ESEA/ESSA Pushed by UFT/AFT/NYSUT After Supporting No Child Left Behind and RTTT

Wait - they want to take the power from the fed ed dept (Obama/Duncan) and hand it over to the mostly right wing state anti-union governments? And even those not right wing might as well be - ahem - see one Andrew Cuomo.

Our great union leaders want you to forget how they sold the very ed laws they are not trashing. The major reason they want you to support the  ESSA/ESEA - (the old act renamed) - is that it gets rid of aspects of NCLB and Race to the Top that our union leaders supported in the first place.

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator: ESSA--Now Less Crappy than Before


I'm not even sure it is less crappy than before in the hands of the states.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter:

•  ECAA "would set the country back more than a half century" 

• The Good News: ECAA Will Bring an Era of Open Rebellion.

• Say NO to ECAA (Escalating Charter Assistance Act)...
• ESEA Will Mean 50 Fronts in the War Against Corpor...
• NPE Turns "Opposition" to ESEA into Fund-Raising O...

 I love the Escalating Charter Assistance Act - which the state governments will enforce with gusto. No wonder groups like E4E support it.


Also see James Eterno at ICE:

STRONGER TOGETHER NOT CELEBRATING EVERY CHILD SUCCEEDS ACT

I would rename this as Every Child Succeeds or Off With the Heads of Teachers of those who don't succeed. And let's keep the definition of "succeed" a moving target so we can push out union teachers.

Our leaders at the time of NCLB in 2004 had their little stool at the table and urged passage of the act.


Ed Notes, (the hard copy) was on the case at that time:

Subject: No Child Left Behind- Ed Notes, March 2004
Reacting to Federal Guidelines, the state of Florida, which has been high- lighted as a role model for student testing by the Bush Administrationʼs Department of Education has released the following memo: 

In response to President Bushʼs Federal No Child Left Behind Act, stu- dents will have to pass it to be promoted to the next grade level. It will be uniformly adopted by all the states, thus illuminating Florida to a glorious front runner position in education, it will be called: the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART). 

All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in grades 3-5 until such a time as they are capable of achieving a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special Mastery Elective for Learning language (SMELL). 

If with this increased SMELL program the student cannot pass the required FART, he or she can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP). 

If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL or CRAP, he will earn his promotion in an intensive one-week seminar This is the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES). 

It is the opinion of the Florida Department of Public Instruction that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL or CRAP.
This revised provision of the student-testing component of the House Bill 110 should help clear the air.

And I published this piece by Greg Palast

NO CHILDʼS BEHIND LEFT: The New
Educational Eugenics In George
Bushʼs State of the Union by Greg Palast

Education Notes March/April 2004 

Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my sister. But donʼt you ever lie to my kids. 

Deep into your State of the Siege lecture tonight, long after sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in the screen, you came after our children. “By passing the No Child Left Behind Act,” you said, “We are regularly testing every child ... and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing.” 

You said it ... and then that little tongue came out; that weird way you stick your tongue out between your lips like the little kid who knows heʼs fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue dart out and I thought, “He knows.” 

And what you know, Mr. Bush, is this: youʼve ordered this testing to hunt down, identify and target for destruction the hopes of millions of children you find too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate. 

Hereʼs how No Child Left Behind and your tests work in the classrooms of Houston and Chicago. Millions of 8 year olds are given lists of words and phrases. They try to read. Then they are graded, like USDA beef: some prime, some OK, many failed. 

Once the kids are stamped and sorted, the parents of the marked children ask for you to fill your tantalizing promise, to “make sure they have better options when schools are not performing.” 

But there is no “better option,” is there, Mr. Bush? Whereʼs the money for the better schools to take in the kids getting crushed in cash-poor districts? Whereʼs the open door to the suburban campuses with the big green lawns for the dark kids with the test-score mark of Cain? 

And if I bring up the race of the kids with the low score, donʼt get all snippy with me, telling me your program is color blind. We know the color of the kids left behind; and itʼs not the color of the kids you went to school with at Philips Andover Academy. 

You know and I know that the testing is a con. There is no “better option” at the other end. The cash went to end the inheritance tax, that special program to give every millionaireʼs son another million. 

But youʼll tell me, you took tests as a youth. I know you did. And you scored on the Air Guard flight 
test 25 out of 100, one point above too dumb to fly. But you zoomed past the other would-be flyboys. They were stamped, “Ready for ʻNam.”

And you took a test to get into Yale. And though your pet rock scored a wee bit higher than you, your grandpa on the Yale board provided the “better option” which got you in. 

Here in New York City, your educational Taliban, led by Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has issued an edict to test the third-graders. Winnow out the chaff - the kids stamped ʻfailedʼ - and throw them back, exactly where they started, to repeat the same failed program another year. The ugly little irony is this: the core of No Child Left Behind is that failing children will be left behind another year. And another year and another year. 

You know and I know that this is not an educational opportunity program - because you offer no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nationʼs loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. 

No Child Left Behind is of one piece with the tax cuts for the rich, the energy laws for the insid- ers, the oil wars for the well-off. Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots of losers - but drug-free, functional and cheaply maintained. 

And so we have No Child Left Behind - to provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner- class on the higher floors of the new economic order. 

Greg Palast is author of, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” which has returned this week to the New York Times bestseller list. View Palastʼs writings for Harperʼs, The Guardian (UK) and BBC television at www.GregPalast.com.
You can also see this article on- line: http://www.gregpalast.com/ detail.cfm?artid=310&frm=eml 

ED. NOTE: Teachers, parents and academics have come together to fight against the evil doer perpe- trators of NCLB and the 3rd grade retention policy. Join them! 

UPDATED: How Many Unity Slugs Does it Take to Run an Election? UFT Election Committee Formed

And the answer is . .....

A UFT election committee has been formed.

The members serving are:

Unity Caucus: Amy Arundell, Chair; Dwayne Clark, Ellen Driesen, Paul Egan, Washington Sanchez*, Mary Vaccaro


MORE/New Action: Kit Wainer, Michael Shulman

Solidarity: Quinn Zannoni

This committee makes the decisions governing election procedures. Meaning Unity makes the decisions because they get 6 people and can outvote the others.

Some guesses about the election timetable.

Jan. 13 Del Ass: Petitions are made available.
Each Caucus has about 6 weeks to complete the process of petitioning, which, unless you are running a minimal slate, is a royal pain in the ass. Over the years we have discussions as to whether to try to run hundreds of people or a smaller slate to make petitioning more manageable.

Expect ballots to go out in early- mid-March and returned 3 weeks later.

This is the official opening of the election campaign and until the day the ballots are counted every UFT member has the right to go into any school and put material in the mailboxes.

[I have never accepted this judgement and go into schools to put stuff in mail boxes when I can get in. And I often can.]

In reality, schools are not always notified by the DOE that you have that right - the Unity crew is perfectly happy with that since they have the district reps stuff mailboxes with glossy Unity election material bragging how great Mulgrew is in schools where they don't have anyone.

So when you go in you often are told you have no right - often by a Unity chapter leader.

Then you call the UFT to complain and they call the DOE to tell the school you have the right which can take a few days and then you have to go back.
And then you find that a Unity slug - like Patti Crispino - pulls all your stuff out of the mailboxes. Or tells Security not to let you in again.

Very important for our reps to raise immediately at this meeting: 

Notifying every principal that starting Jan. 13 (if that is the day petitions are released) through the day ballots are counted in April or May that we have the right to go into schools to put materials directly into mailboxes. Not leave it with someone, etc.

We need to stress this point time and again so our people do not waste time arguing with secretaries or having to come back.

We also need the UFT to notify all chapter leaders of this fact so we don't get Unity people claiming we don't have the right.

Announcements must be made at the DA and in the NY Teacher.

Also - the use of district reps who are UFT employees for stuffing mailboxes should be raised.

Naturally, you have the right to hand out lit in your own schools at any time - though your chapter leader may tell you you don't.


*You'll notice my favorite Unity whipping boy slug/goon, Washington Sanchez. Now there's a fair and balanced guy. Putting this guy on this committee is an insult to every UFT member. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Due to my respect for James Eterno (see his comment below) I removed some of the comments about Washington Sanchez. James is a very forgiving guy. Washington was one of the goons who tried to stop James from watching the vote at the NYSUT 2014 RA at the Hilton - when Sanchez tried to stop me I ignored him and he kept confronting me until Emil Pietromanco broke it up.

He was also the guy who confronted my at the AFT convention in Seattle for attending a Progressive Caucus meeting - assuming I had crashed it when in fact I had paid my $25 to join. When he appoints himself as Sargent at arms and plays the part of a goon he will not escape from scrutiny.

Choosing Among Megalomaniacs for President

They grant him all of the virtues that you’ve observed, but tell you that he’s the antithesis of a team player. His thirst for the spotlight is unquenchable. His arrogance is unalloyed. He actually takes pride in being abrasive, as if a person’s tally of detractors measures his fearlessness, not his obnoxiousness. Do you hire this applicant?... Frank Bruni, NY Times

NY Times columnist Frank Bruni knows nothing about education - actually his columns on education are cause for the category of "laugh out loud." I've done a few pieces on the Bruni joke:

• Ed Notes Online: August 2015

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2015_08_01_archive.html

Aug 31, 2015 - Great shot at the NY Times' ed-no-nothing Frank Bruni by Kevin Prosen, who is one of the most knowledgeable and effective chapter leaders at ...

• Ed Notes Online: The Trouble With Frank Bruni

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-trouble-with-frank-bruni.html

Aug 20, 2014 - Joining the anti-teacher fray is former NY Times food writer Frank Bruni, another clueless NY Times columnist writing on education (see David ...

• Ed Notes Online: Frank Bruni Coddles Ed Deformers 

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.../frank-bruni-coddles-ed-deformers.html

Nov 27, 2013 - NY Times restaurant critic/columnist Frank Bruni has some propaganda piece out about the Common Core State (sic) Standards that equates ...

• Ed Notes Online: The Daily Howler on Frank Bruni Piece on ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.../the-daily-howler-on-frank-bruni-piece.ht...

Oct 30, 2013 - What is worth noting about the Colorado ed story and the Bruni article is ... Everyone knows about schools: Frank Bruni doesn't seem to know a ...

So I basically won't read Bruni pieces in the Times because when he knows nothing about something I know why should I believe he knows anything about things I don't know?

Maybe one has to be a MegaloM to run for top office but these guys (and mostly they are guys) are scary stuff, but Bruni caught my eye with this piece about the apparently despicable Ted Cruz.

His freshman roommate, Craig Mazin, told Patricia Murphy of The Daily Beast: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”

This quote is even more telling:

The political strategist Matthew Dowd, who worked for Bush back then, tweeted that “if truth serum was given to the staff of the 2000 Bush campaign,” an enormous percentage of them “would vote for Trump over Cruz.”

Holy crap. Even crypto-fascist Trump over Cruz? (Is Donald Trump a Fascist?)

Anyone but Ted Cruz

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/opinion/anyone-but-ted-cruz.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

Hey, since Bruni is so interested in education, maybe he will do a column  on the presidential election in the UFT. He wouldn't have to do much rewriting.

Randi/AFT/Mulgrew/UFT/E4E Join Deformers in Supporting ESEA (ECAA -Escalating Charter Assistance Act)

Weingarten works tirelessly to advance the agendas of billionaire pseudo philanthropists at the expense of union members who pay her salary. The teachers of my acquaintance have no use for standardized testing and the unending test preparation it engenders. They do not require national comparisons of student achievement. Every week contradictory mandates are handed down to the lowly teaching serfs.... Abigail Shure, Newark Teacher

Schools Matter

ECAA "would set the country back more than a half century" -

The requirement that a state “annually measure the achievement of not less than 95 percent of all students… who are enrolled in public schools” (page 88) on the annual assessments is still in place. The federal government is trying to force the testing without taking responsibility for forcing the testing. Now, there is the creative option for parents (or districts) to un-enroll their children during testing and re-enroll once testing is over.
With the continued testing mandate in this ESSA, the federal government should anticipate an opt-out showdown... Mercedes Schneider

More from Jim Horn at Schools Matter:

Say NO to ECAA (Escalating Charter Assistance Act)

Now that NPE, Fairtest, NEA, and AFT have bought the ESEA bag of radioactive rocks with the liar's promise of gold inside, it is best for them to pretend this deadly gift is going to make us all well. 
Don't be fooled.  Billions are guaranteed for segregated charter privatization to expand exponentially (see pp. 518-575), with charter authorization taken out of the hands of LEAs.
Call Congress and remind them that this bill will unleash an era of resistance and civil disobedience they have never seen.

Help NPE Action STOP Damaging New Provisions in ESEA Reauthorization Bill

Now let's hear from the ed deform peanut gallery 

Educators4Excellence ‏@Ed4Excellence 12h12 hours ago

We support the Every Student Succeeds Act, which reflects many teacher priorities: http://www.educators4excellence.org/news/2015-12-educators-4-excellence-supports-passage-of-the-every-student-succeeds-act … #ESEA

UFT ‏@UFT 7h7 hours ago

Support real change in education. Tell Congress to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act - https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-to-support-the-every-student-succeeds-act-of-2015 …

  

 Michael Mulgrew:

Congress is now set to vote on a new education bill that will get the federal government out of the business of teacher evaluations and offers real relief from the testing fixation that has increasingly narrowed the curriculum and done little to close the achievement gap.
Please ask your House representative to vote "YES" to support the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.
 

So which side is Mulgrew/Randi/AFT/UFT on? Naturally she lines up with the ed deform slugs of E4E.

Funny, but NPE keeps asking her to play a role at their yearly conference. Isn't it time to dis-invite Randi?

Here is a message from our Ed Notes' Newark stringer:

AFT President Randi Weingarten cordially invites her union members to contact their representatives and senators to voice their support of ESEA. I regret to inform Her Majesty that she will not have the honor of my presence at the festivities. In the spirit of full disclosure; I am not a general. I am not an attorney. I am not a labor organizer. I am a teacher member of the NTU/AFT and I am not an advocate of the reauthorization of ESEA. Whereas, Weingarten claims that turning over authority to states is a "sea change in education policy," I fail to see the advantage of the strategy of fighting a fifty front war (fifty one with the inclusion of Puerto Rico) when we have failed to energize our troops to combat education reform on a federal level.

The two states I observe most closely are New Jersey and New York. There is no evidence of any encouraging news for advocates of public education emanating from either Trenton, or Albany. Governor Christie has succeeded in gutting the one hundred year old tenure law aided and abetted by Democrat State Senator Ruiz. My own position has been jeopardized by this development as I labor under a CAP. Governor Cuomo is battling the public school monopoly with the assistance of Democrat and Republican state legislators alike.

Weingarten works tirelessly to advance the agendas of billionaire pseudo philanthropists at the expense of union members who pay her salary. The teachers of my acquaintance have no use for standardized testing and the unending test preparation it engenders. They do not require national comparisons of student achievement. Every week contradictory mandates are handed down to the lowly teaching serfs.

In the local arena, Weingarten has implemented every possible method to screw Newark public school teachers. Hurricane Katrina has hit Newark full force as charter schools spring up in a vacant parking lot and a Teacher Village. Innovations of merit pay and frozen steps arrive with Weingarten's blessing.

An early endorsement of corporatist Hillary Clinton for president is Weingarten's most glaring misstep thus far. I, for one, wish to file for a divorce from Weingarten and her misguided policies. If Weingarten is for it, I am against it. Contact your Congressmen and Congresswomen to voice your opposition to ESEA. It is too early to sing Kumbaya.

Abigail Shure

Mercedes Schneider: Here is the Proposed Federal Law

By dianeravitch

December 1, 2015 

Mercedes Schneider here offers the latest version of the new federal law that will replace No Child Left Behind. Prepare yourself. It is over 1,000 pages. Look for the titles that interest you. Any law that is so long has all sorts of political compromises tucked into it, and all sorts of favors to lobbyists and special interests. It is a Christmas tree, just in time for Christmas.

In this post, Mercedes analyzes the latest draft, the one that came out of the House-Senate conference committee and will likely be made law.

Carol Burris, Kathy Cashin, (Holy Cow) Jennifer Jennings on District 15 Panel, Dec. 9: TALKING ABOUT TESTING

I agree with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on just about nothing. I think Race to the Top is an evidence-free mess. I think the idea of a test worth teaching to is a willful misunderstanding of the science of testing. And I can’t agree with Duncan’s insistence that the cheating scandals that have garnered widespread attention in recent months are a parable about “rotten” school cultures and not a reflection on the incentives that we’ve forced upon teachers. But as I sat on the floor of a packed ballroom in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association last week, I was embarrassed—no, humiliated—that some of my colleagues booed the secretary of education when he approached the microphone for his keynote speech.....
You had the grace, the guts, and the patience not to reciprocate [EdNotesWTF].  If there is one lesson from this conference, Secretary Duncan, you showed America’s educational researchers that we can have a different debate—one in which we rely on ideas and open disagreement and reason, and not on schoolyard bravado.... Jennifer Jennings, Edweek, May 6, 2013, http://shar.es/lzWnS.

Jennifer for about 2 years was an active participant in that battle [against ed deform] and her own blog was under assault by the deformers as throwing bricks no matter how artistically she threw them.... Shades of how Randi and Unity Caucus chastised those who booed Bill Gates at the AFT2010 convention.....Ed Notes
 
This should be an interesting panel with Carol Burris, our current top level ed deform fighter, leading the way. And Jennifer Jennings, who I write more about below.

TALKING ABOUT TESTING

A Panel Discussion

hosted by

District 15 Community Education Council & PS 10

December 9, 2015

7-9 pm

Address:  Pre-K 280 for PS 10,

500 – 19^th St. at 10^th Ave.(formerly the Bishop Ford School)

Brooklyn

Panelists:

Carol Burris, Exec. Dir. Network for Public Education Foundation

Kathleen Cashin**, NY State Regent

Erika Gunderson, Asst. Principal, PS 172

Jennifer Jennings, Asst. Prof. of Sociology, NYU

Anita Skop, Superintendent of Schools, District 15

Panel presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion and Q & A.

BRING YOUR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS

Note how they now moderate discussions by having people fill out index cards.

How interesting that Jennifer Jennings, our former leading battler against deform back in 2008, turns up at this event. Formerly known as Eduwonkette,  Jennifer was the masked avenger hero for many people in battling ed deform when she blogged anonymously as Eduwonkette in 2008.

eduwonkette Unmasked - NYC - Blogs - Education Week

Education Week

Aug 24, 2008 - You were a tad off.eduwonkette is written by Jennifer Jennings, a final year doctoral student in Sociology at Columbia University. I study many .

How Jennifer Jennings Tried to Cut School-Reform ... - NYC

New York Magazine

Aug 24, 2008 - Just a few days after she handed in her dissertation proposal, Jennifer Jennings, a soft-spoken Columbia sociology grad student who's wicked ...

After being introduced to Jennifer by Leonie Haimson at a rally over a closing of a large high school back in 2007, Jennifer asked me to meet with her to discuss the issues related to closing large schools and she came to some ICE events and we stayed in touch. When she decided to blog she consulted with me over strategies and a few days later she took off and the entire edu-nation became enthralled.

Only a small band of people knew who she was and we kept her secret until she revealed who she was and ended her blog and sort of disappeared. 

Actually, there was a curious Jennifer Jennings sighting when she emerged in 2013 to rebuke those who booed Arne Duncan at the AERA conference when Jennifer publicly apologized to Arne Duncan. 

The AERA conference is the leading yearly event of the chief academic educational research organization and many ed researchers know full well the destructive force unleashed on the American school system by the likes of Arne Duncan. Jennifer says, let's debate not throw bricks. But when one side has hedge fund ballistic missiles and the other has only bricks, to chastise them is so genteel in a world where war has been declared by one side on the other. And active engagement in fighting back on all fronts has actually managed to compensate for the massive tilt of the playing field. Jennifer for about 2 years was an active participant in that battle and her own blog was under assault by the deformers as throwing bricks no matter how artistically she threw them.

Jennifer is academic who clearly is not feeling the direct effects of ed deform on the entire educational community. Nice to Arne (and maybe by extension Eva Moskowitz) is not an option.

Shades of how Randi and Unity Caucus chastised those who booed Bill Gates at the AFT2010 convention.

I wrote back to back blogs on this event in May 2013:

EdNotesOnline: Jennifer Jennings (formerly Eduwonkette) apologizes to Secretary Duncan over the booing at AERA

May 7, 2013 - Jennifer Jennings is one of my favorite people of all time even though I disagree with almost ... Posted by Norm @ ed notes online at 11:38 PM.

Ed Notes Online: When Davids Boo Goliaths Do They Lack

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.../when-davids-boo-goliaths-do-they-lack.h...

May 8, 2013 - As promised, I'm following up on yesterday's post "Jennifer Jennings (formerly Eduwonkette) apologizes to Secretary Duncan over the booing ...

Ravitch commented here:  Why Did Educators Boo Duncan? Jennings Apologizes.

Here are links to some of the research Jennifer did, with the wonderful Aaron Pallas as her advisor. 

Norm's Notes: Do new small schools in NYC enroll more ...

normsnotes2.blogspot.com/.../do-new-small-schools-in-nyc-enroll-more....

In a new report, NYU professor Jennifer Jennings and Teachers College professor Aaron Pallas ... Posted by ed notes online at Saturday, October 30, 2010 ...

New York City's Small Schools Experiment: Who's Benefiting?

normsnotes2.blogspot.com/.../new-york-citys-small-schools-experiment....

A research presentation by Jennifer Jennings and Aaron Pallas of Columbia University will be ... Posted by ed notes online at Monday, September 21, 2009 ...

Eduwonkette: The Turnaround at Evander Childs: A NYC ...

eduwonkette2.blogspot.com/.../turnaround-at-evander-childs-nyc-small....

Oct 9, 2007 - ed notes online said... How did the NY Times reporter miss this? It is the NY Times' agenda to support BloomKlein so "missing" this is not an ... 

**I don't count former Region 5 supt Cashin as a fighter against deform just yet since when she was in the system as District and Region supt she did so much to support it -- and there are still currently some awful  legacy principals in District 27 from her tenure. But I do believe that former deformers can be redeemed and reformed.)

*In 2008 I attended the one in NYC as Jennifer's stringer while she sat anonymously in the back of the room in front of a panel that included Andrew Rotherham, one of the original chief apologists for ed deform who used his blog Eduwonk as a weapon. When Jennifer went live with her blog, purposely named to chide Rotherham, he was charmed and publicized Eduwonkette widely the very first day - but later turned sour and was one of the chief pursuers trying to flush out her real identity.

By Ignoring the Potential of Activist Unions, Krugman and Reich Offer Weak Answers to Addressign Income Gap

Something else began happening after 2000: labor in general began losing ground relative to capital. After decades of stability, the share of national income going to employee compensation began dropping fairly fast.
... Paul Krugman, reviewing Robert Reich book in NY Review of Books.

A big DUHHHHH! Just check out what has been happening to teachers and their unions -- often with the collaboration of our own leadership -- but I would take that back to 1975 - which I'll talk about at the end of this blog post.

I generally love Paul Krugman's analysis but he always stops short - at times very short - not only in his analysis but in ignoring so many obvious historical facts. (Thanks to Harris Lirtzman for linking to this on FB.)

There is a lot of food for thought in Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

I was bothered by a bunch of stuff.

As Krugman takes us through the way economists looked at the growing income gap (which has a hell of a lot to do with the achievement gap but people like Krugman and Reich who either support or ignore the Obama assault on education stay mum) I keep thinking that Marx pretty well predicted the concentration of economic power which then concentrates political power in the hands of an increasingly few people - the 1% of the 1%.

Then comes this Krugman comment on the Reich solutions:

In his proposals for new policies, Reich calls for a sort of broad portfolio, or maybe a market basket, of changes aimed mainly at “predistribution”—changing the allocation of market income—rather than redistribution. (In Reich’s view, this is seen as altering the predistribution that takes place under current rules.) These changes would include fairly standard liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, reversing the anti-union bias of labor law and its enforcement, and changing contract law to empower workers to take action against employers and debtors to assert their interests against creditors. Reich would also, in a less orthodox move, seek legislative and other changes that might move corporations back toward what they were a half-century ago: organizations that saw themselves as answering not just to stockholders but to a broader set of “stakeholders,” including workers and customers.

These guys really have to be in a dream state given the realities of today.

Enforce contract law in a court system stacked on one side?

Give me a break. How can Krugman ignore the power of labor to strike is what helped build unions? And he and Reich don't dare go and examine the powerful role the left played in building militant unionism in the 1930s before being purged which left the leadership of unions in the hands of an entirely different breed. I read so m any comments about how the UFT has changed since Shanker - but in reality, Shanker's militarism was often narrow-based and because I was active in the critical opposition from 1970 on I saw up close the wearing away of conditions from the ground up while the leadership continued to flourish until Bloomberg took over the system and reduced their role in helping run the system that always has screwed the teachers.

They seem to act like unions have had no role to play in their own destruction. Or rather union leadership. Just check out a few of my fellow bloggers recently pointing out so many illustrations relating to UFT policy at the end of this article.

Krugman  mentions the New Deal as if the policies had nothing to do with the enormous pressure - and threats - from below due to the depression and the organizing going on in response. As if Roosevelt did what he did in a vacuum.

And of course when Krugman or Reich talk about the loss of union power do they touch on the passive and collaborationist response of an often corrupt union leadership which has lost the trust of so many of its members. Read the blogs and see how many UFT members can't wait for the Unity leadership to face the consequences of Friedrichs. Why is this nation so anti-union? Let's never ignore that oligarchical and repressive union leadership like Unity Caucus has a power to make their own people suspicious of the leadership which often translates into anti-unionism itself. Is it an accident that only 20% of the membership votes in elections? Or are they voting with their feet - the Don't Give a Crap vote.


I left this comment on FB on Harry's posting this piece:

I am trying to apply some of the theories to what happened to the UFT and teacher unions in general. While there was an illusion of power in effect the UFT began to lose power as a result of the 68 strike which was lauded as an extreme example of teacher power. But it wasn't. Immediately or soon after, class size reduction dropped off the table and teacher salaries began to slow down in growth. Liberals were in the process moving away from unions as witness the Woody Allen Shanker line in Sleeper. The 1975 strike which was sold out by a leadership which meekly accepted the layoffs of 15,000 people and drastic cuts in working conditions was pretty much the beginning of the end. As Krugman points out things began to really move in the 80s as the anti-union movement gathered force and how did the UFT/AFT respond? By jumping on board, if not helping to lead, the ed deform movement. Shanker partnered with the Clintons in Arkansas and Regan too. The Kahlenberg Shanker bio has the entire story but from a Shanker favorable POV. No wonder Eli Broad helped support that bio - linking the unions to ed deform.

Here are some excerpts from the Krugman review in NY Review of Books.

Something else began happening after 2000: labor in general began losing ground relative to capital. After decades of stability, the share of national income going to employee compensation began dropping fairly fast. One could try to explain this, too, with technology—maybe robots were displacing all workers, not just the less educated. But this story ran into multiple problems. For one thing, if we were experiencing a robot-driven technological revolution, why did productivity growth seem to be slowing, not accelerating? For another, if it was getting easier to replace workers with machines, we should have seen a rise in business investment as corporations raced to take advantage of the new opportunities; we didn’t, and in fact corporations have increasingly been parking their profits in banks or using them to buy back stocks.

---
Meanwhile, forms of market power that benefit large numbers of workers as opposed to small numbers of plutocrats have declined, again thanks in large part to political decisions. We tend to think of the drastic decline in unions as an inevitable consequence of technological change and globalization, but one need look no further than Canada to see that this isn’t true. Once upon a time, around a third of workers in both the US and Canada were union members; today, US unionization is down to 11 percent, while it’s still 27 percent north of the border. The difference was politics: US policy turned hostile toward unions in the 1980s, while Canadian policy didn’t follow suit. And the decline in unions seems to have major impacts beyond the direct effect on members’ wages: researchers at the International Monetary Fund have found a close association between falling unionization and a rising share of income going to the top one percent, suggesting that a strong union movement helps limit the forces causing high concentration of income at the top.⁶
Following his schema, Reich argues that unions aren’t so much a source of market power as an example of “countervailing power” (a term he borrows from John Kenneth Galbraith) that limits the depredations of monopolists and others. If unions are not subject to restrictions, they may do so by collective bargaining not only for wages but for working conditions. In any case, the causes and consequences of union decline, like the causes and consequences of rising monopoly power, are a very good illustration of the role of politics in increasing inequality.

---
But why has politics gone in this direction? Like a number of other commentators, Reich argues that there’s a feedback loop between political and market power. Rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, via campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door. Political influence in turn is used to rewrite the rules of the game—antitrust laws, deregulation, changes in contract law, union-busting—in a way that reinforces income concentration. The result is a sort of spiral, a vicious circle of oligarchy. That, Reich suggests, is the story of America over the past generation. And I’m afraid that he’s right. So what can turn it around?

Other bloggers on UFT/NYSUT alienation of union members in the face of Friedrichs:

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• COPE SALES PITCH FALLS FLAT
• LATEST DA GIVES EVEN MORE PROOF UFT IS PART OF DE ...
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•  

Building MORE: Challenging Unity Can Only Be Accomplished by the Un-Unity - a Democratically Run Caucus

If there is one thing I have learned and firmly believe in it is that in a UFT election, in schools where there are respected members of the opposition caucus who engage their colleagues on a regular basis, there will be votes for that caucus in the election. Theoretically, if a caucus has people in half the schools it could win the majority of votes of working UFT members. (I leave off retirees because there is so little access to them - and I also don't believe they are as important a factor until an opposition can reach the point where they are going 50-50 with Unity in the schools.

Furthermore, I also believe that a caucus must establish internal democratic principles that would apply to running the UFT if it were to take power. That is why I would not want to be involved in a top down leadership at the top organization that is run like Unity because that is a recipe for "new boss, same as the old boss."

But doing that is so incredibly hard and at times debilitating but worth the time and effort to get it right -  and I touched on some of this in my reports (Reports of the MORE Meeting: A Maturing Organization) on last week's MORE meeting with links to the Eterno (MORE CONTINUES TO GROW) and Zucker (South Bronx School Endorses Jia Lee as Next UFT President).

MORE must make sure it is the un-Unity to be credible. But democracy is harder the bigger you grow. Trust in each other also becomes a very important factor. I do want to get into some of the details of the democratic issues that came up before and during that November MORE meeting because what emerged were differing view of democracy, with some people claiming that a vote of an entire membership must be taken while others said that the decisions of people on voluntary committees should be trusted. I'm still rethinking some of this so I will do a follow-up piece getting into specifics.

The democracy issue dovetails into how to organize city wide to build an organization. I and others have come to see that this cannot be done by a sort of central committee trying to manage addressing 1700 schools and over a hundred thousand UFT members. I can only be done by localizing organizing using the basic structures of the DOE and UFT - chopping things down into districts and using concentrations of strength locally and not so spread ourselves too thin.

MORE local organizing event coming up

This requires a long and arduous process that must go way beyond an election every 3 years in the UFT.

Having been part of political movements inside the UFT since 1970 my experiences have led me to the point there are no quick and easy ways to challenge a Unity Caucus machine which has the ability to reach into every school and touch every single one of the roughly 108,000 active UFT members and 60,000 retirees.

It will take building a comparable machine in every district and school before any opposition has a chance of making a serious challenge.

Now over the years I have been criticized by readers for this attitude who tell me if we put a lot of money into advertising during election time it would make a big difference.

I reject this notion as being a diversion of resources - and going at it from the top down rather than bottom up organizing  --- an attempt to find a quick fix and skip the hard work of creating an organization that will go beyond an election campaign. I believe in spending money but on long-term organization building blocks.

The mistake these people are making is that they view a UFT election campaign as similar to regular political elections where a campaign organization is built and then dissipates after the election.

In the UFT what is needed is a permanent organization that doesn't miss a beat after the election and in fact uses the election to built out and extend its reach.

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See also:

• Why UFT Elections Are a Sideshow to a Bigger Strug...

And if in the neighborhood or want to hang out with MOREs

MORE UFT‎ to District 15 Happy Hour

November 22 at 5:29pm ·

District 15 happy hour!
Friday, 12/4 at Abilene on Court Street. $5 drafts and a full menu
http://tiny.cc/D15 ‪#‎MORE2016‬

Lessons of Cuckoo

The Wave, for publication, Nov. 27, 2015
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School Scope:  Lessons of Cuckoo

By Norm Scott

Watching a great play night after night for weeks is enlightening, not boring. Even at the closing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the RTC on Sunday I was seeing new things in the play. I got one such insight in the midst of saying my final lines as the doctor, which actually caused me to miss an important word, though I think I did recover in the next line. The relationship between Nurse Ratched and her nominal boss, Dr. Spivey, is a small but crucial subplot. Not only does Ratched rule the ward with an iron hand, she also rules the weak doctor who she manipulates in every which way to get what she wants. When she wants use the threat of  electro-shock therapy or the disastrous lobotomy in order to control and ultimately turn McMurphy into a vegetable, she still needs the doctor’s permission.

I have only 3 scenes in the play but each one moves the story along. In the first one the doctor is introduced to McMurphy and sees for the first time someone stand up to the nurse in ways that he did not imagine. He explains to McMurphy the rules of the therapeutic community and group therapy. He tells McMurphy that he should write down anything another patient says in the log book and asks if he know what that procedure is called, McMurphy asks, “Squealing?” The nurse smiles at the doctor benevolently when he corrects McMurphy: Group Therapy is what it is called.

By the next scene something has happened. Doc and McMurphy enter the ward arm in arm laughing and clowning. Clearly, McMurphy has used his charms on the doctor to wean him away from the nurse’s control – not because he cares about him – he actually also has no respect for the doctor – but in his war with the nurse, anything goes.  When nurses suggests shock therapy, doc says no and sides with Mac, pointing out that in the absence of violence shock therapy is not indicated. But soon enough there is some violence and sure enough, shock therapy is ordered.

In the doctor’s final scene, we see Mac enter post-shock therapy as a zombie. Doc and nurse full well know he is playing around but the other patients don’t know and are shocked. Then Mac springs into life, dancing and singing with such vigor, a relieved audience breaks into applause. They too have been taken in by Mac. Nurse is outraged but doc can’t stop laughing as he enjoys Mac’s show and actually breaks out into guffaws at some of the outrageous things Mac says. So Nurse pulls another power card and escalates things by asking doc to prescribe a pre-frontal lobotomy and doc flat out refuses, standing up to her for the first time, saying that he will never agree unless there is recurrent violence. And of course the tragedy play out when violence does recur. Mac has taken away not only the patients from nurse but here we see she has lost Doc, her foil. And that now makes her desperate to regain her authority. Mac must either leave or have the operation to tame him and set an example. She must provoke him into violence so she can get what she wants, even if that violence is a threat to her. These insights came to me in the midst of reciting my final lines and even if the final performance, I stood up taller to nurse than I had before.

The roles played by nurse and mac are symbols of authority that go beyond institutions to nations and the people who resist authority and even touches on the current roots of terrorism. Is Mac a version of a terrorist and Nurse the voice of the states trying to stop him? Themes I shall explore in future columns.

Memo From the RTC: No, Billy and McMurphy Didn’t Really Die

 

Memo From the RTC: No, Billy and McMurphy Didn’t Really Die

By Norm Scott

At the final performance we were standing on the receiving line some members of the sold out audience jokingly told Frank Caiati*, who as Billy Bibbit commits suicide near the end of the RTC production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, that they were so glad to see he was still alive. Thus the power and realism of the production, which is sort of funny, considering the entire story may have come out of The Chief’s imagination. The play can get pretty raw so I was surprised to see so many kids with their parents at the Saturday night performance – but these are RTC theater kids working on the upcoming production of Shrek, so they know the score. Still, one parent of one of most experienced young actors, now 16, told me her daughter was so moved, she cried as the ending unfolded. One of the key points in the play is how quickly it goes from comedy with the audience laughing to tragedy.

Photo Credit: Rob Mintzes

Those who didn’t get to the 6 sold-out performances in Fort Tilden, the first time an RTC non-musical has sold out, have no idea what I am talking about. Maybe next time in a decade for the 20^th anniversary of the original RTC production when I can play the doctor as an 80-year old – if I’m still here.

There was a whole lot of sadness amongst the cast at the breaking up of a family that had been spending so much time with each other over the past months as people headed off to their regular lives and some to other projects. John Stillwaggon who received raves as McMurphy is off to Texas for a tour of his one man show based on David Sedaris’ “Santaland Diaries”. For a non-actor like me, seeing how a professional actor work up close is a special treat. John will be in Texas for the winter before returning to Brooklyn and we can hope to see him again at the RTC.

Most of the rest of the cast, having regular jobs, may not be pros in the strictest sense, but they have so much experience they might as well be. It was quite a treat listening to the talk backstage of the lead roles so many have played, from Willy Loman to Hamlet and everything in between.

One of the run things for me was getting to work with and know Geoff Rawlings who I had only heard of as an artist – I took a drawing session with him years ago. I had no idea he was also an actor who had played the role of Scanlon in the 2005 production. I found him one of the most interesting people to chat with. And oh those not for public consumption drawings that kept popping up around the set.

Sadness quickly turned to cast party – once the cast had followed orders to clean up the dressing room, store all costumes, wipe down the mirrors, etc. (no food until it was done). People were reluctant to leave so they engaged in some shenanigans on stage, the highlight being trying to fit the entire cast into the small booth meant to hold no more than 3 people. Everyone made it except me and one other cast member, but I managed to get a photo.

By noon Monday, Tony Homsey and his crew had taken down the magnificent set and we were down to bare stage, getting ready to put up the Shrek set.

Memo from RTC will be on hiatus until after the New Year, so have a happy holiday season. I will delve into the many themes in the play in my other column, School Scope.

*The only reason I can even think of going on stage is because of Frank Caiati’s acting classes. Frank will be offering an 8 week acting class at the RTC starting this Sunday. Contact me by email (normsco@gmail.com) and I will forward it to Frank who will contact you if there is still room.

MORE Supports Puerto Rican Teachers Union, Links to Backstory

Angel Gonzalez (left - no kidding), Lisa North, FMPR Pres. Rafael Feliciano at forum c. 2011

ICE, GEM and now MORE have been supporting the FMPR for over a decade, since they bolted from the AFT - they sued but lost and the FMPR won and withdrew 40,000 AFT members.We established contact with the FMPR through NYC teacher Angel Gonzalez who worked with ICE and then helped found GEM. His good friend, FMPR President Rafael Feliciano,  made a number of visits to speak at meetings and events. (We had some quotes from him in our movie.) It's been a long story, too complicated to tell now. I'm proud that MORE is contributing $200 to the support of the FMPR.

MORE Proudly Supports the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation

http://morecaucusnyc.org/2015/11/24/more-proudly-supports-the-puerto-rican-teachers-federation/

 

November 24, 2015 — Leave a comment

There are few unions in North America which has as proud a tradition of struggle as the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico. The FMPR, after battling for autonomy from the AFT, lead a 2008 strike that, among other things, kept the island free of charter schools.



This week, the FMPR (along with other teacher organizations) helped lead a massive one day strike, protesting austerity and privatization and the territory’s education “reform” plan in the context of its debt crisis.  They are in the course of rebuilding their organization after a series of attacks, including government decertification, raids by SEIU, and firing of its executive committee from their jobs as teachers.  MORE is proud to announce that we are supporting the FMPR in its fundraising drive with a $200 contribution, even though we are in the midst of our own fundraising campaign for the UFT elections.

Please consider making your own contribution and circulating this fundraising letter to your coworkers and fellow unionists.  This is an important effort to build concrete solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are examples of the kind of struggles that we need to wage in order to win.



Check can be sent to:

Federación de Maestros de PR

Urb. El Caribe

1572 Ave. Ponce de León

San Juan, P.R. 00926-2710

¡La Lucha Sigue!

(FMPR) and the AFT - Ed Notes Online

ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.../puerto-rican-teachers-union-fmpr-and.ht...

Feb 24, 2008 - Then there's the role SEIU and Dennis Rivera is playing to undermine the FMPR: - (with the AFT cheering?) by organizing a rival union (the ...

Defend FMPR Teachers Union!

www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/910/fmpr.html

Mar 14, 2008 - Defend FMPR Teachers Union! Pro-Imperialist SEIU, AFT Tops Knife Puerto Rico Strikers. MARCH 11—The Federación de Maestros de Puerto ...

AFT maneuver defeated - SocialistWorker.org

socialistworker.org/2005.../557_15_PuertoRico.shtm...

SocialistWorker.org

Sep 16, 2005 - In September 2004, the FMPR's assembly of delegates voted democratically to disaffiliate from the AFT, declaring their independence. The AFT ...

LaborNet: Online Communications for a Democratic Labor ...

www.labornet.org/news/0605/puerico.htm

Puerto Rican teachers protest AFT hearings in San Juan. Special To Labornet ... The AFT is seeking to put the FMPR in trusteeship. "Chupa cuotas" on one of ...

Puerto Rico's teachers battling takeover by U.S. union

www.workers.org/2005/world/puerto-rico-0721/

Workers World Party

Jul 15, 2005 - The Puerto Rico Teachers Federation (FMPR, its Spanish initials) was ... in Puerto Rico, representing 43,000 teachers—under AFT trusteeship.

Puerto Rican teachers' union fights takeover - Liberation News

https://www.liberationnews.org/05-09-01-puerto-rican-teachers-union-fi...

Sep 1, 2005 - The FMPR is the largest labor union in Puerto Rico, representing 43,000 ... Shortly after its foundation, the FMPR joined the AFT based on ...

SEIU to Raid Union Representing 40000 Teachers in Puerto ...

labornotes.org/.../seiu-raid-union-representing-40000-teache...

Labor Notes

Jan 29, 2008 - Rivera further stated that he could not envision FMPR affiliating with SEIU because FMPR had disaffiliated from AFT. During the contract fight, ...

Puerto Rican Teachers Fight for Union Democracy | Labor ...

www.labornotes.org/.../puerto-rican-teachers-fight-union-de...

Labor Notes

Jun 30, 2005 - At a disaffiliation assembly in September 2004, more than 60 percent of FMPR voted to leave the AFT. In response, the International has been ...

#E4E Gets Big Unwelcome at Chicago School - What You Can Do In NYC if they come to your school

Watch out for this group. They are not to be trusted! Have they come to your schools? Sarah Chambers added 7 new photos.

Sarah helped organize her school to resist the #Educators for Excellence  Astroturf message disguised as supporting teachers.

 

Educators for Excellence, the AstroTurf group, came to my school and boy, did we give them a run for their money!
When they walked into the staff cafeteria, it was covered in flyers about who they really are, union busters!
Our contract action team members also went into action when we found out they were in the building. They spoke with their team members about E4Es corrupt agenda.
We also made it clear that we are a union school and we don't support their agenda.
90% of the teachers completely boycotted their lunch, but the ones that came by refused to sign their cards or give their info. Some teachers interrogated them.
An e4E staffer made a Freudian slip and said, "We are pro public school and pro charter, I mean pro union, not pro charter."

Watch out for this group. They are not to be trusted! Have they come to your schools?