Joe Williams' DFER Propaganda Laugh Riot, Lauding E4E, Ignoring MORE Support

...new organizations like Educators for Excellence are increasingly giving voice to teachers who have a totally different framework for social justice...... 18% of active teachers who actually voted, one out of five of those teachers voted for someone other than Mulgrew to be president... Joe Williams, DFER, in DN.

Message to Joe Williams: Those one in five voted for MORE whose members mock and despise E4E as your astro-turf creation. In case you missed it E4E didn't have the chops to put itself out there in the UFT elections even with their millions of dollars to run a campaign. They would have been exposed as the joke they are. In fact they barely have a presence left here in NYC with their events dwindling to nothing. Hey Joe, I have an idea. Why doesn't DFER sponsor a debate between MORE and E4E and watch them run for the hills. Or rather they have already run for the hills -- the Beverly Hills.

Perdido Street School made this cogent point:

Many of us in the UFT rank and file despise the UFT leadership because they cave to much to the DFER/hedge fund/Bloomberg/Gates/Obama agenda, not because they don't cave enough to it.

DFER propaganda-meister Joe Williams mocks UFT President Michael Mulgrew 

Now Williams does have a few interesting things to say.

Once upon a time, city teachers were united in a social justice battle for better pay, benefits and working conditions. They fought hard and they fought together, because the benefits of doing so were obvious.

The internal dynamics of the UFT expose the stark disconnect.
Inside the union, the old guard is still holding on strong – and that has become a nightmare for Mulgrew. The men and women who made the UFT, now retired, still serve as the most active voting bloc within the union. (Retirees are allowed to vote in UFT elections.) The problem is: Most of them left NYC long ago, for warmer environs down south and a lower cost of living.
In union elections this spring, for example, only 18% of the city’s teaching force cared enough about what the UFT was doing that they even bothered to vote. (And of the 18% of active teachers who actually voted, one out of five of those teachers voted for someone other than Mulgrew to be president.)

It has gotten so bad that the UFT is considering launching an internal task force to find out why the overwhelming majority of active classroom teachers are disconnected from the union.

Yes, that internal task force, which MORE is/will be invited to take part in. Which I adamantly oppose -- I am in the minority. Here's what will happen. They will be sworn to secrecy so our own reps can't come back and report to us. The TF will be dominated by Unity -- and New Action -- all caucuses, even phony bogus ones like NA are supposed to be part of this. And I can predict what they will come up with. 

And the lack of a democratic union where nothing much can be at stake given the way the elections are structured will NOT be part of the discussions. They will recommend more outreach/advertizing etc. 

Frankly, if I am still around I will argue for MORE to boycott the election farce next time in 2016 -- campaign yes, but against the way elections are run -- and the resulting campaign will actually have a bigger impact. I will lose that argument inside MORE and if the numbers don't change much - oh, maybe MORE wins the 7 high school exec board seats and MORE will be where New Action was in the 90s. Ho hum.

Newark's NEW Caucus on Chicago Layoffs

Some of them were union activists, trying to make their public schools and their union better.... NEW Caucus

The Chicago layoff story while hiring Teach For America scabs (Mark Naison: Teach for America-Our Modern Day Pinkertons) is a declaration of nuclear war.

RBE did a good job the other day in branding Rahm Emanuel a murderer (Rahm Emanuel's School Closings Put Children's Live). In a fair society Rhambo would be on death row, along with his pals who murder innocent civilians (Obama: I Could Be My Own Drone Bombing Victim.)

NEW Caucus, which basically won the Newark union elections last month, is predicting that Cami Anderson will be doing her own version of Rhambo next year once Rosemary's Randi's baby -- the contract she brokered -- hits full force.

Despite it being the summer, NEW Caucus has been busy.  More on that in a later email...

But for now, we wanted to share some recent articles that are relevant to all Newark education workers and public education in general.  So those articles are toward the bottom.

But the huge, terrible news today is what has been taking place in Chicago since Friday.

Chicago has begun laying off 2,100 education

workers!!!  MANY OF THEM ARE (were) TENURED!  

Some of them were union activists, trying to make their public schools and their union better.  

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-07-19/news/chi-cps-more-layoffs-coming-20130718_1_pension-reform-cps-new-teachers-contract

PLEASE READ!  This is what is coming to Newark!  We have already heard rumors that because our Superintendent did not close any schools this past year (an election year for her employer) she WILL close schools in large numbers next year if Christie wins a second term.    

Newark education workers MUST begin mobilizing to protect our students, our public schools, our city, and our profession!  

The corporate education reformers are willing to destroy schools, communities, student lives, and 

the lives of education workers in their push for markets and profit.  

It's up to US to stop them.

Below are more articles, further driving home the damage caused by the corporate "reform" agenda:

1)  article on Philly school closings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/education/budget-cuts-reach-bone-for-philadelphia-schools.html?emc=eta1

2)  Jersey City Public Schools outsourcing substitutes.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/07/jersey_city_schools_to_outsource_substitute_teachers_at_4m_cost.html

3)  Corporate reformer push to "reform" schools of education.

 http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/07/09/alternative-grad-school-raises-concerns-about-who-s-teaching-nj-s-teachers/

and another critiquing the "reform" agenda for schools of education.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/are-schools-of-education-_b_3563103.html

4)  GREAT article on the disruptive and negative results of "renew" or "turnaround" schools

in Washington, DC.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-reconstitution-dc-officials-hope-for-school-turnaround/2013/06/10/9c998a44-cb0a-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html

In Solidarity,

Newark Education Workers Caucus

(NEW Caucus)

 

NewarkEducationWorkersCaucus.com

862-367-9211 

Facebook.com/NEWCaucus

Twitter.com/NEWCaucus

YouTube.com/user/NEWCaucus

Google Calendar: NewarkEducationWorkersCaucus@gmail.com

Jeff Kaufman Covers Trayvon Martin Protest in Los Angelos

Jeff is spending the month in LA attending the National Academy on Constitutional and Political Theory. He was at the Trayvon Martin rally and send these videos and pics. He said, "The woman with the cut out paper is, of course, a teacher from East LA (middle school math). We met teachers from various schools in LA United included one who had been in the rubber room 3 times."

This Was The Week That Was: Norms Social Notes

It's been a busy week at the ole homestead. So, given my disappearing

Mighty Max: 7 weeks old

memory, I'm doing a day by day chronicle of the last week so I don't do the same things this upcoming week where the only thing on the agenda is going to see Dirty Wars Monday and the MORE summer series: UFT leadership, Friend or Foe on Thurs. (Come on down -- $3 happy hour beers -- I may have a few BEFORE the meeting.

Saturday July 13

Brother, sister love

Brother in law birthday. Go to Jersey, the Highlands, for party. Hot. Hit lots of traffic in SI and on Garden State. Eat lots of hot dogs (one was fat free), cheeseburgers, drink lots of beer. Play Boce on lawn with 29 year old cousin Dan as partner while bro-in-law gets stuck with my wife who throws ball sideways-- see pic for reaction. I'm not bad and have a Boce future.

See niece's daughters (28 months and 5) get more interesting with every visit -- they lobby parents for another child, 5 year old complaining what hard work it is to be a big sister -- she has to do all the work. Wife ends up alone with them taking care for about 15 minutes. Nothing like watching her chase a 2 year old around.

See benefits of being only child as my wife and her brother do a love pose.

Sunday, July 14
Celebrate future testing opt-outer Jack Cavanagh's first birthday with Julie and Glen - and about 50 others. Jack has had quite a year, attending DAs, MORE meetings, etc -- if this kid becomes a teacher I will be shocked. Looked like great food -- but  still full from all the crap from Sat so miss out and eat little -- which I regret an hour later when I get home and am starving.  Mollie and Darren are there and we get to meet 6-week old Max for first time. (I gotta find some of the great Max --- another future opt-outer.) And how great to see Lisa Donlan who I don't see often enough. The whole Real Reform crew was there except for Brian. Making the Inconvenient Truth Behind WFS was one of the richest experiences of my life and the team will be bonded forever. Now let's get all those kids grown up so we can do another one.

Monday, July 15
Stay home and stare at garden of the future while smoking a pipe and reading "Dirty Wars" (looking for drones from Bill Gates) while doing no work. Too bad you can't dream a garden into life. I have all these grandiose plans to build, build, build but so far all I do is cut vines, brush - my inner George Bush -- and take down old trellises. At night I don't even watch the home run hitting event, which bores me to hell. So I sit on deck and smoke and read.

Tuesday, July 16
Ditto Monday (with a visit to gym) until leave for Change the Stakes steering comm meeting at 4:30 followed by regular meeting at 6. My fave group of people -- maybe because most are parents and not teachers. Screw the all-star game though I do get home to watch some of it. Snore.

Wednesday, July 17
College pal Dan and Australian wife Robyn do insane thing. Took a bus from Washington DC where they now live to Manhattan where they took the Jitney to East
Hampton for a few days. That entire process takes almost 8-10 hours and they get in Monday night. (Love this week's NY Jitney cover.)

So we do a more insane thing. Rather than go to our beach 3 blocks away, we drive 2 and a half hours to the Hamptons to go to the beach there -- which frankly didn't impress me much. We manage to eat lunch before the beach and dinner later (no missing meals in my wife's world), though we choked on the outrageously expensive food and surly service for dinner. Still a great view of sunset followed by another 2.5 hour trip home in the dark - can't they afford lights in EastHampton? No baseball to miss tonight so all is good. Love that XM radio.

Thursday, July 18
Julie comes to beach with 2 pals and no kids. I never go to the beach unless people come. So I head over to meet them in 95 degrees at noon. Surprisingly there is a nice breeze and it feels pretty good. Get 2 hour harangue about what a sexist I am -- I need to send her pics of my junk in my underwear and then ask for rehabilitation  -- hey, it worked for some people. It was fun to chat given how busy Julie has been and also get over to the beach and see the progress in repairing the wall.

Get home at 2:30 and head for deck to smoke and read more "Dirty Wars" while looking up for incoming drone from the AFT while checking back fence for signs of CIA assassination teams. At 4 wife says, "Hey, want to go to the beach?" So off we go for another 2 hours. More beach time over last 2 days than I've had in a year. My face is RED!

David, Gloria, Liza, Lisa, Moi, Pat

Still no baseball so stay up for Letterman and Craig Ferguson.

Friday, July 19
The big MORE air-it-out meeting where we get to bitch about the good, the bad and the ugly. Sorry, can't speak about it without worrying about a MORE drone. But kudos to Seku and Jia, 2 of the emerging leaders of MORE for doing a spectacular job.
Aside: Too bad people think of a caucus only in terms of elections. Most important: 30 people care enough give up a hot Friday afternoon (if people weren't away it would have been 60) to shlep into the city for what could have turned out to be a difficult meeting and to have 2 relatively new people a) be trusted to handle this and b) to have that trust reinforced beyond conception is what makes this work so rewarding.

Liza can make anyone feel happy- even me

Then it was party time as some of us headed over to a bar in Williamsburg for Liza and Vanessa's bachelorette party. I've never been to a bachelorette party before. "Don't worry," Gloria told me. "No one thinks of you as a guy." Gee thanks. David came along with Pat to make sure I wasn't the only guy.

Vanessa and Liza

The official wedding is in Maine next week which we can't attend. Turns out they got married officially on Friday so this was a very special evening for us all. Those who know Liza's awesome history of activism in GEM, NYCORE and the early stages of MORE miss her terribly since she and Vanessa moved to Seattle, where Liza has jumped into the test resistance movement.

Saturday, July 20
Last day of heat wave. So instead of going to the beach we head into Brooklyn to our friends' daughter and hubby's new apartment they moved into yesterday in Fort Greene near Washington Av and Greene St. Nice place in a gentrifying neighborhood. I can't get my head around an

at the ice cream stand minutes before downpour

apartment that costs 7 times what I paid for my house 34 years ago. (You can get an entire house in Rockaway for the price of an apt in Bklyn now). Then we walk over to a nice little restaurant a few blocks away, followed by a walk over to Dekalb near Vanderbilt for some ice cream. Where we get caught in a massive downpour and my wife has the only umbrella. While waiting it out under an overhang we meet a British/Scottish couple with a 4 month old and a dog. We all make friends very quickly before heading off into the rain, trying to walk between the drops.
Stay up till 2 watching Bourne something or other followed by The Newsroom.

Sunday, July 21
Gym and a day of just hanging out -maybe a movie and afternoon nap---

Newark Schools for Sale: Cami Anderson, Cerf Keep Turnaround Board Member Campbell Brown Under the Sheets

Turnaround has refused to provide information about its failed foray into Orange schools. Now, Turnaround For Children is interviewing schools in Newark for September. What is Turnaround and what is its proposed role in Newark? The best source for information would be Turnaround, right? Wrong. ...Newark Schools for Sale

Ted Cohen sent this follow-up report after his last post here (Newark Confidential - Turnaround Children Inc. Tr...) on secrecy laden Turnaround Schools move into the Newark schools as a "reward" for failing. Slimebucket Campbell Brown is on their board.

He posted at http://newarkschoolsforsale.wordpress.com/

Turnaround Children, Campbell Brown: kissin’ cousins?

Posted on July 20, 2013 by newarkschool

 

By Ted Cohen

The top school official in a major American city as part of an education-reform initiative is bringing in yet another nonprofit foundation, yet as little is known about Turnaround for Children Inc. as is known about how it fits into Supt. Cami Anderson’s plan to modernize Newark, New Jersey’s schools.

Anderson refuses to respond to open requests for information, and Turnaround officials  - where the secretive ex-newsie Campbell Brown sleeps on the board (http://gawker.com/5936190/campbell-brown-is-incapable-of-understanding-the-concept-of-disclosure) – are equally evasive.

Brown’s lackings also caught the sharp eye of Karoli Kuns. (http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/campbell-brown-crawls-out-under-her-rock-sl)

Attempts to contact New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf have been met with similar silence.

As a longtime newspaper reporter, I find transparency hard to come by. Nonprofits should make transparency their middle name.

In fact, Guidestar.org is helping promote transparency, announcing recently its intent to “encourage nonprofit transparency on a national scale.”

A bit of history: Anderson arrived in New Jersey’s largest school district  in 2011. She brought with her an education-reform movement. The city’s public schools are among the lowest-performing in the state, even after the state government took over their management in 1995.

Although the school district continues to struggle with low high school-graduation rates and low standardized-test scores, the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, insists, “Newark, New Jersey can become one of the first American cities to solve the crisis in public education.”This vision for better school district is also shared by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who made a $100 million donation to Newark Public Schools in 2010.

HuffPost’s Joy Resmovits called Newark  “a national test case for the fixing of troubled urban schools and the use of major philanthropic dollars in an educational system.”

Now, Turnaround For Children is interviewing schools in Newark for September. What is Turnaround and what is its proposed role in Newark? The best source for information would be Turnaround, right?

Wrong.

Turnaround has refused to provide information about its failed foray into Orange schools and whether that experience foretells problems in Newark. That’s not the way to run a nonprofit. Obfuscation begets journalistic cynicism – and scrutiny.

Turnaround’s entry into the reform movement began with Orange, N.J., as well as New York City and Washington, D.C. But as soon as the Orange effort began, it failed, according to Turnaround’s nonprofit filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Tax documents filed with the IRS by Turnaround – accessible through Guidestar.org – disclose the program’s unexpected suspension. The documents, a public record, also reveal that Turnaround was forced to return the remaining part of the grant that funded the program.

“Management decided to terminate its three-school program earlier than planned,” Turnaround officials told the IRS. In their IRS filing, Turnaround officials blamed the short-lived program’s demise on what they vaguely described as a “shift in organizational priorities.”

But officials failed to disclose what they meant by the change or who instigated it.

Turnaround officials say they suspended their request for the remaining funding they were to receive for the Orange project, but they made no mention of the amount of funding they had already received and the amount they were still due.

Turnaround officials issued a prepared statement defending their Orange pullout. “Our hope was to expand the partnership, to deliver a significant amount of professional development to teachers and to increase our engagement district-wide,” said Kate Felsen, vice president of communications. “Unfortunately, Orange Public Schools did not have the capacity to take on the professional development we had to offer during the 2011-12 year. For this reason, we ended our partnership amicably.”

Though Turnaround proudly announced the Orange project in its September 2010 newsletter, there is no evidence on the organization’s web site that Turnaround officials ever notified the public of the program’s suspension.
If Orange school officials are to blame for Turnaround’s failure in their schools, then they are apparently taking the accusations in stride. Orange Supt. Ronald Lee refused to respond to questions. He submitted a statement finally after receiving a formal open-records request.

He said, “Turnaround proposed to expand its program to a transformational model that encompassed academic, foundational and behavioral elements in the 2011-2012 school year. At the same time, the district was continuing or launching a number of significant initiatives to improve instruction and student outcomes. We mutually concluded that the district’s initiatives would require and deserved the full focus of the district staff, principals and teachers. Therefore, we discontinued the program in Orange at that time to allow these innovations to take hold.”

Felsen, too, will not go beyond her prepared statement. When asked who funded the Orange effort and who will be funding the Newark plan, Felsen replied, “You have my statement.”

More to the point, attempts by journalists to procure information from this so-called “transparent” group – as described by GuideStar.org – have been met with silence, stalling and arrogance.

To garner and cultivate pubic support, i.e., more dollars, nonprofits need to be open, accessible. Not hiding. What language do they understand – “lawsuit?”

Ted Cohen of Maine is a veteran newspaper and radio reporter who follows trending national issues. He can be reached at tedcohen@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Tedcohen1.

Reposted: Kerrie Dalman, president of Colorado teachers association writes pro-inBloom oped as metastasizing cancer keeps eating away at the NEA and AFT

Kerrie Dalman is President of the Colorado Education Association, the state affiliate of the NEA.  She’s also head honcho of Southwest TURN, a branch of the metastasizing cancer eating away at the NEA and AFT. ......

@theChalkface exposes another turncoat union leader

Colorado Educators Alert: TURNcoat, Kerrie Dalman, Promotes InBloom Student Data Mining and Storage

I'm reposting this as new links have come in. Want to discuss the internal cancer eating away at teacher unions? Come to the MORE summer weekly series this Thursday I'm helping organize: UFT Leadership; Friend or Foe.

For documentation of Gates grant to Colorado Education Association: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database/Grants/2013/02/OPP1081527

Diane Ravitch posted this Colorado teacher response:

This Teacher Does Not Love inBloom by dianerav

Peg Robertson read the article in the Denver Post in which the president of the Colorado Education Association praised inBloom and said that it would provide great learning tools.

Peg is a teacher and parent in Colorado, and she is a leader of United OptOut. She is opposed to inBloom. Here she explains why.

Read her article in its entirety.

 Another comment

10:33am Jul 20 Kerrie Dalman the president of the Colorado teachers union just wrote a pro-inBloom oped in the Denver Post; saying how the sharing of personal student data with inBloom and for-profit vendors will help teachers reach students more effectively. http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_23688519/inbloom-great-teaching-tool If you are a teacher and disagree leave a comment on the oped, and on the CEA Facebook page where they have linked to the article https://www.facebook.com/ColoradoEA?fref=ts Also, if any Colorado teacher wants to write on this -- about how sharing students' personal data with vendors is likely to hurt rather than help -- as well as the fact that inBloom is also collecting data for teachers, including your name, address, SSN, and the reason you were let go of your last teaching job, all linked to your students' test scores, in a way that puts your privacy at risk (and could jeopardize your future professional prospects), please let me know. You could offer it to the Denver Post and if they don't publish I'd be happy to feature it on my blog and ask Diane to link to it to make sure it gets maximum readership Finally, the CEA did get $300K from Gates Foundation in Feb. 2013 http://shar.es/krIDM Hope you all read the terrific expose of the Gates effect and how they use their huge wealth to buy assent in higher ed at http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gates-Effect/140323/ InBloom enables great teaching tools www.denverpost.com For a teacher, nothing beats that moment when the light goes on, when a student says,

Call for Waiver from teacher evaluations in NY

This came in an email as a suggestion for MORE to take up the cause and I think it should. But I wonder if the UFT which supports and vehemently defends the new evaluation system will be calling for a waiver.

It is now possible for states to request a waiver from teacher evaluations for the upcoming school year.  Randi Weingarten and the AFT (parent body of the UFT) has asked for it and, in an astonishing about-face, Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education and the person responsible for tying federal funding to teacher evaluations, has followed with the offer of a one-year moratorium.

This makes sense!  Many states have already applied for their waivers, but not New York.  Cities and districts throughout the state need time to make their way through the incredibly complex process (over 200 pages in NYC) of implementing a teacher evaluation system.  We need to rally behind Randi and the AFT. Unions upstate--NYSUT and Rochester, in particular--have been outspoken in their support for the moratorium.  In fact, there's been a lot of agreement among many different interests that a moratorium is needed.

Now is the time to call on our union and help make the request for a waiver an issue.  Speak to the mayoral candidates, let them know this matters to you.  Let your colleagues and friends know that an option is there for the taking, and New York has not jumped on the chance to give our school systems the time they need to do this right.

Call the UFT, 212-777-7500.  Share with your colleagues and union members on Facebook and Twitter!

Gotham Schools Funders: You Get What You Pay For

Yesterday I posted hits from my fellow bloggers to Gotham Schools' increasingly pro ed deform agenda (NYC Teacher Bloggers on the Loose: Slam Gotham Schools Coverage) -- they don't even bother defending themselves against these charges. NYC Educator hit them hard:

when an astroturf group like Students First NY holds a rally to announce something that's not actually going to happen, there's a picture right there so everyone can see. Gotham Schools readers can ask one another, "Gee, what is Michelle Rhee's NY branch going to not do next? Are they going to not tape kids' mouths shut? After all, Rhee found it hilarious when she herself did it." But no, the [UFT] rally itself did not make the Gotham cut. Perhaps it was because the UFT is actually going to go through with this. Or maybe it was due to the vital nature of covering every little thing reformy, real, imaginary, or whatever. This notion is supported by the fact that, while Gotham didn't bother to cover the UFT/ parent rally, they saw fit to cover how charter supporters felt about the UFT lawsuit. There are extensive quotes from astroturf folks, but not a single one from any of the varied speakers at yesterday's rally.

Gotham headline: Charter advocates criticize UFT’s lawsuit against city’s planning.

NYC just doesn't get it. Come up with the bucks like Students First NY to buy coverage and you have a shot. 

I once gave $50 and Randi also gave and when the ed deform funding issue came up they said something like, "Oh, lookie here, we get funding from all sides. See that makes us impartial."

So what if they get funding from the Walton Family Foundation, well known for its support for privatization, vouchers & charter expansion, all relevant to the co-location UFT rally Gotham didn't cover?

Gotham is part of Education News Network. Here are the announcements about the Denver-based ENN and Gotham itself.

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-02-25-education-news-network-comes-together

The group has received funding from some foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation, SeaChange Capital Partners and the New York-based Arabella Advisors.  

http://gothamschools.org/2013/03/01/why-were-creating-an-education-news-network-and-how-to-help/

Elizabeth Green left this comment in response to the funding question:

Updated March 3: I’ve already responded to one question, about ENN’s funding sources, in the comments section. Leonie Haimson asked whether our grants, including one from the Walton Foundation mentioned in this news story about ENN, come with strings attached.  She also asked, “even if not, how will you insulate yourself from the fear of losing funding” if we write critically about causes the Walton Foundation supports?
I responded in this comment, explaining that, in brief, the answers are “No and Carefully.” The comment elaborates further so please read it if you are interested! And bring on more questions as you have them.

When a comment raised the question about the influence of the funding ("I'm bit worried about that you might lose some of that quality in a larger "corporate" model", Elizabeth responded:

I don't mean to minimize the challenge here. Business matters (in particular, how much money a news organization has, from where, and with what conditions) will always influence editorial decisions; that is the unavoidable reality. (See this great essay on how this relationship has played out throughout the history of the American press: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/.... ) Given that reality, we have two options: (1) Cease to exist, proclaiming any funding source polluted or (2) Do our best to create a business that supports editorial independence and reporting of the sort we believe is important, rather than threatening it. Obviously, we are choosing (2).

 Actually, I'm getting closer to choosing (1). I know I am a hard liner but we are in a war and it can be disingenuous to claim impartiality in covering stories while the important thing it what stories you choose to cover. I barely skim GS now while getting much more info from other bloggers.

A funder of Gotham Schools expansion is SeaChange Capital Partners.

SeaChange makes loans to charters including the New York City Montessori Charter School, http://shar.es/kp24c and organized a fund to expand Uncommon Charters in NYC and beyond.

“SeaChange arranged a $6.5 million Expansion Fund, to provide the necessary financial foundation for Uncommon’s planned growth over the next five years, which will allow the organization to educate thousands more low-income students, while demonstrating the viability of a scaled solution for improving urban education. We committed $2 million from our own Catalyst Fund toward this effort.” http://seachangecap.org/about/investments/

Here is a 2010  “confidential memo” by SeaChange for “investors” to lure them to contribute to their fund to expand Uncommon Charters and grow in size 5X w/ public funding leveraged 7-10X.  There’s a lot in this document about the need to secure facilities to ensure this expansion; very relevant to the co-location issue.

http://seachangecap.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/UncommonFundingMemorandum.pdf .

Only 48% grad rate?

Also a funder: New York-based Arabella Advisors.  Very pro-charter issue brief for potential investors here:

http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IssueBrief-CharterSchool.pdf

NYC Teacher Bloggers on the Loose: Slam Gotham Schools Coverage And TFA

Another blogger slams Gotham Schools, more and more a wholly owned subsidiary of the charter school movement.

I spend much more time reading other bloggers than writing my own -- that should be painfully obvious in terms of the deteriorating quality over here. Blame the heat. Or lower mental capacity. Or too many social things going on. I'm going to blog tonight listing details of my busy social life so I can get a "lack of blogging" pass -- or "we don't give a shit if you blog or not" messages. I've got to head into town for a MORE meeting today at 2 -- yes we are crazy.

If you look at the fabulous blogroll on ed notes it is clear that there is almost no need for me to blog much anymore given the quality of work so many people are doing. What great news for a lazy guy. Just collate and link.What a life -- allows me to sit outside on my deck reading "Dirty Wars" and smoking my pipe, a renewed hobby after 30 years.

=========

NYC Educator slams Gotham schools on coverage - or lack thereof - of UFT protest on charter co-locos, pointing out that when Student First farts Gotham is there to sniff. (Well, he said it more genteelly than that.)

Gotham Schools Values

But then again Student First pays for their coverage at Gotham.

========
Perdido St S goes into some depth on the Bloomberg 4th term intent to lock in charter co-locos.

Bloomberg Announces Charter School Locations To Continue "In Perpetuity"

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Raging Horse also comments:

Raginghorseblog

Bloomberg Again Attempts to Extend his Education Policies into Successor’s Term -

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Gary Rubinstein slams TFA leader over hackneyed use of "status quo" terminology. Don't the deformers know they are now the new status quo? Gary calls the guy clueless -- he doesn't even know that the slickster ed deformers are not using the old SQ term anymore -- even Joel Klein who used it every other word has backed off it realizing that using SQ 12 years of running the schools is a self-indictment.

TFA co-CEO’s vs. The Boogeyman

====

Chaz nails the DOE again on favoritism for newbie teachers. Can't wait to hear Walcott defend the use of select newbie pilots and doctors over experience by going up in a plane and having his next medical procedure done by one of them.

Chaz's School Daze

The City Pulls All Stops To Get "Select" Newbie Teachers Hired While Trying To Kick ATRs To The Curb. - The DOE has shown once again how they will go to great lengths to get *"newbie teachers" *hired while making it difficult for schools to hire better qua...

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Another blogger slams Gotham Schools, more and more a wholly owned subsidiary of the charter school movement.

Urban Ed

Celebrating America's Best Teacher (and Why You'll NEVER read About That on GothamSchools.org) - Some time ago, a guy named Steve Brill -a non-teacher, non-education and virtual know-nothing to the entire education discussion in America- wrote a book e...

 

EIA: Louisiana has the rare combination of high spending and low unionization rates

I’m not sure if anyone is examining the public education environment there from that angle.... EIA

Interesting nugget from Mike Antonucci, a critic of teacher unions who is seeing the real agenda of ed deform:  $$$$$$$$$$$$$. Lots of it for charters. I always thought that once charters get their mitts on an entire city or state and kill all the unions the true purpose will emerge. Credit to Mike for exposing this trend. And by the way, while Mike says he us unqualified to judge the quality of the schools, the story of failed ed deform is emerging.

Louisiana’s Strange Success Story

Written By: Mike Antonucci - Jul• 17•13

 

The complete overhaul of Louisiana’s public schools after Hurricane Katrina was a matter of controversy then, and still is today. I’m unqualified to offer a worthwhile opinion about the current quality of the state’s schools, but I do know that if you were to hypothetically describe a state with vouchers, a multitude of charters, a mostly decimated pair of teachers’ unions, and a Republican-dominated state government with a governor determined to make a national name for himself on education issues, you wouldn’t expect to hear that there was an explosion of spending, hiring, and compensation hikes. Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

More at http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2013/07/17/louisianas-strange-success-story/

You Get What You Pay For - from a NYC Parent

A debate on the NYCEd listserve resulted in a teacher of all people joining the ed deform chant of "throwing money at things is not the solution" and that Bloomberg's failures in ed deform despite the expendutures is proof that money doesn't work. His solution is strengthening School based Support Teams. I won't go there now other than to say that I posted all the ways Bloomberg's spending was misspent on everything but supporting the classroom. Here, Vicki, a parent on the list serve makes so much more of an eloquent statement than I can.

You get what you pay for

Think about the money we spend on schools and "overpaid, overstaffed" union employees the next time you drive by one of those constructions sites.

You know, the ones your tax money pays for, maybe on second avenue. Two or three supervisors standing around chatting, one with a clipboard leaning against a wall, one guy just to hold up a sign. Three guys to watch the guy who moves the backhoe.

But we can have one teacher and 30 children in a classroom learning to read?

What do we say about starting a new business? Make sure it's well-capitalized.

What do we say about major corporations? They want to pay lower taxes because they need the money to invest in the business -- the best people, the best equipment.

What do we say about pharmaceutical companies? They need to charge higher prices so they can invest in R&D and hire the best employees.

What do people say about their cars, as evidenced by the 99% of cars on the roads in NYC that are late-model SUVS? We need top-quality transportation and it's worth paying for so we don't have dents in the door, chips in the paint, and so on.

What do we say about schools? Seventy-year-old buildings with PVCs leaking from the light fixtures are good enough for our kids. Libraries without books are good enough for our kids.

Inadequate gym facilities are good enough for our kids. Lack of indoor play space, and thus forced watching of Sponge Bob during recess (no books allowed in the auditorium!) during half of all schools days is good enough for our kids.

One teacher for every 30 kindergarten children is good enough for our kids -- oh, and let's "raise the standards" by skipping a developmental stage and force them to read in Kindergarten.

Kid, you say you want to blow your nose? Well tell you mother to send some tissues.

School supplies? Paper staples notebooks pencils pens? Ask your mother.

My parents went to school in the 30s and 40s when there were plenty of immigrants and plenty of social problems in NY. Their parents had no cars and often scrimped to pay the rent.

Yet their high school had a pool and Latin and handwriting and physics and a football team and everyone graduated knowing who Charlemagne was. We still don't offer more than 2 years of history in all of the 12 years our kids spend in school.

--Vicki

How Do They Loathe Us? - Fred Smith's Sonnet to Tisch, Duncan et al.

Fred wrote a sonnet dedicated to Arne Duncan, New York State Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Mayor Michael Bloomberg and  their respective departments of education, as well as test monger Pearson.  He says, "In their nonfiction, data-cramped world, this is the kind of poetry they inspire."

How Do They Loathe Us?


How do they loathe us? Let me count the ways.

They loathe us deepmost to the very core.

Teachers, parents they evenly abhor--

Children more so in their tend’rest days.

They loathe us blind-eyed with “high standards” rage,

Misusing tests to give each one a score.

They loathe us thus and thus turn gold to straw.

They loathe us in a frenzied death-embrace:


Loathe by every unfounded decision,

Declaring that we have no other choices;

Loathe us, turning classrooms into prisons.

They loathe us darkly and ignore our voices;

Worship at the shrine of imprecision,

Foreclose the future, loathe us and rejoice.


~Fred Smith, Change the Stakes (with apologies to EBB)

Stay cool, ask your ardent followers to put some iambs together in sonnet form, and compose their own litany of loathing.

Edushyster Blows Up Democracy Prep 100% Grad Rate and New Yorker Shill Piece

I was going to do a piece on the New Yorker article on the publicity seeking Democracy Prep but was so spitting mad I couldn't think straight. To our rescue comes Edushyster. Did DP give UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a speaker's fee as part of the PR machine hype, which to charters like DP is their most important operations? Just askin'.

I was in a DP co-located school in Harlem a few years ago when the chapter leader invited me to address the staff during a union meeting. The staff was mostly black, Latino and older. A walk through the halls during passing showed the DP racist spin in action The blond pony tails of the young teachers were bobbing along. And the big signs on their doors with the names of their fancy colleges were prominent.

http://edushyster.com/?p=2907

Other People’s Children

Posted on July 11, 2013

Why are white people so eager to advocate for the sort of schools to which they would never send their own children?
 
 

Reader: more and more white people agree that strict, “no excuses” style charter schools provide an ideal learning environment for poor minority kids. As proof of this surging enthusiasm I give you exhibit A: a glowing report about Harlem’s Democracy Prep charter school featured in the current issue of the New Yorker, one of America’s whitest magazines. (Full disclosure: I am white and also a New Yorker subscriber). Which brings us to today’s fiercely urgent question: why are white people so eager to advocate for the sort of schools to which they would never send their own children?
 
Through the Gauntlet
The New Yorker piece, by writer Ian Frazier, is subtitled ‘Up Life’s Ladder’—but ’gauntlet’ might be a more accurate metaphor. Frazier is dazzled by the spectacle of the 44 members of Democracy Prep’s first graduating class, on stage at the Apollo Theater in their school-bus-yellow robes, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on hand to fete them. But more than three quarters of Democracy Prep’s students—23% each year—never made it onto the stage. If Frazier is aware of the school’s attrition rate, among the highest in New York City, he doesn’t mention it. Nor does Frazier have anything to say about the school’s strict “no excuses” disciplinary policy. Instead, he seems excited by the fact that students at the school are required to take Korean, the only foreign language offered. Best of all, Frazier likes the fact that 100% of the remaining graduates are headed to a four-year college.

Whatever it Takes
 

I’m guessing that it’s not the fault of the New Yorker’s legendarily “no excuses” fact-checking department that these less inspiring (not to mention less democratic) details about Democracy Prep didn’t make it into the magazine. Instead, the writer is merely reflecting a growing consensus among elites that a certain kind of schooling is necessary to propel poor minority students along the steep uphill climb to college. This formula for success, the “special sauce,” is long and hard and requires the sort of militaristic discipline that I doubt any writer for the New Yorker would tolerate for his or her children for a day, let alone the four years, eight years, even 12-year-long slog that is supposed to end in a mythical place called “college.”

• Doing time
  The school day at Democracy Prep starts at 7:45AM and lasts until 4:15PM, but students routinely stay until six for tutoring. A nine, ten or 11 hour school day would no doubt strike middle class parents as excessive (what about Skyler’s soccer practice, or Emma’s beekeeping camp?) but even within this endless school day there is no time to lose. Democracy Prep, like many urban “no excuses” schools, uses a countdown during transitions from one class or activity to the next so that students don’t waste a second of learning time.

• Living the DREAM
  Democracy Prep relies upon a monetary-based system of rewards that is common in the “no excuses” world. Students earn and lose DREAM Dollars (the acronym stands for the school’s values: Discipline, Respect, Enthusiasm, Accountability and Maturity) based on behavior and academic performance. In addition to providing an important regulator of behavior, the DREAM dollars also prep the students for their ultimate destination beyond even college: work.

• Broken windows
  A “no excuses” school embodies a philosophy that might best be understood as the educational equivalent of the broken windows theory. Small disruptions are seen as leading to the kind of unruliness and disorder that stands in between poor minority kids and college-bound success. Hence the straight, silent lines in which students transition from one class to another might be seen as leading straight to college.

• SLANT
  Suburban parents are likely unfamiliar with SLANT, the KIPP-informed mantra that shapes “no excuses” teaching. The behavior management technique instructs students to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the teacher. Younger students, who tend to be naturally disruptive, may also be instructed to fold their hands or “make a bubble,” pursing their lips and filling their cheeks with air so as to keep them from talking.

• Time and Punishment
  The elaborate architecture of rewards and punishments that undergird the “no excuses” approach must have consequences, of course. Suspensions at these schools tend to be extremely high, even though suspending students has long been linked to worsening academic outcomes and higher drop out rates. The recent revelations about the high number of kindergartners suspended by the charter school chain “Achievement First” in Connecticut may have caused some initial discomfort among suburban advocates of these schools (little Haley, suspended???). But amid the rising certitude that we must do “whatever it takes” to propel poor minority students to college, that discomfort was soon forgotten.

Send tips and comments to tips@edushyster.com.

Bruce Baker: Charters are Parasites

Here is the Ravitch post with the link to Bruce's piece:

Bruce Baker has studied Newark charters repeatedly. As he shows in this post, their greatest success is their ability to skim the students who are most likely to succeed. Some if his findings about their academic growth–or lack thereof-may surprise you. 

Charters are parasites, he concludes, that harm their host. Making the entire district charter does not change that: 

“But sadly, those who most vociferously favor charter expansion as a key element of supposed “portfolio” models of schooling appear entirely uninterested in mitigating parasitic activity (that which achieves the parasites goal at the expense of the host. e.g. parasitic rather than symbiotic). Rather, they fallaciously argue that an organism consisting entirely of potential parasites is itself, the optimal form. That the good host is one that relinquishes? (WTF?) As if somehow, the damaging effects of skimming and selective attrition might be lessened or cease to exist if the entirety of cities such as Newark were served only by charter schools. Such an assertion is not merely suspect, it’s absurd.”

The agenda of the people behind charters is to eliminate as much of the public school system they can before it all falls down around their heads. If they can really break it badly it can never be put back together again and no matter the scandals, etc. we will be back to the 19th century pre-public ed --- except for the kids no one wants --- but I bet some charter slugs will even come up with some scam to take those --- you know, use Guantanamo techniques at the least expense but charge high fees for their "special" services.

Here is a post that reveals that agenda from Andy Smarick posting in Philanthropy Roundtable:

Our schools won’t thrive until the charter ethic replaces the urban school district itself, says this leading reform expert....The traditional urban public school system is broken. It cannot be fixed. It must be replaced.

http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/site/print/magna_charter

Gary Gives Advice to an upcoming TFAer

And to TFA:  Shame on you for disrespecting this woman by not providing her adequate training.  And shame on you for having no concern for the 150 to 200 students who she is about to teach.  Teachers who only taught a few fourth graders reading and math for sixteen hours are most certainly not going to close any achievement gaps in their first year teaching middle school science.  There is a reason that 15% of corps members quit (and another significant percent who probably should quit since they are not doing much good).

Excerpt, Gary Rubinstein blog:  Preventing a disaster

Newark Confidential - Turnaround Children Inc. Transparency Grade: F

[Cami] Anderson refuses to respond to open requests for information, and Turnaround officials are equally evasive... Attempts to contact New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf  have been met with similar silence..... Ted Cohen

Cami Anderson, one of Joel Klein's hatchet women, now Supt of Newark schools, won't share info? Shocking.

Guest Editorial

by Ted Cohen

The top school official in a major American city as part of an education-reform initiative is bringing in yet another private foundation, yet as little is known about Turnaround for Children Inc. as is known about how it fits into Supt. Cami Anderson’s plan to modernize Newark, New Jersey’s schools.

Anderson refuses to respond to open requests for information, and Turnaround officials are equally evasive.
Attempts to contact New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf  have been met with similar silence.
Anderson arrived in New Jersey’s largest school district  - two years ago this month She brought with her an education-reform movement. The city's public schools are among the lowest-performing in the state, even after the state government took over their management in 1995.

Although the school district continues to struggle with low high school-graduation rates and low standardized-test scores, the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, insists, "Newark, New Jersey can become one of the first American cities to solve the crisis in public education." This vision for better school district is also shared by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who made a $100 million donation to Newark Public Schools in 2010.

HuffPost’s Joy Resmovits called Newark  “a national test case for the fixing of troubled urban schools and the use of major philanthropic dollars in an educational system.”

Now, Turnaround For Children is interviewing schools in Newark for September. What is Turnaround and what is its proposed role in Newark? The best source for information would be Turnaround, right?
Wrong.
Turnaround has refused to provide information about its failed foray into Orange schools and whether that experience foretells problems in Newark.

Turnaround’s entry into the reform movement began with Orange, N.J., as well as New York City and Washington, D.C. But as soon as the Orange effort began, it failed, according to Turnaround’s nonprofit filing with the Internal Revenue Service. Tax documents filed with the IRS by Turnaround disclose the program's unexpected suspension. The documents, a public record, also reveal that Turnaround was forced to return the remaining part of the grant that funded the program.

"Management decided to terminate its three-school program earlier than planned," Turnaround officials told the IRS. In their IRS filing, Turnaround officials blamed the short-lived program's demise on what they vaguely described as a "shift in organizational priorities."
But officials failed to disclose what they meant by the change or who instigated it.
Turnaround officials say they suspended their request for the remaining funding they were to receive for the Orange project, but they made no mention of the amount of funding they had already received and the amount they were still due.

Turnaround officials issued a prepared statement defending their Orange pullout. “Our hope was to expand the partnership, to deliver a significant amount of professional development to teachers and to increase our engagement district-wide,” said Kate Felsen, vice president of communications. “Unfortunately, Orange Public Schools did not have the capacity to take on the professional development we had to offer during the 2011-12 year. For this reason, we ended our partnership amicably."

Though Turnaround proudly announced the Orange project in its September 2010 newsletter, there is no evidence on the organization's web site that Turnaround officials ever notified the public of the program's suspension.

If Orange school officials are to blame for Turnaround’s failure in their schools, then they are apparently taking the accusations in stride. Orange Supt. Ronald Lee refused to respond to questions. He submitted a statement finally after receiving a formal open-records request.

He said, “Turnaround proposed to expand its program to a transformational model that encompassed academic, foundational and behavioral elements in the 2011-2012 school year. At the same time, the district was continuing or launching a number of significant initiatives to improve instruction and student outcomes. We mutually concluded that the district’s initiatives would require and deserved the full focus of the district staff, principals and teachers. Therefore, we discontinued the program in Orange at that time to allow these innovations to take hold.”

Felsen, too, will not go beyond her prepared statement. When asked who funded the Orange effort and who will be funding the Newark plan, Felsen replied, “You have my statement.”
More to the point, attempts by journalists to procure information from this so-called “transparent” group – as described by GuideStar.org – have been met with silence, stalling and arrogance.

Ted Cohen of Maine is a veteran newspaper and radio reporter who follows trending national issues. He can be reached at tedcohen@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Tedcohen1.

Weiner owes bump in the polls to black voters, Spitzer Soars Over Stringer, Does Lhota Have a Chance? Moskowitz in Future

I'm ordering pins for the UFT leadership to wear: December 31, 2029.

Weiner owes his bump in the polls to black voters, 31 percent of whom favor him for mayor, compared to Christine Quinn's 16 percent and Bill Thompson's 14 percent. Weiner also leads among men. ... Village Voice

‘Tabloid Twins’ Spitzer and Weiner lead in new NYC poll.... Support from African-Americans boosted Weiner and Spitzer, the “Tabloid Twins,” says Maurice Carroll, poll director. “Whether those numbers hold up in the real poll on primary election day is the big question,” Carroll said in a statement. Weiner earned support from 31% of black Democrats, compared with 16% for Quinn and 14% for former comptroller William Thompson, who is African-American. Quinn takes the support of white voters with 22% compared with 20% for Weiner and 12% for Thompson. Spitzer also has a big margin of support among black voters, who favor him over Stringer 51% to 26%. USA Today

Weiner's candidacy, for now, seems generally healthy: His fund-raising in the latest filing period was better than that of any of his Democratic rivals, too.

Oy! Black voters favor Weiner over Thompson? No wonder the UFT sent out a desperate plea the other day for Thompson support. Remember Bloomberg's prediction? UFT endorsement was the kiss of death. Given current numbers it looks like a Weiner/Quinn runoff. Remember back in 2009 when the UFT didn't endorse Thompson, claiming that at most the UFT endorsement can move the needle is 2? Thompson looks like a dead duck.

That puts the UFT in the position similar to 2001. In a Weiner/Quinn runoff the UFT has no choice but to go for Quinn who at least they have a relationship with, as opposed to Weiner who they always have despised. Imagine if  Weiner wins that too. Then what does the UFT do in a Lhota/Weiner race? Sit on the sidelines or endorse Weiner over the Lhota Bloomberg-like nightmare. Weiner isn't much better but still.....

This is really the UFT's worst nightmare.

You know, from the very beginning I predicted that the entire Merryl Tisch pro-Thomson scenario, while her husband supported Lhota, was to create enough confusion to enable Lhota to win. The idea was to make sure that neither Liu or de Blasio reached the runoff. Check.

If Thompson, de Blasio and Liu all combined their totals in one candidate they might have a chance. I wonder what would happen if the bottom 2 (Liu and de Blasio) dropped out? Would Thompson then be able to compete? I bet he still wouldn't make the runoff but at least it would be close.

For people like me, what to do? I want Liu first and de Blasio second and my vote doesn't move the needle at all. Can I vote for Thompson? I guess NYC Educator's analysis Thompson for Mayor sort of makes sense. My problem is, can I pull the trigger?

Stringer YES
I know that people think that Spitzer will go after people. I don't really believe it. I also know that Stringer is viewed as a weak link. But let's not forget that Stringer has appointed Patrick Sullivan to the PEP time and again. One voice but a strong voice who holds the Bloomberg scum accountable. That alone gives him my vote.

And Stringer also slapped down Eva Moskowitz when she ran for Manhattan Borough President 8 years ago.

Hmmm, maybe that wasn't the best idea given that she is building a massive machine through her charter network. That is why she is making sure to open up in every district in the city. I'm betting we see a Moskowitz mayoral bid in 4 or 8 years.

Let's see now. Lhota for 8 years. Then Moskowitz for 8. Do the math. I'm ordering pins for the UFT leadership to wear: December 31, 2029.