Play Poker for Eva and Harlem Success

I'm signing right up for this  one. Ed Notes will take 2 – tables, Whitney. The check is in the mail. Leonie said:

Just like they’re gambling w/ kids lives; only $2,500 for a seat; only $20,000 for a table.

From: Whitney Tilson <wtilson@t2partnersllc.com>
Date: October 19, 2010 1:54:14 PM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Success Charter Network Poker Tournament in NYC tomorrow night

I hope you’ll join me tomorrow night at the 4^th Annual Charity Poker Tournament in NYC to benefit the Success Charter Network, which was founded by my friends Eva Moskowitz, John Petry and Joel Greenblatt.  I've been a supporter since Day 1 and I think that they are building one of the best school networks in the country.

I've attended this event for the last four years and I am certain that in addition to being an incredibly worthy cause, it will be a lot fun and there will be great networking among New York’s top investors. 

It’s at the W Hotel on 49^th and Lex.  Cocktails start at 6:30pm and the Texas Hold’em Tournament starts at 7:30pm.

It’s almost sold out (there are only 7 seats left for poker and 15 for cocktails), so if you’d like to come, please register at: www.scnschools.org/events/poker10

I hope to see you there!

AFTER BURN
New developments on the upper west side since yesterday's blog -

West Side Inflamed at Prospect of Eva Invasion

NOTE:

Pedro Noguera, who all too any view as one of the good guys, voted to grant the charter to HSA. 

How a NYC Teacher Gave Klein the Finger

Mr. Klein postured that, "... the debate between district schools and charter schools is a false one," and that anyone who engages in this debate is, "... just playing politics." He went on to say that good schools should be replicated, regardless of whether they are public or charter. To a person who may not be intimately associated with Chancellor Klein's policies and ideology, these may sound like benign statements. But, to those of us who have been the victims of his misguided infatuation with charter schools, these statements were astounding. His actions, sadly, have not and do not support this message.

My school was forced to co-locate with a charter school three years ago. The co-location has been nothing short of a disaster that has drained our resources in a myriad of ways. What is most troubling, is that my school is an "A" school, according to Klein's school report cards, and performs better than 95 percent of elementary schools in New York City by every measure. So, during public comment time, I had no choice but to approach the microphone, raise my finger, and explain to Chancellor Klein and the Panel that I had taught all day, took three trains to the Bronx to attend the meeting, and could guarantee that neither my interest nor my motivation was politics. I further pointed out to Mr. Klein that if his statements were true, he would be supporting and replicating the great accomplishments of my school, but instead, he is squeezing us out of our own building, stifling our growth, subordinating our students, and limiting our programs and services in favor of an untested charter school, that by the way, is run by the son of a hedge-fund billionaire who has donated millions to the school reform projects Mr. Klein holds dear. I charged, "That, is politics."

 GEM/CAPE member Julie Cavanagh with an excerpt from superb new post at Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-cavanagh/wagging-my-finger-while-m_b_763483.html
________
Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/

West Side Inflamed at Prospect of Eva Invasion

"What’s particularly disgusting is the way she is using DOE’s own negligence to build enough seats as a way to recruit parents." - Leonie Haimson

"About 92% of the third- and fourth-graders who attend Harlem Success Academy I passed the state math and English tests, making it the top-performing nonselective school in District 3 this year, according to a Harlem Success spokeswoman, Jenny Sedlis.- The Wall Street Journal

Note the fate of the other 8%

Please Join Our Press Conference and Protest Today to Reject the Success Charter Network's Pending District 3 Application and Co-Location at PS 145: Tuesday 10/19, 3:45 PM at PS 145, 150 West 105th Street

For Immediate Release

Please Join Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell, Council Member Gale Brewer, Other
Elected Officials, Community and School Representatives, and District 3
Parents at a Press Conference Today, 10/19 at 3:45 pm at PS 145 (150 West
105th between Amsterdam and Columbus) to Reject the Success Charter
Network's "Upper West Success" Application and Instead Improve the Prospects
of All of Our District 3 Schools

Currently, the SUNY Board of Trustees is considering an application
submitted by Success Charter Networks for a new K-8 school to be co-located
within a district school building within Community School District 3.
Apparently, however, the legislated charter approval process and its public
input component do not apply to Eva Moscowitz and her Success Charter
Network Schools. While the SUNY Board of Trustees vote on her latest
Success Charter network application has yet to take place (it is planned for
tomorrow, 10/20), and no building location has been specified within her
pending 1000+ page charter application, Ms. Moscowitz has picked out a
public school building of her choice and already begun advertising her new
"Upper West Success" school at bus stops on the Upper West Side and on a
website.

 MORE

 AND READ THIS TOO

Community District Education Council 3 on the potential co-location of a new Success Charter Network School

See also Class Size Matters' Comments to SUNY board on the application of Success Academy charter in District 3 (pdf) and Comments to SUNY board on the application of the Bronx Success Academy charter in District 7 (pdf)

Firstly, elementary school overcrowding has become endemic to District 3 and there is no room for the co-location of Success Charter school without increasing this already dire situation. Overcrowding predominates in the Southern portion of the district and given the level of new development in Harlem, such overcrowding is moving uptown. Unfortunately, SCA and DOE projections have continually underestimated this enrollment growth - and overestimated existing capacity - leading to increased overcrowding.

Yet even if we use the SCA's own projections for 2012 showing a capacity of 4,043 middle school and elementary school seats and projected enrollment of 3,745 students in Harlem, the 298 available seats the DOE show will not suffice for the proposed new school planned by Harlem Success. And these numbers assume that all the students in the new HSA school would come from District 3, which - unlike the strict in-district policy being imposed by the DOE on all of our D3 elementary and middle schools - is not even the case for Harlem Success who will be drawing students from a number of districts.

More

Two articles on the press conference:
 
http://www.dnainfo.com/20101019/manhattan/angry-upper-west-siders-protest-harlem-success-academy-charter-schools-plan-move-into-neighborhood

and 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562693063956972.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

websites are both are accepting comments

Support Rikers' Resolution: First UFT Delegate Assembly of the year: Wed. Oct. 20, 4:15pm

Support Rikers' Resolution at DA Tomorrow!

by Marjorie Stamberg

Last Spring, the DOE decided to restructure the schools and programs on Rikers Island using the corporate model: close it down, excess the teachers, re-open with a far-reduced staff, and forget about the impact on the kids.

District 79 authorized an outside report by the Comer group at Yale University. But after the report was written, the district refused to release it. The teachers then filed a Freedom of Information Act demand to see the report.   Last week, it was finally released. But it is so heavily redacted (i.e., blacked-out) it is unreadable.  It looks like something the CIA would hand out when they're trying to cover up for U.S. war atrocities!

On Wednesday at the UFT Delegate Assembly, a motion will be put up requesting the union use it resources to demand the report be released in its entirety, which should bring some transparency to this whole nasty business.

Teachers at Rikers Island who work with incarcerated students are among the most dedicated in our system. Every day they come to work in very difficult conditions in order to teach the students who are most at-risk. These teachers deserve the thanks of all, not to be excessed and many thrown out of their classrooms into the ATR pool. 

What's happening in D79 casts light on the urgent situation of some 1,800 ATRs throughout the DOE.  As teachers are being made the scapegoats for every problem in this society, the  ATR teachers are the most vulnerable.   No one is "secure" in this era of privatization and public school closures.  As we all know, "if you're not an ATR now, you could be soon."

The reso is posted at the ICE blog.

The Great Deflation: Coming Soon to a Nation Near You

I woke up with a sore back. Some of the cash in my mattress must have shifted over night.

As a history major I studied The Great Depression. It seems I've been waiting for The Big One for 30 years. Or maybe 65 years as I saw the impact of the Depression in action every day growing up. My dad, born in 1918, was incredibly thrifty - OK, cheap. Still is. He's almost 93 with more than enough money and still calls up and asks me to drive 10 miles out of my way and pay 2 tolls so he can save 15 cents on a can of tuna. And to show how far the leaf doesn't fall, just watch me inaction when the check arrives.

Back in my college days in the 60's I used to think: "What a relief. They put controls to stop a replay of the porno film "Banks Gone Wild" to make sure it never happened again."

Ooops. Where have you gone Glass-Steagall? - Thank you Bill Clinton and the other Blue Dog Democrats and Real Dog Republicans - sorry for insulting canines.

Now one thing about the 1930's - there was a major deflationary spiral with prices falling through the floor.

So in the late 70's with Stagflation running rampant, who would have thought that deflation was ever going to be a threat again? I remember starting to look for a house in 1978 with interest rates at around 7.5% and feeling a state of panic as rates rose along with home prices. Thus when I closed on a house on Aug. 1, 1979 interest rates were 9.5% - my friend just a few years later paid 15%. It was insane. Then came the Reagan years and I remember starting to read early warnings about deflation, which of course turned out to look crazy. But I tracked these articles when they would appear over the past 30 years.

When Japan went "Boom" in the '90's - The Lost Decade - I read everything I could. As a stock market investor, I looked with horror as the Nikkei (their Dow) fell from almost 40,000 to around 7000 (it is 9500 today.) And apartments in Tokyo were being abandoned due to the real estate bubble. Sound familiar?

Before our own tech market crash around 2000 the Dow was over 14,000 and Nasdaq was around 5000. Soon after the crash I moved all my TDA from the market to fixed, taking a big bath but have not regretted it. Ten years later the Dow is a little over 11,000 today and Nasdaq is 2450. How's that for deflation in the stock market?

After the crash of 2008, we started to hear more and more about possible deflation returning. It seems very possible. Just think of the state of labor unions in this nation and how weak they are. Who else can get wages to rise so the majority of people have money to spend? As the assault on labor has taken place, we are in much greater danger of deflation as lower spending power drives the downward spiral.

Think of just the teachers and the attempt to make pay based on merit - the few - the bell curve - while the rest earn much less. Imagine a nation of mostly charter schools where they can keep salaries down. That's the end game. Charters now pay teachers somewhat of an equivalent salary to public schools - though they demand a pound of flesh - with probably poorer health care and no pensions. When public schools with teachers represented by unions barely exist, what will these schools pay teachers? Reduce the purchasing power of millions of teachers (except for the thousand bucks a year the average teacher spends out of pocket to support their students) and the spiral is sped up. Bank failures? FDIC gone to pot? Start stuffing your mattress

Now to get a good picture of what Japan after the lost 2 decades looks like, read this Sunday NY Times piece as I post a few excerpts:

Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened

Few nations in recent history have seen such a striking reversal of economic fortune as Japan. The original Asian success story, Japan rode one of the great speculative stock and property bubbles of all time in the 1980s to become the first Asian country to challenge the long dominance of the West.

But the bubbles popped in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Japan fell into a slow but relentless decline that neither enormous budget deficits nor a flood of easy money has reversed. For nearly a generation now, the nation has been trapped in low growth and a corrosive downward spiral of prices, known as deflation, in the process shriveling from an economic Godzilla to little more than an afterthought in the global economy.
Now, as the United States and other Western nations struggle to recover from a debt and property bubble of their own, a growing number of economists are pointing to Japan as a dark vision of the future.

----
Many economists remain confident that the United States will avoid the stagnation of Japan, largely because of the greater responsiveness of the American political system and Americans’ greater tolerance for capitalism’s creative destruction. Japanese leaders at first denied the severity of their nation’s problems and then spent heavily on job-creating public works projects that only postponed painful but necessary structural changes, economists say.

“We’re not Japan,” said Robert E. Hall, a professor of economics at Stanford. “In America, the bet is still that we will somehow find ways to get people spending and investing again.”

 Robert Hall? I thought he made suits. He was probably one of the optimists in 2007. He might as well start sewing now. The article goes on:

 Still, as political pressure builds to reduce federal spending and budget deficits, other economists are now warning of “Japanification” — of falling into the same deflationary trap of collapsed demand that occurs when consumers refuse to consume, corporations hold back on investments and banks sit on cash. It becomes a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle: as prices fall further and jobs disappear, consumers tighten their purse strings even more and companies cut back on spending and delay expansion plans.
“The U.S., the U.K., Spain, Ireland, they all are going through what Japan went through a decade or so ago,” said Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Securities who recently wrote a book about Japan’s lessons for the world. “Millions of individuals and companies see their balance sheets going underwater, so they are using their cash to pay down debt instead of borrowing and spending.”

So see the Times today about how many Democrats join Republicans in rejecting Keynes as a way out of economic downfall. Democrats Are at Odds on Relevance of Keynes

And then this: Largest Bank Will Resume Foreclosure Push in 23 States


All I want to know is: when can I get a deflationary apartment in Manhattan for around 10 grand so I can get those lumps out of my mattress?

ADDITIONS: UPDATED 5:30PM
After posting this I went on a treadmill with Paul Krugman's "The Return of Depression Economics" while at the same time listening to Leonard Lopate discuss the depression (can I multitask or not? But I couldn't chew gum at the same time)

Trying Times
Michael Perino tells the story of Ferdinand Pecora, the Senate lawyer who unmasked the financial misdeeds that caused the 1929 stock market crash, and how he forever changed the relationship between Washington and Wall Street. The Hellhound of Wall Street gives an account of the Pecora hearings that prompted Congress to rein in the freewheeling banking industry and led directly to the New Deal's landmark economic reforms.

Listen here: http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2010/oct/19/hellhound-wall-street/

Oh, Valerie!

Every day I check my fabulous blog roll. I look up and an hour (or more) has passed and the item I was going to blog about has turned to mush. So I often end up copying and pasting links.

Thus, my deterioration as a blogger with something of his own to say. Everybody else seems to be saying it first. And better.

Today, Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet, has such a delicious post that I have printed it out, shredded it and sprinkled the pieces all over my morning toast. Mmmm, Mmmm, Good!

Here are just a few tidbits from How billionaire donors harm public education to wet your appetite:

Today the foundation set up by billionaires Eli and Edythe Broad is giving away $2 million to an urban school district that has pursued education reform that they like. On Friday a Florida teacher is running 50 miles to raise money so that he and his fellow teachers don’t have to spend their own money to buy paper and pencils, binders (1- and 2-inch), spiral notebooks, composition books and printer ink.
Together the two events show the perverted way schools are funded in 2010.
-----
Very wealthy people are donating big private money to their own pet projects: charter schools, charter school management companies, teacher assessment systems.
-----
What this means is that these philanthropists -- and not local communities -- are determining the course of the country's school reform efforts and which education research projects get funded. As Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent James A. Williams said in an interview: "They should come out and tell the truth. If they want to privatize public education, they should say so.”
-----

That none of their projects is grounded in any research seems not to be a hindrance to these big donors. And they never try to explain why it is acceptable for them to donate to other causes -- the arts, medicine, etc. -- without telling doctors and artists what to do with the money. Only educators do they tell what to do.
-----
[$2 million] is the same amount of money that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave away earlier this year to a company simply to market the education film “Waiting for Superman,” which portrays a distorted idea of the root causes of the problems facing urban school districts as well as the solutions.
-----
Surely these philanthropists think they are helping. But they don't understand education and have been somehow led to believe that "the answer" is specific and around the corner: a longer school day; a longer school year; charter schools; technology; standardized tests in every subject; assessing teachers by standardized test scores; for-profit education; training new college graduates for five or six weeks as teachers and then sending them into the toughest schools in America.
The fact is that there is no strong research to show that any of those elements will do much to help education, and many will actually hurt.
-----
let’s not imagine for a minute that the millionaires and billionaires giving out all this money are doing anything other than making it harder to fix the public schools that America needs.

Now on get over there and read the whole thing.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/how-billionaire-donors-are-har.html#more

Ravitch in Houston Challenges KIPP and TFA

In Houston, Diane Ravitch challenges school reformers face to face

October 15th, 2010 8:32 pm CT http://www.examiner.com/education-reform-in-houston/in-houston-diane-ravitch-challenges-school-reformers-face-to-face

“You send out a false message,” Diane Ravitch, the nation’s premier education historian, told school reformers on Thursday night at Rice University. The event hosted by Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools, Teach For America (TFA), and the Rice Educational Entrepreneurship Program gave Dr. Ravitch the opportunity to speak directly to school reform leaders. Dr. Ravitch began by saying public-school teachers across the country were highly demoralized because school reformers were placing the blame for under-achievement entirely at their feet. “Please stop claiming Teach for America can close the achievement gap,” Ravitch urged. “Nobody who teaches for two or three years can close the achievement gap.” She asked them to think about their long-term impact on public schools, and recommended they “practice humility.” Dr. Ravitch said the “civic narrative” of traditonal public schools, rooted in neighborhood social networks, were under threat from a “market narrative” popularized by charter school financiers who want to privatize K-12 schooling. “Don’t compete,” Dr. Ravitch urged, “collaborate with public schools.” Questioning statistics used in the pro-charter documentary, Waiting for Superman, Dr. Ravitch picked up on that movie’s comparison of Finland’s educational success to our own relatively poor performance. She pointed out Finland has fewer tests, stronger unions and four times the level of social service spending for children as in the United States. Neither Dr. Ravitch, nor KIPP CEO Mike Feinberg who joined her in a panel discussion, addressed KIPP’s plan to recruit 20,000 students from the Houston Independent School District (HISD). While Mr. Feinberg lauded competition as the solution to urban education’s dilemmas, he failed to address why KIPP’s financiers have sponsored four successful school board candidates for the HISD Board of Trustees, or why they are currently backing a fifth candidate, which would give them a super-majority on the board. With the support they now have on the school board, and their influence in the community, KIPP’s backers, which include John and Laura Arnold, the nation’s youngest billionaire and his wife, and Leo Linbeck III, the scion of a local patrician family, the school reform coalition--if they wanted to improve rather than replace public schools--could win passage of any policies they desired. If John Arnold told the HISD board and Superintendent to jump out a second story window, the majority would probably do it; so why not fix the public schools now when we can, instead of replacing them with private charters unless they are doing this as a bizarre ideologically motivated experiment. This is the central issue underlying much of what Dr. Ravitch had to say--how if we as a community give up on an institution as central to neighborhood life as a public school, then can we maintain any sense of being part of a local, or a national community? What does it say about the United States, or at least about our cities, if we are the only wealthy nation that cannot create and manage good community public schools? Are we so divided on lines of race and income, and distrustful of elected leadership, that the only way to make progress in Houston is to shut down public schools and farm those services out to isolated, privately run entities? If we turn our public schools over to KIPP, who will be running them in twenty or thirty years after Mike Feinberg retires? The public has no say over these so-called public schools which receive taxpayer money, and there is no provision in their charters for public election of governing officers. So far, charter expansion, and HISD’s response to it, has been entirely under the table. We at least owe it to the notion we are still a democracy to have an open debate on the pros and cons or the long-term consequences of contracting out educational services for 20,000 of our public-school students.  

UFT Executive Board Notes

Monday, Oct. 18

A correspondent reports:

• Four people got up and requested reports:  one on the reorganization of D 75, another on the ATR agreement,  and the last on a report of the unionized charter schools.  The answers were in order were:  "yes, we will get it to out", "the DOE is having discussions and will get back to us", and to the last question "we'll look into it".  You know as much now as you knew before.
• But on the issue of the ATR's, perhaps there is a hint of what to expect in the longer answer which was:  the DOE is discussing whether or not they want to continue subsidies or something else.  They said they would get back to us in a few weeks.  The agreement expires on Nov. 31. One teacher who is an ATR said although the agreement says that they will be assigned in their districts, he was assigned 1 1/2 - 2 hours from his home and traveling is costing him $400 per month.  He was told to file a grievance and wondered of what use the agreement is with the grievance process going so slowly.
• It was clear that we will not be supporting a candidate for Governor.
  
• They gave out blue t-shirts, superman style with UFT written in the logo
• When a member asked why we are supporting Nicole Paultre-Bell for City Council as she supports charters, the response was that "charters are not the line in the sand, we have two of our own"!  The other candidates were labeled as "slick" candidates, turned down by voters in the past. (We predicted long ago that opening up two charters was dangerous for us.  And since when don't we support "slick" candidates?)
• There was a resolution on supporting Dignity for All in response to the recent bias attacks and suicides.  (The reality is that there once was an Office of Multicultural Education at the DOE that promoted anti-bias education  and were awarded Districts funds to conduct programs. The DOE ended the office.The reality is that at one time teachers had the time to teach values education.  The emphasis on test prep has stolen all of that time away. The resolution is a weak one in terms of prevention. )
  

Sabrina Finds the CRAP

Real Reformer Sabrina sent this to GEM last Monday.

Corporate Reform Action Pack!

From: TeacherSabrinaFSP | October 11, 2010  | 1,734 views

Loading...

While I try to find the proper (and markedly less snarky) words to fully address what I perceive to be the major shortcomings of Klein, Rhee & co's recent "manifesto", please enjoy this commercial for the kind of school reform they champion. By turning a deaf ear to the people they should be serving, and applying the most behaviorist, outdated ideals of business to schools, they're continuing the already devastating trend toward conformity and instability in schools.

For more serious, nuanced analyses of our current school reform climate, and first-person accounts of what goes on in so-called "failing schools", visit http://failingschools.wordpress.com. You can also follow me @TeacherSabrina on Twitter.

My thanks to the Real Reformers of the Grassroots Education Movement NYC for the protest footage! If you think America's kids deserve better than gimmicks and CRAP, be sure to check them out at http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com or http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org.

... (more info)  

I thought I already put this video up but guess I didn't.  Over 1700 hits. Keep it rolling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mciucQi-2GA&feature=player_embedded

School Closing Poison Pills: Jane Addams Under Attack and Columbus HS Doomed?

COME TO THE GEM CLOSING SCHOOLS MEETING TO START TO FIGHT BACK: OCT. 26

The school closing, reorganization, reconstitution, turn-around - whatever you want to call it - game is starting up early this year. Brian Lehrer had Beth Fertig and Gotham's Maura Walz and Anna Philips on this morning with their new joint project of following 3 schools for the year. They're calling it The Big Fix when it should be called "The Fix Is In". Just listen to what they has to say about Columbus HS which Anna is covering as the DOE starves it of resources and squeezes it to death like a Python's prey.

Or Inside Job if you want to see what the Ed Deform mentality did to the economy.

See the WNYC web site and leave comments.

This morning we heard from old pal Glenn Tepper at Jane Addams HS
 

Please forward:

Chancellor Klein and the rubber-stamping DoE deliberately force-fed Jane Addams a series of poison pills, over a period of several years, all with the intended outcome of causing the school to implode over time.  And now all the band-aids in the world can't stop the hemorrhaging.  All along, the plan was to destroy the school.

Right to the end, the DoE continues to get the name of the school wrong:  It's Jane Addams High School for Academics and Careers, not Jane Addams High School for Academic Careers (which makes no sense).  Although I brought this to the attention of several DoE honchos, over several years, the error has continued.  Why admit fallibility?  Why bother to fix something when the plan has been to cause the school's slow demise?

-Glenn

Friends,
From a teacher at Jane Addams HS where I worked from 1980-2007. The best and most compassionate teachers in the world taught at Jane Addams, for decades an oasis  in the infamous south Bronx, a school my colleagues and I truly loved.

The DOE is indeed going mad.
Dana Lehrman

Hello Dana,
They are coming after us...  The superintendent came to school on Thursday and Friday. The report below is what they plan for us.  They are blaming the teachers. . .  it is crazy. This week we are having both the quality review and people from the state to look at our school and decide what to do.  But, they pretty much have their minds made up.  They know that the parents won't speak up.  We only had 3 parents at the meeting.  It was supposed to be at 3pm and we had 6 parents.  But, the superintendent said she was told it was 5pm.  So the 3 of the parents left.  We are an easy school to close because parents aren't going to fight.

Anyway, please forward this information on to people who care because we need to speak out.
We need to be heard.

Thanks - a teacher at the school

FACTS? 
http://schools.nyc.gov/community/planning/changes/bronx/addams
 
If you look at the numbers - that despite the fact that we have 500 fewer students in the last 5 years. . . we have more special ed students.  We also now have more ELL learners with IEPs and about the same number of overage students.  In 2006 we had 19 kids in temporary housing, last year we had 105.  

http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X650.pdf
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2008-09/cepdata_X650.pdf
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2007-08/cepdata_X650.pdf
 
They are comparing our results to a "peer group."  If you look at the demographics of the schools below it's crazy that they consider these schools equal to Jane Addams.  

One of the schools they are comparing us to is New World High School
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X513.pdf

Belmont Preparatory High School
http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/oaosi/cepdata/2009-10/cepdata_X434.pdf

Thd New Mareketplace report predicted what would happen as Bloomberg and Klein started shutting down schools.

http://www.newschool.edu/milano/nycaffairs/publications_schools_thenewmarketplace.aspx

GEM Focuses on Closing Schools

The Grassroots Education Movement is holding a meeting focused on the closing schools on Oct. 26.
Last year the UFT never tried to organize all the closing schools into a strong body of resistance but took each case individually, arguing that some schools should be closed no matter what poison pills were fed to the school.

That is the focus behind the meeting - to try to bring this year's target list together before the ax falls.
We are developing a fightback toolkit modeled on the toolkit developed last year to fight back against charter school co-locations.

We are flyering as many of these target schools as we can get too - yours was on our list.

GEM General Open Meeting on School Closings:
Tuesday, Oct. 26

**** please forward widely ****


School Closings
An Educational Solution or a Political Attack on Public Education?

Tuesday, October 26 4:30-7 pm
CUNY Graduate Center
34th and 5th Ave. Room 5414 (Bring ID)
Trains:  N, R, D, F, Q, B, W, V, 6, 1/2/3
Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc@gmail.com
www.grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com

·            What is the impact of closing schools on students, parents and teachers?
·            How is closing schools being used to dismantle and undermine the public education system?
·            What is the effect of closing schools on our educational system?
·            Can schools under threat band together to fight back en masse?
·            How can GEM and others work within the UFT and schools to create an effective fightback movement?
·            Help put together a toolkit that schools can use to fight back. See a draft at the GEM blog.

President Obama has called for the closing down of 5000 supposedly failing schools nationwide. Here in NYC the Bloomberg/Klein administration has closed over 100 schools, with dozens more slated to get the ax. Smaller public schools or charters have replaced many. In both instances, there is some proof that through various means students with the most intense needs are not accepted with the same frequency as the traditional public schools.

School closings, reorganizations, reconstitutions, and "turn arounds" have become a mainstay of the so-called education reformers, code words used by edubusiness free marketeers. Are the educational needs of students the main consideration? Or, lurking in the background, is this merely a tactic to empty school buildings of tenured, unionized, and higher-cost more senior teachers, as well as the most at risk students, and to replace these schools with charter schools run by privatized interests with the right political connections?

What can schools in NYC do to fight back? The UFT has shown it can be a force in mobilizing thousands of people (PEP, Jan. 2010) and win the high ground, but has relied on a court case which was won based on narrow procedural grounds instead of the broader issue of whether closing down schools is sound educational policy. While the 19 schools were ordered kept open for one more year (Klein has made it clear he will attempt to close them this year) the DOE undermined attempts to recruit entering freshmen.  Meanwhile, the UFT and the DOE agreed to allow new schools to open in some of these buildings, thus further undermining them.

In Chicago, the actions of teachers, parents and students managed to reverse decisions to close six schools. Can an alliance between schools under attack be forged to create a strong response? Bring your experiences and ideas to a discussion with the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM).  Join with others in attempting to analyze what is behind the mania for closing down public schools and destabilizing education in low-income neighborhoods.

Was Davis Guggenheim a Dupe or Dope or a Willing PARTICIPANT?

Is Guggenheim Leni Riefenstahl in drag?


Participant Media's CEO (maker of W4S)

Guggenheim and Riefenstahl: Separated at birth?

See below about Jim Berk, CEO of Participant Media who joined the company in 2006. Participant Media came up w/ idea for Waiting for Superman, helped produce it and is now running the “campaign” to promote its ideas to policymakers.

Gryphon Colleges Corporation part of Gryphon Investors, a $700 million San Francisco-based private equity fund which operates Gryphon Colleges Corporation, which invests in and owns for-profit EMOs.

Gryphon Investors, through Gryphon Colleges Corporation, acquired Delta Educational Systems, which operated 16 for-profit vocational schools in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2006_May_15/ai_n16361472/

More at Norms Notes: Was Davis Guggenheim a Dupe or a Willing PARTICIPANT?

and at


http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/01/philanthrocapitalists-go-hollywood-with.html

 

MORE ON W4S

A great piece at The Answer Sheet by teacher Susan Graham (MUST READ), who concludes with:

And that brings me back to Waiting for Superman. Education stakeholders, like the staff of the Daily Planet, aren’t paying much attention.

There is an army of Supermen and Superwomen among us disguised in alphabet sweaters, apple jewelry and UNICEF/Save the Children ties.

Teachers are intervening in the lives of children every day and some of them have been doing it for 35 and 40 years under conditions that would crush the spirit of a mere mortal.

They’re not out there trying to "fix" children so that they look more like little Bruce Wayne Juniors. Most teachers are doing all they can to empower children to define and pursue their own understanding of truth, justice and the American Way.

All we ask is that we be allowed to do our job without being weakened by the Kryptonite of manipulation by power brokers, without exploitation by politicians, and without denigration by the media.

We’d prefer to stay in our classrooms with the kids, but there are over 4 million of us out there and before this is over, some of us just may have to take off our glasses and put on our tights.

Rothstein: Why teacher quality can't be only centerpiece of reform

Another Real Reformer stands up!

Posted by Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/rothstein-on-the-manifestos-ma.html#more

Richard Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. This appeared on the institute's website. It is long, but worth the time.

By Richard Rothstein
Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City public school system, and Michelle Rhee, who resigned October 13 as Washington, D.C. chancellor, published a “manifesto” in The Washington Post claiming that the difficulty of removing incompetent teachers “has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.” The solution, they say, is to end the “glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher” and give superintendents like themselves the authority to pay higher salaries to teachers whose students do well academically. Otherwise, children will remain “stuck in failing schools” across the country.

Klein, Rhee, and the 14 other school superintendents who co-signed their statement base this call on a claim that, “as President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income — it is the quality of their teacher.” [Note: After this was written, Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said she had not approved the manifesto and issued her own statement.]

Sunday Oct. 17, 3pm - PUBLIC EDUCATION UNDER ATTACK!

Please circulate widely....

The Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID) Presents its
2010 Education Forum
PUBLIC EDUCATION
UNDER   ATTACK !

- Chris Owens, Facilitator -
District Leader,  52nd Assembly District 

DOE Test Score Scam
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters,

Under Receivers, Not Under Achievers
Akinlabi Mackall, Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence, S.E.E.D.S/SISDS, CPE/CEP
 
Charter School Idea Hijacked
Mona Davids, New York Charter School Parents Association

Corporate Big-Bucks Takeover
John Tarleton, The Indypendent Newspaper

Misguided Federal, State & City Policies
Martha Foote, Time Out From Testing

   Sunday, October 17th
 3:00 to 5:00 pm
 Union Temple
 17 Eastern Parkway
 Across from the Brooklyn Public Library (Main Branch). 
 #2 train at the Brooklyn Museum Station.

Co-Sponsors: • Brooklyn Soc. For Ethical Culture’s (EA Comm.), 

• Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission, • Coalition for Public Education (Brooklyn Chapter)

•Independent Commission on Public Education (iCOPE),  

• The MANY (Mothers' Agenda, New York),

•Olaniki Alibi, 57th AD Leader , 

• Assemblywoman Inez Barron, 40th AD, • Councilperson Tish James, 52nd CD, 

• Senator Velmanette Montgomery, 18th SD

More Baltimore from a Teacher Who Said "No"!

Hi,

I'm a teacher in Baltimore, and I read some of your recent edition of Education Notes Online.

Here's an Op Ed piece that was published in the main newspaper here just prior to the voting (when the proposed contract was rejected). 

Best regards,

Bill Bleich

More from Bill:

Hi Peace & Justice Friends,

Just want to let you know that the proposed contract for Baltimore City teachers was defeated this past Thursday - 1540 to 1107!

It's an interesting situation. It seems, in a modest way, that teachers in Baltimore have essentially just handed a defeat to the education direction of the national government, our national union leadership, our local union leadership, the public schools CEO here in Baltimore, the Baltimore School Board, and The Sun newspaper. 

Rather historic. 

On the other hand, a significant portion of the opposition to the contract was based, not on substantive disagreement, but on the fact that the proposed contract was quite vague, leaving many new details to be worked out by new union/management committees, after adoption of the contract. 

The CEO, Board, and union leaders are taking advantage of this, planning a second vote soon, with few if any changes to the proposed contract. Instead, they are focusing on efforts to simply "clarify" the proposed contract to teachers. 

Below, I'm including an Op Ed piece that was published in the main newspaper here (side-by-side with an editorial strongly urging support for the contract) on Wednesday, just before the voting.  

All my best,
Bill Bleich

baltimoresun.com

A teacher's case against the Baltimore union contract

The proposed agreement would empower principals, not teachers

By Bill Bleich

10:21 AM EDT, October 12, 2010

What's not to like about the proposed contract for Baltimore city schoolteachers? Plenty.

Start with "merit" pay, which will encourage rivalry among teachers. Currently, teachers share pedagogical insights, teaching materials and effective lessons. For most of us, our support for one another is a reflection of our profound concern for maximizing the intellectual growth of the young people for whom we're responsible.

With "merit" pay, there will be pressure on teachers to be less supportive of each other and to act in a more self-centered way. We are modeling the adult world to our students. Do we want our young people to learn — from observing our behavior — that backstabbing and unbridled ambition are the best way for humanity to conduct itself? Shouldn't our goal be to uplift all of humanity, not just a small portion of it?

Often, teachers are more highly motivated than administrators to serve our young people. The attitude that motivates some people to become principals causes them to focus their time on the requisite coursework for becoming administrators. In contrast, a dedicated teacher may selflessly devote large amounts of time to being the voluntary adviser for a school club, helping to organize social and academic events for the students after school, getting to know parents, and refining teaching strategies and instructional materials with the goal of becoming more effective each year.

But the proposed contract gives principals tremendous power to choose which teachers advance and which get sidelined. Won't that lead, in many schools, to a situation where a principal's favorites are cultivated and rewarded, with little regard for effectiveness, while anyone who opposes the principal on any matter at all — even when doing so for the benefit of the students, like fighting for smaller class sizes — is largely excluded from advancement?

Baltimore Teachers: STAND UP AND TAKE A BOW!

Is rejection of contract a sign of emerging teacher rebellion?

{NOTE: If you are a teacher or connected with education in the Baltimore area leave a comment or email me off line with info: normsco@gmail.com}

Back in 1995, when Randi Weingarten was years away from taking over the UFT presidency, she negotiated a five year contract with double zero raises and other onerous provisions. You see, Mayor Giuliani was claiming the city didn't have any money and Randi and crew went right along with it. Thus, no raises. And some other provisions that would eat the young teachers and extend to 25 years before you could reach maximum, which many women who had lost years for childcare said was a form of discrimination.

They were so sure of ratification that Unity didn't bother sending out the hordes to the schools to sell it. It went down in defeat (credit to New Action at the time and to independents like Bruce Markens), sending shock waves through the UFT (they learned their lesson in the 2005 contract). So they made some minor changes - and then sent out the Unity hordes to spread fear and loathing and the contract passed on the second round. Within a year, Giuliani was bragging how rich the city was.

So yesterday's news about the Baltimore teachers voting down a contract Randi helped negotiate was so deja vu.

Baltimore City teachers rejected a contract Thursday that would have provided six-figure salaries for an elite corps of teachers but would have tied the pay of all educators to how they performed in the classroom, a vague provision that caused discomfort for many union members. More than 2,000 educators represented by the Baltimore Teachers Union voted on the tentative agreement, which had been hailed as the most innovative in the nation since its details emerged two weeks ago. However, it proved to be one of the most contentious ever in Baltimore, with its overhaul of how teachers are compensated, promoted and evaluated. The new contract would have eliminated the traditional system of "step increases," under which teachers are paid based on seniority and education degrees. It would have instead paid teachers based, in large part, on how effective they are in the classroom and their pursuit of professional development. On Wednesday and Thursday,1,540 union members voted against the tentative agreement and 1,107 in favor. The union represents about 6,500 educators.

Oh, they were so sure. Randi and friends. That they could shove another Washington DC/Harford/Detroit/etc. contract down the throats of teachers in Baltimore. So sure that Harold Myerson wrote in the Washington Post a short time ago:

Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

....the narrative that education reformers and teachers unions are eternal and implacable enemies is a hardy one, and one that Washingtonians in particular may well believe after four years of pitched battle between Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. teachers union. The intensity of the local battle might blind them to the experience of cities where the school district and the union have jointly embraced a reform agenda, even including a version of merit pay. And yet, such an agreement -- an impossibility, if we are to believe the conventional narrative -- was reached just two weeks ago in the faraway city of Baltimore.

Yes, they are heroes. But not of the Myerson and Weingarten kind.

Even Valerie Strauss wrote (I can't locate it now) that there would be a more benign atmosphere in Baltimore due to the milder form of Klein/Rhee in the face of Superintendent Andres Alonso, who used to carry Klein's water bottle. We knew Alonso a bit and no matter what cloth they where, an ed deformer is an ed deformer. Besides, I think Alonso couldn't be Rhee if he wanted too since there is some kind of school board instead of mayoral control.

There were warning signs. Mike Antonucci (one of the earliest anti-union sirens of ed deform) sent this out on his blog yesterday:

Last Tuesday, I noted there was some opposition brewing to the new Baltimore teachers’ contract, but I wrote:

“Since the much more controversial DC teachers contract passed, it’s hard to imagine this one being defeated.”

Oops.
City teachers voted it down – 1,540 to 1,107. Union president Marietta English blamed the defeat on the rumor that “some charter school operators have encouraged their teachers not to vote for this agreement.”
So it’s back to the drawing board for the negotiators. I’ll avoid predicting the outcome of ratification votes in the future, and I hope Harold Meyerson will think twice before he writes another column like this one.

Randi on front page in Times
Today's NY Times has a front page article on Randi which reveals so much.

Both friends and foes describe Ms. Weingarten, 52, who became president of the 1.5-million member American Federation of Teachers in 2008 after a decade leading the New York City local, as a superb tactician who cares deeply about being seen as a reformer.
“We have spent a lot of time in the last two years looking at ourselves in a mirror, trying to figure out what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong, and we’re trying to reform,” Ms. Weingarten said in an interview.
Early this year, she delivered a major policy speech that embraced tying teachers’ evaluations in part to students’ scores on standardized tests, a formula that teachers — and Ms. Weingarten herself — once resisted. 

----
Yet one scene that the director filmed, but left on the cutting-room floor, showed Ms. Weingarten signing a contract on behalf of teachers at Green Dot, which has had impressive results since it opened in 2008.
Steve Barr, who founded the Green Dot charter school network, lamented that the film ignored examples of charters and unions working together. “It doesn’t help to take the one true open-minded union leader and bash her,” he said.

Yes, we've been claiming all along that Randi wants to be an ed deformer, not a Real reformer. Lest you think Randi came up with this all on her own, we have been pointing out for years that Albert Shanker started leading the UFT/AFT in this direction in 1982 with his support for the now tainted "Nation at Risk" report. (I won't go into details her but you can follow some of it by reading the review of the Kahlenberg Shanker bio Vera Pavone and I wrote a few years ago - read it online here.)

NYC teacher Reality-Based Educator was overjoyed at Perdido Street School over the situation in Baltimore:

Next thing to do is vote out the sell-out leadership who tried to sell Baltimore teachers on the "Salary Commensurate With Test Scores and PD" jive.

Then take aim at Randi Weingarten and the rest of the sell-outs in the AFT leadership who touted this piece of shit contract as a model for contracts all across the country.
Hey, Randi, hope you can read lips!!!!
You too, Arne!!!

 Well, not maybe overjoyed. But RBE's post and the vote in Baltimore, along with the Chicago election, turmoil in Detroit and Washington DC, expresses the increasing revolt of the rank and file teacher, something Weingarten and MulGarten will try their best to manage.

They have the best shot at control in our own hometown here in NYC where Unity Caucus machine reigns supreme. There are stirrings for sure and I will use Ed Notes to support any movement that makes sense.

Today, Teachers Unite is sponsoring the first of a series of monthly forums focused on teacher unionism. I can't make it because we are working on our film response to WfS. But if you are around head on down.

A new union movement starts Saturday, Oct. 16

Saturday, October 16
Rank and File Leadership Program
11am-1pm
Community Resource Exchange, 42 Broadway, 20th Floor

Facilitator: Dr. Lois Weiner, Professor of Education, New Jersey City University
Pushing back on testing, merit pay, charter schools, and de-professionalization of teaching: How can we use teacher unions?

We will share strategies with participants for leading reading groups with colleagues about these issues. Participants will be provided with reading materials to distribute and action steps for organizing teachers in their school building.

Yes, boys and girls. All you people who decry the Unity machine - there will be no change in the UFT - or the AFT which is controlled by the UFT -  until you get actively involved in the struggle. And organizing in your own building is where it starts because Unity actively controls most schools and those they don't control they do so by default due to lack of interest.

There are enough active groups out there for you to jump in: ICE(which met last night), TJC, Teachers Unite, GEM. Or go start your own group at the school level like CAPE did and link in with the other groups.

AFTER BURN
More Teachers Unite: Go see Leonie Haimson speak on mayoral control on Tuesday:

Tuesday, October 19
Right to the City Schools Leadership Program
5:00-7:00PM
Urban Justice Center, 123 William St.

Guest speaker: Leonie Haimson

How has mayoral control impacted your classroom? What does school governance model have to do with the overemphasis on testing and lack of attention to class size?

The WAVE: NY Times Gets Louis Renault "Shocked, Shocked" Award

www.rockawave.com

Oct. 15, 2010

by Norm Scott

The October 11 NY Times front page story on the testing score fiasco in NY City and State led me to take a look at the famous Claude Rains clip in Casablanca where his character, Louis Renault, is "shocked, shocked" to find there's gambling going on at Rick's place – while collecting his winnings just as Bloomberg collected his winnings - a third term as Mayor - based on phony test results.

The story was titled, "On New York School Tests, Warning Signs Ignored," ironic since it was the Times that did so much ignoring of the warning signs from teachers, parents and other commentators. Parent activist and leader of Class Size Matters Leonie Haimson even published letters she had sent to the paper regarding their distorted reporting favoring BloomKlein on the issue. Haimson commented on her NYC Public School Parent blog:

"Anyone who was paying attention knew at least as far back as 2007 that there was rampant test score inflation...The article also offers a rather irrelevant story, relating how Joel Klein earnestly tried to convince the state to change its scoring system to use a value-added method instead, as though that would have addressed any of the problems regarding the score inflation...The Times itself had plenty of reason to know about concerns about the state test score inflation throughout this period but not only failed to report on it, but generally toed the company line."

For those not familiar with the term "value-added", that is the method being pushed like a magic drug to cure all educational ills by trying to measure how "effective" individual teachers are based on the test scores of students over time. VA has been attacked as a faulty system due to the number of variations that creep into the testing process – the background of the students, the nature of the particular class, etc. And then there is all that cheating on so many levels, especially at the top where they play with the cut scores – one year 5 out of 10 correct passes, the next 3 out of 10.

State Regent head Merryl Tisch - whose educational expertise is based on having taught pre-k Hebrew school briefly - certainly was shocked, shocked. Leonie wasn't buying any of it: The article also gives Regent Merryl Tisch a pass, letting her have the last word, saying "We came in here saying we have to stop lying to our kids," without mentioning that throughout the test score inflation period, she was Deputy Chancellor of the Regents, and yet reliably supported Bloomberg and Klein's claims of great improvement.

Our own former Region 5 Superintendent Kathleen Cashin was also shocked, shocked and is quoted in the Times article.

As a superintendent in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Kathleen Cashin had seen several schools improve throughout the early part of the decade. But when she saw the sudden jump, she said, she was shocked. “I said to my intimate circle of staff, this cannot be possible,” Ms. Cashin recalled. “I knew how much effort and how much planning any little improvement would take, and not all of these schools had done any of it.” But Ms. Cashin, who retired in February, held her tongue at the time. Asked why she did not take up her concerns with Mr. Klein or his deputies, she said, “I didn’t have their ear.” 

I know, I know, all you Region 5ers out there - and former District 23ers from pre-Klein days - are shocked, shocked at Renault's – er – Cashin's being shocked, shocked. She also collected her winnings based on test scores in rising almost to the top of the BloomKlein phony ed house of cards. There were even rumors that she might one day replace Klein. Then she was cast aside because she had a semblance of ed credentials, which when it happened just shocked, shocked me.

Rhee in DC Resigns

Teachers all over the nation weren't shocked, shocked but were cheering the resignation of Michelle Rhee, Superintendent of schools in Washington DC. Rhee came out of the Joel Klein School of running public school systems into oblivion, but with an even more vicious snarl. Everyone understands she was the cause of Mayor Fenty's loss in the DC primary. Her famous Time magazine cover photo holding a broom now has true meaning as she flies out of town on Halloween. One blog commented:

The recent defeat of DC mayor Adrian Fenty spells the end to the damaging career of dilettante school reformer, Michele Rhee, originally recommended to Fenty by Joel Klein, a close friend of Bill Gates and Eli Broad and described by people experienced in the teaching profession as edubusiness entrepreneurs’ attack dog. Lacking any discernible qualifications, her shocking appointment, can be understood only when you realize that Rhee was brought in to inflict maximum damage on the district’s public schools. And as a cultist (Teach For America, New Teacher Project) and true believer she came at a bargain basement salary. Real superintendents were courted (Fenty visited Miami with several members of the D.C. commission to interview Dr. Rudolph Crew) but those candidates could not be counted on to mindlessly take a club to D.C.’s public schools. The havoc and disruption that Rhee has caused was no accident. It was the plan! ---http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/73608

Well, I'm off on my own broom – to see the Rockaway Cafe at the Rockaway Theatre Company's Halloween extravaganza this weekend and the following two weekends. Then off to rehearsals for the December production of The Odd Couple in which I'll be making my acting debut. I was shocked, shocked that such a professionally operated theater company with access to immense talent would give a role to a rank amateur.

When Norm is not flying around on his broom he blogs at http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/.

Do Teacher Unions Have the Cooties? - Julie Cavanagh at the Huffington Post

A Real Reformer has a few things to say

If not for NYC teachers like Julie Cavanagh I would most likely be out grazing in the pasture of early bird specials and daytime bus trips to Atlantic City.

Having met Julie only 15 months ago through her work with Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE) in Red Hook, I have to say that I have been more than impressed - impressed at the idea that a teacher just a shade over 30 with a decade of experience is out there with a whole bunch of other same gen Real Reformers doing what so many older teachers who I hear putting down the younger gen of colleagues do not believe is possible – mounting a defense of teacher unions from the perspective of a teacher in the trenches. And with a social justice twist.

One thing I have come to know. My usual habits of meandering around issues at tasks and at meetings and losing focus is not something to be tolerated. The constant refrains: "Is that the most productive use of your time?" and "Stop interrupting people." Nice to be lectured to by someone over half your age. But I am definitely more productive – when prodded. Fear does work.

Julie has helped CAPE organize a wonderful crew of teachers aligned with parents in the Red Hook community to fight off the invasions of the PAVE charter school clones. CAPE's work has impressed the activist education community throughout NYC with its passionate defense and pride in their public school. Many consider their school and community one of the most successful examples of a truly organized teacher/parent advocacy group. The 50 page "Advocacy Toolkit" that emerged from their own experience was produced to assist other schools facing charter co-locations had people dropping their jaws in awe. Check out the index:

1. Educating and Advertising…
· Create a press release
· Create a blog
· Contact the media
· Create a newsletter
· Advocacy Resources
2. Organizing…
· Create an advocacy group
· Community Organizing
3. Mobilizing...
· Create a petition
· Create a form letter
· Contact Policymakers
· Community Mobilizing
4. Information to share

(I can send you a copy if interested.)
 
Julie and some other CAPEers have jumped into the work of GEM. In a relatively short time, Julie has emerged as a prominent voice for the classroom teacher in the NYC ed real reform community: a major force behind the rally at Bloomberg's house in January (she co-signed the court papers along with Seung Ok) and the film we are working on to respond to WfS (http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org). An organizer for the rally in front of the movie theater on Sept. 24, she even wrote the words for the song "Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up!" A passionate advocate for many of the push button issues so many of us care about, she provides real leadership, which has so often been absent. Julie's appearance on Fox and Friends on Sept. 26 gave her an opportunity to defend teachers and tenure in the very brief time she had ("Without tenure I wouldn't be sitting here....tenure allows teachers to advocate with parents for children.")

My proudest moment: introducing Julie to Leonie Haimson.
This dynamic duo should make the ed deformers very scared indeed.

When we add some of the great people in the NY Collection of Radical Educators (NYCORE), Teachers Unite and other activists in Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), there is some hope for a movement to emerge from the new generation of teachers (please, please so I can be put out to pasture).

The common theme: Will the Real Reformers Please Stand Up!

Going national
Recently, Julie began a column at the Huffington Post. Look for it weekly.

Her first post: Do Teacher Unions Have the Cooties?

Excerpts:

Each week it is my hope to bring to you a teacher's perspective, highlighting the latest issues in educational policy with anecdotes from the everyday classroom. Please join me, in the comments section, by sharing your personal stories that bring to life the unintended, or perhaps intended, consequences of education policy and reform.

-------
We all remember "the cooties", and we expect this kind of behavior and name calling from young children. Millions of parents and teachers hide their laughter (at least I do) when the subject is perennially breached. As we engaged in a brief discussion of "the cooties" and treating each other nicely, I couldn't help but think of the national dialogue about teachers and their unions right now, and the very clear message that teacher unions "have the cooties". The assault on teacher unions has reached a fever pitch. The conversation surrounding education policy, and millions in taxpayer dollars in the form of Race to the Top, is focused not only on attacking our unions, but weakening them, if not dismantling them altogether.
--------

I am interested in reform. However, I seek real reform. Attacking teachers and their unions will not result in real reform. Let's turn our sights not on those "wealthy middle class teachers, with their cushy jobs, who retire on pensions that are a fraction of their salary," instead, we should focus on our policy makers and the corporate interests that drive their decision making. Let's stop playing schoolyard games with teachers and their unions and get real. Teachers and their unions do not have 'the cooties', we simply have and want to keep what all workers in this country should have: fair wages, health care, protections from arbitrary firing, safe working conditions, and a reasonable pension so we can live and retire at a fair wage and age.

Our children deserve real reform right now! Write to your policy makers and demand:
- Smaller class sizes
- Public Schools that are Community Centers and Serve ALL Children
- More Teaching -- Less Testing
- Parent and Teacher Empowerment and Leadership
- Equitable funding for ALL schools
- Anti-Racist Education Policies
- Culturally Relevant Curriculum
- Expanded Pre Kindergarten and Early Intervention Programs

Read the full piece at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-cavanagh/post_955_b_742752.html

Arthur Goldstein too
Speaking of Huffington, another great teacher activist leader - but a bit closer to my generation - is Arthur Goldstein, chapter leader at Francis Lewis HS, also has his first post up and running - a love letter to Bill Gates at the Huffington Post and a letter in the Daily News today (scroll down to see it).

Here's an excerpt from: Garrulous Mr. Gates

It's been a busy year for Bill Gates. He's been spreading his gospel far and wide. He spent 2 million dollars promoting Waiting for Superman, yet its alleged villainess, AFT President Randi Weingarten and company chose Gates to address her convention, an unlikely choice, to say the least. I'm not an education expert like Gates, so I'll comment only on a TED talk he gave last year. My experience is limited to teaching 25 years in New York City.  Still, even a layperson such as myself has to wonder where the influential Gates gets his information:

After burn
Check out the post below this for upcoming Teacher Unite events this week, starting with Lois Weiner tomorrow.