UFT to negotiate a teacher evaluation system which would provide New York City public school teachers with the means to hone our skills and craft, and provide our students with the highest quality education, it is now painfully clear that Mayor Bloomberg has no intention of negotiating such an agreement.
__________________________________________________________________________________
* When the negotiations on teacher evaluation began two years ago, I was a UFT Vice President, and I served as co-chair of the union’s Teacher Evaluation Negotiations Committee. Last September I resigned my position as UFT Vice President to become the Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute at the American Federation of Teachers, the UFT’s national union, but I made a commitment to the UFT to see these negotiations to completion and remained involved in them.

 

MORE General Meeting 1/26

Come to the 1^st MORE meeting of 2013 and join the fight to defend educators and protect students from the continuing attacks on public education!

WHAT: MORE General Meeting

WHEN: 12:00-3:00pm, Saturday Jan 26th 2013

WHERE: 224 West 29th St. btwn 7/8ave NYC 14th floor

During the recent evaluation negotiations, MORE fought for democracy within OUR union. MORE believes that members should have direct input into all major decisions.

Evaluations are just one of many issues MORE is organizing around: closing schools, forced co-locations, over-testing and underfunding, ATRs, denial of tenure, mounds of paper-work, Danielson, common core, special ed violations, and the continued attempt to destroy unions (as in the current school bus strike)….

The time is now!

Come build a positive alternative that challenges the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership.

Join us at our general meeting Saturday 1/26.  We will discuss why we have been successful in growing this democratic movement and what our strategies will be moving forward.

Come find out how to work with MORE in the upcoming UFT elections… including opportunities to run, petition for signatures, leaflet, and fundraise.

If you have sold raffle tickets bring money and/or unsold tickets to meeting, please contact us if you can't make it.

Childcare available only if requested by Wednesday 1/23 - email more@morecaucusnyc.org

https://www.facebook.com/MOREcaucusNYC/events

Next Special Event

Saturday February 23rd " Forum with Lois Weiner, moderated by Brian Jones "Dignity and Democracy in Education: Blowing the Whistle on the Culture of Fear and Corruption in NYC Public Schools"

Check the Facebook link for more info/location

Vincent C. Wojsnis on Eval Deal on Facebook

The time has come for people to consider whether the ruling party of the UFT over 50 years has any answers. Vincent was for many years a neutral chapter leader but has cast his lot with MORE. He wrote a great piece "Why I Joined the MORE ... back in November. He is running on the MORE slate for UFT Executive Board at-large.

Here are some comments in Facebook which he will expand into a general article.

At Thursday's UFT Delegate Assembly, Michael Mulgrew repeatedly said that the proposed deal on teacher evaluations was a "good deal," though he offered few details. What concerns me was his repeated reference to "evidence of growth." (translation: "value added") Was this not the "junk science" we sued Joel Klein over the release of Teacher Data Reports? We're buying into this?!! This is a bad deal. Let them keep their money. It's tainted.

We should be clear on this. The so-called deadline for a new teacher evaluation deal is not an act of nature (or if you prefer, "God"), only by politicians who think they're gods. Cuomo and Commissioner King can release the money (the amount of which seems to be growing) at any time. THEY CHOOSE NOT TO. They would rather hold a "gun" at the heads of teachers to force us to accept an unfair evaluation process that is based on "junk science," a result of of the deal they made with the "devil" when they accepted the Race to the Top funds. This is nothing more than a naked attempt to weaken our union.

"The future of school reform is here. It is the democratic voice of the true stakeholders in the education system...
Unfortunately, the same forces that have given rise to dictatorial mayoral control schemes around the country are also responsible for our own union’s lack of democracy. Since these education reform policies are wholly unpopular, and since our union leaders do not want to be seen as obstacles to “progress”, they have been forced to take a “conciliation” approach with “reformer” mayors who run school districts. In turn, they have been required to turn to increasingly un-democratic means to silence their members who understand that these reforms are harmful to our schools.".. Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE)

Seven Habits of Happy Kids in 5 SI Schools: Teacher Charges Religious Infiltration

I don't know anything about this but a teacher at one of these schools contacted me with this info and I'm throwing it out there for comment from anyone who knows something about it. The costs to a school -- 30-50 grand sounds so excessive and as the teacher points out these costs come as the loss of major services. But we shouldn't assume that the teacher is correct in charging a connection to religion. This program is about character education and we should question whose values are being promoted when we do character education. Given some bad history in the Mormon church on race I do wonder exactly how they view character in the black community, especially given the repressive charter school restrictions.

Colleagues,
A total of 5 schools are currently implementing the "7 Habits of Happy Kids." PS 21 in Staten Island, P.S. 53... 330 Durant Ave. SI and P.S. 23 in Richmond Town and PS 39 near Grasmere in SI.

We are being told it is not a "pilot" but a real "program" to be used. After sitting through some training I couldn't help but feel it's "cultish" vibe. So I researched Sean Covey and found he is a mormon with relations to the Seventh Day Adventist ... hence SEVEN habits.

It is a clear religious agenda being implemented into our PUBLIC schools. The children and teachers are being trained to use special vocabulary from the seven habits. We had to create mission statements...when in fact Mr. Covey's organization does not have a mission statement.

This is costing each principal of the five schools somewhere btwn. 30 and $50,000...money that should obviously be spent in the classroom to support students who CONSTANTLY lose services due to staffing issues.

In London, Ontario, Canada they tried to use the School Board to try to implement Covey's beliefs but the community and teachers fought against it and won!!!! We are in a SAD, SAD state if we are allowing 'religious' beliefs into our Public School System ....any thoughts? anything can be done?

BTW...TWEED has been visiting the 5 schools this year to determine if it is something ALL schools will do next year.

Paul Proscia works at the Regent and sends out the emails. Also, he held a workshop for teachers last week at 21 and attended the PTA meeting at P.S. 53 on Thursday night...this is PURE madness to me. TWEED was at PS 21 last week as well...teachers were instructed to put on the show so they will implement it next school year across the city.

Sharpton Doesn't Show at Philly Event While Weingarten Does

Our contact in Philadelphia sent us a follow-up to his report on this event Weingarten and Sharpton, Perfect Together -

Al Sharpton was a no show at the MLK event in Philadelphia. His spokeswoman said he was 50% on his way, but stuck in traffic and realized he couldn't make it on time. She wasn't very convincing. The crowd greeted her announcement with silence.

Randi Weingarten spoke three minutes. She did some shouting, pumping her fist about the planned closing of 37 public schools in Philadelphia. After reciting a list of the outrageous we face she asked if we were going to let them do it. Everyone shouted no, and that was it. No proposal for any kind of action.

The other union leaders were little better.

But exactly what is the AFT going to do about -- not talk about how outrageous it is -- the shutting down of almost entire public school system in major cities?

Saturday Sitings: Double Dose of Violence Where Russel Crowe Plays Bloomberg and a Touch of Credit Card Fraud

Bloomberg retaliation? Mulgrew says UFT HQ "inundated with city inspectors" this morning. "I would say the mayor is not responding well"  -- Gotham Schools tweet.

Thursday's UFT Delegate Assembly and its aftermath - especially - King Threatens To Strip Title 1 Money From NYC If No Evaluation System Is In By March 1  - put me in the mood for some good old violence.

So my Friday plan hinged on catching Django Unchained at the reasonably close Sheepshead Bay Multiplex but when it was clear I was not making the 12:05 showing and with the next one at 3:40 I ended up aiming for the just opened "Broken City", a tale of a mayor of NYC running for a third term and his major corruption, malfeasance, misuse of power, and arrogance.

In other words, the Michael Bloomberg story, something the NY Times review didn't dare go near. Expect him to hire a private investigator to track Diana Taylor. Or maybe misuse city power to harass people like Mulgrew who become obstacles. Oh, sorry, been there, done that. The key element of the corruption -- the mcguffin -- was a fictional representation of the attempt to sell Suyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village as a way to drive lower middle class people out in order to gentrify the area - and I'm sure Bloomberg had is hand in promoting that. If he could manage it, Manhattan would have a moat around it with missiles aimed at anyone without a high credit rating.

 Well, (spoiler alert) -- it was nice to see the Russel Crowe Bloomberg surrogate being led off in cuffs, something we unfortunately will not get to see, though in Joel Klein's early tenure, the corruption was so clear, I predicted he would one day be taken out of Tweed with his coat over his head. There is still hope, though it may be out of a Rupert Murdoch owned building.

Before I went to the 2PM show I made my daily visit to Home Depot and paid at the self-checkout machine. With the movie starting and me with the biggest tub of popcorn I could find, I ignored the phone call from an 800 number at about 2:15. Later I found out it was Amex fraud alert. Apparently, minutes after I used my card, someone used it to shop at Target and then Kentucky Fried Chicken -- and I would have forgiven them if they has sent over a bucket to the movie to save me from that enormous amount of popcorn (which I finished half way through). How Amex figures that is impressive -- later that night they told me to destroy the card - cest la vie.

Well, after the satisfaction of see Bloomberg got to jail, I managed to make the Django Unchained movie just a few minutes in -- remember the days as kids when you walked into the middle of a movie and sat through a double feature to see the parts you missed --- and there was enough violence to last me 5 Delegate Assemblies.

Well, its off to a gala birthday bash being thrown by the children of Loretta and Gene Prisco, two of the old stalwarts from the 1970s right through to today. So seeing some of the old UFT activists today should be lots of fun. Pics later tonight.

MORE Rally Video and Photos at UFT DA, Jan. 17

Some Ed Deformers at actually pitting the militant MOREs vs the E4E slugs, claiming they are a majority.

even if it angers younger, more reform-minded teachers who are the majority of rank-and-file members and seek high-quality evaluations 

Count the numbers of younger MORE (real) reform-minded teachers in the video.

See full dumb statement below pics.



Posted at: http://youtu.be/-EmpYubKraQ

A few photos (thanks to Pat Dobosz)

More MORE Videos - Chants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQn1ZWY5Lnw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFzWD0iOaaU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xtjfd1zQ0chttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNY2q8nAEU8

On TV:

ABC: MORE Elem school VEEP Candidate Sam Coleman, PS 24K

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8957466

CBS: MORE Elem Ex Bd candidate and CL Jia Lee with gang from Earth School
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=8202344

Dropout Nation

the most-radical of traditionalists within the rank-and-file want a leader who resembles Mulgrew’s colleague in Chicago, the infamous Karen Lewis; blowing off a deal with the district appeals to both Baby Boomers (who may not want to be subjected to performance management under which objective student test score growth on Empire State tests account for between 20 percent and 40 percent of evaluations), and more-militant retirees (who made up 39 percent of the votes in the AFT local’s last election four years ago. The fact that Mulgrew gets to score a victory of sorts against the outgoing Big Apple mayor (even if it angers younger, more reform-minded teachers who are the majority of rank-and-file members and seek high-quality evaluations)

MORE Analysis of Non-Deal and Commentary on Yesterday

The future of school reform is here. It is the democratic voice of the true stakeholders in the education system...

Unfortunately, the same forces that have given rise to dictatorial mayoral control schemes around the country are also responsible for our own union’s lack of democracy. Since these education reform policies are wholly unpopular, and since our union leaders do not want to be seen as obstacles to “progress”, they have been forced to take a “conciliation” approach with “reformer” mayors who run school districts. In turn, they have been required to turn to increasingly un-democratic means to silence their members who understand that these reforms are harmful to our schools... Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE)

I didn't get home until 10:30 last night after a few hours at a bar with some MOREs where I had a pastrami rueben and beer - urp! - and then getting lost in the dark downtown -- which way is Broadway? --- and then B and Q train problems which was a problem since my car was at Newkirk and forced me to take a long walk after taking the IRT to Brooklyn College - something I haven't done since c. 1965 when I was still living in East NY and taking the New Lots train to Franklin Ave and change to the Flatbush line, a trip that made getting a driving license the single most important thing in my life when I was 18. Oh, did I digress?

I actually did some processing of video I took of the great MORE led rally outside the DA before falling asleep at the keyboard. So I had a lot of catching up to do this morning and in the midst of taking my daily trips to various Home Depots, working on electrifying part of my basement (I heard Mulgrew was putting sheet rock up in his home and he is welcome to stop buy and help) and maybe catching a movie at the Sheepshead (Django Unchained) and being home for my wife's return later this afternoon from her big mahjong gig at Mother Kelly's restaurant, I may actually do some work updating -- but the blogroll is full of stuff anyway.

Below is the MORE official statement, written by a chapter leader who was stuck in school and couldn't make the DA. This was being written on the fly as soon we heard the NO DEAL news while another MORE stuck at home with childcare handled the input from tweets and email, while other MORES did countless things yesterday, like the chapter leader in the Bronx who wrote up an instant leaflet taking into account the new info, to the MORE who took his cell phone to Staples down the block and started printing copies, to the MOREs who took concerted action at the DA in the most effective manner for any opposition group to Unity that I've seen (or heard in this case) since the 1970's.

I will blog more about how proud I was of MORE, which to me had its coming out party yesterday as people came from all over to join in the rally which was aimed originally at a VOTE NO and then managed to shift gears to urge opposition to the use of testing as part of the corporate agenda to privatize schools and destroy teacher unions.  People kept coming up to me to ask what we should do and I was so happy to be able to tell them that I am just a cog and a good soldier. What a relief! I don't have to be accountable for anything, unlike the position the teachers have been put in.

Here is the statement from MORE even though I disagree with applauding a UFT leadership that was ready to cave the night before, even willing to give Bloomberg an extra year more than other districts were doing and were saved by Bloomberg's idiocy, especially given that Ernie Logan has backed up the UFT and I will give Mulgrew credit for calling Bloomberg an out and out liar, which even the press is seeing is true.

But for Mulgrew to spend the entire meeting defending voodoo science outraged many non-Unity delegates. Mulgrew's stand should help solidify his standing in the election -- and for conspiracy theorists - really, would Bloomberg prefer a CORE-like group like MORE and having to deal with a real teacher like Julie Cavanagh or the current UFT leadership which until yesterday was the gift to ed deform that just kept giving?

Yes, there are some cultural differences within MORE between the older ICEers with years of battling the Unity machine --- see James Eterno at ICE --- MULGREW TELLS DELEGATES SCUTTLED NEW EVALUATION SYSTEM WOULD BE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD
and the newer MORE activists who have to go through this process themselves. 

One thing you should note -- the full-time UFT employee Unity trolls are out commenting on the blogs while getting their 150k plus salaries and double pensions to leave snarky comments. Lucky there are no teachers in trouble due to their policies of neglect to deflect them from their true occupation.

------------
From MORE - http://morecaucusnyc.org/

Post-Mortem: The Non-Deal Between the UFT and DOE

18 Jan The passing of the January 17 deadline for a new evaluation agreement is not an ending but a beginning. Now the DOE will work overtime to spin doctor the failure to reach an agreement on new teacher evaluations, mandated by New York State’s version of Race to the Top, as the fault of Michael Mulgrew and union leadership. This despite the fact that every indication shows it was Bloomberg who failed to negotiate in good faith.

While we applaud the UFT leadership for standing their ground, the MORE Caucus has no intention of giving up the fight to prevent our teachers and students from being given over to the standardized testing regime. We know there will be efforts in the future to convert our schools into low-level thinking factories and our teachers into low-skilled, low-paid bureaucratic functionaries.

So, why did the evaluation deal fall through? We believe there is no one particular reason. Instead, there were a variety of reasons all working in concert to torpedo this deal. Understanding these reasons will help us understand what the post-non-evaluation DOE will look like:

Reason #1: Race to the Top is Bad Policy
Probably the most fundamental reason why there was no deal is because Race to the Top is bad policy. This goes beyond anything the UFT, city or state did. This has to do with the Obama Administration’s embrace of standardized testing as a way to measure teacher effectiveness. Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, often describe themselves as leaders bent on rolling back the Bush-era No Child Left Behind system of testing. However, their RTTT program merely means more testing and, in many ways, an expansion of the NCLB system. Students, parents and teachers have been steadily crushed by high-stakes tests over the past 12 years that are turning education into a stultifying affair. Both NCLB and RTTT erode creativity, free-thinking and openness in our public schools. This fact leads into the second reason why the deal fell through:

Reason #2: A Growing Backlash against Education Reform
PBS recently ran an hour Frontline special on Michelle Rhee. Despite the fact that Frontline barely scratched the surface on criticizing Rhee’s tenure as D.C.’s school chancellor, the fact that a major national media outlet was critical of her to any degree is quite a development. We have come a long way from the days of when she graced the cover of Time Magazine as the hero education reformer.

At the start of the current school year, the Chicago Teacher’s Union went out on strike against Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s Obama-inspired school reform agenda. They took to the streets to call for a better school day for children and work day for staff. By all indications, the parents of Chicago stood on the side of the teachers and against Emmanuel’s leadership of the Chicago school system. Again, this represented a change in previous actions by the CTU, whose previous leadership stressed compromise and conciliation with so-called reformers like Emmanuel.

Most recently, the teachers of several Seattle schools opted out of that state’s MAP exam to protest the high-stakes testing regime that has rolled over every school system in the land. Just like the Frontline story and the CTU strike, any type of organized opt-out of an exam would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

People across the country are beginning to realize that the so-called education “reformers” are really the status quo. They have had their way for over a decade and the backlash seems to be afoot.

Reason #3: High-Handed and Un-Democratic School Leadership
Both Michael Mulgrew and Leo Casey have stated that the evaluation deal fell through because of Mayor Bloomberg’s “my way or the highway” approach. This is the type of approach Bloomberg used when he demolished the Board of Education which, for all of its faults, was at least subject to a democratic process. In place of the BOE, Bloomberg created a Panel for Educational Policy whose votes he largely controls. The PEP has been the body that has decided to close over 100 city schools at the behest of the mayor. They have done so over massive protests of parents and community leaders who know how devastating school closures can be to a community. When UFT leaders say the mayor has a “my way or the highway” approach at the negotiating table, we are inclined to believe them.

Unfortunately, the same forces that have given rise to dictatorial mayoral control schemes around the country are also responsible for our own union’s lack of democracy. Since these education reform policies are wholly unpopular, and since our union leaders do not want to be seen as obstacles to “progress”, they have been forced to take a “conciliation” approach with “reformer” mayors who run school districts. In turn, they have been required to turn to increasingly un-democratic means to silence their members who understand that these reforms are harmful to our schools.

Therefore, while we applaud and stick by our union leaders in their resistance to the RTTT evaluation deal, we also understand that most of the work lies ahead of us. This rejection of school “reform” is part and parcel of a wider nationwide backlash against what has passed as “improvement” in education over the past 10 years. This is a backlash that has taken place as a popular movement, not a top-down one.

MORE is on the frontlines of this popular backlash. Our goal is to appropriate the title of “reformer” from those that have it now: Rhee, Bloomberg, Duncan, Emmanuel. The people are beginning to see that these reformers are actually some of the most retrograde and centralizing forces in education today.

The future of school reform is here. It is the democratic voice of the true stakeholders in the education system.

=======
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.