Ed Deformer and Netflix Founder Reed Hastings is Why the Democrats Have a Problem

This morning I got a call from someone in North Carolina connected to the Democratic Party pleading for my contribution to stop the right wing/Trump agenda. I told him NO. He seemed astounded to hear that coming from someone who was clearly left leaning. I ranted about the Dems not supporting unions, their core constituency -- Clintons and Obama - and what did former Labor Secty under Obama try to do for unions? Remember Wisconsin? And how about that they did to the teaching profession and their support for ed deform?

I told him to call someone else and he was wasting his time but he wouldn't give up -- I said the Dem Party has a long way to go to win my trust, especially on ed policy. Finally, his supervisor told him to hang up.

Then I turn to the NY Times and read this article about Google firing the employee who expressed his opinions on women and tech: 
Rising Dissent From the Right In Silicon Valley: The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/technology/the-culture-wars-have-come-to-silicon-valley.htm

I imagine people on the left cheering his firing. I'm not. I do believe we can't run a one way track to free expression --- the left justifies themselves by branding comments as hate speech and that gives them the right to oppose it.

The article talks about Trump tech supporter Peter Thiel, who is in many ways despicable for his views but I don't have problems in his expression of them.

But look who is acting as a cop for the left?

Mr. Thiel, a member of Facebook’s board of directors, was told by Mr. Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, that he would receive a negative evaluation of his performance on the board because of his support for Donald J. Trump.

Reed fuck'n hastings? Hastings, who supported Hillary, is a reason I won't give a dime to Democratic Party. Here are a few links to Hastings and education deform.

Thiel, Hastings

1. Reed Hastings' donations, students boo DeVos, remediation ...

   www.latimes.com/local/education/la-essential-education...

   May 11, 2017, 5:00 a.m. Reed Hastings' donations, students boo DeVos, remediation reform: What's new in education today

2. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Launches $100 Million Education ...

   fortune.com/2016/01/13/reed-hastings-100-million-education

   Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' education fund kicks off with a $1.5 ... Hastings has been interested in education reform for ... FORTUNE may receive compensation for ...

3. The battle of Hastings: What’s behind the Netflix ... - Salon

   www.salon.com/2016/10/...netflix-ceo-reed-hastings...partner

   Oct 14, 2016 · And much of Hastings’ school reform ... a former Virginia elementary school teacher who now writes and consults on education issues. “Reed Hastings ...

4. Netflix's Reed Hastings has a passion for education r

   Jan 01, 2014 · Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings may be best known for upending the entertainment industry, but he has also built a reputation as an ardent ...

Chalkbeat, Subsidiary of Ed Deform, Beats the Anti-ATR Drum

...why should they talk to working teachers when Students First and others pay people to spout The Gospel According to Gates and Walmart, both of whom fund Chalkbeat?... NYC Educator

Have you been wondering about the obsession of ed deformers over the ATR question, not exactly the most pressing education issue of our time? I and others have talked about what is behind this. But count on their shills in the press to keep the issue going hot and heavy.

Chalkbeat, that paragon of ed deform journalism, once again leads with the ATR issue in Monday's morning report

Rise & Shine: Who is in New York City's controversial Absent Teacher Reserve?  Five things we still don’t know about who is in New York City’s Absent Teacher Reserve

By Daniela Brighenti  -  

Oh, goody -- they are finally going to talk to ATRs to get some answers. Let's see now:

A 2014 report from the advocacy group TNTP estimated that 25 percent of teachers in the ATR pool then had been brought up on disciplinary charges. 

You mean that TNTP, founded by Michelle Rhee 20 years ago? Now there's a group to believe. I wonder if they contribute to Chalkbeat.

Let's see, maybe after TNTP they actually talked to some ATRs:

Even if teachers are strong performers when excessed from their schools, one principal told us, the time they spend outside the classroom and in the ATR could be harmful, since they are unlikely to receive the same professional development as teachers in full-time positions.

Of course, go talk to principals and cite "some critics":

New York City principals balk at plan to place teachers in their schools; some vow to get around it

More principals' opinions -- this one is a fun one:

some critics have raised concerns that the teachers would be placed primarily in low-income areas of the city, in the struggling schools likely to suffer most from teacher vacancies.

Wow - they are so worried about placing ATRs in low income areas but have no qualms about hiring brand new teachers. Yeah, trust principals.

This is the Chalkbeat lead-in:

Much of the debate around the Absent Teacher Reserve revolves around the qualifications of the teachers in the pool, and what kinds of schools they work in. We rounded up questions we've asked the education department and union officials about the ATR, but haven't gotten answers to. ... Chalkbeat

Really? Much of the ed deform debate we read (here, here, here)
revolves around how ATRs are treated, how they are products of bad ed policy and bad union policy, how fair student funding incentivizes principals to not hire high salaried people, etc.
I think of the great crew of teachers we met last year in the struggle over the closing of JHS 145 in the Bronx. Are some of them ATRs?  Our CPE1 pals could have very easily been ATRs if they were found guilty of even the most minor charge -- their principal was removed the day after they were exonerated - proving she fabricated the charges -- we believe in consort with higher ups at the DOE - yet she is still functioning somewhere in the DOE.

After all, she vus just following orders.

But Chalkbeat must present the anti-ATR position and they do so by raising questions they don't have answers to -- a tactic used to create doubt. They have been criticized for not talking to ATRs -- there are only a thousand and I guess they are hard to find -- though we see them all over the blogs.

DRAIN THE POOL A new policy for placing educators from the Absent Teacher Reserve into schools -- even potentially against a principal's will -- has raised many questions and pushback. Here's what we still don't know about the educators who are in the pool, despite multiple requests for information. Chalkbeat

Look at the title -- Drain the Pool -- remind you of someone we know who was going to drain something but loaded it with more swamp creatures. But then again deformers try to brand ATRs as swamp creatures.

[By the way - at least one reader claimed I was mistaken to say I was an ATR back in 1967-1968 when I was exactly that - we were on the organization sheet under that category- but on one school.]

Arthur did good job of savaging Chalkbeat - read it here:

Monday, August 07, 2017

Reformy Chalkbeat Doubles Down on ATRs, Informs Readers It Knows Nothing

RBE: The UFT is a Company Union

RBE [Perdido Street School] has left a new comment on your post "Attacks on ATRs is Spear at All Teachers Plus Why ...":

Klein didn't run rings around Randi. The givebacks from Randi were intentional. They're on the same team - both Clintonistas out for the destruction of a unionized workforce. It's WWE shit. They play adversaries in public, but it's all a show and behind the scenes they yuck it up while they strip workers of rights, compensation, protections, etc. They may not have liked each other personally, but make no mistake that personal animosity puts them on separate teams.

The UFT is a company union. We see this even more so with de Blasio, where they don't even bother to mount a defense as the DOE goes after veteran teachers, ATR's, etc. The big giveaways started under the "hostile" Bloomberg, they continue unabated under the "friendly" de Blasio. It will be interesting to see what percentage of the rank and file flee the UFT post-Janus. UFT leaders will call for "unity" and "solidarity," but that's just empty, meaningless Orwellian rhetoric from a union leadership that has sold out its membership time and time again. 

I agree that the UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex has been complicit, especially in the early decades of ed deform going back to Al Shanker. Joel Klein and Randi are both centrist Democrats and thus...

Our union(s) are fundamentally neo-liberal in outlook. They do believe in the free market and when deformers apply it to education and charge that public schools are a monopoly, even if they don't agree, they have a hard time framing an adequate response and a campaign to counter this view. 

When it comes to guns and butter issues where defense eats up a massive amount of money, they always support those expenditures. Same with jingoistic foreign policy. 

And then there are the ties to the centrist wing of the Democratic Party and its policies that enforce the above -- I mean who is calling for a new Cold War against Russia, which is a fairly weal country in many ways?

These outlooks in essence turn our unions into a company union - if we view "company" in broader terms.

Attacks on ATRs is Spear at All Teachers Plus Why Not Have a Permanent Corps of ATRS

Obviously, this is about more than placing a few hundred teachers out of a system of 80,000 to teach classes that don't have a regular teacher over a month into the school year. Ed deform leaders know that if they finish off our seniority rights, it's basically over for the unionized teaching workforce (see Chicago teachers for some evidence). Ending seniority rights altogether is the holy grail of union busting that Joel Klein pushed for and is still the treasured goal of the zealots who want to destroy our profession. ... James Eterno, the ICE Caucus Blog

The other day I raised the issue of why the billionaire backed ed deform movement - On "Fair" Student Funding, ATRs, Chalkbeat Deformer Reporting with such shill organizations as Families for Excellent Schools (FES), Students First, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) are so obsessed with the fates of a relatively few ATRS, people who are on the margin of the system - people who have in essence reduced the need for hiring pile of substitute teachers by creating a permanent, though often unwilling, pool of people to do a necessary job.

I mean, why not actually create an ATR pool of volunteers to that job in some kind of organized manner? I was an ATR for a year and a half in one school at the beginning of my career. By covering classes I learned a lot -- it was a good training ground -- and when there was no one absent they assigned me to handle a bunch of other issues that the school never had people to take care --- even helping in the supply room --- remember those days when we had loaded supply rooms?

There is a corps of Homebound teachers who visit kids who are sick. Why not an ATR pool, especially for newbie people who can benefit from a hands on training period?

But of course the attacks on ATRs is part of the decade assault on seniority, teaching as a career, union protections, tenure, etc --- call it---

The Road to Making Teachers Individual Contract Workers 

James Eterno has an important piece delving into the history of that is a must read--

THE REAL AIM OF THE RENEWED ATTACK ON ATRS IS TO BUST UNION

I would not have framed it as just an attack to bust the union -- after all as James points out, the UFT agreeing to the 2005 contract was a peg on the road to the union busting itself.

At pre-2005 city council hearings on education - run by Eva Moskowitz -- Randi testified agreeing with Joel Klein in essence on seniority transfers. Klein at that point claimed that the transfers drained poor schools of senior teachers -- barely true as the rules allowed many loopholes --- a shill ed deform argument -- and then flipped the argument by claiming senior teachers were burned out.

You may hate Klein - but admit he was a genius in running rings around Randi - he is one of the great heroes of ed deform despite proving to be so incompetent in a everything else -- I mean the guy can't hold one job for very long - other than his 8 years in office -- if not for the UFT compliance he would have been an object failure even at ed deform -- his greatest success -- even greater than the victory over Microsoft.

Klein owes oh so much to Randi Weingarten.

Memo from the RTC: The Producers – Eat Your Heart Out If You Missed It

Published in The WAVE, Aug. 4, 2017
www.rockawave.com

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Memo from the RTC:  The Producers – Eat Your Heart Out If You Missed It

By Norm Scott

Last week I raved about the six leading performances by Jeremy Plyburn (Bialystock), Craig Evans (Bloom), John Panepinto (Franz Liebkind), Brian Sadowski (Carmen Ghia), Erech Holder_Hetmeyer (Roger), Catherine Leib (Ulla) of the Rockaway Theatre Company production of Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

But this just scratches the surface. I’ve lost count of the number of cast members. The dressing room often looks like a subway car at rush hour as people race in and out for their scenes, many costume changes, or stage crew duties (everyone has to do some scenery moving in an elaborate schedule set up by Jenna Tipaldo, our 20 year old stage manager supreme (who also does the light cues in many performances). There are so many excellent performances supplementing the Big 6, I would have to use the entire WAVE to mention every performer.

I laugh at every joke and cheer at the end of every song and dance even though I’ve seen umpteen times – most of it from the wings, peeking between the curtains in the back of the theater or from the booth upstairs because I have stagehand duties -  moving the French doors when we set up and take down the office, which happens about a million times a show. So I end up running back and forth between office scenes so I can see snatches of the show. (Of course I never get to see the one scene I am in near the end, nor the scene before it since I am setting up to move my prop.) I’m often joined by other performers in the back of the theater who can’t stop laughing. And when we are backstage we are also laughing.

Before one show a theater goer asked me if Jodee Timpone was in the show. “She sure is,” I said. “And you will see Jodee as you’ve never seen her before.  Jodee, playing the part of Hold me-Touch, shows her heart/s is/are in the right place.

Producer Susan Jasper says in her program Notes, “If you have not seen or heard anything to offend you by Intermission, you probably slept through Act 1.” Some of the funniest, and possibly most offensive scenes relate to the LGBT community. A large group from the local LGBTQ social group, Out Rockaway wearing their tee-shirts, attended and I hear there was a lot of laughter coming from their quarter. No pickets - yet. And few people - maybe one guy – walked out due to homophobia.

The audiences have been as responsive as any in the past, some saying this is the best one ever.

I won’t get into some details of the play so those who come the final weekend see the surprises for those who didn’t see the movie or the play. I do want to mention a few behind the scenes people. I’ve talked about the directorial leadership of John Gilleece who has managed the entire project wonderfully. Audiences have been raving about the professional choreography by Nicole DePierro-Nellen. Watch those tap dancers and the synchronicity of complex dances. The opening sequence recalls Fiddler on the Roof. And the chorines in the office scene doing that Rockettes matching kick-line and see how many of them swap into old-lady land tip tapping their walkers. And that solo dance by Ulla – ooh, la, la.

Music Director Rich Louis-Pierre is one of the RTC indispensables, not only leading the band, but playing a small part in the play and doing the sound design while working with the sound technicians Michael Caprio and the heroic Daniel Fay. Danny is a local and a recent college grad who actually got a job in the industry and gives up much valuable time to be at the shows when he can.

There’s the complex lighting by Andrew Woodridge, the RTC lighting guru, who also makes the pigeons do their thing, which got an ovation at last Sunday’s performance – watch Adolph salute. Andrew hasn’t developed the technology – yet – of having them fly around the audience and crap on their heads, but maybe one day.

Dan Guarino, president of the Rockaway Artists Alliance, who is not in the show but volunteered to assist with the stage crew and is my partner in moving the French doors without killing anyone, and has done yeoman service.

I’ll have more next week in my final piece on this show (after which I will take a little RTC break). This Monday, I join master demolisher Tony Homsey in taking down the set before working with his twin, Tony the master builder, to put up the set for the upcoming Frank Caiati directed Elephant Man.

When not destroying sets, Norm uses his pen as a sledgehammer on the NYCDOE, UFT Leadership, the Democratic Party, and charter schools on his blog at ednotesonline.com.

School Scope: Health Care - Educating People Honestly is First Step to Reform By Norm Scott

The WAVE - www.rockawave.com -- Aug. 4, 2017

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School Scope: Health Care - Educating People Honestly is First Step to Reform

By Norm Scott

If you are looking for commentary on education let me remind you this is summer vacation for most ed news, other than to say that the de Blasio/Farina operation of the schools is not as different from BloomKlein. One of the big stories this week was the Susan Edelman expose in the NY Post of the scandals in the principal training Leadership Academy, which spawned our very own Marcella Sills. http://nypost.com/2017/07/29/doe-lost-track-of-101m-given-to-leadership-coaches-audit.

I compare the NYC Leadership Academy training to the Nazi SS - where there are stories that they would give a new recruit a dog when they arrived, allow them to bond, and then order them to kill the dog to complete their training. All too many Lead Acad grads act like they’ve emerged from that type of trauma and feel free to engage in vicious, sadistic behavior.

But let’s get back to an equally vicious and sadistic topic. Health care as a follow-up to last week’s column (School Scope: Why Not Medicare for All?) where I talked about single payer around the world with an emphasis on how health stats in Rwanda may one day, if Republicans remain ascendant, may soon surpass ours.

There has been increasing serious media attention (as opposed to mocking commentary) related to Bernie Sanders bringing up a single payer bill, an idea he was ridiculed for a year ago. It is clear there are problems with Obama Care, many of them exaggerated by eight years of Republican attempts to go back to the pre-Obamacare good old days of death panels. The criticisms of Obamacare from both left and right go deep but come at the issue from two entirely different directions.

One of the attacks on Obama was based on his false promise that people could keep their plans. Seven years ago I was tossed out of my UFT plan and into Medicare by law as I joined everyone who turns 65 . I didn’t cry, as Medicare just happens to be one of the most popular government run programs.

I keep repeating that my wife who worked in billing for a major hospital and dealt with every insurance company maintained that Medicare, staffed with career professionals (as opposed to the often revolving door employees in private insurance) was also the most efficient and well-run. I would say this was one of the biggest issues in former Obama voters moving to Trump.  Goodness, is it possible that the big, bad government which comes under attack by so many can out perform privately run operations?

Boys and girls there is a solution, even if a temporary one to stabilize the market while we work to expand Medicare down to younger people. (Bernie suggests we move people who are 55 into Medicare as a first step.)

Obama abandoned the offer of a public option very quickly to appease the insurance companies who didn’t want to compete with the government. (He also ignored please control drug costs to keep big pharm on board). With so many insurance companies abandoning the market at this time, the biggest immediate fix to Obamacare would be to add a government option in every area that is left with few options or none. I find it funny how all the people who believe in competition don’t want the government to compete with private insurance plans.

Now I want to be clear. In a single payer system everyone would be tossed out of their plan and into the same plan. This would be huuuuge and of course disrupting as even employer based plans would end. Some argue that industry offers these plans as a way to lure workers. And many workers make job choices based on health care. By taking the burden of health care off the table, as would happen in single payer, there would be a major bump in earnings for boss and worker – think of taking the money spent on health care and giving raises.

We also should be clear that single payer would wipe out most of the insurance industry with its overhead and high executive salaries – and all those lobbying costs. How can that be a bad thing?

Let me end with a reference to some correspondence I’ve been having with  a WAVE reader who doesn’t agree with my take but does admire the variation of single payer system in Singapore, which forces everyone to pay something whenever they use a health service. (Google Singapore health care if interested in learning more.) I am open to negotiations on means payments and co-payments. My recent foray into health care related to a urinary tract infection taught me a few things. I had to have a picc line installed in my arm to receive antibiotics and it was done at NYU-Langone where two nurses and a doctor did the job (who knew that the line went  directly from my arm into my heart – ugh). They billed for over $15,000. Medicare paid about $600. It was clear before I went in – there would be no cost to me and they knew what they were going to get. Thus an advantage of single payer even with all the waste and fraud ( and over testing) – there is one place to go to get paid and someone makes a value judgment.

Even under single payer, which would replace everyone’s health care costs with a  --- dare I  say the word – tax, people would come out ahead.

If you want to read a medical horror story, check out the recent NY Times exposure (The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills) of scams where emergency rooms have been privatized by EmCare, a rapacious company. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/upshot/the-company-behind-many-surprise-emergency-room-bills.html.

Norm blogs about whatever drivel comes into his head at ednotesonline.com.

On "Fair" Student Funding, ATRs, Chalkbeat Deformer Reporting

I blogged yesterday (Farina to Principals - Wink, Wink - Go Get Em - Schools With Placed ATRs Must Absorb Salaries) about that ridiculous Chalkbeat story echoing the Families for Excellent Schools line on ATRS. Why a deformy group would focus so much attention on ATRS -- not exactly the crucial education issue of our time? The answer it that they are using it as a wedge as part of the broader attack on seniority, tenure, highly paid teachers, disparaging certified teachers- the "hey, anyone can teach" etc.

Arthur Goldstein took on Chalkbeat on his blog --

NYC Educator

Reformy Chalkbeat Deems Paying Teachers Inconvenient - Who'd have thought that Chalkbeat NY, after taking all that money from Gates and the Walmart family, would suddenly go all community service on us. Arthur was as perturbed by that phony demo photo used as I was.

 I just adore the photo Chalkbeat chooses to recycle, the one of a dozen people organized by the well-financed so-called Families for Excellent Schools standing around stereotyping ATR teachers. It would take me about five minutes to organize a dozen people to stand outside the Chalkbeat office with signs that say "Chalkbeat Sucks."

Not a bad idea to illustrate a point.

Then there is a parent shill named Nicole Thomas who writes a piece at the Daily News assaulting ATRs. Nicole just woke up one day and decided the existence of 800 ATRs in a system of 100,000 education personnel is the most important threat to her children's education. Nicole is one of those bought parents by the deformies. I bet she was at one of those phony 20 people rallies.

ATR Peter Zucker took Nicole Thomas on and ripped her op ed to piece.

I know where your bread is buttered Nicole. StudentsFirstNY butters it, and butters it well. You want to hang with these people? You think for a moment that StudentsFirst cares about you or your family, or even your community? You are being played like a fiddle and when you outlive your usefulness, see how long, if ever, it takes Jenny Sedlis to return your calls.

But if you want to hang with these people, know that StudentsFirst is the evil spawn of Michelle Rhee. Read this and tell the world how you would feel if Rhee was your child's teacher. These are the type of people you are being a sycophant for.

SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL Open Blog Post to Nicole Thomas (ATR Basher) Parent at PS 256 in Brooklyn

Now we know that one of the wedges used to attack teaching as a career is the fair student funding formula.

Leonie Haimson savages the Fair Student Formula in a must-read blog: https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/08/fair-student-funding-atr-system-two-bad.html

NYC Public School Parents

Fair student funding & the ATR system - two bad policies undermining NYC schools

Today Chalkbeat covers the budgetary ramifactions of the new agreement between the UFT and the NYC Department of Education in which the DOE will place ATR teachers (on Absent Teacher Reserve) in schools with vacancies, whether the principal chooses these particular teachers or not.  In addition, unlike earlier years, the principal will have to pay the full amount of their salaries – which are often much higher than the average teacher salary, even though the school only receives funding for the average salary under the Fair Student Funding system, implemented by Joel Klein in 2007, after much controversy and protest.

Let's look at how our stalwarts at the UFT are handling the situation. Arthur comments:

 I'm also disappointed in UFT leadership, which seems to believe that, even with the idiotic so-called Fair Student Funding, that there will be no issue hiring senior teachers. In fact, schools themselves now have to pay teachers out of their own budgets. Why would a principal hire a 100K teacher when a 50K teacher would do? After all, who values experience anymore? You could stock your whole building with newbies and turn them over every three years before they get tenure and start speaking up.

 Mulgrew, given an opportunity to point out certain essential truths, punted. I will urge our high school ex bd people to hold their feet to the fire on making a strong stand -- including educating the public - on the damages of FSF.


 

Bernie Sanders attacks 'greedy' Nissan for waging anti-union campaign - Where are Other Dems?

Vermont senator, writing in the Guardian, says: ‘The truth is Nissan is an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working people’... The Guardian.

Where are the other Democrats? Most don't want to support unions even with a 10 foot pole.

Bernie Sanders has attacked Nissan for doing “everything it can” to stop workers from unionizing at its Mississippi plant despite making “obscene” profits.

Nissan dispute could go down as most vicious anti-union crusade in decades

Bernie Sanders

Read more

In an editorial for the Guardian, the former presidential hopeful weighs in as Nissan workers prepare to vote on joining the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
Echoing union officials and their supporters, Sanders says Nissan’s campaign “could go down as one of the most vicious, and illegal, anti-union crusades in decades”.
Nissan is being investigated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the independent US government agency responsible for enforcing US labor law, after warning workers they could lose wages and benefits if they back the union vote.
Other workers have been told they will receive increased benefits and pay if they vote against unionising. “Workers should never have to endure this type of threatening campaign or walk through a minefield just to vote for a union,” Sanders writes. “The truth is Nissan is an all-too-familiar story of how greedy corporations divide and conquer working people.”
The Nissan vote is the latest in a series of attempts by unions to grow membership in America’s south, where many manufacturers have moved to take advantage of low wages and non-union workforces. Unions have faced similarly hard-fought battles to gain recognition at plants run by Boeing and Volkswagen – and lost.
Sanders, the actor Danny Glover and leading labor officials have all campaigned in support of the UAW’s attempts to unionise the 800-strong plant.

Mississippi Nissan workers hope for historic win in 14-year fight to unionize

Read more

Nissan has union representation in 42 of 45 of its plants throughout the world, writes Sanders. “But the company does not want unions in the US south, because unions mean higher wages, safer working conditions, decent healthcare, and a secure retirement.
“Corporations like Nissan know that if they stop workers in Mississippi from forming a union, wages will continue to be abysmally low in this state.”
Sanders says Nissan made $6.6bn in profits last year and paid its chief executive officer, Carlos Ghosn, more than $9.5m last year.
“Those kinds of obscene profits are a direct result of corporations’ decades-long assault on workers and their unions,” he writes. “The American middle class, once the envy of the world, is disappearing while income and wealth inequality is soaring. We have got to turn that around.”

Gothamist: Eva Moskowitz’s Privileged ‘Bipartisanship’

Nice to see mainstream press (sort of) exposing Eva Moskowitz hypocrisy - actually, she's a Trump-level outright liar - though the writer doesn't go into the schemes she uses to phony up the rep of Success.

Some excerpts:

Ms. Moskowitz can’t hide behind a self-serving and privileged version of bipartisanship.... It takes a lot of privilege for Ms. Moskowitz to somehow believe that the policies that Democrats and the Resistance across the country represent somehow do not apply to her students.

Black organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the N.A.A.C.P.), afters years of internal debate, in October called for a moratorium on charter schools, like the charter network Ms. Moskowitz runs in New York City. In response to the N.A.A.C.P. moratorium and report, Ms. Moskowitz attacked the N.A.A.C.P.’s credibility and authority to speak on education for black children. Despite the fact that Ms. Moskowitz's schools have come under scrutiny for controversial admissions policies and disciplinary practices, which Ms. Moskowitz usually leaves to be resolved by her private consultants and lobbyists....

it seems strange that Ms. Moskowitz repeatedly attacks the mayor, a fellow Democrat, for budgetary reasons yet she doesn't criticize the federal secretary of education, a Republican, who is proposing cuts worth more than $9 billion to national education programs and resources.

Gothamist

August 01, 2017 | by Kenneth Campbell

http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/7093-eva-moskowitz-s-privileged-bipartisanship?mc_cid=fbd1eba5eb&mc_eid=1a6c9e0292

Farina to Principals - Wink, Wink - Go Get Em - Schools With Placed ATRs Must Absorb Salaries

At the very least, one Bronx principal said, he’d be wary of the hire. “If someone automatically puts an ATR into my school,” he said, “I would go in there and observe them quite a bit.” --- Chalkbeat

Chalkbeat as usual doesn't get to the heart of the matter. That the DOE is making sure not to provide financial backing to schools taking ATRs - schools I am betting will be chosen based on the ability of the principal to be especially vicious. Note not one contact from the reporter with a comment from an ATR.

They are walking in with targets on their backs.

Mulgrew of course is exposed as a sham supporter of ATRs - instead of screaming about the fair student funding formula he says this:

Principals have historically exaggerated the impact on their school budget of hiring someone from the ATR pool,” he said in a statement. “We have found the impact of hiring a more experienced teacher, whether from the open market or the ATR pool, does not derail a school budget.”

What a crock - of course the higher salary impacts a school budget -- that was the very purpose of Fair Student Funding in the first place -- to incentivize principals to do salary dumps. As usual the UFT comes up on the wrong side of the issue.

The article does at least point up the UFT flip-flop in providing financial support to the school.

Ironically, this is an issue the UFT set out to tackle in its 2014 contract with the Department of Education. A provision in the contract states that schools that hire an ATR teacher would not have that teacher’s salary included in the school’s average teacher salary calculation. That agreement stood for both the 2015–16 and 2016–17 school years. 

“Principals no longer have a reason to pass over more senior educators in favor of newer hires with lower salaries,” the UFT promised in a statement on the 2014 contract posted online.

During the 2016–17 school year, the DOE also offered two options for subsidizing the salaries of ATR members. The first subsidized the costs of permanent ATR hires by 50 percent the first year and 25 percent the next. The second allowed principals to have the full cost of the teacher’s salary subsidized for the 2016–17 year. Ultimately, a total of 372 teachers were hired with those incentives last year. 

But starting in the upcoming school year, neither of those policies will be in place. Schools will not receive the incentives and the salaries of ATR teachers will be included in a school’s average teacher salary once they are permanently hired. 

The UFT declined to comment on the apparent flip-flop, and neither the UFT nor the city’s Department of Education could estimate the average number of years of experience of teachers in the pool.

The article by Daniela Brighenti is oh-so leaning in the direction of the ed deform attacks on ATRs -- behind which is an attack on teacher tenure protections. Daniela might have reached out to some ATRs to get their take -- maybe she thought she would catch something.

This is the lead blurb.

ATR FUNDING When members of the Absent Teacher Reserve are placed this fall, schools will incur the full cost of the new hires, without incentives the city has provided in the past. Chalkbeat

Did Chalkbeat funder Families for Excellent Schools (I'm guessing here) write this piece?

At the top of their article it says: support independent journalism -- my biggest laugh of the day - so far.

Look at the photo that leads their piece -FES gets 20 people out - probably paid - and that becomes the lede.

Look at their headline:

draining the pool [echo of Trump draining the swamp]

New York City’s plan to place teachers from its Absent Teacher Reserve pool could take a bite out of school budgets

Here is the complete article:

 http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/08/03/new-york-citys-plan-to-place-teachers-from-its-absent-teacher-reserve-pool-could-take-a-bite-out-of-school-budgets/

DE BLASIO GIVES IN BIG TO CHARTERS

Curbing mayoral control of schools should be a priority - local control is the biggest threat to the ed deformers.

Posted by Jake Jacobs at NYC BATS FB:

DE BLASIO GIVES IN BIG TO CHARTERS: You might have missed this but in a last-minute deal for a two-year renewal of mayoral control, Mayor de Blasio agreed to circumvent the legislature, pledging to help charters expand through his administrative powers.

The agreement granted permission to revive so-called “zombie” charters, meaning schools that never open or quickly closed.

The really contentious part was the proposal to let charter schools which SUNY oversees hire unlicensed teachers. The controversial proposal grew out of concessions de Blasio made in last year's mayoral control renewal deal, where SUNY was allowed to change some rules so charters could switch authorizers -- about 50 charters did switch over to SUNY in advance of the unlicensed teacher proposal.

But it's not clear whether SUNY has the legal authority to approve the new rules, which would not only let charters hire uncertified teachers, but let charter school executives grant licenses to teachers after three years, even if they were trained by uncertified instructors.

Mayor de Blasio’s position on the uncertified teacher plan has not been made public, but the proposal dropped around the same time de Blasio secretly negotiated his side-deal for renewing mayoral control.

First wondering aloud if the two were linked, Politico’s Eliza Shapiro later reported that withholding details about the exact concessions made to charters seem to be part of the deal struck between de Blasio and NYS Senate leader John Flanagan.

We can wonder whether de Blasio agreed to letting charters hire uncertified teachers to replace the 40% of teachers they burn through each year, but we know the proposal was first championed by Eva Moskowitz, who supports not only Trump's call to expand charters but private school vouchers as well.

http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2017/06/29/mayoral-control-deal-could-change-de-blasios-poor-standing-in-albany-113160

Jeff Kaufman: Computer Science for Some

After decades spent fighting abusive/inept principals, Jeff Kaufman, one of the stalwarts of the ICE caucus, has been teaching computer/coding classes working with an excellent principal the past few years, a late career reinvention of himself as a teacher. Jeff sent this the other day.

I submitted the attached article as an op-ed for the New York Times partially in response to an article that appeared there about the manipulation of computer science education by some wealthy tech companies. As you can see my experiences evidence their lack of commitment to the basic notion they started with; that computer science was truly for all. In any case it doesn't appear the Times will print it. .... Jeff Kaufman

I also went back to school in mid-career and earned an MA in computer science in the mid-late 80s and taught computer courses at Brooklyn College. I spent the last 20 years teaching tech/low level coding in elementary school and also teaching teachers at the district level -- things like -- how to set up their first email accounts. My computer lab was more popular than gym for many kids. I used the Basic Programming languahe initially to have the kids use x/y coordinates with a color of choice to turn on a pixel on the screen. They could then build that into lots of pixels to make large letters or picture. Simple coding but also teaching math.

I saw the power kids felt in controlling a computer. And also the logic and order one learns from programming. So I was all for the call for coding -- but only if done with a broader purpose.

One of my goals is to get off my lazy ass and go over to Jeff's school and hang out in his class.

In this piece Jeff points out the shift from the initial values that attracted him. It wasn't just about teaching pure coding but relating it to a cultural significant curriculum that would engage the students. Jeff makes this key point:

The course began with an assignment that required us to read a book co-authored by Goode with her colleague at UCLA, Jane Margolis entitled Stuck in the Shallow End.[8] The book, a landmark study of how racial and ethnic barriers not only persisted in the allocation of resources in Computer Science education but were reinforced by the then current pedagogy. Both Goode and Chapman sought to introduce a more culturally relevant curriculum and transform our pedagogy to reflect teacher practice which was sensitively inclusive in diverse student populations.

Apparently the original purpose of Goode and Chapman have been morphed by leaving out the "relevant curriculum" aspect.

Computer Science for Some: An Assessment of Two Different Approaches to Teaching Computer Science in a Diverse Classroom

By Jeff Kaufman[1]

After several years teaching United States History, Government and Law to at-risk students and given the opportunity to transform my teaching practice to a blended learning environment I embarked on a way to provide a relevant and rigorous curriculum to my students. Following some of the teaching models outlined in Gloria Ladson-Billings’ book, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children[2], I sought to provide a pedagogy that incorporated these concerns.[3]

There were many resources available to teach culturally relevant materials in Social Studies including the Zinn Education Project[4] and the American Social History Project.[5] Along with teaching practical law courses such as Police-Student Encounters[6] and Immigration Law my ability to tailor the curriculum to student needs made their learning both engaging and personal. I used the computer to provide a ready-resource to the outside world and encouraged exploration, research and discussion on the topics we covered.

Unfortunately, due to graduation requirements and other New York State Education Department mandates I was slowly being forced to change my curriculum to conform to high stakes examination requirements. While my pedagogy did not change it became increasingly more difficult to go into the depth necessary to provide the high-ordered thinking vital for students to fully take part in our democracy. Since students are required to pass the New York State Regents examinations to graduate my classes became test review classes requiring a pedagogy that was not only irrelevant to my students but was antithetical to culturally relevant education.

As this trend was becoming clearer to me and I contemplated retirement I noticed an offer by the Central Board of Education to learn and teach Computer Science. My classes were already paperless and seeing a way to teach an important subject without a high stakes test and proscribed curriculum I decided to investigate.

During the summer, in 2014, I attended a seminar taught by Joanna Goode and Gail Chapman, who, at the time, were associated with Code.org, a philanthropic educational company founded by an ex-Microsoft executive to promote Computer Science throughout the United States.[7] Goode and Chapman taught my cohort of New York City budding Computer Science teachers in a way that valued culturally relevant methods in similar ways Ladson-Billings did in her books.

The course began with an assignment that required us to read a book co-authored by Goode with her colleague at UCLA, Jane Margolis entitled Stuck in the Shallow End.[8] The book, a landmark study of how racial and ethnic barriers not only persisted in the allocation of resources in Computer Science education but were reinforced by the then current pedagogy. Both Goode and Chapman sought to introduce a more culturally relevant curriculum and transform our pedagogy to reflect teacher practice which was sensitively inclusive in diverse student populations.

I was skeptical at first but after trying out the curriculum I was sold. While I found some of the practice pedantic I nevertheless found a freedom to allow for high order thinking, positive and rigorous discussion and the time to teach students who were eager to learn. For some of my students Computer Science was the first time they felt they had learned something.

By the fall of 2015 New York City was all in with its Computer Science for All initiative:

NYC students will learn to think with the computer, instead of using computers to simply convey their thinking.  Students will learn computational thinking, problem solving, creativity, and critical thinking; to collaborate and build relationships with peers; to communicate and create with technologies; and to better understand technologies we interact with daily. These skills will be integral to student success in higher education, the 21st century job market and beyond.[9] 

I joined the excitement and volunteered to help facilitate Code.org professional development. This allowed me to recreate the same sense and transformation I had experienced while learning how to teach Computer Science. These experiences and my teaching improved my practice and looked forward to the day I would be able to teach Computer Science full time.

That opportunity came when I was accepted to teach Computer Science at a Queens high school which had the highest free or reduced-price lunch rates in its district.[10] The school had a Technology Department but there were no Computer Science classes. The transfer gave me a retirement-delaying reason to try bringing my newly adopted subject to a new environment.

It worked. By the end of my second year I had started a brand new Advanced Placement class in Computer Science and with the help of the principal brought robotics and 3d printing to students who had never experienced Computer Science education.

This past summer I went back for some more professional development and found out that Code.org had disassociated itself from Goode and Chapman and had adopted a new pedagogy for teaching introductory computer science. This new class stressed computational thinking and many of the goals outlined on the New York City DOE website but deliberately avoided the culturally relevant education that was stressed with my previous instruction.

Notions of equity were mentioned but the new facilitators were not equipped or instructed on how to teach computer science among diverse populations. Teachers under the new pedagogy were ill prepared to teach Computer Science for all.

It is important that our students learn to be prepared for their role in our democracy. Computer Science provides an ideal modality to cause students to become critical thinkers. If it becomes less relevant we will only reinforce the barriers our students face.[11]

---

[1] Jeff Kaufman has taught at-risk students for almost 20 years having taught in the high school on Rikers Island, a jail for adult prisoners held in New York City, a long-term suspension school for students prohibited from returning to general education schools due to student discipline transgressions and a transfer school serving under-credited, overaged students in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He currently teaches Computer Science at Queens High School for Information, Research and Technology, a school on the Far Rockaway High School campus.

[2] John Wiley & Sons, Mar 23, 2009

[3] These include: 

1.Communication of High Expectations

2.Active Teaching Methods

3.Practitioner as Facilitator

4.Inclusion of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

5.Cultural Sensitivity

6.Reshaping the Curriculum or Delivery of Services

7.Student-Controlled Discourse

8.Small Group Instruction

[4] https://zinnedproject.org/

[5] https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/

[6] See, more generally, https://www.flexyourrights.org/

[7] See Singer, Natasha “How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms,”

New York Times, June 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/education-partovi-computer-science-coding-apple-microsoft.html

[8] Margolis, Jane, Stuck in the Shallow End:  Education, Race, and Computing, with Rachel Estrella, Joanna Goode, Jennifer Jellison Holme and Kim Nao

[9] From the New York City Department of Education website at http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/ComputerScience/Introduction/default.htm

[10] QIRT is at 86% free or reduced-price lunch. See https://high-schools.com/directory/ny/school-districts/new-york-city-geographic-district-27-school-district/342700010000/

[11] During my first training, a lesson on coding for cornrow braiding was provided early in the curriculum. While this was only one of several culturally relevant lessons it caused the most discussion while I taught the lesson in professional development. When I taught the lesson to my students they could not believe someone had created software to help design cornrow braids. This lesson was omitted in the revised curriculum.

Leadership Academy Scandals - and MTA Too

I used to compare the NYC Leadership Academy training to the Nazi SS - where they would give a new recruit a dog when they arrived, allowed them to bond and ordered them to kill the dog to complete their training. 

People have been writing about the NY Post report on the Leadership Academy stable of unstable principals.

See:

ICEUFT Blog

SUE EDELMAN EXPOSES DOE NOT TRACKING HOW PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP ACADEMY MONEY IS SPENT

Leonie also added this on her listserve:

 

David Ross who oversaw numerous DOE fraudulent & wasteful contracts and who should have been fired years ago just joined MTA

 

"Summer of hell just got worse" http://nyp.st/2vh5LBq

 

Meanwhile, the DOE’s sweetheart deal with the Leadership Academy has cost millions – without any documentation of the “work” done for schools

 

http://nypost.com/2017/07/29/doe-lost-track-of-101m-given-to-leadership-coaches-audit/

 

The city Department of Education has awarded contracts worth up to $101 million to the NYC Leadership Academy — but didn’t keep track of where the money went, a bombshell audit by City Comptroller Scott Stringer charges.

The Long Island City-based non-profit has collected $45.6 million from the contracts to coach “aspiring principals” and teachers. But the DOE failed to produce records to prove the $183-an-hour coaches did what they were paid for.

“If the DOE can’t be sure whether or when the professional coaching even happened, how do we know it was effective?” Stringer asks in a scathing report obtained by The Post.

….The comptroller’s auditors reviewed $559,667 in DOE payments to the Leadership academy, including $394,007 for “leadership coaching.”

“Disregarding the safeguards in its own contracts and procurement rules,” the comptroller said, the DOE spent $385,612, or 98 percent of the coaching payments, without the required documentation.

 

 

Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Isn’t Over - New Yorker

“Do not underestimate the resistance of the Democratic establishment.”.... Bernie Sanders, New Yorker

In Trump’s America, the Independent senator is fighting to win back the heartland for Democrats.

New Yorker: Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Isn’t Over

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

 A good piece in this week's New Yorker. Contrast Bernie - a Brooklyn born Jew -- digging in deeply in Trump territory - while say someone like Chuck Schumer, another Brooklyn Jew -- hides out in Washington with the Dems so-called Better Deal. The internal battle continues as this selection illustrates:

Bernie said on MSNBC -- which by the way no matter what the rhetoric, side with corp Dems because they are a corp.

Democrats would continue to lose elections “unless we have the guts to point the finger at the ruling class of this country.” Hayes asked Perez if he shared that view, and Perez wearily issued a talking point: “When we put hope on the ballot, we win.” Clinton, Hayes pointed out, had put hope on the ballot. She had not won. Whereas Perez offers the liberal abstraction of inequality, Sanders insists on naming an enemy, the billionaire class.

Some excerpts:

Since the election, the Democratic Party has tried to move closer to Sanders’s views. Last week, in a small town in northern Virginia, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, announced the Party’s platform for 2018, “A Better Deal,” which is aimed at winning back working-class voters. The platform includes a fifteen-dollar minimum wage and a trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure, plans that Sanders has long promoted, often with little support. Many people in the Democratic Party believe that, when it comes to policy, Sanders has prevailed. Sanders does not see it that way. He told me, “Do not underestimate the resistance of the Democratic establishment.”

When the Democratic Party fractured, in the primaries, it was like a bone cracking—the Clintonites on one side, the Sanders faction on the other, with no obvious way to repair the break. Sanders’s supporters deeply resented the Party’s obvious preference for Clinton; Clinton’s backers accused them of sexism. Last July, at the Democratic National Convention, in Philadelphia, the Sanders faithful shouted down podium speakers, marched out of the hall and occupied a media tent, and covered their mouths with tape, on which some of them had written the word “Silenced.” The two camps clashed again this winter, in the contest for the Democratic Party chair. Tom Perez, who was President Obama’s Secretary of Labor, narrowly defeated Representative Keith Ellison, of Minnesota, the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus and an ally of Sanders. The insurgents had come up short again.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/bernie-sanders-campaign-isnt-over