Howling at George Will Who Knows How to Close the Achievement Gap

This spot on selection from Friday's Daily Howler, bears reproducing in full. (There's more on journalism and politics. Here's the link.) The Daily Howler is a must read as it goes beyond education, though ya gotta love the way he has taken apart Wendy Kopp and Michelle Rhee over the past year (check the archives.)

No self-proclaimed ed policy pundit and empty suit, Howler Bob Somerby spent a number of years teaching in the Baltimore school system in elementary school. Sorry you high school teachers, I think elementary school teachers who get closest to the kids, their families, their homes, their neighborhoods, have the best take on what is really happening and the solutions that might work. And what won't work. And to expose idiocies from the likes of George Will and David Brooks (see our posts here, here, here) when they speak Eduese.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008

GEORGE F. WILL, SLOW LEARNER: Is there any other subject where so many know-nothings pose as experts? Yesterday, George F. Will displayed his vast brilliance about the state of elementary ed. In the following part of his column, Will is discussing Benjamin Chavis, who runs a well-known public charter school in Oakland:

WILL (8/21/08): He and other practitioners of the new paternalism—once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism—are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.

That highlighted statement is simply astounding. And trust us: Will knows as much about this subject as you know about the space shuttle program. We know how to close the achievement gap! It’s amazingly easy to say—and many hustlers now constantly say it. For all we know, Will may be channeling Wendy Kopp, well-known biggest hack in the land.

Sorry, but no—we don’t “know how to close the achievement gap” at this time. When people parade about saying we do, they commit an unfortunate act. But then, every dumb-ass on earth seems to say this now—often on the flimsiest “evidence.” In large part, Will seems to be basing his uplifting claim on the high test scores at Chavis’ school (the misleadingly-named American Indian Public Charter School, which kids of all races and ethnicities). Many kids have achieved great success at the school. But does that mean we know how to achieve such success as a general matter? Will seems willing to say it does. But right at the start of his column, this “know-nothing know-it-all” dumbly describes one part of this school’s success:

WILL: Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too, is 13. Both wear the uniform—white polo shirt, khaki slacks—of a school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses to go away.

The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS's benevolent dictator, told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up to the rigors of AIPCS, which is decorated with photographs of the many students it has sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. So the boy asked, what must I do?

We often deride “slow-learner” students. But could anyone show less capacity for learning than George F. Will, right in this piece?

Why does Chavis’ school send so many students to Hopkins? Duh. In part, because it picks and chooses the kids who attend! The 13-year-old whom Will describes is already “doing well at school,” we seem to be told. Not only that: He’s so motivated that he’s paying another student to tutor him—and he’s already purchased the uniform of a school which won’t let him in! We’ll applaud that student, just as Will does. But if Will would only submit to paid tutoring, even if he could probably see that public schools, as a general matter, don’t select their students this way. The average school must accept all the kids who arrive—not just the brightest, most determined students, the ones who “refuse to go away.”

Friends, for just $5 a month, you can provides books and equipment for Will. Won’t you consider making that small donation to give him the help he deserves?

And while you're checking out the DC scene, read this July 28 post on union busting from DC City Desk. Pro-Rhee teacher blogs have suddenly appeared, which we wrote about here and here.

Dorothy Brizill, DC 7/28/08

http://www.prorev.com/2008/07/dc-shorts_28.htm


Watch Now - the Fenty-Rhee-Reinoso team may be on a collision course with the council over the proposed contract that Rhee will submit to the Washington Teachers Union. Rhee is seeking to bypass WTU's Executive Board and Delegate Assembly and take her proposed contract directly to the union membership. To accomplish that goal, Fenty and Rhee have launched a public relations campaign, both nationally and locally, to discredit the union and badmouth Washington teachers. The contract is a real union buster, asking current teachers to give up job security in exchange for potential pay bonuses. The government will not fund the bonuses, however; Rhee and Fenty are seeking startup funds from foundations such as Gates and Broad and the District's business community, such as CareFirst and developers. As a result, funding for the possible bonuses will only be guaranteed for the first year of the contract, while teachers will have given up tenure and job security, both for themselves and all new hires, permanently. However, the council has traditionally been very pro-union, and if councilmembers don't come out against these provisions in negotiations with teachers they will signal to all government employee unions that they can't be trusted to support them against Fenty's future union-busting initiatives.

EEP Marches to Denver

The true agenda of the EEP revealed: It's all about politics, not education. Children First, indeed.

Schools in Washington and NYC are about to open. A major contract issue exists in DC. Yet the leaders of those school systems are in Denver trying to get the Democrats to endorse their program:

credit recovery
false graduation rates
over crowded buildings
rote learning
inflaming racial tensions

(thanks to Voice for the list and to David B for the graphic)

Welcome Back Voice

A Voice in the Wilderness has returned at Chancellor's New Clothes from her temp digs in Europe with some pithy new posts.

This one focuses on what she's found about the European vs. the American view or work, benefits, etc.

NYC Educator made some similar points in this post comparing Canada to the US.

American workers identify more with Donald Trump than they do with the immigrant worker taking care of their garden. Big mistake. "It's a free, democratic country and anyone can become a Trump," they have been led to believe. It's all about class and the Trumps and their ilk are in a class of a very small size. As people get squeezed economically, there may be a resurgence of American worker class consciousness. But look to the patriotic xenophobia of this country (what, Obama says we should speak TWO languages) to trump all.

Class Size and Charter Schools in NYC

Here are comments from 2 posts by Leonie Haimson on the NYCEducation News listserve.

Here is [my question/comment on charter schools] – posted on the NY times website yesterday. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/answers-about-charter-schools/

(You can easily look up the funding your own school received last year on the DOE website, divide by the enrollment and check if your school got more or less than the $11,000 per student received by NYC charter schools last year.)

Question: Mr. Merriman says that charter schools are seriously hampered by receiving less funding, but according to DOE budget documents they received more than $11,000 per student this past year, and are projected to receive $12,500 per student next.

Meanwhile, the school that my child attends receives about $7400 per student. Mr. Merriman also argues that charter schools don’t receive any funding for facilities — but why should they need to when the administration gives them prime real estate in our existing public school buildings, at the same time taking away valuable classroom and cluster spaces from the students at the existing public school?

Moreover, as mentioned above, charter schools have the most valuable advantage of all — the ability to cap enrollment and class size at any level they want.

My question is this: who pays for custodial services, lunch, and transportation services at charter schools that share buildings with traditional public schools? Does the DOE charge the charter schools extra for this, or is this also provided free of charge?

thanks for the info in advance,

— Posted by leonie haimson

Harvard reclaims No. 1 from Princeton in latest U.S. News list and guess why?

Excerpt: So how did Harvard edge past its Ivy League rival? A comparison of last year's numbers points to one category where it moved ahead of Princeton — average class size. Harvard reports the percentage of students in classes under 20 students rose from 69% to 75% since last year's report, while the percentage in classes bigger than 50 fell from 13% to 9%.

Asked whether Harvard had made a particular effort to reduce class sizes, Mitchell said: "We have worked and will continue to work very hard to enhance the academic experience for undergraduate students." Since 2000, he said, Harvard has added 86 freshman seminars (which have fewer than 12 students), and more than 100 tenure-track faculty, while its student body size has stayed about the same.

So Harvard reduces class size for the highest achieving students in the country, including creating more seminars with fewer than 12 students; but somehow this administration can claim – with a straight face – that it doesn’t matter if some of our most disadvantaged NYC public school students continue to suffer in classes of 34.

How’s that for a double standard?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iUunRem0s3dCln7_7jnuHGcfNg9wD92N7QVO7

Leonie Haimson

No Excuses for Schools...

....but for the rest of government, A-OK!

Accountability? Go find it

UPDATED 12:30 PM

See NYC Educator's excellent related post on conditions No Excuses BloomKlein allow to exist in schools. Readers of Pissed off teacher's blog know all about her lovely trailor. (I hope NYC doesn't mind that I stole his picture.)

An item in today's NY Times "Emergency Radio Network Fails Tests" is a prime example why I reject the No Excuses theme applied to schools. You know the mantra - "Since there's no funding for education, we have to fix schools the best we can and not use things like kids' lives, high class size, etc. as an excuse."

Gotham Schools' Phylissa Cramer likes the "no excuses schools" expression in a reasoned piece on what KIPP offers. But I disagree with the one-way accountability argument.

Here are just a few points on how this emergency radio failure strikes a chord. Like the $2 billion in the contract Gov. Pataki gave to M/A-COM (a subsidiary of Tyco Electronics) whose credentials were questioned at the time. But Pataki's close ally former Senator Alfonse D'Amato represented the company, so why quibble over potential lost lives because the emergency radio network doesn't work?

In my narrow reasoning, multiply this deal by hundreds. Thousands? Millions? Billions of dollars that no one is held accountable for.

So don't talk accountability and no excuses for underfunded schools.

No excuses allow the acceptance of this crap and allows politicians and the business community off the hook while defusing the struggle to do what's right for the urban school children of this nation.

One of the biggest failures of the UFT/AFT has been the acceptance of the accountability trap which has distracted the prime force that should be out there fighting for full funding into defending an increasingly narrowing turf.

That's the real civil rights struggle of our time.

UPDATE: An article on medicare fraud in the NY Times on Aug. 20 was pointed out to me as another example of No Accountability. But when you choose auditors who are themselves part of the game, what do you expect? I expect they all should be taken out of their offices with bags on their heads.

Medicare’s top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system.

But according to a confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report, those claims of success, which earned Medicare wide praise from lawmakers, were misleading.

In calculating the agency’s rate of improper payments, Medicare officials told outside auditors to ignore government policies that would have accurately measured fraud, according to the report. For example, auditors were told not to compare invoices from salespeople against doctors’ records, as required by law, to make sure that medical equipment went to actual patients.

As a result, Medicare did not detect that more than one-third of spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and other medical equipment in its 2006 fiscal year was improper, according to the report. Based on data in other Medicare reports, that would be about $2.8 billion in improper spending.

“This report doesn’t surprise me,” said Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. He has pushed to cut improper Medicare spending. “To look better to the public, you cook the books,” he said. “This agency is incompetent.”

Think $3 billion would help close the class size gap? If the agency were a school they would close it.

Last Chance to Meet Mr. Fry - Shades of the Sun - at The Fringe Festival

Anyone who saw Nilaja Sun's marvelous play "No child," - see our report on the trip we made with a whole gang from my former school back in Nov. '06, must race over to the Milagro theater (107 Suffolk St. between Delancey and Rivington St.) for tonight's (9:45PM) final performance of "They Call Me Mister Fry." ((Tickets can only be bought at the door starting at 9:30 and there will be enough seating.)

Unlike Sun who is an actress who spent time working with kids and teachers in various schools, Jack Freiberger has taught in various LA schools since 2001. His one man play takes you through the entire process of the pain and joy of teaching, from your first job interview to the total involvement in the lives of your kids that can come to dominate your personal life to the extent that your fiance has had enough.

See the real impact of No Child Left Behind on teachers and students as Mr. Fry is told to put away his balloon sabre in the interests of test prep. Can he be accused of violating a school's "no weapon" policy when you are pointing a balloon at someone? The ideal world under NCLB is for every child in the nation to be doing exactly the same thing at the same time.

Jack manages to find humor in many of the teaching situations, with critical letters from supervisors posted on the screen, along with letters from students. NYC teachers facing Leadership Academy principals will howl.

Jack vividly describes the experience of moving from white bread schools that work to the devastation of South Central LA. "Gee, this school must be safe. Look at all the police around."
Did letting a kid who should have been punished go to a game where his closest relative ends up stabbed to death mean Mr. Fry is a murderer?

Jack called yesterday to thank us for coming to the show (I went with a middle school Spanish teacher) and I urged him to turn it into a film. He will be putting up some video clips on his web site very soon. I asked him to send back reports on what is going on in the LA schools and the LA teachers union when he gets back there. Jack will be around town for a few more weeks and would love to meet with some teachers. I'll post a notice for those interested if that takes place.

Read Jim Callaghan's Mr. Fry Teaches a Lesson in the Back-to-School section of the August 7, 2008 edition of the New York Teacher. (I can't find it on the UFT web site.)

How Serious Are These Conversations on Ed Policy....

.... if they leave out class size?

UPDATED: Friday, Aug. 21, 8AM

Philissa Kramer over at Gotham Schools writes:

If I hadn’t been battling illness all week, I would have beaten Kevin Carey over at the Quick and the Ed to the punch on Good Magazine’s current cover story, “School Wars,” by progressive educator (and blogger) Gary Stager. Though his criticism could have been gentler, Carey nails the big point: There are serious conversations going on right now about the source of trouble for urban schools and the best strategies for how to address them; these conversations have very real policy implications, but sentiments that, like these concluding Stager’s apparently interview-less piece, ignore both policy-level and day-to-day realities, just aren’t constructive.

No Philissa. The big point is this:

The “serious conversations” taking place often don’t include teachers who would in most cases say, “Don’t talk seriously about urban education until a real attempt is made to invest in a massive campaign to give urban kids the kind of education people like Kevin Carey would want for their own kids.” Note how often the Carey and other ed policy wonks supporting the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton EEP and leave out class size as anything more than an attempt by teacher unions to swell their ranks. The next thing out of their mouths are the magic words, “teacher quality.” As if massively lower class sizes would have little impact on TQ.

I don't necessarily agree with Gary Stager (who I first met in LOGO workshops decades ago when he was teaching computers in New Jersey) that the answer is parent activism. It would take a parent movement for sure but we also need to create a progressive teacher union movement that would fight for the resources to make this a battle for a true Marshall plan for ed reform. The current AFT/UFT and to a great extent the NEA try to straddle the "we want to be accountable" EEP position while having one foot in the Bigger, Bolder approach. They cannot have it both ways, as we in NYC have seen with such disastrous consequences.

Kramer and Carey nit pick while ignoring the big ideas in Stager's piece:

Traditionally, corporate philanthropy in education consisted of a speaker on career day or sponsorship of a softball team. I’m all for generosity, but I’m also for accountability. And I wonder, to whom are the Gateses and the Broads of the world accountable? They were not elected or even appointed, but their money is changing the ways public schools operate. They may do this for altruistic reasons, but what is a citizen’s recourse if their ideology harms children? And, worse, what happens if a billionaire finally throws up his or her hands and publicly exclaims, “Even I can’t fix the public schools”? Our schools may not be able to survive the sudden cash withdrawal—or the backlash.

One way to navigate this new era of “giving” is by asking a simple question: Would these folks send their own children or grandchildren to their “reinvented” schools? Is a steady diet of memorization, work sheets, and testing the sort of education the children they love receive? Of course not. If affluent children enjoy beautiful campuses, arts programs, interesting literature, modern technology, field trips, carefree recess, and teachers who know them, I suggest that we create such schools for all children. What’s good for the sons and daughters of the billionaires should be good enough the rest of the children, too.

A perfect example is James Eterno's fabulous letter to Richard Mills "Stop Academic Aprtheid at Jamaica HS" (posted today at ICE) where he points to the shortchanging of students at the bigger high school, while an elite small school gets preference. James writes:

According to the New York City Department of Education Website, Queens Collegiate is starting up with 81 students in the fall. They will receive $884,544 to run their school for 2008-09. Meanwhile, Jamaica is projected to have 1,484 pupils and was slated to receive an allocation of $11,636,267 this year. After extensive lobbying by the Jamaica High School community, our budget has recently been increased to $12,263,497. While we acknowledge the Chancellor and his financial officers for increasing our allocation, a huge per pupil spending gap between Jamaica and Queens Collegiate remains.

When the supplemental allotment is included, Jamaica, a traditional comprehensive high school that has many more high needs students, will be funded at $8,264 per pupil while the new selective school, Queens Collegiate, will be funded at $10,920 per pupil. This means that per student expenditures will be $2,656 greater at Queens Collegiate compared to Jamaica High School. This amounts to 32% higher spending for a Queens Collegiate student. Even taking into consideration start-up costs for the new school, this still adds up to separate and unequal schools within one building.

The promotional literature being produced by Queens Collegiate advertises lower class sizes. If Jamaica had a per pupil allocation similar to Queens Collegiate, we could easily lower class sizes to under 23 instead of having class sizes as high as 34, the level that we are currently projecting; we certainly could improve the student to counselor ratio and enhance other support services as well.

Despite the clear need for smaller classes, and the new state mandate to achieve them, particularly in low-performing schools, Jamaica High School In addition, valuable classroom space that could be utilized to provide room for this is being taken away from Jamaica to house the new school. is being denied the funding that would make this possible.

Gary Stager, (read Gary's entire piece at Susan Ohanian) like James, expresses the passionate anger that progressive teachers feel about these phony conversations that leave out real solutions. These are the true serious conversations that are taking place, not what Kevin Carey thinks they are.

Richard Rothstein has been putting his ideas out there for a long time on how to attack the problem and even has conjectured as to what it would cost. Seriously less than $20 billion for Fannie Mae, or billions for Bear Sterns. And need I mention Iraq?

"Serious" conversation over.

Candidates for Sale - Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Updated: Aug. 20, 8am

See Obama do the same old, same old "corporations before the rest of us."
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone on donors to McCain and Obama.
Guess what? They're the same.
A scary must read.

Guess who owns America no matter who wins?

Jose Vilson has some on the money comments at his blog.

"It’s not enough to just vote. We need to organize in our communities and educate in whatever capacity possible. Because if our own elected officials won’t look out for our interests, we’ll need to fend for self."

You see. It's all about one way accountability. The business and government community (one and the same) blames schools, teachers, students but expect to escape any real scrutiny while attacking those who want full funding of education as liberal big spenders.

Check out this from Susan Ohanian on corporate accountability. Or the lack thereof. Susan comments: "Teachers, start fighting back. Pass on this commentary."

Teachers and schools are being held accountable. It's time to start holding corporations accountable, too. We must demand that they contribute to the health and well-being of the country by paying their fair share.

Accountability Meets the Corporate Achievement Gap

By Peter Campbell

from the blog Transforming Education, Aug. 15, 2008.


The Associated Press ran a story on August 12, 2008, citing a report from the Government Accountability Office that revealed that two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts. And, according to the report, about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes altogether over the same period.

How ironic in the age of No Child Left Behind that the GAO - the Government Accountability Office - would be the one that would point out corporate America's lack of accountability when it came time to paying the bills in this country.

In his amazing book Class and Schools, Richard Rothstein wrote:

All told, adding the price of health, early childhood, after-school, and summer programs, (the) down payment on closing the achievement gap would probably increase the annual cost of education, for children who attend schools where at least 40% of the enrolled children have low incomes, by about $12,500 per pupil, over and above the $8,000 already being spent. In total, this means about a $156 billion added annual national cost to provide these programs to low-income children.

These are 2003 - 2004 data, and they're probably not completely accurate. But these numbers at least give you an idea of what it might take to actually close the educational achievement gap. They give you the sense that closing the educational achievement gap might actually be something that could be done.

But before we can close the educational achievement gap, we must first close the Corporate Achievement Gap.

Read the entire piece at Peter Campbell's blog.

Digging at the Underbelly of Teacher Unions

The stuff going on in Washington DC with new teachers attacking career teachers for not going along with Michelle Rhee's offer to end job security for more money may just be the war for the future of teacher unions. This is a complex issue that requires more analysis than I'm willing to give it right now. The attacks on DC union Pres. George Parker for sending out a reminder to teachers that they are not required to go into school early are pretty astounding. Check out this blog and some of the comments - a comedy routine can be written. George Carlin, where are you?

The real underbelly of most teacher unions is that they are truly undemocratic. We've seen that in places like our own UFT and in Chicago, where cooperative, collegial, and collaborative unions have gone along with the corporate plan. Are they worried about an attack of youthful Teach for America zombies out to cut the guts from the union? Is this a cadre being egged on by the EEP thought police?

My guess is that the DC (and Denver) scenario will start playing itself out in urban unions, which are mostly AFT. Don't discount Randi Weingarten's nimbleness in making all sides feel she agrees with them. But the long-time prospect for teacher unions to withstand the onslaught from without and within is not looking too well. Oh, the undemocratic leaderships will consolidate power and do what it takes to keep control even if it takes giving them what they want. But the rank and file is looking mighty ill these days. See New York City.

For progressive, career oriented teachers who have a full understanding of what is going on, yet are also opposed to a dictatorial union, there has to be some level of ambivalence.

"The Deciders" at the Fringe

On Saturday, I was asked by Tati Sena from the Fringe to videotape an event at the Fringe Festival after the show "The Deciders," a rock musical with a strong political message about the war in Iraq.

The Deciders web site proclaims: "Patriotism! Power! Paranoia? A driving rock score reveals in song and satire the secrets, dreams, motives and misinformation of those who make the decisions and those who live with the repercussions from the Washington Power Elite to Baghdad and beyond."

The event featured Cindy Sheehan who became a leading anti-war activist when her son Casey was killed. Her daughter Carly's poem "A Nation Rocked to Sleep," was a key song in the production. Cindy and Carley met with the cast and audience at a reception room in the MIchael Shimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University after the show. Among the audience were some parents who had lost a child in the war.

Here is a photo from the The Deciders web site taken after the show.


[Saturday] The Deciders debut at The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University finished with the cast and band meeting Cindy and Carly Sheehan. A very special experience to also honor Cindy’s son and Carly’s brother Specialist Casey Sheehan killed April 4th 2004 in Sadr City and Carla Euphrates Kelly’s brother Sgt. Clarence LaVon Floyd killed December 10 2005 in Taji, Iraq. Both soldiers were awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for valor in combat. Pictured above from left to right is Mitch Kess, Carly and Cindy Sheehan with Carla and her parents.

http://www.thedecidersmusic.com/blog/index.php


Unfortnately, I couldn't get there in time to see the play. So, Sunday night we went back and saw it. We ended up sitting directly behind Cindy and Carly, which made the play evenmore poignant as we noticed a tear or two wiped away.

George Bush - Dubya- played perfectly by Erik Hogan - comes up with a great idea to solve the war in Iraq: Turn the country back to Saddamn ( one of Saddam Hussein's doubles who took his place when the original Saddam died of cancer). (Don Imus suggested that many years ago.) The only problem is that Saddamn insists on having a musical (an updated version of Springtime for Hitler and Germany?) produced on Broadway. Dick Cheney (John Stillwagon) is not happy and manipulates strings on both Condi (the power voiced Carla Euphrates Kelly- who lost her brother in Iraq) and Dubya. The press (Fox) is skewered and the voices of Iraquis are heard through a fictional blogger. Cindy Sheehan (Amber Carson) belts out "The Devi's Place" and "Collateral Damage" loud and clear.

Heck, I'm not a reviewer, so check out Alyssa Simon's fabulous review at Theatre.Com posted at the Deciders web site.

There are 3 more performances: Tues 8/19 2:30, Thurs 8/21 5:30, Fri 8/22 8pm

Some backgound from the web site:
We’re so excited that Cindy got on the ballot in San Francisco and is celebrating with her daughter Carly with a weekend in NYC attending the August 16th premiere of The Deciders. Show creator, Mitch Kess, met Cindy Sheehan last summer during a rally in Union Square where the lyrics of her daughter Carly’s poem, “Nation Rocked to Sleep,” was heard for the first time put to music by Mitch Kess. Now a featured song in the production performed by Amber Carson. Dubya “Tries” to give news conference New York - As Dubya begins to address the audience at The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, a group of protesters interrupt his speech with their songs “Free” and “A Nation Rocked to Sleep.” Even “Dick” and Condi couldn’t contain the rebels with keeping to the “talking points.” It seems Bush & Co. need to come up with some answers.

One more sidelight.

After the show I heard my name called. It was Linda, whose son Michael Ruocco, played Rooster in Annie at the Rockaway Theater Company in May. He played the judge and camerman. Brooklynite Michael, now 18, in his statment in the program says, "After being part of such a wonderful cast and crew his view on the war in Iraq has changed and he believes it will change for you as well." We're looking for some big things from Michael in the future.

Creating 5th Columns Inside Teacher Unions

The next wrinkle in the assault on teacher unions and public education will be to create a 5th Column* of teachers within unions that advocate for the end of tenure in exchange for higher pay. Job retention would be based on student performance on high stakes tests.

Though some are anonymous, I would bet that many of these teachers have connections to Teach for America and have no intentions of staying in the system for any length of time. They have also been inculcated with a bias against career teachers.

Thus, the wars begin. Right now the chief battleground is Washingon DC, where TFA alum Michelle Rhee, who formerly worked for Joel Klein in NYC, is leading the assault. Internal battles are also taking place in Denver.

But don't expect any of this to occur in the UFT because the leadership itself functions as a 5th column and there is no need to create a divisive group there since they have functioned in a collaborationist manner. Thus the opposition, who are branded as divisive by the leadership, has consisted of people calling for a stop to the givebacks.

I remember issuing a challenge to find NYC teachers who support the policies of BloomKlein. Where are the blogs of support while there are so many blogs out there that are critical? Many of these bloggers are career teachers who demonstrate in their blogs indications that they are supremely dedicated to their students and to teaching.

At one point a someone who left comments under various names like Socrates claimed to be a NYC teacher who defended the entire TFA/KIPP/BloomKlein package but was so clearly a phony, he was soon exposed. He even ran a blog briefly and left comments at many ed blogs. Many suspected he was being paid.

But why pay a phony teacher when you can find teachers without a career perspective to lead the fight for the corporate privatizers and anit-unionists within their own unions?

Not that there are not a number of new teacher blogs in NYC, many of them from TFA and Teaching Fellows. But they have not generally been political, but more directed at the teaching experience.

One particular example of this genre that we should expect to see a lot more of is D.C. Teacher Chic in Washington. The blog has been out there for 2 years and promised an insight into a classroom in a DC school. But there are precious few posts giving us these insights while the overwhelming majority of posts fall into a political area, mostly in support of the Michelle Rhee agenda. There are also a bunch of supporting blogs out there with lots of attacks on senior teachers for not being willing to go along with the program.

But the DC teachers union is so weak from previous scandals, it shouldn't take much to undermine it. If any of these teachers were to stay in teaching, which I believe they won't, it wouldn't be shocking to see an opposition come together to challenge the union leadership on the grounds it's not willing to give up hard won teacher rights.

Teacher unions seem outflanked and outspent by a sophisticated corporate attack. A basic lack of democratic input and leaderships out to serve themselves rather than the members leave them extremley vulnerable. The UFT, which has been considered the most powerful, is already basically a head without much of a body. As long as dues flow in to keep them in power, expect then to compromise and collaborate. Only the growth of a serious opposition movement can put a check on these trends. And if such a movement ever got started to be a serious threat, watch whoever is in charge of the DOE do whatever it could to aid and abet keeping Unity Caucus in control. But we're a long way from that.

Here are some articles and blog pieces worth checking out from DC and Denver where groups of teachers are calling on the union leadership to agree with the so-called "reforms" that would lead to the end of a real teacher movement.

Bait and Switch In DC

Teacher John Thompson writes at A. Russo's TWIE

What could be wrong with Michelle Rhee's proposed $70,000 per year teacher pay increase, in return for a year of probation? Lots, as it turns out. First off, the plan doesn't include a neutral party in the due process role, which could endanger teachers. Second, it would undercut contracts throughout the country. Last but not least, there's no guarantee the resources would last. And then what? Would Rhee perpetually pass the hat for permanent wage increases? Bonuses and salary increases for teachers have a strange way of drying up after a few years. --

John Thompson

Teachers to March on Union Offices

Washington Post, Aug 13

A group of D.C. public school teachers who want Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's salary proposal to come to a union vote say they will demonstrate outside of Washington Teachers' Union headquarters at 9 a.m. tomorrow. The protest is being promoted on the blog D.C. Teacher Chic, and several teachers have told The Washington Post of their plans to participate.

The teachers are upset by reports that union president George Parker is opposed to a provision of Rhee's plan that would require instructors to go on probation for a year and risk dismissal in order to remain in the top tier of proposed salaries and bonuses. The pay schedule could yield more than $100,000 annually for teachers with just five years of service.

Teachers also have the option under Rhee's system of taking less money and retaining tenure protections.

The union has been battling internally over Rhee's proposal, with some members initially upset that Parker would consider negotiating away seniority protections. They criticized the president for being too chummy with the chancellor. Tomorrow's protest will reflect those teachers who believe Rhee's proposals present an opportunity rather than a threat.

Holes in NEA’s Denver Doughnut Diplomacy

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association is in a contract dispute with the school district. It is gaining national attention because the major point of contention involves the future of the city’s unique performance pay program.

That’s the standard plot you’ll find in any story about the dispute. But there’s a subplot as well. It involves a group of teachers who think their own union is being obstructionist on the contract. They have set up a web site, and have 287 teacher signatures on a petition calling for a settlement.

Teacher Jessica Buckley says the union is reacting to the opposition. “I honestly felt very intimidated,” she told Rocky Mountain News reporter Nancy Mitchell. Mitchell explains that Buckley “cited the presence of the National Education Association and envelopes of cash given to schools as ‘incentives’ for teachers to pass out fliers explaining the union’s side of the dispute.”

Mike Antonucci's Intercepts.

*a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation. - Wikipedia

Sol Stern misses the boat...

...in his Marshall Plan for reading in K-3 as he turns to a narrow view of reading methodology as a solution to whatever gap is being discussed. He talks about decoding and pushes his beloved "Success for All" program, a rigidly defined program that allows little flexibility for teachers.

I mentored Teaching Fellows who used this program and what it was really about was reducing class size by taking the entire school's resources - all out of classroom teachers - and for an hour an a half a day cutting the size of reading groups into more manageable chunks.

Reading doesn't just start with phonemic and phonic awareness but with speech - lots of it. And having stories read to kids an an early age.

The concept of balanced literacy which he is so critical of, actually has some sound theory behind it in addressing some of these issues but was implemented by Klein's non-educators in a destructive way. It also requires small, manageable classes, something Klein doesn't believe in.

Another factor was their rigidity - kids that did need phonics were denied it in the early years. I was in one class where one of the children was not able to function in the BL program and kept the teacher preoccupied while she was clearly needed to be circulating to make it work for the rest of the class. As her mentor I recommended she give him some kind of workbook so the other kids wouldn't lose out. "We're not allowed" she said. Okaaay!

I agree we should have a Marshall Plan for the schools. But covering only up to the 3rd grade (don't we see the enormous slippage between 4th and 8th grade scores) will be a drop in the bucket.

It is good to finally see Stern acknowledge the benefits of lower class size, which he used to pooh pooh. But if he thinks starting a reading program in kindergarten will do the trick, he is mistaken. By that time many kids need one to one assistance (Reading Recovery addresses some of this).

Open up schools for parents to bring their 2 year olds to be read to. Strengthen local libraries and run programs for very young children. Arrange for trips. It is the bigger bolder approach to the whole child before they enter school. Any Marshall Plan should attempt to diminish the language gap by pre-school.

The key ingredient in reading improvement is getting kids to enjoy reading. No easy task, especially when programs like Success for All and test prep often end up making the reading experience akin to taking a daily does of Castor oil.

NY Sun Speechless Over NY Times Editorial

A remarkable editorial appeared in the NY Sun criticizing an editorial in the NY Times. Leonie Haimson's reaction was like mine:

"I’m speechless as well; NY Sun criticizes the NY Times editorial board (read Brent Staples) for refusing to acknowledge the watering down of NY State testing standards, while pointing out the phenomenon in general."

And the editorial didn't even mention credit recovery where a student failing a course has to fog a mirror - faintly - to pass. One principal tells the teachers to consider "seat time" - when a student occupies a seat even without doing any work.

The true ed reform community in NYC has been beyond speechless at the shameless NY Times pandering to BloomKlein and Ed Notes has done a bunch of pieces pointing this out. The NY Sun has been a pleasant surprise as one of the few media sources to take a good hard look at Tweed, mostly by ace reporter Elizabeth Green and by columnist Andy Wolf. the Sun also had some independent analysis done on the data being spewed out by the State Ed Dept.

Here's the complete editorial where you can note how Bloomberg can't fathom that Green would ask him a question about these shenanigans. I wonder if Bloomberg pays people in his company for seat time.

Speechless
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/speechless/83870/


Forgive us, but what was the New York Times thinking when they wrote that editorial this week about No Child Left Behind? They wrote about every way states are making a mockery of the law's high standards — from watering down tests to quietly lowering the pass-rate — without once mentioning their home state of New York, which just happens to be Exhibit A in this entire debate.

It was New York that gave special accommodations to more fourth-graders taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress than any other state in the union — so many that some experts told our Elizabeth Green the state's results should be thrown out entirely. It was New York where a top adviser to the state Education Department argued the state should scour its test results for evidence of what the psychometricians call "score inflation," in which test scores rise regardless of whether true learning has occurred.

On top of that, it was New York where officials this year lowered the passing score on an Algebra exam required for graduation to just 30 points on an 87-point score. And it was also New York that high schools looking to varnish their statistical profiles were found to be quietly bidding farewell to teenagers who appeared likely to fail, without reporting their departures to the state. One potential outcome is that graduation rates could skyrocket and the dropout rate could disappear.

How these local developments could have escaped the attention of the Times is beyond us, especially considering that the newspaper from which we drew our final example in was theirs. Perhaps in their coverage of the No Child Left Behind law the mandarins of Eighth Avenue have fallen victim to the law of Not In My Backyard. They'd certainly be in good company.

Announcing the latest graduation rate results, Mayor Bloomberg could not for his life fathom why our reporter Elizabeth Green might inquire as to his opinion on the charge that graduation rates are inflated by schools trying to put on a good face.

"I'm sort of speechless," the mayor said. "Is there anything good enough to just write the story?" Well, it's the mayor who has traveled the country decrying lower academic standards for poor and minority children as a shameful practice we should immediately end. So the point is not to embarrass him or his chancellor or the Times. But the mayoral control of the schools is up for renewal in Albany, and one would think that both the mayor and the Times would want to be seizing the lead on the standards issue by setting an example here at home.

Tyranny of the test: One year as a Kaplan coach in the public schools

A fascinating article at Harper's by a former NYC teacher on the Kaplan and test prep scan. Long, but worth a read as the author, Jeremy Miller (who will probably never be asked to work for Kaplan again) spent serious time at a bunch of NYC schools, including Wadleigh, Truman, John F. Kennedy HS, and the George Washington HS campus.

Excerpts illustrating the true purpose of NCLB, which could have been designed (and probably was) so companies can gain maximum profit follow. Read the entire piece at Harper's.

...failing students become trapped in a foundering system, and the schools where students land en masse are left to carry out the test-heavy requirements of NCLB. For the New York schools “in need of improvement,” this means preparing students—many of whom are utterly lacking in basic academic skills and subject knowledge—to pass a battery of standardized exams.

Toward this end, it also means paying money to outside entities (often private companies such as Kaplan, the Princeton Review, and Newton Learning) up to $2,000 per student for courses focused not on improving content knowledge or on intensive educational counseling but on strategies for a “particular testing task.” (The total annual government expenditure per student in New York City is $15,000.) The failure of schools serving low-income students has been a windfall for the testing industry. Title I funds earmarked for test tutoring increased by 45 percent during the first four years of NCLB, from $1.75 billion in 2001 to $2.55 billion in 2005. With the ever growing stream of funding flowing through the nation’s schools, the number of supplemental-service providers nationwide has exploded. In New York City, the number of providers approved by the state’s department of education jumped from forty-seven in 2002–2003, the first full school year of NCLB, to 202 today.

The company’s revenues have jumped from $354 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion today, and it is now the most profitable subsidiary of its parent, The Washington Post Company, accounting for almost half of the conglomerate’s income. More telling are the margins: in 2003, Kaplan posted a loss of $11.7 million; in 2007, the company reported a $149 million profit.

Kaplan hired former N.Y.C. Chancellor of Education Harold Levy as an executive vice president and general counsel, and in 2006 relocated its headquarters for Kaplan K12, the division of the company that works in schools, from Midtown Manhattan to luxury offices downtown. According to Crain’s, the company made the move “to be closer to the New York City Department of Education.”

“Customization” and the educationally in vogue “differentiation” are two of Kaplan’s professed guiding principles. But Kaplan’s boilerplate assignment sheets and teaching materials hardly reflect the particulars of each of its customers.

I tell Ms. Semidey [who is supposed to be observed] I can teach the class tomorrow, since I’m scheduled to be in the school for two days. A little smile returns to her lips. “I’ve worked my ass off on this lesson,” she says. As I turn to leave, I am met by a small, perky woman. “Are you Jeremy?” she asks. It is the assistant principal, Ms. Campeas. She listens as I explain the conflict and the proposed resolution. “No,” she says. “This is Kaplan day. We will do the observation another day.” She calls Ms. Semidey over and firmly tells her the same. [So much for consideration for a teacher who has prepared for an observation.]

I find myself desperate. I can’t accept that I have not reached a single student in the program. Kaplan was being paid $1,200 per student (attending or not) for a job it knew from the outset it couldn’t complete. The money could have been used for an ESL or special- education teacher. Instead, I was receiving an entire day’s wage for each hour I sat in a nearly deserted classroom.

Kaplan coaches are taught to handle the strangeness of each new workplace by falling back on their highly scripted lessons and by quickly identifying school faculty as one of several possible archetypes; e.g., whether they are “trailblazers” within their schools or dreaded “saboteurs.”¹1. Kaplan’s handbook for coaches suggests that saboteurs be dealt with in a counterintuitive, Sun Tzu-esque way: by keeping them “on the inside where they can be watched rather than on the outside where they can cause trouble without it being detected until their effects are felt.”

I was cut off after I asked the teachers what the SAT was designed to do. It was a lame question, I admit, but the vehemence it unleashed surprised me. “It’s designed to keep people in their places,” a teacher shouted from the back of the room. “It serves the status quo.” There were approving snickers.

Yet as I came under attack at Truman, I found Kaplan’s training reflexively surging into my chest. We had been told in practice seminars to diffuse criticism by acknowledging complaints and then responding with an array of talking points intended to play on teachers’ anxiety over metrics and accountability. As a kind of disclaimer, we were to emphasize our transient and limited role in schools: We, Kaplan, could not ultimately be held accountable for whatever inadequate form of instruction was taking place at the school.

Bushra Rehman

I was hanging out at Teachers Unite Sally Lee's office yesterday and Sally introduced me to her friend Bushra Rehman, apparently a writer of some note. I had never heard of her, but why would I be familiar with that genre? Serendipity. I'll make sure to check her out. As someone who has found fiction writing to be extremely difficult, I am very impressed by successful writers. http://bushrarehman.com/.

Still Campaign '08

Maybe I was wrong. It is not campaign '12 but still campaign '08.

I am on the mailing list for some reason of a North Carolina Democratic party organization in which the entire newsletter focuses on atacking Obama and pushing Clinton with the hope that they can get enough delegates to switch votes in Denver.

Read this and see if you think Obama has a chance.

Do I think the Clinton machine has drummed up much of this? Hell yes. They never give up.

I posted links to one blog - with comments to give you a flavor at Norms Notes.

Fred over at Prea Prez also has some interesting thoughts.

Hillary Clinton is caught on video telling supporters she wouldn’t oppose her name being placed in nomination in Denver.

Her key adviser Howard Wolfson suggests that if the creepy (”my wife’s cancer was in remission”) philandering John Edwards had not been in the race in Iowa, Clinton would have won the nomination.

Billary appears to have bullied their way into speaking two nights at the convention. Will you be watching? I’m hoping the Cubbies are on at the same time.

Does Hillary Clinton still have dreams of grabbing the nomination? Or is she working to sabotage Obama’s campaign, hoping he loses so she can run in four years?

They Call me Mr. Fry - Teacher in LA at FringeNYC

http://theycallmemisterfry.com/Mister_Fry_.html


I ran into Jack Freiberger at Fringe Central the other day. Jack is a teacher from Los Angeles who has used his classroom experiences to do a one man show at the Fringe.

Shows still to come:
Sat. 8/16 3pm
Mon 8/18 3pm
Wed 8/20 9:15 pm
Fri 8/22 9:45 pm

Milagro Theater
107 Suffolk St.
F train to Delancey St.
J,M to Essex St.

Jack sent this email along:

Hi, it's Jack Freiberger, "Mr. Fry", the teacher with the play THEY CALL ME MISTER FRY. It was really great meeting you.

I really appreciate your support for my show. I've attached the NY press release that has the dates, times, and venue. If you can pass this out to the teachers, and actually get some to show up, I would be deeply grateful.

Also, please read this issue (August) of UFT New York Teacher. The "Back to School" section "Mr. Fry Teaches a Lesson". It's an article about the play.

Thanks again for your support and I look forward to hanging out with you after the show if you care to join my friends and me.

Jack

A few of us are going on Wed. Aug. 20, 9:15 pm and may hang out with Jack afterwards - if it's not past my bedtime. Let me know if you will join us.

You can order tickets online http://www.fringenyc.org/, or buy them at Fringe Central (201 Mulberry St.) or at the box office 15 minutes before the show.

Hill in '12 - Leo and Randi Attack Me

I've been writing on the issue of whether the Clinton/AFT/UFT machine really wants McCain to win so they can run Hill for Pres in '12 for quite a while. That the fall back position for the Clinton machine [of which the UFT/AFT machine is part and parcel] was to set up the campaign against McCain - in 2012. The NYT Maureen Dowd column on Aug. 13 nails them.

Now I know that many people feel Dowd has a thing about the Clintons, but she does deal with the facts of the protest and addresses the issue that the Clintons could stop the movement with a simple word. But they won't. Closure, ya know.

What we do know is that the actions by the Clinton gang will severely damage Obama to the point of no repair.

From the day the Clintons started to go downhill, we pointed to the quandary for UFT/AFT president Randi Weingarten. Insiders at 52 Broadway had been telling us for years that the major focus by Weingarten was to get Hillary elected and that the joint UFT/AFT presidency was to be used for that purpose. Thus the manipulation of the Hillary endorsement where it was done ass backwards - first the AFT, then NYSUT (NY State) and never the UFT where the members, who constitute the largest local in the nation and are the backbone of NYSUT and the AFT, were presented with a fait accompli. Thus, UFT Obama supporters were never given the opportunity to even discuss an endorsement. We wondered how Obama could be pulling 90% of the black vote nationwide while the Black members of Unity Caucus were silenced into supporting Hillary.

At the April Delegate Assembly, with Obama clearly about to clinch the nomination, ICE's Lisa North asked Randi the million dollar question, which I reported this way on May 9th:

At the April Delegate Assembly Weingarten was asked by ICE's Lisa North - will you be giving Obama the same level of support you are giving to Hillary, she smiled (sort of) and said, "We don't want McCain to win, do we?" The tone with which she answered gave something away. Then this was followed by a slap at Obama. We've also heard about chapter leader training has been used to slam Obama - a great way to get the word out to members without being on the public record.

After the election, the Clintons - and Weingarten - will spend the next few years mending fences.

And they will be aided by the entire AFT/UFT apparatus. Behind the scenes of course. That will be Weingarten's focus as AFT president.

Important to UFT members is how this plays out in the amount of real support Obama will get considering the UFT/AFT has such a big stake in Hillary.


Fred Klonsky ran the piece above at his Chicago-based blog, Prea Prez.

Then the plot thickens as UFT high school VP Leo Casey attacked both Klonsky and me, calling me sleazy and attacking me for not knowing what Randi said at a Unity Caucus meeting [Norman Scott knows this, and he also knows, because he makes it his business to know such things, that she reinforced her statement at the Unity Caucus meeting later that night] - Huh? Make sure to invite me next time.

Remarkably, Casey's attack was followed up with one by Randi Weingarten herself.

Before I get into those and Klonsky's response, a UFT member who was at the April Delegate Assembly meeting sent Klonsky this report backing up some of what I sensed but not all . I think that person got some of it right tbut missed the context of the deep roots that are committed to making Hillary president, by hook or crook.

Anonymous report sent to Klonsky:
At the Delegate Assembly an Obama supporter (and, by the rules of their game, not a member of our leadership’s caucus, they all support Clinton or remain silent) asked the “will we support the candidate even if it is someone other than Hillary” question, and Randi did answer clearly “yes.” And then she hedged. Not nearly as badly as Norm indicates, but it was a hedge. From memory, after her yes, she went on to mention how there hasn’t been outreach from the Obama campaign, that they’ve been hard to talk to. Didn’t make much sense. And, yeah, it sowed some doubt. But not much. It sounded much more like one last negative comment, one last unnecessary shot at Obama. But she was careful. The shot was at “the Obama campaign” rather than at him personally.

I have no doubt that the entire UFT phone-banking and canvassing machine will get to work behind Obama, but they might push a bit more on the local races, and not push quite as hard overall as they would have if Hillary had won.

Here is Klonsky's comment on the Casey/Weingarten's posts (which follow his comment.)

UFT’s Casey berates me. “Proud of support for Clinton.”
preaprez on May 11th, 2008

A few words in response to Casey and Weingarten. A couple of words about the two previous posts [by Casey and Weingarten].

First, I couldn’t be more pleased if the teacher union leadership will enthusiastically support Barack Obama in the upcoming historic battle with John McCain. As a member of the NEA, I wish my own union had done it already.

Frankly, I received the e-mail from UFT President Randi Weingarten with mixed reactions.

Mostly I’m happy about her assurance that her union will energetically support Obama when he is finally formally nominated or when Hillary drops out.

But, Weingarten’s claim that she never said anything negative about Obama seems to be parsing words.

Clinton’s campaign against Obama, particularly in recent weeks, has been repugnant, war-mongering and racist. What of Clinton’s threats to “obliterate” Iran? What of Clinton’s making use of racism in her warnings that Obama would be rejected by white working voters because he is black? Other Clinton supporters rejected this kind of talk.

What was my crime? I reprinted a post from a NY school’s activist (”slimy” according to the wordsmith, Casey) who has a blog that I read and sometimes agree with and sometimes don’t. I reprint a lot of postings and I will continue to do it, even if Leo Casey doesn’t like it. Interesting that he didn’t get so outraged when my anti-war essay was censored on the very site that printed his essay the day before mine was scheduled to run. In fact, not a peep from Casey.

No, Casey’s outrage is limited and targeted. Gerald Bracey writes an article on the Huffington Post about NCLB, and Casey says Bracey’s right-wing critics are justified in their outrage.

Someone from the union opposition speculates about what the AFT’s position might be in the aftermath of the Clinton collapse, given their leadership’s close ties to the Clinton operation, and Casey is outraged. In Leo Casey’s world you are not allowed to speculate about the political dealings of the union leadership, because as we all know, they are always open and above board. I reprint a portion of a post, and in Leo Casey’s world, civil debate is calling me “sleazy” and “shameful.”

But the candidate that they support runs a cheap-shot, Karl Rove-like campaign, and Casey’s outrage disappears.

Casey’s hysterical rant suggests that maybe there’s something to the speculation. A reasonable response would have been, “There’s nothing to it. The UFT will enthusiastically support the Democratic nominee in the race against McCain.” Because all the name-calling aside, that’s what I’m going to do.

By the way, I don’t know Norm Scott. Never met him. He’s never written to me. Never called me a name. Casey’s finger-pointing about how I joined Norm Scott in some exercise is not true. The only one who I join in exercising is Ulysses, my sweet Wheaten Terrier. And Ulysses is neither slimy, sleazy, divisive or blindly critical. On the contrary, he is blindly accepting of everyone. We need more like him.


[Note: The last time Casey attacked me [Konsky] it was because I said the UFT had supported Clinton. He said that the UFT didn’t support Clinton. Now he says he is proud of their support. You pick.]

Casey’s e-mail follows:

Leo Casey comment:
I am personally proud of the principled way in which the UFT and AFT has supported Clinton, sticking entirely to our view of the issues and Obama’s and Clinton’s positions on them.


This is one of the sleaziest and most outrageous seen in quite a while, and you do yourself absolutely no credit by reproducing it on your blog and giving it credence.
Every time the question of what we would do if Obama [or earlier, Edwards] won the Democratic nomination over Clinton has been posed, been completely clear and unequivocal: the differences among the Democratic candidates on the issues that are paramount for us — education, labor, human rights — pale next to their differences with the McCain, and we would actively support whomever won the nomination. When the question was posed at the April Delegate Assembly, at a time when Clinton’s candidacy looked like it was gaining momentum after Ohio, Texan and Pennsylvania, and Randi’s answer there was as clear as it could possibly be:
The person who asked the question, an Obama supporter, thanked her for her answer. Norman Scott knows this, and he also knows, because he makes it his business to know such things, that she reinforced her statement at the Unity Caucus meeting later that night, explicitly refuting misrepresentations of Obama’s positions on Israel — an issue of great concern to many of our members — and telling members that we would call upon them for November.
Since her words are so clear on this question, he is reduced to a slimy attempt at suggesting that she means something other than what she has actually said, again and again.
I am personally proud of the principled way in which the UFT and AFT has supported Clinton, sticking entirely to our view of the issues and Obama’s and Clinton’s positions on them. Regardless of what others have done, we have refused to go down any road other than that of the issues. Our endorsement, our focus on the issues and our ability to put people into the field in key battleground states has been one of the few important and consistent strengths of the Clinton campaign — a point which, I am sure, is not lost on an Obama campaign looking to November.
If you share with us the view that is potentially a realigning election that could put a progressive majority in command, than clearly the task is one of building the most powerful coalition possible for November, so that we can win the Presidency with strong majorities in Congress. A major component of that coalition will necessarily be teacher unions, as we are probably the most significant electoral force in the union movement. Norman Scott could care less about that goal of winning in November — as always, his purpose is to sow division. How shameful that you would join in him that exercise, and give credence to his outrageous misrepresentations.

Leo

And Randi follows with:

I agree with Leo. I have never said a negative word about Senator Obama. When asked at the April DA about this I was very emphatic about how we must unite the Democratic Party. Only someone who wants to be devisive or blindly critical, or simply lie, could have possibly misprepresented the content or tone of my remarks.

Randi

Anyone who was listening carefully caught the hesitation but there was also a quick recovery. But I always say, watch what Randi does, not what she says. Her actions in Denver will give us a clue as to whether my analysis has been correct.

OK Randi. Now is the time to put up or shut up. Roundly condemn the attempt to derail the Obama camppaign in Denver. As a super delegate, make a stand and just VOTE NO on roll call vote. And don't give us the democracy crap which we see very little of in the UFT.

Level Playing Fields Are Full of Weeds

Skoolboy over at Eduwonkette's place has an analytical post on education and socio-economic status, one of the issues addressed by the Broader/Bolder approach to ed reform. He starts off with:


skoolboy doesn’t know who was the first to say that the true measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members, but it’s an appealing proposition. All societies have children and adults who vary in their economic, social and cultural status within the society. In virtually every modern society, the more advantaged, as a group, do better than those with lower status, although individuals can rise or fall in relation to their peers. Today’s visit to the Olympics looks at the relationship between a child’s socioeconomic status and proficiency in math and science across countries.


His post made a connection to a fascinating program I saw on PBS yesterday (Wide Angle) on the rigid exam system in China and the pressures on students. When Aaron Brown questioned a defender of the system, she claimed that this was the closest to a level playing field where the child of a peasant has an equal chance with the child of a high government official. Brown was skeptical. "Well," she said, "naturally there are advantages and the peasant may have to be 10 times smarter than the official's child but if he/she is then the playing field is equal."

It's worth checking out just to see her justification at the end of the program. All rote learning all the time and you get weeded out before you reach high school Of course, China invented the examination system over a thousand years ago.

With the US schools, especially in urban poor areas, heading in the same direction, we hear the same claims of a level playing field from the Joel Klein/Al Sharpton Educational Equality Project. What they are really doing is picking off the 10 times smarter kids and pushing them into charter and other privatization situations while leaving the other kids behind in large, overcrowded, under serviced high schools.

Sort of like they weed them out in China in the 8th grade.

Level playing field indeed.

Rubber Room Suit Out - Kaufman Comments

Elizabeth Green writes about the tossing of the rubber room suit by a state judge in today's NY Sun. Jeff Kaufman provides more extensive background on the case by Teachers4Action and comments on the ICE blog. Head over and read Jeff's entire piece. Here are a few excerpts:

Back in January a group of rubber room teachers who called themselves “Teachers4Action” filed an action in Federal District Court against the City and the UFT (the UFT was not originally named but was later included as a necessary party which resulted in the loss of union representation for the charged teachers) in an effort to shut the rubber rooms down. Erin Einhorn of the Daily News reported that “The suit alleges that the rooms are part of a "scheme" to discriminate against experienced teachers and "reduce salaries by forcing teachers to quit or be fired.

Teachers4Action is to be congratulated for having the courage to bring these proceedings. They have clearly been instrumental in maintaining the pressure on the both the UFT and the DOE to help stop the abuse that rubber room teachers are subjected to every day.

While kudos go out to Elizabeth Green of the New York Sun for covering this story it is important to note that Justice Payne did not throw out the case because “there was no evidence that the arbitrators were biased against the teachers.”

While the judge made a side comment about the lack of evidence he never heard any evidence since the case was dismissed because Teachers4Action filed the wrong paper.

We hope they will continue to fight.

Campaign 2012: Pro-Clinton Group Runs Anti-Obama Ad

More on the Clinton undermining of Obama so McCain can win. Told ya so.
(And for anyone who doesn't think the Clintons aren't behind this no matter how much Hillary campaigns for Obama, there's a bridge to nowhere in Alaska I have to sell you.) And remind me of where Randi Weingarten and the UFT/AFT stands on this issue.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Newsmax

A group of Hillary Clinton supporters has bought an ad in an influential Washington, D.C. publication warning against turning the Democratic convention in Denver into what they call a “coronation” of Barack Obama.

The ad states: “If Democratic processes and principles are not respected, then the party will have a much bigger problem – a genuine revolt of more than 18 million voters.”

Another pro-Clinton group, 18 Million Voices, is organizing a march on that day in Denver “and nationwide to support Sen. Clinton and advocate for women’s rights worldwide,” according to its Web site.

Some of the Denver Group’s goals are at odds with those of the Democratic Party, The Hill newspaper reports. It wants an open convention, with Hillary’s name placed in nomination, as well as a genuine roll call vote with Clinton as a legitimate candidate instead of what it calls a “coronation” of Barack Obama.

Clinton backers in Denver will hold signs reading, “Denounce Nobama’s Coronation,” according to the Denver Post.

Read more

Thanks to FL

A Typical Retiree Day- A JOKE

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. I have a great example.

The other day my wife and I went downtown and went shopping. We were in a shop for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

We went up to him and said, "Come on man, how about giving a retiree a break?" He ignored us and continued writing the ticket.

So I called him a Nazi bastard and a pig. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So my wife called him a fascist shithead. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote. Personally, we didn't care. We came into town by subway.

We try to have a little fun each day now that I am retired. I feel it is important !

Thanks to CS

Warning: Some people took this seriously - especially a certain Unity Caucus cluck.
This is a joke. Anyone who would get into such a confrontation with a cop in a situation like this should be locked up -- for insanity.

Accountability?

Think it costs too much to reduce class size and provide other services to kids and parents in urban school systems? Create a phony one way accountability and standards movement to ignore and disparage small class size while putting the burden of accountability on teachers, schools, students and parents.

Susan Ohanian points to this article by William Greider in The Nation, Aug. 18, 2008:

Read this important article in the context of what the corporate politicos--Republicans and Democrats--have done to attack, demean, and deprofessionalize teachers--in the name of accountability.

Greider writes:

Talk about warped priorities! The government puts up $29 billion as a "sweetener" for JP Morgan but can only come up with $4 billion for Cleveland, Detroit and other urban ruins. Even the mortgage-relief bill is a tepid gesture. It basically asks, but does not compel, the bankers to act kindlier toward millions of defaulting families.

A generation of conservative propaganda, arguing that markets make wiser decisions than government, has been destroyed by these events. The interventions amount to socialism, American style, in which the government decides which private enterprises are "too big to fail." Trouble is, it was the government itself that created most of these mastodons--including the all-purpose banking conglomerates. The mega-banks arose in the 1990s, when a Democratic President and Republican Congress repealed the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented commercial banks from blending their business with investment banking. That combination was the source of incestuous self-dealing and fraudulent stock valuations that led directly to the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.

The central bank tipped its monetary policy hard in one direction--favoring capital over labor, creditors over debtors, finance over the real economy--and held it there for roughly twenty-five years. On one side, it targeted wages and restrained economic growth to make sure workers could not bargain for higher compensation in slack labor markets. On the other side, it stripped away or refused to enforce prudential regulations that restrained the excesses of banking and finance.

The only force capable of making a stand were the unions. Yet we have seen in our own UFT and AFT that they are part and parcel of this process. Have you heard one word from Randi Weingarten pointing to the disparity of the money spent for wars and bailouts compared to a true package of urban education reform? Thus, her calls for community schools without making the money connections, are just words.

But there is a long-time precedent in predecessor Al Shanker, who in 1975 used teacher pension funds to bail out the city as 15,000 teachers were laid off in a devastated the school system for over a decade with schools being left in disrepair with some closed and sold on the cheap (think they would be useful in today's overcrowded situation.) And the Tier 3 and 4 pension systems too.

Shanker followed up with Act II in the 80's when he allied with a very anti-labor business community to create the very phony accountability and standards movement that has led to today's devastation of urban public schools.

I expect capitalists in the business community to function the way they do. Just as I expect Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg to go after teachers and the union. But the "cooperative" and "collaborative" role unions, in particular the AFT/UFT tough liberals, have played when they should have been the last line of resistance, is what has helped make all their dreams come true.

Shameless Plug:
Read Vera Pavone's and my New Politics review of Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal

Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon - Review by Vera Pavone and Norman Scott in New Politics

New Politics web site
The review has not been posted at the NP site yet but you can get it at the Indepent Community of Educators web site.
Get the pdf
http://www.ice-uft.org/ruthlessneocon.pdf

Exporting NYC's Education "Miracle": Buyer Beware!

"As class sizes remain maxed out, dynamic teachers continue to depart the system in droves, and student dropout rates remain static, reality does not match the Bloomberg-Klein rhetoric."

Dan Brown in the Huffington Post.

Why Didn't The UFT Demand An Independent Investigation For Alleged Teacher Misconduct...

... Asks Chaz's School Daze.

Chaz writes:

The UFT spin machine is at it again as they proclaim in their propaganda rag, The New York Teacher, about how they won a great victory for the "rubber room" teachers. I have already commented on this phony UFT victory here. However, what was wanted by all teachers was a truly independent investigation procedure. Presently, all investigations are done by SCI, OSI, and the principal. In all cases the investigators either work for and are paid by the DOE. They assume that the teacher is guilty and their job is to get enough evidence to embellish, pervert, or to change the information to substantiate the alleged misconduct.

At a June 2006 Executive Board meeting, ICE EB member Jeff Kaufman asked the UFT to do exactly what Chaz asks for by hiring paralegals and investigators to look at the evidence before DOE investigators and principals with vendettas begin their machinations.

Randi Weingarten ridiculed his proposal. Imagine the costs! What would those do to the patronage mill? How would they be able to spend millions of dollars sending 1000 Unity Caucus members on junkets to NYSUT and AFT conventions? If money were spent on giving teachers charged a chance at a fair shake how would Unity be able to create enough union jobs to satisfy the desire of Unity members to get out of their schools?

This was just one event at Executive Board meetings that so grated on Unity Caucus and led to the co-endorsement of New Action so they could replace the ICE/TJC reps.

When it comes to teachers charged, UFT policy is to let sleeping dogs lie. If the member makes no noise and goes like sheep to the slaugher, so be it. That was why we started bringing rubber room people to Ex. Bd meetings to make the wheel squeak.

Jeff wrote about the issue on the ICE blog in June '06:

When I was in the rubber room last year a member told me “his story” about an allegedly forged medical note. It appeared that after the teacher spoke up about the number of special ed student in his class (he worked in District 75) he was injured by an autistic student. He went to the doctor, who according to the eventual allegations, filled out a note which the teacher changed. The teacher claimed that the note was changed by the doctor. The doctor divulged the teacher’s medical records to DOE investigators which indicated that the note had a different (later) date than the records.

I asked the teacher what contact he had with the doctor and he told me he was specifically told not to talk to him. Did the NYSUT attorney send an investigator or make any attempt to contact the doctor or in any way investigate the matter?

Recently, a NYSUT attorney amazingly told me that there are no investigators and that the attorneys are overwhelmed with cases to provide the defense that our members need.

This might explain why, at a recent 3020a hearing I attended I was not subpoenaed nor had contact with the NYSUT attorney until the night before my testimony.

The only way we, as a Union, tolerate this misrepresentation of our members is because we don’t really care about these members. Just remember, however, the next rubber room reassignment might be for you!

Jeff's full post.

2012: A Presidential Odyssey

by David B.