Blogojevich to Keynote EEP Sharpton/Klein Fest...

...Ed Notes News is reporting
...Bloomberg to send personal jet to bring Rudy B from Disneyland to Sheraton for Educational Equality Conference.

"He is the most qualified to join Sharpton and Klein on the dais," said a spokesperson.

NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION

The NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION -- of which the Parent Commission on School Governance and Mayoral Control, iCOPE, Black Leaders for Educational Excellence, New York Coalition for Neighborhood Schools Control, ICE, among others are members -- will be gathering Friday to voice our opposition to the insidious bedfellows of public education and private money on display at the National Action Network/Education Equality Project's conference at The Sheraton Hotel at 811 7th Avenue @ W. 53rd Street.

@ 9:30 am -- Coalition members & supporters will be at the main lobby entrance of The Sheraton to distribute literature

@ 10:00 am -- Coalition members & supporters will attend conference panel "How to Ensure Your Child gets a Great Education" moderated by Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform (& former Daily News reporter unflatteringly featured in yesterday's Daily News article by Juan Gonzales.)

@ 11:30 am -- Coalition members & supporters will attend conference luncheon panel "A Conversation on Education" featuring (among others) Rev. Al Sharpton, Joel Klein, the mayors of LA, Sacramento, DC and former Bush administration US Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling.

Just in case you need some additional motivation to come out tomorrow, check out the following:

Wayne Barrett's blog in the Village Voice on Pols, Press Party with Sharpton and His Corrupt Network

The Wonkster (Gail Robinson)'s blog in the Gotham Gazette on Public Schools, Private Money

EEP, I'm Not a Crook Either

The money reportedly did not go directly to Sharpton but was channeled through Education Reform Now, a group Gonzalez said is headed by former Daily News reporter and charter school advocate Joe Williams, who also heads Democrats for Education Reform. Williams (another busy guy), who is president and treasurer of the Education Equity project, would not tell Gonzalez how the donation was handled or what it was used for.

Williams did tell his former colleague that the project’s board has not met in the 10 months since Klein and Sharpton formed it and city Education Department employees have so far made all day-to-day decisions.

More of the story from Gail Robinson
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/04/02/public-schools-private-money/

Charter School Parents Have More Education

The Perimeter Primate investigates schools in Oakland and finds charter school parents have higher education backgrounds.

MUST READ:
Charter School Tactics

In Response to NYCLU/UFT Lawsuit, DOE Announces it Will Keep Schools Open

Gotham Schools has a report.

NYCLU Press Release at Norms Notes.

Ed Notes commentary to follow soon.

Curb Principal Power

From a public school teacher:

My principal would not let a visiting family view the pre-k rooms for no reason and when asked about the curriculum, could not articulate what we do! Needless to say that family said they didn't think this school was for them. It was a family who is part of the gentrification in the neighborhood. We lost a chance at some diversity.

I have heard from other teachers anxious to see more families diversify their public school. Many dictatorial principals fear outspoken, activist parents who might raise questions just as the don't want older experienced teachers who might question their fiats.

One of the major failures of BloomKlein has been the handing over of total power over schools to principals and the weakening of the union which served as a check and balance. We need checks and balances in schools, not only in a system of mayoral control.

Is the NY Times Asking, "Where is Hitler When We Need Him?"

Dave Leonhardt had an interesting piece on the impact of stimulus packages in the Great Depression in yesterday's NY Times.

More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.

The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.

No sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this bit of economic history has a particular importance this week.

I was particularly taken with, "The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining."

Well neither does most of the American political system look kindly on collective bargaining. How about the attack on teacher unionism as the major obstacle to education progress, by the likes of Bill Maher and Nicholas Kristof and by many Democrats?

Remember the anti-strike Taylor Law?

How about Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers, which opened the floodgates to antilabor sentiment in this country? The Obama administration's waffling on card check, which would restore a semblance of balance between labor and management?

One could claim that a key element in the financial crisis is this imbalance between labor and a powerful corporate oligarchy that basically controls the American government that has lead to the massive disparity in wealth. It was well-known that during the boom years, American workers did not participate in the benefits.

Remember the shouts of "more productivity" in exchange for raises from the likes of Giuliani and Bloomberg?

Take teachers in NYC, who got supposedly big raises, but for longer working hours and more working days, while paying more for health care. We paid beyond the pale for the 2005 contract which stripped teachers of so many seniority rights and created the ATR mess.

Young teachers, especially in charter schools like KIPP are being paid 20% more for 60% more work and with nowhere the same benefits as public school teachers. This is the new model of non-career educators with no families or other serious obligations outside the school door that is being so praised by liberals and conservatives alike.

Arguments that labor has massive power and influence over the American political scene by anti-worker propagandists are a joke.

This Leonhardt point is revealing:

Europe is doing less than the United States, but the gap isn’t huge. It just seems so because European stimulus tends to arrive quietly, from existing safety net programs. In this country, where the safety net is weaker, stimulus comes largely from new laws.

Yes, Virginia, we have a weak safety net.
Weak labor = weak safety net.
Low wage, non-union companies like Walmart and McDonald's, among our largest employers = a population mass that under financial crisis will not be able to afford a Big Mac = global financial meltdown.

Related
Orleans School Board suspends teacher raises, allows larger classes
Cutting teacher salaries in New Orleans can easily occur because they destroyed the union. How will that work out for stimulating the economy? How will the hordes of Teach for America recruits brought in handle that? TFA will encourage them to keep their heads down and think about the kids instead of their livelihoods.


European Workers Rebel as G-20 Looms
At companies, including Caterpillar in France and Visteon in Northern Ireland, workers have occupied offices and detained bosses.
The Christian Science Monitor
America's press generally presents these people as left-wing lunatics, not as angry regular workers. I bet you can't wait to occupy your school and detain your principal and assistant principals.

I'm Not a Crook

Former Chancellor Harold Levy and Al Sharpton. Levy preceded Joel Klein as a corporate no-nothing about education chancellor, both having been granted waivers by the NY State Education Department's Richard Allen and the State Board of regents. The whole gang should be taken out with their coats over their heads.


Leonie Haimson to the NYC Education News listserve:

In today’s Daily news, Juan Gonzalez hits it out of the ballpark again – just in time for Al Sharpton’s big pow-wow this week w/ Klein, Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Mayors and charter school advocates from throughout the country – all singing the praises of Mayoral control and the wonders of charter schools. At the same time, according to the column, Sharpton seems to be disavowing his support for mayoral control, and expresses opposition to “privatizing schools and corporate payoffs in education."

Yet at the time when Sharpton joined up with Klein to form the “Education Equality Project”, some of us were rather suspicious, given that he had just come up with $1 million, enough to settle w/ the feds who were about the indict him for tax fraud.

Now it looks like at least half of these funds were provided by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former Chancellor Harold Levy. This hedge fund is heavily invested in gambling and is lobbying the city and the state to acquire Off Track betting and Aqueduct race track. The funds for Sharpton were officially donated to a 501C3 organization that promotes charter schools, a “charitable” organization that allows the donors to take a hefty tax deduction, but then apparently funneled to Sharpton’s operation, which is a 501C4 lobbying group, with no tax-deductibility allowed.

At the time EEP was announced, we wrote on the blog the following:

Until recently, Sharpton was under the cloud of numerous investigations. Most prominently, federal officials accused him of owing nearly $10 million in payroll taxes, and threatened him with criminal prosecution. According to news reports, “Sharpton’s civil rights group had failed for several years in a row to file income tax returns, obtain workers compensation insurance, or disclose how much it was collecting in donations or paying its top employees, as required by law.”

Just ten days after launching the Education Equality Project, Sharpton came up with $1 million, which he promptly handed over to the IRS as a downpayment; in turn, the feds agreed to drop criminal charges if he paid back what he owed the government over the next few years.

….So where did he get the $1 million? As Sharpton explained to the Daily News, “"I make money, so I can pay." Another mystery is who is funding the Education Equality Project. Until recently, David Cantor, the chief communications officer of the DOE, was listed as the main press contact on all its press releases; now they are being sent out without any names attached. Is this effort being subsidized by tax dollars that should be going towards improving our schools? Or as Cantor recently announced to our list serv, is the source of funding an “anonymous” donor, but someone other than Bloomberg? If so, who might that be?

Mayoral control = lack of corruption? I don’t think so.

There is still the question of where the other half a million came from that allowed Sharpton to settle with the feds.

See Juan Gonzalez’s dynamite column.
Rev. Al Sharpton's $500G link to education reform

Striking Back at Sharpton/Klein/Bloomberg

AT LAST.
Community groups in the black community making a stand against mayoral control and the Al Sharpton/Joel Klein/Bloomberg unholy alliance. And stories are emerging about just how much money was funneled to Sharpton to buy him off. Word is he is very nervous about these protests and behind the scenes has been trying to make some deals. Once Sharpton is exposed within the community, his little cushy deals and exploitations could come crashing down. Don't let him off the hook. Our own emerging Save the Public Schools group is reaching out to these groups and we will talk about it at today's meeting. One day, who knows, we may actually hold a rally that may be smaller than the one the UFT held recently, but with much wider impact as we take on the true purposes of charter schools, something the UFT wouldn't touch because of its own involvement with charters.

If you're free Friday afternoon, or happen to be sick and take a day off, sign up- lunch is free and it's a duty free lunch at that. Other than booing, that is.


EDUCATION DEMOCRACY ACTION ALERT !!!!

ORDERLY CHALLENGE!!!

AGAINST MAYORAL CONTROL and Collaborators at the National Action Network--NYC Department Of Miseducation Conference—Luncheon Panel


FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2009 11am

The Sheraton Hotel

811 7th Ave. (West 53rd St. And 7th Ave)

This convention, sponsored by the mis-named ‘Education Equality Project’ and the National Action Network, is orchestrated by Klein/Bloomberg/Sharpton.

The panel-luncheon spotlights Joel Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, Rev. Al Sharpton and others. They intend to keep the myth going that NYC is an educational “Miracle” under Mayoral Control rather than the DISASTER it actually is.

THE Panel AND THE LUNCH are FREE. But REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED FOR ATTENDANCE

WE MUST BE PRESENT IN NUMBERS AT THIS CONFERENCE. PLEASE SIGN UP TO ATTEND AND JOIN US. – at: http://www.edequality.org/AttendTheConvention

A NEWLY-CONSTITUTED GROUP CALLED NO TO MAYORAL CONTROL COALITION (NTMCC) - which BNYEE (Black New Yorkers for Edudation Excellence) and the New York Coalition for Neighborhood School Control (NYCNSC) are part of - IS PLANNING TO ATTEND ON FRIDAY TO HEAR THE PANEL BELOW AND EAT LUNCH TOGETHER.

IF YOU INTEND TO JOIN US, MEET IN THE LOBBY OF THE SHERATON AT 10:30. LET’S SIT AS A GROUP.

ATTEMPTS ARE BEING MADE TO INCLUDE A PARENT AND AN EDUCATOR ON THE PANEL BECAUSE AS PLANNED RIGHT NOW, THE PANEL ONLY CONTAINS THOSE IN SUPPORT OF THE BLOOMBERG/KLEIN TEAM.

WE KNOW THIS IS SHORT NOTICE BUT IT IS AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY TO SEND A POWERFUL MESSAGE OF DISAPPROVAL ABOUT NYC’S EXPERIMENT WITH MAYORAL CONTROL -- where among numerous outrages of the past 7 years there are such educational fatalities as a 52% high school dropout rate!!! See the Fact Sheet below for more details of the “miraculous” bloomberg-klein regime.

AFTER YOU REGISTERED FOR THE CONVENTION PLEASE let BNYEE and/or NYCNSC know.

***********************

The Mis-education Mayor

In two terms NYC mayor, Bloomberg has made one of the most segregated and unequal public school systems, even WORSE. Through centralized Mayoral Control, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein (Bloomberg-Klein) restructured the Public Schools into a mayor-chancellor-school principal educational dictatorship.

BLOOMBERG-Klein has…

1. …trapped most Black and Latina/o (B&L) students in a 21st century system of educational apartheid. You should know that in NYC:

· Many B&L students are ‘tracked” to dropout before 9th grade

· Less than 50% of B&L 9th graders graduate

· Less than 30% of B&L students graduate with regents diplomas

· B&L students in “gifted” programs have been reduced by more than half.

· B&L students comprise 72% of the school population, yet constitute less than 17% of the students in the specialized-test high schools

· B&L students are about 13 times LESS LIKELY than Asian & White (A&W) students to attend a specialized-test high school

2. …increased the suspension and criminalization of Black and Latina/o students in their schools; accelerating the genocidal school-to-prison pipeline.

3. …dismantled the district “School Boards” and disempowered the Community Education Councils (CECs) as well as the school leadership teams (SLTs).

4. …thoroughly disenfranchised parents and community residents from their human right to shape public school policy.

5. …systematically “disappeared” Black teachers & administrators (student role models) into “rubber rooms” or completely out of DoE.

6. …aggressively recruited and funded a large majority of new, untrained white college graduates to teach predominantly B&L students.

7. …silenced the UFT leadership and the CSEA leadership.

8. …squandered billions of taxpayer dollars in contracts, and millions in jobs to Wall Street cronies to maintain a racist system. Yet NYC DoE eliminated ALL Black and Latina/o public school vendors by requiring a minimum of $5 million in sales to do business.

9. …failed to comply with state and federal legislation requiring the (teaching and) learning of Black History by all students.

10. …refused to allocate the Campaign For Fiscal Equity (CFE) Funds equitably.

11. …deceived many parents by portraying NYC’s generally mediocre group of charters as an honest path to educational equity. Since less than 1-in-25 students can even attend a charter, Bloomberg-Klein’s disinformation has simply served to confuse some parents and weaken solidarity on the powerful demand: “Educational excellence for ALL.”

Two Terms have been too many! He CAN’T have Three!!!

Bulletin Boards 'R US

The following interchange on bulletin boards either affirms the need for extensive teacher contracts or makes the point that no matter what they say, or don't say, they are often irrelevant. I always found that there was much fuzzy language that could be exploited by admins. At one point the UFT was able to get away with stuff. But under BloomKlein, principals have received training and advice in how to go around the contract and chapters have been devastated.

Take the ironclad language of a guaranteed duty-free lunch period. This has been violated constantly through "lunch 'n learn" meetings. The UFT response: make believe it isn't happening. Note Woodlass' advice includes the proviso of whether the UFT would back such a grievance on bulletin boards. My bet is it won't or only do so tepidly because the UFT strategy has been to hope there are places where the contract is being followed and a loss on the grievance would open up the door. Not a winning or aggressive long-term strategy. But what else can we expect from them?

Posted to ICE-Mail:
Hi Group,

What exactly is the story with bulletin boards and the UFT contract?

My admin says ( in *writing*): "Bulletin boards in the hallways and cafeteria must display current ( name of school) themes and be updated by the second Friday of each month."

Note the word "must". A slew of other specifics follows.

OTOH, the Know Your Rights section of the UFT website contains the following:

Bulletin Boards
If you are required to do classroom or hall bulletin boards, their format is up to you. In a right won recently, your principal cannot dictate how they look or discipline you for their format.

I told my supervisor of the apparent contradiction; she said she was not aware that the contract spoke to this issue. Actually, I can't find in in the contract either, but it IS most definitely on the UFT website as quoted.

May seem minor but is NOT. These out-of-classroom ex-teachers OBSESS about bulletin boards. Form AND content; to the most *minute* detail. It is a HUGE distraction from real teaching.

So who's right? Me or the admins?

Thanks.

Woodlass reply:

Bulletin boards are mentioned in the contract in Art. 21.A.6, below.
But notice it says the FORMAT, not the CONTENT.

The way I see it is this:

The only way to resolve this ambiguity (if you see it as ambiguous, it may be really concrete and NOT grievable at all) is if the union backs you at Step II (which is up to you to convince your DR to go for it), and then hope it gets it to the arbitrators. They don't pick up every Step I and take it all the way. I try not to file a grievance unless I know they're going to back it at Step II. Step II we always lose, but if it gets to Step II and loses, you might be able to convince union to take it to Step III, which is then arbitration. There are only limited slots for arbitration, so I don't know they'll go the whole way with you.

ARTICLE TWENTY-ONE: DUE PROCESS AND REVIEW PROCEDURES
A. Teacher Files
Official teacher files in a school shall be maintained under the following circumstances:
6. The following issues shall not be the basis for discipline of pedagogues: a) the format of bulletin boards; b) the arrangement of classroom furniture; and c) the exact duration of lesson units.


Thanks, Woodlass. We're not at the grievance point yet. Apparently this is a "right recently won" ( the UFT website) and it is likely that the admins are not up to date.

OTOH, if they lose the authority to micromanage bulletin boards I'll be damned if I know what they'd come-up with nest.

They have to do *something*. Or appear as though they are.

I'll make the rounds with the aforementioned 21 A6, and see what kind of reaction it elicits.

I'll keep you posted. ( BTW, yes.... too bad "format" is not defined; hard to distinguish sometimes from "content".)

Thanks again.

Public Schools in District 14 under assault

Norm,

Yesterday my daughter received a letter and an application soliciting her to apply to Williamsburg Charter HS. She is a sophomore at another high school. I have no idea how they got her address! She never applied there as a freshman. Then today letters were sent home to parents about the D14 CEC meeting. A charter school person is the slated guest. A new charter school is going into PS 297. These charters are desperate to recruit. There are small charter schools all over the district.

Don't forget to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Fusing the Human Atom

Trying to both report on ed events in NYC and being part of them as an organizer surely gets confusing. I don't operate on any high-minded principals or with much of a plan, which is a good insight into the disorganized nature of my life. Instinct and the inability to say "NO" seem to be the driving force. I'm just as happy to sit in the backyard and read. Or make videos of just about anything that moves. Or doesn't move. (How about still life videos as an art form?)

I guess the one operative principal has been in the belief in releasing the latent energy inherent in not the splitting, but the uniting of the human atom. People fusion.

I was thinking about the enormous energy released when the atom is split and the analogy to the energy generated when masses of people become politically active. I have always believed if a mass movement of politically conscious teachers became active in alliances with parent and community groups and took this alliance beyond education into other unions (many parents are union members too, or would like to be) the energy released would be enormous, creating a sort of atomic social movement by bringing people together. Would the BloomKlein education deformers have gotten away with all their crap if such a movement existed?

A true union would be doing this but with the UFT AWOL, the only way for this to happen is to do it ourselves. This is where I part ways with some of my colleagues in ICE and other critical voices within the UFT. I think they spend too much time addressing the structures set up by the UFT/Unity Caucus leadership, time that would be better spend organizing in their own schools and beyond. But I seem to be in the minority. And there is a point to be made to use the union structures to pressure the leadership. My issue is I have no faith in the leadership to do anything but mislead.

This leads me to the "Save Public Education" conference we helped organize this past Saturday and the building of a coalition to fight back against the education deformers. We looked at it as a beginning of building a grass roots movement, not as a one-time event. The break-out sessions worked on future strategies and we're holding an organizing meeting (see side panel) tomorrow to follow up.

About 80 people came out on a rainy Saturday, mostly teachers, but some parents and representatives of community groups, like Time Out From Testing and students like Global Kids (two of them spoke and were extremely impressive.) Pretty interesting. Just as interesting was the organizing efforts behind it.

My experience as a teacher/activist certainly worked for me. In the 1970's I was part of a group that met almost every week and we were enormously active. While teaching was tiring, I walked out of these meetings energized for both my job and the other activities. So many teachers feel isolated in their schools, the boost they get from meeting with like-minded people has a positive effect on them on the job and in dealing with the political mind field school politics can so often turn out to be.

Now I know that things are very different today, as the DOE has turned schools into sweat shops and teachers are exhausted. But I've also seen the way teachers we've been meeting with feel as a result of these meetings. And it seems to be a good thing.

Over the long term, the number of people involved in active organizing, call it a core, is the key to creating change. I realized the importance of an active core after the last UFT general election in 2007 and was resolved not to do that again unless a core of committed activists emerged. it doesn't have to consist of an enormous number of people because the energy released in the human fusion process is enormous. But countering the massive Unity machine requires such a core. Thus, after that election, my attention shifted towards working to build a core. I knew we wouldn't get anywhere without tapping into the new teacher social activist group and trying to bring the older, union conscious people together with them.

With Teachers Unite aiming at reaching the newer teacher crowd and creating a higher level of union consciousness along with a social justice viewpoint (register for the 4 week course at the TU website) and the increasing interest of some members of NYCoRE in the union, there was a natural affinity to merge some of the work we were doing in ICE and Education Notes. Thus, for the first time, various scattered forces began to come together, like circling rocks in a pre-planet stage beginning to coalesce in a very loose manner. I would say it's still in the Saturn ring stage, but the conference was a sign that some rocks are sticking.


That the March 28 conference was well-organized and actually worked like we planned is somewhat astounding. I generally expect things to go wrong all the time, sort of like sitting on a cliff waiting to be pushed off. But having people like Angel Gonzalez and Sam Coleman pulling things together taught me a great deal about how to get things done. You know, that old dog thing was operating here.

I won't get into all the details of the conference at this time. I spoke on ATRs and seniority and being forced to organize my thoughts coherently into a 6 minute presentation was very valuable. I will post something soon. Sam did a great job on the high stakes testing issue and Michael Fiorillo nailed the grand unification theory of the attack on public ed in his usual brilliant way – hey Michael, how about a written account? TAGNYC and some rubber room people were also involved as well as other independents. (Read Pissed Off Teacher's report on the conference.)

As interesting as the event itself was the process behind it. Process over product is way more important I believe. Think of the way the ed deformers take the opposite, bottom line approach which is so ruinous to education. So let's look at the process.

We started with an ICE ATR committee in January focused on just that issue. I remember John Lawhead taking it beyond that at an ICE meeting, fusing the concept of high stakes testing and the emerging closing schools issue. John's points unlocked the narrow view I held and allowed a broadening concept to emerge. This group started to meet regularly and put out a few leaflets and we made contacts with people at closing schools, along with people active in the Ad-hoc ATR group that did such a good job organizing the November ATR rally (see the part 1 and 2 of the video I did showing the UFT selling out the rally The Video the UFT Doesn't Want You To See: The ATR Rally).

At the same time, we've been involved with the Justice Not Just Tests subgroup of NYCoRE and we've been passing around a petition to stop the use of teacher data reports and the misuse of tests. We've also been doing work on the merit pay issue. We got 200 signatures at the March UFT Delegate Assembly (see pics in the previous post to this), with even some Unity Caucus people signing it.

It seemed a natural step to merge the work of the ICE ATR committee, which renamed itself ASC-ICE (ATR/School Closing) and we started holding joint meetings.

Concurrently, Angel Gonzalez and I took a labor study course given through NYCoRE and we worked closely with the organizers of the study group, giving a presentation on the union at the culminating event a few weeks ago to a group of mostly young teachers. Since this was on a Friday night, a bunch of us went out to a bar afterwards, where fusion really works over a few beers. (I was over 2 times older than most of them, so I was pretty well fused.)

Some of the work of that group became incorporated into the committee planning the conference. A few teachers connected to ISO and TJC also became involved in the planning committee.


Beside being able to pull off a successful event, it is just as important for the core to keep coalescing and there's no better place to let gravity work than in a bar.

Thus, after a long day of conferencing, ten of us retired to a local bar Saturday to do some coalescing. That this is not a pre-planned group but anyone who felt like going makes things very open ended. No matter how many meetings you attend together, the socializing after is often more important in building bonds and trust. Unfortunately, this bar charged $7 a beer and food was expensive, so we did some quick bonding and trust building and headed off for the rest of the weekend, only to gather again tomorrow afternoon at CUNY to plan the next steps. Ahhh, there's nothing like some good old Core knowledge.

The only thing that bummed us out was that a bunch of our compadres in NYQueer held another conference the same day, which went pretty well I hear. (Organizing to Create Safer Schools for LGBTQ Youth)

Next time we will double check our calendars. So much organizing to do, so few troops.

Emerging coalition to defend public education: The Grass Has to Have Roots

The coalition of ICE and NYCORE had a very successful conference this past Saturday. The energy and turnout were great. To keep the momentum up we are having a followup meeting to continue planning events and actions around the issues of testing/school closings/ATRs and Charter schools.

This is a great chance to get involved, there will be lots of new people and lots of new energy. We are connecting to parent and community groups and hoping to get lots of teachers involved in the struggle.

The grass has to have roots!

WHAT: Emerging coalition to defend public education meeting!

WHERE: CUNY grad center, room 5409 (bring photo id)
N,Q,R,W,B,D, F,V to 34th street. Grad. Center is on 5th ave.
between 34th and 35th street.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 1st, 5:00-7:00

Who: Everyone interested in defending public education from the falsely labeled education "reformers" and their corporate, for profit, agenda!

Pics of Protest

Our High stakes testing petitioning at UFT DA last week
Have you circulated the Justice Not Just Tests petition in your school calling on the UFT to take a stand against teacher data reports and the testocracy?
(More photos)















Protest at PS 153 Washington Height, NYC (More photos)


Don't forget to check the side panel for updates and other important information.
TODAY: PROTEST BUDGET CUTS AT GOV PATTERSON OFFICE, 5:30

Duncan Appoints 7-Year Old as Top Aid

The pendulum in the country has swung too far to adults – Arne Duncan

Ed Notes Foundation to Fund Microsoft Reform

The Ed Notes multi-billion dollar foundation has announced a software reform movement with the aim of getting Bill Gates' Microsoft corporation to produce software that won't cause your computer to want to pack its bags and head off to Australia.


"Since Microsoft resists the expansion of competitive operating systems, browsers and other software that would lead to higher quality products and Microsoft monopolists resist measuring and rewarding effectiveness, this is a long overdue reform effort," said Ed Notes spokes animal Pinky, the cat.


Ed Notes spokes animal, Pinky

"In fact evidence shows no connection between the quality of Microsoft software and most of the measures used to determine the pay of its employees, who appear to be compensated by the length of computer code they write, rather than how well it works. The quality and superiority of software from companies like Apple -- these all are mostly irrelevant to the market place, with Microsoft using ruthless tactics like sending blue screens of death that have been one of the leading causes of computer suicides."

New measures of measuring the effectiveness of Microsoft's software engineers will be implemented. One purpose of measurement would be to deploy the best software writers to the neediest departments of Microsoft, and pay them accordingly; another, to fire the worst. "But the main point," Pinky said, "is that effective software engineering can be taught: The biggest part is taking the people who want to be good -- and helping them."

See Norms Notes Bill Gates is as Ignorant as Bill Maher

Related: The Bill Gates Joke Page

Voices of Brownsville: The Rally at PS 150

Parents and teachers rallied at PS 150 in Brownsville Brooklyn on March 18, 2009 to protest the closing of the school and its replacement by two charter schools. Here are some of the people from the school community who spoke. There will be a follow-up edited version, A Tale of the Two Rallies - the scary Harlem Success event later that night and this home-grown event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-z4FavNfUI

"Shut Down Tweed" Says Charles Barron

Parents and teachers rallied at PS 150 in Brownsville Brooklyn on March 18, 2009 to protest the closing of the school and its replacement by two charter schools. NYC City Councilman Charles Barron spoke at the rally. The strategy of Tweed to divide the community is causing a push back. Later that evening we went up to the Harlem Success rally, a slick event I chronicled on my previous video. After I put up some more speeches from PS 150, I will do a short juxtaposition of the contrasting rallies, the PS 150 pro and slick Harlem Success anti-public education rally.

You want to build some charter schools, then go buy your own building.
Parental choice? Let me tell you, you don't choose the charter school, the charter school chooses you.
They're lucky we're rallying in Brownsville. The next rally, we should go down and take over the Tweed building and let them know we're not going to stay in the neighborhood.
They turned our schools into test taking mills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aBdcJfLD0

Jay Mathews: KIPPer Minister of Information

UPDATED Graphic:
Photoshopped by David Bellel

Jim Horn at Schools Matter reports:

When he is not shilling for Kaplan's dominance in the child testing industry (Kaplan being that part of the Washington Post Company that pays more than half of the company's profits), Jay Mathews functions as the chief propagandist for the mind and body control camps of KIPP...

Mathews's recent book, Work Hard Be Nice, celebrates the excellent education adventures of KIPP's infantilized bully founders, Davey Levin and Mikey Feinberg, whose bare-knuckled pedagogy is presented as the innocent over-exuberance of two irrepressible young uber-educators. The moral lapses, ethical breaches, and illegal acts by the terrible twosome (at least the acts that have been publicly exposed) are given the Mathews treatment, which is to say a Cliff Notes version of reality done up in etherized prose.

More at:

KIPP Information Minister Continues to Ignore Abuses and Ethical Meltdown

Matt Taibbi on The Big Takeover

Select quotes from Taibbi's scathing piece in Rolling Stone

...this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror.

The Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more "business-friendly."

Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers.

the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

A MUST READ
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/

Related: Naomi Klein's Nov. 08 piece, The New Trough