2 UFT Dissident Slates Close Ranks Behind Lee: The Chief Features MORE's Jia Lee

Ms. Lee said she wasn’t afraid of the two dissident tickets splitting the potential opposition votes because she considered it a sign that more members were ready to challenge the status quo... The Chief

Good point by Jia. All votes for either slate will count against Unity in this election without the confusion over the past 10 years.


The Chief:

Underdog Takes on Mulgrew

2 UFT Dissident Slates Close Ranks Behind Lee

Posted: Monday, February 1, 2016 5:00 pm | Updated: 5:04 pm, Mon Feb 1, 2016.
http://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of_the_week/uft-dissident-slates-close-ranks-behind-lee

By DAN ROSENBLUM |

Citing her opposition to top-down leadership and standardized testing, two dissident slates—the Movement of Rank and File Educators and the New Action Caucus—recently nominated Jia Lee to challenge United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.

Ms. Lee, a special-education Teacher at the Earth School in Manhattan since 2011, said the union’s leadership has often disregarded rank-and-file members in favor of political considerations such as adopting Teacher evaluations.

‘Give Teachers a Voice’

“It’s really about establishing some democracy within our union,” she said. “There’s very little in the way of giving Teachers voices in the decision-making that happens within our union.”

The 15-year veteran said she would do more to encourage parents to have their children opt out of Common Core-based standardized tests. After a campaign by parents and the New York State United Teachers, 20 percent of students statewide sat out the math and English exams last April. But in New York City, where the Teachers union advised parents to not withdraw their kids, the rate of opt-outs was less than 2 percent.

In 2014, she and other educators at her school refused to administer standardized tests to fourth- and fifth-grade students. Ms. Lee said she helped draft a letter and position paper to the DOE and got support from her Principal, but not her union. “They basically said I was on my own,” she said.

Francesco Portelos, a Staten Island educator and activist, is also running to unseat Mr. Mulgrew on the UFT Solidarity Caucus slate, which is advocating for school staffers who feel ignored by the Department of Education.

Both candidates—who are running slates seeking to also gain executive-board seats in May—face an uphill climb in mounting a significant challenge to Mr. Mulgrew. He was selected in 2009 to succeed Randi Weingarten, who departed the local to lead the American Federation of Teachers. The following year, he was elected over James Eterno by 41,521 votes to 4,075. He was re-elected in 2013 with 35,913 votes to 5,708 for MORE’s candidate, Julie Cavanagh. The New Action Caucus endorsed Mr. Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus that year.

Critical of Wage Deal

Since Mayor de Blasio was elected, the UFT has developed a closer relationship with City Hall and his Schools Chancellor, Carmen Fariña. But MORE, billed as the UFT’s “social-justice” caucus, protested the contract reached between the union and the de Blasio administration in May 2014, saying that Teachers deserved raises more generous than were offered in the agreement.

Ms. Lee, a chapter leader for seven years, said the union should fight against the Teacher-evaluation system. “It feeds into the ed-reformers’ rhetoric of the bad Teacher, and which is part of a bigger agenda to basically bust our union and privatize the public-education system,” she said.

She testified last year before a U.S. Senate Committee that was debating the successor to the Federal No Child Left Behind law. She also proposed an unsuccessful resolution last year at a UFT delegate assembly to express “no confidence” in newly appointed State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

Approximately 30 officer and executive-board positions are up for election, she estimated.

“The UFT is a democracy,” Mr. Mulgrew said in an e-mailed statement.

Unfazed by Split Challenge

Ms. Lee said she wasn’t afraid of the two dissident tickets splitting the potential opposition votes because she considered it a sign that more members were ready to challenge the status quo. She added that even if her campaign, which is driven by word of mouth and local organizing, didn’t propel her into the presidency, it would still be a success if it engaged less-active members.

“The true test of what we’re doing is really whether or not we’re able to help build our rank-and-file-led push within our union,” she said. “And if we can get more Teachers to feel empowered—to organize at the school level and within their communities and to have a voice—I think that is the true win.”

Rebecca Friedrichs in Mourning

Friedrichs: Please, pay me less.

Untold story: How Scalia's death blew up an anti-union group's grand legal strategy

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-scalia-s-death-anti-union-group-legal-strategy-20160214-column.html

Michael HiltzikContact ReporterThe Economy Hub

 

The anti-union lawsuit known as Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Assn. is widely viewed as one of the leading casualties of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death.

What's less well-known is how the anti-union plaintiffs connived to fast-track the case through the federal judiciary in order to get it before the court while it still harbored a conservative majority. Their method was to encourage the lower courts to rule against them, so they could file a quick appeal. But Scalia's passing is likely to leave a 4-4 deadlock over the case, so the last ruling, in which the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the teachers union, remains in force.

Everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition. - The late Justice Antonin Scalia in January, firing a broadside at union "agency fees"

This wasn't how the anti-union group behind the lawsuit, the Center for Individual Rights, expected things to work out. As we write, the group's website still features a photograph of nominal plaintiff Rebecca Friedrichs and the center's lawyers standing in front of the Supreme Court on Jan. 10, looking plenty chuffed about that morning's oral arguments, which plainly went their way. The poet Robert Burns had a line for the subsequent developments: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."*  

 

Here's the background, drawn in part from our previous coverage here and here.

“The CORE sit-in that Bernie helped lead was the first civil rights sit-in to take place in the North.” -Danny Lyon

The Bernie Sanders critics on race are being taught a history lesson when his fundamental activism from his earliest days are recalled. I am of the same generation as Bernie though a few years younger. I joined ROTC in college and sat on my ass in the 60s. Bernie did not. One Hillary supported wrote:
....she backed Democrats in the subsequent presidential elections. Or that her civil rights bona fides go back to 1972, when she investigated school discrimination in Dothan, Ala., for the Children’s Defense Fund.

Right. She "backed" and "investigated" while Bernie acted and led.

This post refutes the controversy over a photo of Bernie by having the very guy who took that photo tell all about it.

http://vetsforbernie.org/2016/02/yes-bernie-sanders-protested-for-civil-rights/

New Pictures Emerge of Bernie Sanders’ Civil Rights Activism

NATIONAL (VFB) – Despite attempts by critics to discredit his early activism, Bernie Sanders was in fact a Civil Rights organizer in the 1960s.  Sanders attended the University of Chicago before the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted, which led him to protest the school’s segregated housing policies.

According to reports, Sanders spent so much time organizing for Civil Rights that “his grades suffered . . . [and] a dean asked him to take some time off from school.”

Moments of Sanders’ early activism were captured by famed photographer, Danny Lyon, who at the time was a student journalist. Lyon recalls,

“In 1962 and the spring of 1963 I was the student photographer at the University of Chicago, making pictures for the yearbook, the Alumni Magazine and the student paper, The Maroon.”

“That winter at the University of Chicago, there was a sit-in inside the administration building protesting discrimination against blacks in university owned housing. I went to it with a CORE activist and friend. The sit in was in a crowded hallway, blocking the entrance to the office of Dr. George Beadle, the chancellor.”

Bernie Sanders (standing), then a college student at the University of Chicago, leads his classmates in a sit-in to protest segregated housing for black students. (Danny Lyon/Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

“I took the photograph of Bernie Sanders speaking to his fellow CORE members at that sit-in,” Lyon says.

A second picture, also taken by Lyon, shows Sanders standing next to the school chancellor, George Beadle

Bernie Sanders (standing, right), member of the Committee on Racial Equality’s steering committee, stands next to University of Chicago President George Beadle, who addresses a CORE meeting on housing sit-ins. (Danny Lyon/Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)

“I photographed Bernie a second time after he got a haircut, as he appeared next to the noble laureate and chancellor Dr. George Beadle. Time Magazine is now claiming it is not Bernie in the picture but someone else. It is Bernie, and it is proof of his very early dedication to justice for African Americans. The CORE sit-in that Bernie helped lead was the first civil rights sit-in to take place in  the North.”

Yet despite his courageous stands so long ago, Sanders’ noble activism is more than some Clinton supporters can stomach.  Post-writer Jonathan Capehart, for example, who wasn’t even born when Lyon snapped them, claims the pictures are of someone else.  He even wrote a story about it.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/02/11/stop-sending-around-this-photo-of-bernie-sanders/

Unfortunately for Capehart and Clinton, however, Lyon, who snapped the pictures now in question, took other photos of Sanders at the University sit-ins, which he has now released.

Lyon explained the need clear the air:

“The slander that Bernie was not a very early leader for African American civil rights got so outrageous that persons went into the archives of the University of Chicago and changed captions on Danny Lyon’s 1962 photos, claiming it was Bruce Rappaport standing in Bernie’s clothing leading the demonstration in the Ad Building. These newly discovered pictures, (below) including close up photographs of the student activists show us exactly what Bernie was and what he remains.”

Lyon describes the pictures (above):

“Here at the University of Chicago, in the winter of 1962, students led by Bernie Sanders and others have occupied the hallway of the Administration Building, spending the night inside. The Chancellor cannot get into or leave his office. Bernie is leading a protest against the discrimination practiced by the University of Chicago against African Americans in its extensive housing. This protest for equal rights for African Americans is the first sit-in to be held in the north as part of  the great 1960’s civil rights movement.  Bernie is the real deal.  And voters, all voters know it.”

If Lyon’s pictures aren’t convincing enough, stories of Sanders leading boycotts from Chicago and elsewhere are also emerging in print.

And if that still isn’t enough, Sanders himself was even arrested and convicted of resisting arrest.

His arrest, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, took place at “74th and Lowe” in Chicago, which is just blocks from the University.

So even though renowned Civil Rights activist Rep. John Lewis says he “never saw” Bernie Sanders during the 1960s, “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t absolutely there, fighting for justice, fighting for open housing,” according to Rep. Keith Ellison.

“He didn’t see Bernie Sanders because Bernie Sanders was doing fair and open housing in Chicago — that’s why he didn’t see him. No matter how good your eyesight is — if you are standing in Alabama, you can’t see people in Chicago.”

Ellison is right.  You can’t see the inside of a Chicago jail cell from Alabama.

Special thanks to Danny Lyon for taking these pictures over 50 years ago, and of course to Bernie Sanders for standing up for what was right, even when it was an unpopular thing to do.

---

Tyson Manker is a former combat marine, attorney, college professor, and candidate for State’s Attorney in Morgan County Illinois. He serves as the National Director of Vets for Bernie. Follow him on Twitter @mankerlaw.

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Should Eva Be Forced to Change Charter Name to "Success" in her Version of Guantanomo?

Is Success Academy really the model we want for the education of urban children of color, many living in economic disadvantage? "Got to go" lists? High suspension rates? Teachers who rip up their students' work (according to one teacher in the Times story, it happens regularly at SA)? Test score fetishism? Churning faculty, many of whom are young, white, and not adequately trained? Chanting in the classrooms and marching in the halls? Moskowitz's approach is premised on the idea that urban students of color need extraordinarily harsh discipline codes; she says so herself: - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/02/success.html#sthash.4dl03TsW.dpuf

Jersey Jazzman pretty much sums it up with his blog post:
"SUCCESS" by putting the word in quotes. The use of the very word "Success" by Eva is turning into a horrifying joke. There should be an attachment: By Any Means Necessary.

The latest "Success" School at Guantonomo

The blogosphere is alive with comment over the NY Times released video of child abuse at Eva's gulag. Ed Notes has been on the case: Video: Child Abuse on Eva's Plantation

Reporter Kate Taylor deserves credit for sticking to the Success story. I met Kate when, new to the Times ed beat, she attended a hearing for another Eva invasion in Brooklyn's District 13 in Sept. 2014. MORE had 8 people there to join community members to speak out. I remember noted charter abuser Steven Perry, looking to get a piece of the charter gravy, in the audience there to observe. But Eva only sent a few observers and no one to even try to make the case. Eva knew it was a slam dunk. I wonder if that arrogance turned on some light in Kate Taylor that has led her to where she may one day win an award for exposing the mess at "Success". Unless someone with power gets to the Times to stop Kate. (I've seen other NYT reporters who had a clue like Mike Winerip and Anna Phillips be moved out.)

I taught grades 4-6 and at times did engage in some behavior that if someone filmed would be embarrassing. But I can honestly say that it was rare behavior on my part and I did deal with older kids.

Jersey Jazzman makes a similar point:

I'm not about to say, on the basis of a one-minute video, that Dial should be fired immediately. If any teacher tells you that they've never said anything to a student that they later regretted, they're either lying, deluded, or a living saint.

I've been in touch on FB with a chunk of former students from my 1978 and 79 5th and 6th grade classes (I looped and had most of them for 2 years.) Their memories 40 years later seem pretty positive. When children are treated badly in school those memories last a long time. I can remember a few of the times where I was yelled at by a teacher even today.

But these little kids who are 5 and 6 years old? What damage! And to me it is also disturbing that so many "Success" parents want this for their kids. I have had disagreements with some of my colleagues in ICE and MORE over how to address these parents, who most make excuses for. I on the other hand have had numerous conflicts with those who are used politically to back Eva and at one point, as we began to see each other at meeting after meeting, began to have some decent dialogues going.

There are some wonderful commentaries out there on this issue. Here are a few.

NYC Public School Parents

The growing storm around Success Academy

Ravitch: NY Times: 8 Experts Censure Moskowitz SA Methods

deutsch29 - Mercedes Schneider

Moskowitz’s Success Academy Is Being Sued Again

Jersey Jazzman
"SUCCESS" 

Alan Singer at Huffington Post:  Success Academy's War Against Children

Jersey Jazzman gets into the race issue that touches so many charters where young, white, mostly women, are engaging black children.

The fact that Dial is white and the student is black makes this especially troubling. I'm all for teachers being authoritative, but too many students of color are living a school experience where they are dehumanized by teachers of a different race. To be clear: I don't think this is confined just to "no excuses" charter schools; we've seen far too many examples of bad behavior against students of color in public district schools to pretend that it's only the charters that are guilty of perpetuating a hidden curriculum.

See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/#sthash.T5K9chmx.dpuf

Let's get into the white teacher/black student issue in further depth in future posts since it ties in with our call for more teachers of color to create a diverse teaching corps that is a better reflection of the student backgrounds.

ADD-ON:

Russ on Reading

Fear and Learning at Success Academy

NYC Educator

Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets 

NY Post Features Jia Lee: Anti-Common Core activists seek control of teachers union

Hope all the Muscota, 187, CSS and D6 teachers are voting for MORE!!.... Parent/Activist Tory Frye on Facebook

An interesting piece in today's NY Post linking the MORE campaign against Unity to the parent activism movement. Having parents on our side is a positive thing. And if they talk to their children's teachers about voting for MORE, all the better, though I don't expect that would translate into all that many votes this time. While they may not do so openly because they have to deal with Mulgrew, most parents and groups active in the opt-out movement support Jia and MORE. Some are even teachers who vote (Teacher is Motivated by Jia Lee Candidacy).

Anti-Common Core activists seek control of teachers union

By Mary Kay Linge

As the Cuomo administration tiptoes back from its testing mandates for Grades 3 to 8, opt-out activists are trying to wrest control of the United Federation of Teachers and the state Board of Regents to push their anti-Common Core agenda to the limit.

Teacher Jia Lee, of Brooklyn, seeks to unseat powerful UFT President Michael Mulgrew in spring elections. “There’s a huge disconnect between leadership and membership,” Lee said. “We have a teacher evaluation system based on flawed metrics that force us to rank and sort our students. It’s totally counter to what brought us to the profession.”

The opt-out movement is a revolt against the Common Core — a set of learning benchmarks that New York adopted in 2010 to claim $696 million in federal education funds — and the matching standardized tests that kids as young as 8 must take every year.

Parents complained the new standards were rigid and age-inappropriate, and teachers hated that their annual evaluations would be based on student test scores. Up to 240,000 students statewide boycotted the tests in 2015, pushing Gov. Cuomo to announce a set of reforms in December.

The union spent $1.4 million on an ad campaign claiming Cuomo and the UFT have seen the light on testing. “The Common Core rollout was a disaster,” a narrator intones. “And now, Gov. Cuomo’s task force is doing what’s right.”

Activists say the ads just show how deeply the union and Albany fear backlash from parents and teachers.

“There are a lot of angry parents, teachers, and superintendents out there who don’t see the changes that the governor claims are happening,” said Lisa Rudley of New York State Allies for Public Education . High-stakes tests are still scheduled, with only minor tweaks to length and content, she said. Fifteen opt-out activists will interview this week for seats on the Board of Regents.

http://nypost.com/2016/02/14/anti-common-core-activists-seek-control-of-teachers-union/

 

Bernie Vs. Hillary Recalls FDR Vs Republicans and Explains Why for our Union Leaders, Bernie Will Never Be a Real Option

Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it. ... Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest. The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse..... Robert Scheer

As a history major with an (almost) Masters in the subject, I am very aware of the conditions this nation faced in the 1930-1933 years and how FDR, facing a collapse of the capitalist system, took emergency measures to save it.

Hillary is under attack from the left and the right and Randi's actions has so driven so many teachers away from Hillary, it brings into question her ability to win even against Trump. So many teachers are saying they won't hold their noses and vote for her. I still think that when faced with the stark reality of Cruz or Trump they will.

Robert Scheer continues:

The guardians of capitalism’s survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers, who, in defiance of the pragmatic Adam Smith himself, want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals, at least those in the mode of FDR, who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

(Read the entire article with a link to the preceding excerpt from the book here.)

As a student of the role the UFT/AFT has played I have some thoughts tying some of this together. Since Reagan, the Republican Party has been trying to take down as much of FDRs New Deal as possible. It was the Clintons who helped moved the bulk of the Democratic Party into alignment with many of these goals and away from the New Deal.

The neo-liberal assault on the public schools and teacher unions by both Republicans and Democrats is one of the clearest manifestations of the take-down of the New Deal. From the earliest days of ed deform, the UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex has partnered in this effort. The alliance with Bill and Hillary was cemented by Al Shanker in the mid-80s even before Randi was deeply involved in the union.

And this is where the Hillary vs Bernie battle is being played out - Bernie is not a socialist in the sense of being anti-capitalist but a social democrat not far off from FDR looking to save the capitalist system, one reason why the Marxist left is opposed to Bernie. Forget what Bernie and Hillary are saying about education. Philosophically it is Bernie, not Hillary who will more likely defend our interests.

So where does our union come down in this battle? How can it support the Hillary right of center, unregulated free-market branch of the Democrats? It has been our analysis - the groups and people I have been involved with since 1970 - that the very foundation and nature of the UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex founded by Al Shanker has been rooted in a right of center anti-left philosophy that dovetails very well with the Clintons.

And that makes the Bernie/FDR model verboten.

In other words, it is not Randi's ambition to be Secretary of Education that drives our union policy but an ideology that if we drift too far left the comfortable structure of capitalism as they know it might be shaken. That is why our union, unlike the people in Chicago, never talks about the banks or Wall Street which is around the corner from 52 Broadway. It might as well be around the world.

That is why you never hear a word about the massive and wasteful defense budget as a drain on our society, which Bernie very pointedly mentioned in his debate with Hillary. Those words are taboo in the halls of the UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex and makes Bernie doubly verboten. As George Schmidt pointed out in his 40 year old pamphlet, the AFT has been an instrument of support for US foreign policy through its entire history and my sources tell me that continues to this day.

This piece references the Robert Scheer book: 

The Role That the Clintons Played in Enabling the 2008 Economic Crisis and Financial Coup d'Etat

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

The Clintons, along with a large group of Republican Congressmen and compliant Democrats, put a 'for sale' sign not only on the Lincoln bedroom as you may recall, but on the rest of the White House and the Capitol, and indeed, the well being of the people of the United States.

 ...it became the thing to do in Washington and New York, to partner up to take the public for a wild ride, as we have not seen since the beginning of the last century.  Once again capitalism was unfettered, the rawest, the worst kind of short sighted and self-dealing 'capitalism' that is more corrosive looting than asset allocating.  And so the New York - Washington metroplex quickly engaged in a program of fabulous gains for themselves, and longer term pain for the country.

 More from Robert Scheer:

The ‘Clinton Bubble’: How Clinton Democrats Fostered the 2008 Economic Crisis
By Robert Scheer

Since the collapse happened on the watch of President George W. Bush at the end of two full terms in office, many in the Democratic Party were only too eager to blame his administration. Yet while Bush did nothing to remedy the problem, and his response was to simply reward the culprits, the roots of this disaster go back much further, to the free-market propaganda of the Reagan years and, most damagingly, to the bipartisan deregulation of the banking industry undertaken with the full support of “liberal” President Clinton. Yes, Clinton. And if this debacle needs a name, it should most properly be called “the Clinton bubble,” as difficult as it may be to accept for those of us who voted for him.

Clinton, being a smart person and an astute politician, did not use old ideological arguments to do away with New Deal restrictions on the banking system, which had been in place ever since the Great Depression threatened the survival of capitalism. His were the words of technocrats, arguing that modern technology, globalization, and the increased sophistication of traders meant the old concerns and restrictions were outdated. By “modernizing” the economy, so the promise went, we would free powerful creative energies and create new wealth for a broad spectrum of Americans—not to mention boosting the Democratic Party enormously, both politically and financially.

And it worked: Traditional banks freed by the dissolution of New Deal regulations became much more aggressive in investing deposits, snapping up financial services companies in a binge of acquisitions. These giant conglomerates then bet long on a broad and limitless expansion of the economy, making credit easy and driving up the stock and real estate markets to unseen heights. Increasingly complicated yet wildly profitable securities—especially so-called over-the-counter derivatives (OTC), which, as their name suggests, are financial instruments derived from other assets or products—proved irresistible to global investors, even though few really understood what they were buying. Those transactions in suspect derivatives were negotiated in markets that had been freed from the obligations of government regulation and would grow in the year 2009 to more than $600 trillion...

Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest. The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse. The guardians of capitalism’s survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers, who, in defiance of the pragmatic Adam Smith himself, want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals, at least those in the mode of FDR, who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it. Whether it was child labor in dark coal mines, the exploitation of racially segregated human beings to pick cotton, or the unfathomable devastation of the Great Depression, the brutal creativity of the pure profit motive has always posed a stark challenge to our belief that we are moral creatures. The modern bureaucratic governments of the developed world were built, unconsciously, as a bulwark, something big enough to occasionally stand up to the power of uncontrolled market forces...

Does Eva's Special edition Pearson Test Prep Explain Her "Success"?

In all the hullabaloo about Eva, this Chalkbeat article's comments cited below by Triumph104 seems to have been overlooked. If Eva's hedge fund purchased specialized expensive test prep comes from Pearson as hers alone, and mirrors the actual test or contains actual questions their standard test prep does not provide, of course all her abuse appears to work wonders, especially in the math where little "critical re-thinking" is required, only knowing the formulaic solution process. Is there a way to verify her priceless test prep materials?..... David Dobosz

http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/04/06/success-academy-a-guide-to-the-citys-largest-most-controversial-charter-school-network/#.Vr-wNY5LolI

Triumph104 •

I had heard that the test prep material that Success Academy uses is remarkably similar to the actual test. I simply assumed that the network either had in-house staff generating the material or they purchased it from a third party.

A comment in the NY Times article suggests that the test prep materials are actually purchased by Pearson and include actual questions that will appear on the upcoming state exam. If this is true, it would explain why none of the 8th graders were admitted to a specialized high school last year; they weren't given the answers to the SHSAT before they took the exam.

NY Times comment:

Much talk of results, but the actual methods of achieving them, the test prep itself, is withheld from the reporter's view. No red flag raised for her? Well that's a red flag for ME. Other outlets have reported that Success uses some of its hedge fund backing to purchase from Pearson, the test designer "preferred test prep materials," which are said to include a fair number of actual questions that Pearson puts on the tests. That public schools are not equipped to pay for these further skews the results. This would have been a useful line of inquiry, sadly missed, not for the first time by the Times.

Fred Smith replies:

That allegation would be an important lead to follow up.  Maybe Kate Taylor can look into it.  She's just been slammed by Eva for her reports on SA cruel practices.

I would also like to know who scores SA's constructed response questions.  Is Eva also allowed to have her staff grade their own students?  I have no idea.  But we always are learning about advantages SA seems to have.  Self-scoring could be one more.

Building the Ground Game: Petition Signing with Rugelach and Cookies

I will work for cookies. And rugelach.

Arthur Goldstein, Chapter Leader at Francis Lewis HS in Queens and the great blogger NYC Educator, enticed me over to the school Friday to help him organize some petition signing for the UFT elections.

Oh what people wouldn't do for rugelach and some fine cookies? I spent over 3 hours there yesterday in the teacher lunchroom as teachers came in to eat lunch. Arthur paid for the goodies as a donation to MORE. After the staff signed the row of petitions, the goodies were waiting for them. Due to the popularity of Arthur and the support he has, the response was overwhelming and I could see that appreciation in the way people were interacting with him. It is no surprise to his readers that he would have a special relationship with the people he works with, especially with the Spanish speaking people who really appreciate his fluency in their language. His good humor and fellowship is evident to all. I should have stayed around to observe one of his classes to enjoy how he interacts with his kids.

It was great being in a school and chatting with teachers, paras, guidance counselors, etc and also got a batch of signatures for the MORE/New Action functional Ex Bd package which can only be signed by the non-teaching staff. I walked out with at least 20 out of the 100 we need and another 130 for the officer slate. Not a bad catch for the day.

Petitions tallies are coming in. One of our elementary guys got over 50 for the Ex Bd in his own school, half the number we need. I  think we are pretty close to 100 already and I would expect we may double that.

I've been coordinating the MORE and New Action candidates with Jonathan Halabi and we are going to hit around 300 candidates in total and could have many more if we wanted but decided to leave some trees alive in North America.

I have UFT elections in my blood but my main role now is handing the front end of the petitions. One of the beauties of the MORE melding of ICE and TJC is having experienced hands like Kit Wainer and Peter Lamphere aboard to join Ellen Fox and Gloria Brandman and gives us a good team and lessons the work. And now having the super experienced New Action people to work with as partners on this project really makes it easy. The petitions are due March 10. I expect my piece will be done by the time I celebrate my birthday on March 3 or soon after. Given what I had to do in ICE this is vacation time for me.

As I see our old pal Schoolgal having fun down in Florida, I have to miss our annual lunch down there. If we had a few weeks of this weekend's weather I would be down there in a heartbeat but being mid-Feb already and looking forward to a Feb. 28 reunion with some of my 5th and 6th grade students from my 1978 and 1979 classes. They are now in their late 40s, some are nearing retirement and some are grandparents. Maybe I should get out of town before I start feeling old.

Breaking: Justice Scalia Dies - Will The Unions Be Saved?

A game-changer on Friedrichs. Now looking like hung jury.

Randi better have an alibi.
I hate to put a death in such crass terms. What does this mean on so many grounds? Will the Republicans not stall an Obama replacement until after the election? The other day I was worried about the longevity of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, another grad of Madison HS along with Bernie Sanders. And she outlasts Scalia. What a turn of events.

GEM/MORE Members Fought Eva Invasion of Cobble Hill School: Where was the UFT?

MORE/GEM stood up to Eva when she invaded the school where that child abuse video from the NY Times was shot. Where was the UFT?

MORE's Brian Jones at Success hearing

Sean Ahern was a teacher in the building where the video was shot. See my post yesterday:

Video: Child Abuse on Eva's Plantation

Another Eva invasion. A teacher in the building has been chronicling the impact of the invasion on a blog:

Inside Colocation

MORE members from their previous groups ICE, TJC and GEM, stood up to Eva when the UFT was running scared.

Darren made a video at the Cobble Hill Success Academy Colocation Hearing:

https://youtu.be/F_Xeelvfbm0




Sean comments:

From the photo I believe the Eva Plantation cited in this NYT article was pushed into The School of International Studies on Baltic Street in 2012 over the vociferous objections of staff and parent leaders who filled school auditoriums to protest what they rightly predicted would be the undermining of their school community.

MORE leaders, Julie Cavanagh and Bryan Jones helped to mobilize support in the District to oppose this push-in. International Studies lost the first floor except for the state of the art Culinary room which I was assured would not be touched (students in the program competed that year in the city wide C-CAP competition winning over $65,000 in scholarships to post secondary culinary schools), but the computer lab and numerous other rooms were lost, crowding students and teachers and undermining a safe and fairly well run school serving a predominantly Title I student body but one that was fairly diverse by NYC standards. What was a real "success" story, The School of International Studies, was undone by the Eva Plantation and her sycophants at DOE and NYSED. Another culinary team has not competed since.

Many teachers, myself included, left the school after their mass protests were ignored by the DOE, NYSED and NYT. The Principal who had founded the school remained silent throughout the protests and was subsequently promoted the following September to Tweed to train principals.

Peace,
Sean Ahern

Video: Child Abuse on Eva's Plantation

In 2014, an assistant teacher at Success Academy Cobble Hill secretly filmed her colleague, Charlotte Dial, scolding one of her students after the young girl failed to answer a question correctly. The children's faces have been blurred and their names obscured to protect their privacy... NY Times - on the case

http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000004159212/success-academy-teacher-rip-and-redo-video.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

Our spies in Eva's buildings tell us this stuff is part of the fabric of the Success Academy culture. Maybe Success teachers should be required to wear body cameras.

Chicago Teacher Reacts to VOTE UNITY Poster - Appearing in your school mailboxes

Sarah Chambers, Chicago Teacher:

Want to see what bullies look like? Check them out here. The guy on bottom right shoved me out of the Mics at AFTunion conf. VOTE for MORE and Jia Lee NOT UNITY!
===

Mike Schirtzer I'm voting unity - Jia Lee Sarah Chambers are all about standing up for kids, union members, and our communities- I prefer unity because they stand up for themselves. #teamunity

====

Jia Lee Unity, an arm of the corporatized NYC DOE, bargains for their own benefit and not the members they purport to represent- don't believe me? I still have the pic from the day they physically moved Sarah Chambers' a rank and file teacher's things and Barr elbowed her so that Mulgrew could be first to the mic. I was standing outside the room. A union without democracy within is no union at all. Most members in NYC live in fear and constant demoralization. Unity is intimidated by true unionists like the CTU. I'm proud and grateful to our colleagues like Sarah!

====

Gloria Brandman I also saw that shove!! It's time we shove out those UNITY thugs and elect democratic leadership!
 =====

I see former Bklyn borough and now Bronx borough leader Howie Shore (top right) has risen to the officer ranks. Howie was my rep on my first step 3 grievance back in 1980 - and I lost.

Dispatch from 2017: How Bloomberg won - Fred Smith in Daily News

Our good pal Fred Smith does it again.

John Marshall Mantel/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dispatch from 2017: How Bloomberg won 

It is Jan. 20, 2017, and Michael Rubens Bloomberg, an honorary Knight of the British Empire, is about to take the oath of office and become the 45th President of the United States of America.

The media have been given a copy of the inaugural address — which, as advertised, will be the shortest one ever delivered, less than two pages. This type of brevity has served our next President well. Throughout his career, he has let his actions, organizing ability and money speak for him.

It was that winning combination that took him all the way to the White House during the tumultuous election year. Exhibiting his smarts as a bottom-line businessman, it was in the early summer that Bloomberg said he would give $200 to everyone who voted for him in November. That promise kept his advertising expenses down.

To justify his generosity, President-elect Bloomberg proudly declared that he had always paid his own way and no one could buy him — to the contrary, he could buy others.

Bloomberg was simply updating the same formula he used to gain re-election as New York City mayor in 2009, when he beat Bill Thompson by 4.4 percentage points. Then, he spent $183 per vote, which tapped his wallet to the tune of $102 million. This allowed him to run without depending on outside funding and the influences and obligations that attach to such campaign contributions — an opportunity that only extremely wealthy people can take.

At the national level, it became a slightly costlier proposition, but Bloomberg kept his per-vote costs down by cutting out the consultants and ad buys and sending the cash directly to the people — provided they’d cast a ballot for him. At a cost of $200 for each of 66 million votes (the number Obama won in 2012) — which were strategically spread around the country to maximize electoral vote totals — his purchase of the presidency set him back $13.2 billion, leaving his net worth at a comfortable $25 billion.

And that is likely to grow, given that it is now being placed in a “blind trust” for the duration of his term or terms in the Oval Office, much as it grew in his 12 years at City Hall.

True to character, Bloomberg ran an economical race. He used only two slogans, both of which could be considered a bit self-deprecating, perhaps, to show his sense of humor: A Bicycle in Every Garage, and He’ll Save You From Yourself.

At the same time, he was able to fend off a couple of sticky issues raised anew last year. Bloomberg again denied his corporation created a hostile climate for women, who were said to have been given hush money to settle harassment suits. It didn’t hurt that one of his opponents was a fellow billionaire known for objectifying and insulting women.

And Bloomberg simultaneously scoffed at criticisms that, as New York City mayor, his administration’s supposed accomplishments were largely the result of a massive news management operation and press agents keeping unfavorable stories out of the media.

One of the handful of times he really got testy as mayor was when reporters kept asking how anyone could take seriously his claims about raising city students’ reading scores.

Last but not least, 73-year-old Bloomberg had to address the age factor. During the election, scrutiny on that point, too, was blunted by the fact that both opponents were also veritable geezers.

Now that it is inauguration day, pundits are already speculating about a second term — or a third, the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment be damned. Bloomberg has good reason to believe that in 2024, the Supreme Court’s new chief justice, Joel Klein, will find a way to interpret the amendment to suspend term limits.

In the interests of disclosure, I voted for Michael Bloomberg for President. We need a businessman running our country. And with my occasional need to purchase print cartridges, $200 is nothing to sneeze at.

Smith, a testing specialist and consultant, was an administrative analyst for the city’s public schools.

#MORE2016/UFT Elections: The Petition Game is On as Teacher is Motivated by Jia Lee Candidacy

This came in from someone we did not know but who picked up a petition for our officer slate at the Feb. 3 Delegate Assembly.

Dear MORE: 
I got all 40 names on the petition in one day! It was awesome! I'll try to mail it tomorrow. I know the LI parents (such as Jeanette Deuterman) support Jia Lee, which is what the force was behind my conviction. I really trust Jeanette. Also, I like what Jia stands for. And, yes, you can add my name to your list.
Thanks! 

If any NYC Teachers are interested in circulating a petition for the MORE Officer slate, which in addition to Jia, includes James and Camille Eterno, Lauren Cohen and Mindy Rosier on the MORE end of the slate in addition to 6 New Action people (Greg DiStefano, Kate Martin-Bridge, Carol Ramos Widon, Margaret Shand, Nelson Santiago and Christine Gross), email me and I'll get one to you with a stamped self-addressed envelope which must be mailed back to me no later than March 2. There is room for 40 signatures and if you think you can get more than 40 I'll send you 2 copies.

There were a whole bunch of people who came over to us at that DA. Our regulars showed up in force to pick up their petition packs for their schools, which I helped organize and am managing for this election, along with Ellen Fox, as we did last time.

I learned a few things last time. I made the mistake of not thinking of petitioning as organizing and did not think of flooding the schools. This time MORE had a different view. Not viewing petionning as a burden but as an opportunity to talk to the people in their schools about the election. A week in, there are some positive signs. We have the view that most votes for the opposition in an election come from the schools where we have people who are trusted by their colleagues and who can motivate them to vote. We call it the ground game, and frankly, the opposition over the years, other than in the high schools in the 90s, has not done very well at the ground game.

Based on the number of people involved in 2013, I was disappointed in the outcomes and felt that the ground game was not pursued rigorously enough.

Even though we are 3 months away from ballots going out, this is a good opportunity to tell people "ELECTIONS ARE COMING!   ELECTIONS ARE COMING!!!

We are polling our people on how petition numbers are coming in. I am available to go to a school to assist and tomorrow morning I am heading to a big school to assist our contact there with the petitions.

The Bernie/Hillary Battle: Commentary from the Left (New Politics) and Mainstream (Politico)

Speaking of elections

I'm finally getting revved up to watch the show on both sides of the aisle unfold. I'm starting to balance the still remote possibility Bernie will win the nomination with the electability of a Jewish socialist. But then again, how electable is Hillary at this point? Even the most rabid Bernie fans, face it. If given Hillary vs any one of the Republican candidates most will hold your nose and vote for her.

What is interesting to me is that Bernie is winning the young and the white working class which rejected Obama and will reject Hillary. Imagine a Bernie vs Trump or Cruz election. Can Bernie win?

Yes, he has problems with people of color, in particular the black community. It is not just that he comes from a white state but there has also been issues between Jews and Blacks for decades, especially here in NYC going back to the 1968 teacher strike which was often framed as Jewish teachers opposing Black community control. As a teacher I often found that my own kids had certain attitudes toward Jews and they were surprised I was Jewish because they had a certain image of Jews - but then again that was in Hasidic Williamsburg.

This country brands itself as a Christian nation. Many Jews believe that it the Obama election was more likely than a Jew being president. I can remember as a young child being told we would never see a Jewish president, forcing me to give up my political career when I was 3.

But when people of color are faced with the stark choice what will they do?
And then again there is Michael Bloomberg jumping in if Bernie looks like he can win.
Imagine this: Bernie vs. billionaires Bloomberg and Trump.
How will that play out with the added factor of having 2 of the 3 being Jews?
But reality bites. The Democratic Super delegates in a close race will hand it ti Hillary and even in not a close race.
No wonder I love 2 major things: sports and politics - better than any other entertainment you can get.

Here is a selection of readings for this cold day from Politico and from New Politics.

New Politics, Winter 2016 Issue

http://www.newpol.org

A Discussion of the Sanders Campaign

Bernie Sanders and the Dilemma of the Democratic “Party,” Jason Schulman

Some months ago I responded to a piece that appeared on the New Politics blog by my longtime fellow NP editorial board member and friend Barry Finger.1 In my own blog, I argued that Barry had a better, more sophisticated understanding of the peculiarities of the Democratic Party and the U.S. electoral system than do many on the radical left who refuse to support any Democratic candidate regardless of that candidate’s personal political platform. However, I also made clear that I believed that Barry still suffered from certain misunderstandings regarding just how different American political parties are from parties that exist anywhere else in the world, and this meant there were defects in his suggestions as to how left-wing socialists should relate to the Sanders campaign. Other defects still characterize the arguments of those who claim that to support Sanders, however critically, is to support a candidate of a party of capital.
While invoking my debate with Barry, I’ll touch upon those other arguments and their problems and explain why I think that critical support for the Sanders campaign is a necessity if we’re to build a much larger socialist movement and how the campaign may lay the basis for an independent party of the left.

The Sanders Campaign and the Left, Lance Selfa and Ashley Smith

Senator Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic Party nomination for president has certainly energized thousands. It has also rekindled an old debate on the American left that revolves around the question: Should the left join, endorse, support, or work for campaigns in the Democratic Party?

Politico has some more traditional stuff:
 

HILLARYWATCH -- "The gaping hole at the heart of Hillary Clinton's campaign," by Paul Waldman in WashPost's PlumLine blog: "[R]ight now, the Clinton campaign has a much bigger problem than the story it wants to tell about New Hampshire. That problem is this: the campaign has no story to tell the voters about Hillary Clinton and why she should be president. Having a good story doesn't guarantee you victory, but nobody becomes president without one ... Now tell me: what's Hillary Clinton's message? She doesn't have one." http://wapo.st/1POOItc

BENJAMIN WALLACE-WELLS on NewYorker.com, "The Clintons Have Lost the Working Class": "Most arrestingly, Sanders won voters with an income of less than fifty thousand dollars by 2-1. There's a lot of talk about Clinton's campaign repeating the chaos and errors of 2008, but that year she had the white working-class vote. Clinton's candidacy looks narrower than ever, more confined to those whose experience of life approximates her own. ... That is not the most promising platform from which to begin a general-election campaign in any year, and especially not in a vigorously populist one." http://bit.ly/1QsXwRI

AMB. HOWARD GUTMAN on Politico, "Why Sanders' Win Is Good for Clinton: The socialist senator has been a saving grace for the Clinton campaign. Best to keep him around as long as possible": "This campaign season, the socialist senator has been a gift to Clinton. He's pumped a huge amount of oxygen into a race that could easily have been starved for attention. And even more importantly, he's made sure that the biggest story in the race isn't Clinton's own background." http://politi.co/1POPPco

MARGARET CARLSON on Bloomberg, "Beware a Wounded Clinton ": "Maybe it's HDTV, but stagecraft is so obvious now. Clinton's sense of entitlement comes through, while Sanders' basic decency is apparent whenever the camera lands on his wild hair, bad suits and Brooklyn accent. The Clintons exude the belief that we would be lucky to get them back not the other way around." http://bv.ms/1o5mNuW

- WNYC's Rebecca Ibarra: "What Will it Take for Black Voters to Choose Bernie Sanders?" http://goo.gl/8U4AXS
 
-- WNYC's Andrea Bernstein: "If There's One Thing Hillary Clinton Knows, It's How to Come Back from Defeat" http://goo.gl/GE5mbc

Randi and Lily Are Democratic Party Super Delegates

While much of the Democratic Party has savaged teachers and their unions on ed deform, the leadership of this unions is part of the structure of the party. We know where they stand on Hillary/Bernie and since a good chunk of the members are anti-Hillary from the right and the left, their stand is very divisive and diverts us from the major battle. Randi was traipsing around Iowa and New Hampshire and giving credence to Teach for America by showing up to speak at their conference last weekend.

Diane Ravitch is taking a neutral stance on Hillary/Bernie and explains why in a reply to a comment on her post Hillary Won More Delegates in New Hampshire than Bernie.

Now I find this an interesting post in that while talking about the super delegates she never mentions that the presidents of the 2 teacher unions with almost 4 million members are out and out Hillary supporters who will be overriding the popular vote if they can. Randi has been tweeting that Bernie and Hillary basically tied in New Hampshire among Democrats and it was the independent vote that gave him such a big margin. I guess independents who reject Hillary don't count in the general election. It is the typical stance that the Republican choice will be so awful, everyone will hold their noses and vote for Hillary anyway. Listen, I would probably do so myself.

Rob Rendo is disturbed enough to offer the following:

How rigged the system is:
Please review the following list for names that you recognize among the superdelegates.
You will see Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten right there, undermining the one man one vote fundamental to our democracy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Party_superdelegates,_2016
Will you sign the petition to let voters decide?
http://pac.petitions.moveon.org/sign/tell-the-democratic-superdel?source=s.fwd&r_by=4412807
Will you sign this petition to the DNC to end voter manipulation?
https://www.change.org/p/democratic-national-committee-dnc-destroy-and-dismantle-the-superdelegacy-end-election-manipulation
Please forward widely
Thank you

Randi undermining democracy? I'm shocked, just shocked. Any photoshoppers out there to take these cartoons and put Randi in them?