Ms. Weingarten Goes on Television

On Wednesday night, if you stayed up later than I did, you could have seen UFT President Randi Weingarten on Charlie Rose. I TIVOed it, though. Ms. Weingarten grabbed my interest immediately by referring to her mom, who was a teacher. Ms. Weingarten, referred fondly to her experience as a teacher, but explained that education was not her first choice:

“I went into law first, because we watched how my mother worked, and we thought that teachers worked all the time.”

Interestingly, Ms. Weingarten's approach to the volume of work teachers did was to add to it, and add to it considerably. Under Ms. Weingarten's leadership, teachers now work 30 minutes more a day, and three more days a year. High school teachers generally teach six classes per day instead of five, and all teachers now have perpetual hall or potty duty. I suppose Ms. Weingarten felt working all the time was simply insufficient.

Ms. Weingarten likes to say that city teachers are now paid on par with their suburban counterparts. Regrettably, that isn't true at all. However, Ms. Weingarten has succeeded in bringing us the longest school year in the area. Remember that, because when you bring up the fact that we have not actually achieved salary parity, UFT bigshots like to claim that suburban teachers work an extra 10 minutes a day. If you actually consider we work five extra days, that argument weakens considerably.

The show also featured an interesting quote from Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

"We’ve instituted merit pay, we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the seniority rules, the teachers are teaching longer... "

Ms. Weingarten's response:

“It’s not merit pay.”

It's certainly nice to hear that merit pay is not merit pay. This statement dovetails nicely with the UFT's assertion that the sixth class is not actually a class.

If I had a magic wand I would try to instill a sense that schools have to be able to be a big tent where we listen to what parents need and what teachers need to do a good job.

Ms. Weingaten praises inclusion. It's odd, then, that Ms. Weingarten and her monopoly party do everything within their power to stifle and crush any and all voices of dissent within the union itself. They restructure voting so that high school teachers, who once dared to choose a non-Unity VP, can never make their own choice again. They make sure Ms. Weingarten hand-picks district reps so those nasty chapter leaders won't choose anyone not to her liking. They buy out opposition parties with patronage gigs if they'll only agree to endorse Ms. Weingarten for re-election. In true Joseph McCarthy style, they call their opponents reds.

In any case, Ms. Weingarten needs no magic wand. As the head of the largest local in NYSUT, which is the largest state union in the AFT, she's pretty much guaranteed her long-awaited promotion to President of the AFT. And Ms. Weingarten need not quit her UFT presidency, as it's only a part-time job anyway.

Kind of like what Ms. Weingarten's teaching job was.

The rest of you teachers, get off that computer and go find a hall to patrol!

(Extra credit to anyone who names the TV stars pictured above)

It's Good to Be King

Short of that, it's good to be principal under Mayor Mike and Jolly Joel. There are so many things you can do--condemn veteran teachers to the purgatory of ATR (a joint production of Tweed and the UFT), make pedagogues jump when you say, or, even better, have them tutor your biological offspring as part of their daily routine. After all, you can only stretch 130K a year so far.

This is really cost-effective because when you live in Rockland County, as this principal does, tutoring fees can really get up there. So what, you ask, is the penalty for blatant personal corruption and getting city employees to neglect their work and do your personal bidding? Well, in Mayor Bloomberg's New York, it's only three thousand bucks. Can you beat that?

It's even more of a bargain when you consider that teachers fester in the rubber rooms for offenses as trivial as using DoE fax machines. Thanks to the 2005 contract, teachers can be not only sent to the rubber rooms, but suspended without pay or health insurance based on unsubstantiated accusations. But if you're principal, you can have a dozen corporal punishment complaints against you and just keep on doing that thing you do.

Apparently, though, teacher complaints are not taken as seriously as children's complaints here in Mr. Bloomberg's New York. Judge Judy says, "You know how you tell teenagers are lying? Their lips are moving." Mayor Bloomberg, however, assumes they speak absolute truth without exception, and will suspend teachers without pay on their say-so. The UFT, which signed off on the contract that permits it, seems to agree. In the US of A, you're innocent until proven guilty.

Unless you're a New York City teacher.

On the other hand, if you're a New York City principal, even being guilty means nothing more than a fine.

Thanks to Schoolgal

Mayor Mike's Kinfolk Issue a Report

After reading widespread claims about Mayor Bloomberg's 81 million dollar bill for ATR teachers, it's nice to see that the UFT is finally speaking up. I only hope someone is listening.

The New Teacher Project, a completely objective organization (which just happens to have a bunch of DoE contracts) released a "fair and balanced" report calling for amendments to the UFT contract. Apparently, those goshdarn lazy ATR teachers don't want to look for jobs at all.

But the UFT says 194 of the 665 ATR teachers are actually working regular schedules full time. Not only that, but with the central system paying their salaries, principals have no incentive whatsoever to put them on payroll. Why not have a free teacher in perpetuity and buy that all-important plasma TV for the principal's office? Why not invest in daily donut deliveries to freshen up the place?

And while you're at it, why not let the mayor and his "fair and balanced" NTP quadruple the supposed cost of this enterprise? The UFT estimates it costs substantially less than the city claims.

The president of the New Teacher Project, Timothy Daly, said he knew of no way to collect data on precisely what ATR members are doing inside schools.

"Why didn't I hear about this before now if this is a widespread problem?" Mr. Daly said.

Interesting that Mr. Daly, despite having no knowledge of what ATR members did within schools, had no problem issuing reports and coming to conclusions about them. And Mr. Daly's conclusions are interesting indeed:

As we have seen in New York already, only a very small percentage of the entire teaching force (235 teachers out of approximately 79,000, or only about 0.3 percent) was unable to find a mutual consent position after a full year in the reserve pool.

Note that the "fair and balanced" approach of Mr. Daly's group is not to actually use the percentage of teachers in the reserve pool, but to compare it to the number of working teachers in New York City, the overwhelming majority of whom have never even been in the reserve pool. You know the old line about "liars, damned liars, and statisticians?"

Another example of Mr. Daly's approach to statistics can be found over at Eduwonkette's comment form.

38 percent of the most senior group of excessed teachers found a new position compared to 35 percent of the most novice.

Note that when Mr. Daly refers to "excessed teachers," he makes no distinction between new teachers excessed for declining enrollment in their subjects, and veteran teachers stuck in schools that got closed. That right there is misleading, as a one-year English teacher might easily go from school A to school B with little problem. It's different for the vet, who's gonna cost principal B over double what one-year teacher gets. And Mr. Daly acknowledges, somewhat, that new teachers are less likely to find themselves in the ATR pool:

...the most novice teachers were more than twice as likely to be reabsorbed by their former schools as the most senior teachers (44 percent compared to 18 percent).

Here, the statistics become even more questionable. There are simply more novice teachers than senior teachers these days. So if 38% of them found jobs, while 35% of novices found jobs, it's entirely possible that many more novices found jobs than senior teachers did. We don't know, of course, because in Mr. Daly's "fair and balanced" report, that info is unavailable to us.

Is there anyone naive enough to believe that if Mr. Daly's group came to different conclusions they'd still be riding the DoE gravy train?

The UFT Responds

Over at Edwize, UFT President Randi Weingarten's internet mouthpiece is shocked, SHOCKED!, at the entirely predictable PR storm the Tweedies have kicked up over the Absent Teacher Reserves, or ATRs. It's true, of course, that the Tweedies are getting a lot of mileage complaining about these teachers. Also, most of the claims in the article appear entirely verifiable.

However, the biggest difference between Mr. Klein and Ms. Weingarten is that Mr. Klein has a long-term vision of what he wants to do with the city school system. Obfuscate and delay on class size, decent facilities, and overcrowding, but full speed ahead with charter schools (With 75% of high schools overcrowded, there's always room for charter schools), privatization, no-bid contracts, and illegal anti-labor antics in the name of saving children. Who cares if we signed a contract? Who cares if we wrote the clause we're now protesting? We're SAVING THE CHILDREN, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

In any case, the United Federation of Teachers, after having endorsed mayoral control, agreed to a 3rd reorganization in which principals have to count teacher salaries as part of building budgets. And they are stunned, apparently, when principals overwhelmingly choose new teachers for less than half the price. The only surprise I see here is that they fail to recognize their own monumental lack of foresight.

The article is interesting in that it offers a laundry list of all the things Tweed won't do. They won't talk to us. They won't negotiate with us. They won't do this, they won't do that.

Well, of course they won't. But the UFT happens to be a signatory to the very document that displaced all these people. The writer protests:

When the Department of Education entered into the staffing choice system in the 2005 contract — which gave teachers the power to choose their school and school principals the power to choose their teachers — the UFT negotiation team clearly stated that such a system would result in a pool of unassigned teachers. The DoE agreed this would happen, but said it was prepared to bear that price.

That sounds like a pretty rough situation. It clearly indicates, though, that the UFT had no problem accepting a pool of unassigned teachers. This is something the very same writer chose to conspicuously ignore when writing in praise of the "Open Market System" that's left so many senior teachers out in the cold.

This situation, again, was entirely predictable. The DoE's unwillingness to negotiate is nothing new. The UFT aristocracy's policy of giving away the sun and the moon, then feigning shock when the city asks for the stars, is simply preposterous. Its response to Tweed's well-oiled PR machine (and why on earth haven't we got one?), despite having pimped the 2005 contract like the best thing since sliced bread, is typically ineffectual.

The most frightening thing about the clueless UFT leadership, though, is its chronic inability to see fault in itself. It staunchly refuses to learn anything, an odd position for a union of teachers.

Indeed, after months of proclaiming that they were concerned with attracting experienced, accomplished teachers to schools in poor communities with the greatest educational challenges, the DoE is now pursuing a policy which would ensure precisely the opposite.

Of course, if you had not agreed to mayoral control, this might not be the case. Perhaps if you had not agreed to support a reorganization that made principals consider salary, that might not be the case. And certainly, if we had not given away every single professional improvement we'd gained with zero percent salary increases (each one fully supported by the UFT leadership), that would not be the case.

What experienced teacher would take the risk of going to a school which might well be closed down, knowing that if they were unable to find another assignment the DoE would have the power to fire them.

And why would they need to worry about it if the UFT had not dumped the UFT transfer plan? Why would they need to worry about it if the UFT had not scuttled seniority privileges for less than cost of living?

It all comes down to the vision thing. Bloomberg has it.

Ms. Weingarten and her merry band of patronage employees do not.

Thanks to Schoolgal

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

Well, not just Lamont Cranston. Every ATR teacher knows what the Chancellor wants them to do (jump off a cliff), and the DoE is making noise about them yet again. If the Tweedies are to be believed, it's cost 81 million bucks to prop up their substitute teacher brigade. Now this was entirely predictable, and I've no doubt whatsoever that many (myself included) predicted it repeatedly.

Mr. Klein instituted this system along with UFT President Randi Weingarten, and made the additional decision to hire new teachers before he placed the displaced. To further ensure experienced teachers would never find employment, he instituted yet another reorganization in which he required principals to take salaries out of their budgets.

Now, of course, both Mr. Klein and Ms. Weingarten are shocked, SHOCKED!, to discover that principals choose to hire 45K newbies rather than 100K vets. Naturally, Mr. Klein wishes to renounce the contract he wrote and signed. After all, this is an emergency!

"We've got some teachers on our hands that are costing our city a lot of money [while not teaching]," Daly said. "This is not a sustainable system. ... It has to change."

Well, then, Mr. Daly, I've got a simple solution--why the hell don't you put these teachers to work? Why don't you reduce class sizes? Why don't you devote every single teacher to the task of teaching the children you very publicly claim to put first?

I'll tell you why--you'd lose a valuable scapegoat, and would have fewer targets at which to point your various fingers. You couldn't risk that, as "accountability" must be restricted to unionized workers, and must never, ever approach Tweed.

While we're on the subject of hypocrisy, note that the Tweedies, who purport to worry about fairness, adhere very strictly to the letter of agreements that lose money for others, like bus companies. They're feeling the pinch of huge rises in gas prices, and want to cut down on field trips. Oh, no, they say. Since they make no dent in our budget, why worry about yours?

Instead, the "Children First" crowd are cutting down the costs of school lunches, making them even worse, if such a thing is humanly possible.

I shudder to imagine the possibilities.

Thanks to Schoolgal

How Much Do Suburban Schools Pay?

You have to wonder, what with frequent UFT claims we've caught up to the suburbs.

A few years back, I wrote a post comparing Nassau salaries to NYC salaries. Nassau teachers get credit for 60 credits beyond the MA, and often for a doctorate as well. With our much-vaunted 5% raise bringing UFT maximum to 100K, I thought it would be a good time to compare salaries as of November 2007 in Nassau. I'm using the measure of 60, not 30 beyond the MA as comparison.


Most of these districts pay a few thousand extra for teachers who have doctorates, so factor that in if you're one of the few and the proud. I think I have the MA plus 60, I'm certain I'm at least close, but I'm sure I'd have it if I were paid, and I'm assuming you would too. For MA plus 30, you can deduct a few thousand from most of these.

Bear in mind that these are only the latest figures I could find, and that they may have gone up by now.

Right now:

NYC 43362-95285

As of May 19th:

NYC 45530-100049

What were teachers earning last November in Nassau? I'll tell you:

Bellmore 49632-108208
Bellmore-Merrick 50842-115864
Bethpage 49018-111529
East Rockaway 50784-110989
Farmingdale 45292-109928
Floral Park 50834-110387
Franklin Square 47312-107757
Great Neck 51801-120632
Herricks 51207-115841
Hicksville 48677-105723
Island Park 53685-123221
Lawrence 47528-117767
Levittown 51579-111745
Locust Valley 52797-119054
Lynbrook 49603-112941
Malverne 52304-112976
Manhasset 53378-119224
Massapequa 50526-115280
North Merrick 47015-116763
North Shore 50115-118861
Oceanside 54797-113785
Plainedge 50956-115916
Port Washington 51449-115760
Seaford 45874-103762
Sewanhaka 50140-107909
Wantagh 49710-113382
West Hempstead 45790-111396
Westbury 47788-110443

Doubletalk

That's what you'll find in the Daily News, where hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson is once again sharing his expertise with us, the bootless and unhorsed. At a time when working people in this country are losing their jobs, their homes, and living hand to mouth, Mr. Tilson suggests fewer options for them is the way to go.

Naturally, it's those goshdarn unions again. If only working people would stop demanding pay, demanding rights, and demanding benefits, we'd have a utopia. The specific problem today, according to Mr. Tilson, is that it's simply too hard to fire teachers.

Mr. Tilson gives the UFT Charter School as an example. He praises the UFT for having opened it, but laments the fact that a teacher grieved being fired, and was reinstated. He hopes the UFT will thus learn the folly of protecting working people. And Mr. Tilson certainly puts his money where his mouth is, investing heavily in companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, which have rich histories of exploitation. Mr. Tilson muses that government should follow in the footsteps of his highly profitable investments:

...I do hope that everyone involved takes the opportunity to learn a critical lesson about what makes charters - and, indeed, all public schools - successful: that principals need the authority to manage their schools, especially the ability to hire and fire all staff. At times, this can lead to conflict with teachers' "rights" tokeep their jobs, but in such cases, it's the manager's job - and should be his or her right, within certain boundaries - to make a decision and stand by it.

A key difference between Mr. Tilson's outlook and mine, I suppose, is his utter disregard for facts in evidence. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is simply unaware that all public schools in nearby Nassau County are unionized, and that all teachers here are also subject to state tenure laws. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is unaware that, unlike the city, existing tenure laws are actually enforced here. More likely, he consciously chooses to ignore these facts, as does the Daily News.

Mr. Tilson goes on to cite Green Dot as an example of a school with a more reasonable contract. Here, he's got some support from the UFT aristocracy. But neither Mr. Tilson nor libelous Leo Casey has been able to provide a single example of the Green Dot contract protecting a teacher. In fact, since Green Dot proudly rejects both tenure and seniority rights, I've yet to hear a single example of their "just cause" clause ever having been exercised. Doubtless Mr. Tilson delights in a contracts where working people can be discharged "just cause" it suits the administration's whims.

Actually, what makes good schools successful is not a principal's option to fire whomever he pleases. In fact, it is these very principals who've been routinely assigning tenure to anyone with a pulse. And while Chancellor Klein can complain from now till doomsday about tenure regulations, existing rules work much better in schools where they're actually enforced. Would Mr. Klein do better with better principals? Perhaps. But his track record makes it doubtful he has the remotest notion what a good principal is.

Mr. Tilson is certainly free to admire the Wal-Mart/ McDonald's model. But he's sorely mistaken about what constitutes a good school. Good teachers, reasonable class sizes, and decent facilities, not "reforms," make up the recipe. It's tough for principals, however good they may be, to rise above a lack of ingredients.

Endless work for little reward may have pleased feudal lords, but working people today need more, not fewer options. And it behooves us not to degrade the job of teaching, but to improve the jobs of working people everywhere.

Our children deserve a future with options well beyond those of simply enriching the likes of Mr. Tilson.

Thanks to Schoolgal

They Should Be Shocked. Shocked!

It's funny to read in the UFT paper that they've filed a discrimination suit against the city. Apparently, the Absent Teacher Reserve is largely composed of senior teachers. Amazingly, principals, who now have to pay salaries out of their own school budgets, prefer to hire newer teachers for half the price.

Clearly no one in the UFT anticipated this when they agreed to Klein's third reorganization. This was the reorganization that made principals pay salary lines out of their own budgets. UFT bigshots are shocked that principals snap up newbies at half the price while senior teachers are left to rot in the ATR brigade.

Naturally I'm shocked too. While I and many others repeatedly predicted this would happen, Edwize writers insisted this was the best of all possible worlds and that everything was beautiful. In fact, they praised the "hold harmless" clause, assuming that principals would opt to hire senior teachers rather than grabbing two for the price of one.

Apparently, what with their utter lack of vision and all, UFT bigshots underestimated the bargain-hunting abilities of administrators. Perhaps they simply hadn't noticed that the city has been paying the lowest wage in the area for over thirty years. Or perhaps they did, but attributed it to coincidence. Or maybe they believed Ms. Weingarten's repeated lies about our having caught up to the suburbs.

In any case, in retrospect, perhaps it was indeed an error to agree to this ATR thing. Senior teachers used to be guaranteed placement, and now they're just another financial liability for principals to worry about. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to have placed them in this demoralizing position without even getting a cost of living increase in return. But what with the UFT's complete lack of vision, I suppose that's too much to ask.

And even with the administration's newfound right to condemn teachers to the purgatory of ATR, the city is still short of qualified science, art, and foreign language teachers. And there are many qualified teachers rotting in the ATR brigade. I know some of them.

But due to the devil's bargain between Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Klein, NYC kids still learn Spanish from gym teachers and science from social studies teachers. The rate is now 9% overall, though it runs up to 25 if you want to study earth science.

In nearby suburban schools, with unions, without merit pay, and without "reforms," the figure hovers around zero--as it has for as long as I've been following education. What can Mr. Klein and Ms. Weingarten learn from this? And is there any evidence to suggest either bothers to learn anything? Or that they have any incentive to do so?

Let me know if you can come up with any answers.

Color Me a Teacher

In a recent puff piece in the New York Times, we learn something of UFT President Randi Weingarten's teaching background:

In 1986, she joined the city teachers’ union as a top adviser to its president, Sandra Feldman. She also took a part-time job teaching history and government at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a position she held for six years and refers to often, and proudly.

So Ms. Weingarten certainly knows what it's like to be a teacher. I mean, sure, she didn't actually have to live on a teacher's salary. And sure, she wasn't actually spending much time teaching. But she did the job, didn't she? Frequent commenter Schoolgal took exception, and said perhaps not, if you've read this Village Voice article:

In urging Klein "to walk in the shoes of teachers" on Saturday, she described how she'd done it, claiming that she "taught, sometimes full time, sometimes part time, at Clara Barton High School for six years." Actually, records reviewed by the Voice indicate that she taught 122 days as a per diem teacher from September 1991 through June 1994, roughly one in four days. She then did what she told the Voice was her only full-time term in the fall semester of 1994, followed by 33 days as a per diem teacher in the spring of 1995.

Strangely, while she told the Voice she was a per diem for the 1995-96 and 1996-97 school years, her records list her as a full-time teacher. Because she was credited with the required two years of full-time service she doesn't even claim she performed, she was given a permanent certificate in September 1996. She has been on union leave since 1997, accumulating a total of nine years of pensionable city time though she only did one semester of full-time teaching.

Perhaps Ms. Weingarten's "experience" led her to believe that what teachers needed was more time on the job, including pointless punishment days in August, 30 minutes extra each day, a sixth class (the one that UFT bigshots declare is not actually a class) and perpetual hall patrol.

This works out well for Ms. Weingarten, as she can declare she's raised salaries by 43%. Of course, that claim assumes our time is worth nothing. It also assumes the extra work she's negotiated for us is worth nothing. And while much of the C6 busy work Ms. Weingarten arranged for us (like doing potty patrol and assisting secretaries) may indeed be worth nothing, it means we have to spend that much more time after school grading papers, writing lesson plans, writing tests, and doing the real work that real teachers have to do.

But now that I've read the Voice article, I understand precisely why Ms. Weingarten feels that our time and work is worth little or nothing. It's because in her six years of "experience" as a teacher, and the nine years of "pensionable city time," she herself was required to do little or nothing.

For real teachers, things are a little different. We have a term for teachers with attendance records like those of Ms. Weingarten.

We call them "unemployed."

Education Reporting the Way It Used to Be

If you're interested in absurd nonsense, a New York Times feature on scrappy streetwise UFT President Randi Weingarten may be right up your alley. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of reporting without context. If you're a thinking person, you have to ask yourself why folks like Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization" Paige and Eric A. Hanushek from the right-wing Hoover Institute support her.

I'll tell you.

Ms. Weingarten supports unpaid suspensions of teachers without health benefits based on hearsay evidence. Presumption of innocence is the law of the land, but not if you're a UFT teacher.

Ms. Weingarten thinks it's important for teachers to come back two days in August in order to sit for two days and listen to absurd speeches about what a great job Mayor Mike and Jolly Joel are doing for us.

Ms. Weingarten has her teachers teaching a sixth class (which she claims is not a sixth class), and receiving merit pay (which she claims is not merit pay).

In a financial bonanza for NYC, Ms. Weingarten (who took a principled stance against sacrificing the pay of young teachers on the various awful contracts she's settled for) has now agreed to have 1.8% of their salaries deducted for up to 27 years, even though most of them will never reach retirement.

Ms. Weingarten has sentenced hundreds, if not thousands, of her teachers to the purgatory that is Absent Teacher Reserve. These teachers receive pay, but are deprived of their jobs through no fault of their own. It is a demoralizing and depressing place for people who love to teach. Due to Ms. Weingarten's collaboration with Mr. Klein in reorganization number three, it is highly unlikely any sitting principal will offer any senior teacher employment.

Under Ms. Weingarten's leadership, NYC teachers now work the longest school year in the area for the lowest wage in the area. Despite Ms. Weingarten's preposterous claims of parity, here's what Nassau teachers were earning over three years ago.

Ms. Weingarten took all the professional gains we'd earned through various zero-percent increases her party had cannily negotiated, and tossed them out the window for less than cost of living. And when she and her paid loyalists brag of the increases, remember they're giving you no credit whatsoever for the additional time and work she negotiated.

And when she boasts of breaking the hundred-thousand dollar mark, bear in mind there are teachers in Nassau who've now passed 125K. Keeping 20 percent behind our neighbors is hardly a bragging point.

When I started 24 years ago, we had lunch patrol, and hall patrol once every third semester. We now have it in perpetuity. Though the UFT offices may be open an extra hour (so Ms. Weingarten's patronage mill can do whatever it is they do in there), don't count on any of them joining you in those halls.

They're sitting in their offices, collecting their second salaries and pensions, and laughing their asses off at fools like you and me who still have to work for a living (thanks to them, harder than ever before).

It's very easy to see why conservatives adore Ms. Weingarten. They've rarely encountered union leaders willing to sell out rank-and-file so thoroughly, and for so little in return. They know a bargain when they see one.

Thanks to Schoolgal

What's a Raise?

Is that a dumb question? If you're a New York City teacher reading the nonsense our union often propagates, you may not know the answer. But I'll tell you--a raise is when you get more money for doing the same job. If you get 10% more compensation for working 10% longer, you did not get a raise (If you don't believe me, ask someone who just worked an extra shift at Taco Bell).

That's why I am not impressed when Randi Weingarten, UFT President, boasts of the "raises" city teachers have received over the past few years. Clearly, Ms. Weingarten does not consider our extra time or effort to be of any value. But I do. That's why I'm skeptical of stories like this one, about a new charter school that pays $125,000 for teachers. I mean, the pay sounds great. But then I see this:

In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans.

So do these teachers really make more than city teachers? Perhaps they do, if the teachers in question are at the beginning of the salary scale. Are their benefits equal to those of city teachers? Do they have a pension plan? Probably not.

They certainly sound better off than other charter teachers in the article:

Claudia Taylor, 29, applied to the Equity Project even though, she said, the thought of leaving the Harlem Village Academy, the charter school where she teaches reading, “breaks my heart.”

“I’m tired of making decisions about whether or not I can afford to go to a movie on a Friday night when I work literally 55 hours a week,” Ms. Taylor said. “It’s very frustrating. I’m feeling like I either have to leave New York City or leave teaching, because I don’t want to have a roommate at 30 years old.”

While I sympathize with Ms. Taylor, it sounds like she's working like a dog with no union protection for very little money. Will she be happier working like a dog for more money? I suppose it's better to work with no union protection for more money. But what would happen to a teacher at this school who dared to mention unionization? Would she be tossed out on her ear like Nicole Byrne Lau? Blanche DuBois may be comfortable depending on the kindness of strangers, but I'm not.

I have to question this, as well:

Will even the most skillful teachers be able to handle classes of 30, several students more than the city average?

I don't know what Mr. Bloomberg claims the average is, but my colleagues and I regularly teach classes of 34. Also, with the various loopholes in the contract, I regularly see teachers with classes up to 40. Music teachers regularly get classes of 50, and if you don't think this mayor shoves kids into every existing nook and cranny, you haven't been in a public school for a long, long time.

There's one part of this school's philosophy with which I'll readily agree---good teachers are element number one of good schools. I'll also agree that a class of 30 with a good teacher is superior to a class of 20 or fewer with a bad one. But here's where they lose me--an even better scenario is a class of 20 with a good teacher. That's what I see every day in the suburban school my daughter attends.

The fact is there are plenty of suburban teachers making very good money, with unions, with pensions, and with great benefits. They do a great job, too. My kid's in 6th grade, and she's yet to have a bad teacher. It doesn't take a miracle.

And it doesn't take a non-unionized charter school either. It takes good teachers, small classes, and decent facilities. I see them work every day.

Related: A thoughtful post on Edwize and another on Eduwonkette

Ms. Weingarten's Mouthpiece Praises Her Brilliance

Yup. It's libelous Leo Casey, pontificating in Edwize about the great achievements of his patronage mill. They've finally got 25/55 (for some) signed into law, only several years after having promised it.

And to think, all we teachers had to do is cut short our summers, work 3 extra days a year, 10 extra minutes a day, accept a sixth class (that the UFT says is not a class), accept merit pay (that the UFT says is not merit pay), give up any and all possibilities of transfer without a principal's OK, dump hundreds of working teachers into the ATR pool, give up the right to grieve letters in the file, do hall patrol in perpetuity, agree to a reorganization that forces principals to consider salary for potential hires, give up every single benefit we've won since well before I became a teacher, and agree that 55/25 is 55/27 for any and all new teachers.

Ms Weingarten (who is not a socialist), Libelous Leo and all their merry band of patronage employees, on the other hand, made the great sacrifice of keeping UFT HQ open an extra hour now and then so they can continue doing whatever it is they do in there.

And our deal is much better than the one NYSUT is trying to negotiate:

Keep in mind the UFT agreement does not give its members a cost-free 55/25. The optimum benefit (a NYSUT-backed bill that was passed by the Legislature in 2006 and vetoed by Gov. Pataki) would alter Tiers 2, 3 and 4 to 55/25 without any cost to members.

NYSUT will be re-introducing that bill in the upcoming legislative session and lobbying again for its passage.

Yup. It's much better, because we get to pay 1.85% of our salaries until retirement. Also, we only give 55/25 to those already on the job, thus "eating our young," something the highly principled Casey and Weingarten refused to do when they tossed away years of gains for a salary increase that didn't even meet cost of living.

I doubt NYSUT could work out a deal like Ms. Weingarten does. The whole "more work for less pay" thing seems to elude all but the most artful negotiators. If NYSUT gets their deal, with the UFT get a similar deal? Don't bank on it. As in all of their dealings with Ms. Weingarten's patronage mill, the city stands to reap a great profit on our latest giveaway, while a great many new members will have no benefit whatsoever.

Yet another brilliant victory for Rod Page's favorite union leader.

UFT Brass Springs to Action

Not wasting a minute, they're on the case. After printing pages and pages of propaganda on Edwize about why it was better for working teachers to have fewer transfer privileges, and why it was best that principals alone decide where teachers can work, after giving away everything but the kitchen sink for less than cost of living, the UFT leadership has come to the defense of an ailing Brooklyn teacher who needs to work closer to home on Staten Island.

Though the teacher, David Irons, requested a medical transfer, the best the good ol' DoE would do was offer him a permanent substitute position. Mr. Irons' misfortunes would certainly not have occurred if Randi Weingarten and her minions had not been so willing to trust in the good graces of Tweed and its Leadership Academy principal corps.

It's pathetic that an experienced working teacher needs a crippling disease to qualify for a transfer. If Ms. Weingarten had half the foresight and vision of the folks on the other side of the bargaining table, we'd never have left this poor teacher in this miserable situation. We'd never have left teachers whose schools had closed as ATRs either.

The patronage employees at Edwize regularly congratulate themselves on the program that's enabled easy transfers for low-paid new teachers. While that may be a good thing, they regularly ignore the plight of ATRs dumped into this pool through no fault of their own. The UFT aristocracy is responsible for all this, and for the very real problems of Mr. Irons as well.

Ms. Weingarten can make a principled argument that Mr. Irons deserves placement, but he wouldn't be in this predicament if it were not for her monumental indifference to the needs of working teachers. Rod Paige's admiration notwithstanding, Ms. Weingarten is plainly incompetent, frets only over the maintenance of her 40-million per annum patronage mill, and merits impeachment, not promotion.

Ms. Weingarten Delivers (in Her Style)

Over two years after having negotiated the worst contract in the history of our union, UFT President Randi Weingarten is finally presenting city teachers with a 25/55 retirement program. That's a great achievement, of course.

Only it isn't actually a 25/55 program. New hires will actually have to wait 27 years before they can benefit from this program. Therefore they, who will soon outnumber current teachers by overwhelming margins, will not receive what the UFT so frequently promised.

It's always instructive to read the viewpoints of Unity patronage employees, many of whom earn double what most teachers do, and all of whom must invariably agree with Ms. Weingarten's every whim or risk losing their jobs and second pensions. On Edwize, one cries about the injustice of the 1.75% cut in school budgets. Concurrently, the UFT feverishly pushes a bill that will cut most teacher salaries by 1.8% on a nearly permanent basis. Some teachers, like me, will have an opportunity to opt in (or not). And though I'd actually like to work past the age of 55, I'll have to buy in as an insurance policy. After all, who knows what the future will bring?

But this program appears to be a bonanza for the city's coffers:

In the latest city budget on page E-117, there is a category called "55/25 Program Savings: Savings generated by increased retirements as a result of the new age and experience retirement policy." For fiscal year 2009 the city will be saving $43,100,000 because of 55/25-55/27; for fiscal year 2010 that will jump to $68,600,000; for fiscal year 2011 it spikes to $87,500,000 and for 2012 the city will be saving $101,000,000.

The city saves over 100 million dollars because current teachers who want to take advantage of 55/25 will have to pay into the system to fund their early retirement while new hires will be required to pay pension contributions for their entire careers, not just the first ten years. The added contributions amount to a 1.85% pay cut for employees not yet hired and they won't be able retire after 25 years of service at age 55 as the contract says they should be able to; they will need 27 years. What did we get in return for allowing the city to save this huge sum of money with their de-facto new pension tier? School-wide merit pay

.

In fact, according to The Sun, Ms. Weingarten gave away even more. One of her prime bragging points about the awful 2005 contract was that she accepted a sub-cost-of-living increase rather than indulging in the process of "eating our young," or giving reasonable pay increases to experienced personnel at the expense of new hires. But an effective 1.85% pay cut is probably not the best way to entice young teachers, most of whom will be unlikely to work long enough to reap any benefit whatsoever.

There also appears to be a side-deal with the devil, specifically an agreement on the union's part to back a Republican hopeful who supports tax credits for private school parents:

On January 28, the state teachers union announced it was endorsing Republican Assemblyman Will Barclay's bid for an open Senate seat that will be decided in a special election on February 27. The race is viewed as a must-win for Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's conference, which holds a fragile 32- to 29-seat advantage over the Senate Democrats.

In the past, the UFT has endorsed such stellar candidates as Serphin Maltese, a State Senator who was responsible for breaking parochial school unions on at least two occasions. Why? Who knows? Why are they backing Barclay?

The union said it favored the Republican because he had "demonstrated a commitment to public education."

Does that sound as vague to you as it does to me?

NYC teachers paid heavily for that 2005 contract. Many, after that, and after Ms. Weingarten's merit pay deal with the city, will now pay even more. I wish Ms. Weingarten well as AFT President, and I sincerely hope her UFT successor will do everything possible to eradicate the legacy that endears her the the likes of union-bashers like ex-US Secretary of Education Rod Paige.

Yawn

UFT President Randi Weingarten is getting ready to become AFT President. Among the many notable achievements that define Ms. Weingarten's legacy in NYC:

-disenfranchising working teachers to the point that fewer than 25% bother to vote in union elections

-3 extra days so teachers can listen to Klein's flunkies pontificate while kids stay home

-fewer transfer options for experienced teachers

-a sixth 37.5 minute class of "small group instruction" 4x weekly (which the UFT maintains is not a class, while Chancellor Klein maintains we now have small classes in the city)

-no right to grieve letters in your file

-return to lunch duty, hall patrol, homeroom, potty patrol et al on a permanent basis

-UFT silence on the mayoral election as quid pro quo for the worst contract in our history

-bribing New Action, the former opposition party, with patronage jobs so they'd support her

-failure to oppose reorganizations that hurt chances of teachers being placed in regular jobs, thus sentencing many ATR teachers to permanent substitute status

-enthusiastic support of nebulous class size regulations that achieved nothing

-repeated failure to amend the UFT contract, the only instrument that legally restricts class size, to really reduce it

-partnership with Green Dot Schools, which specifically reject tenure and seniority rights for teachers

-UFT support of mayoral control

-achieving the admiration of Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization" Paige, as well as that of various anti-teacher, anti-union editorial boards

-accomplishing all of the above without bothering to achieve even cost of living increases for rank and file

I've no doubt Ms. Weingarten can continue to build upon her remarkable record on a national level. It may prove marginally interesting to watch her and others posture as though she has not already been assigned the job.

Then again, it may not.

Ethics Are for the Little People

Saint Rudy and his people don't need to bother. Sure, Roosevelt and Lincoln had to stand for re-election, but Rudy felt he needed to defy term limits and stay on unelected. This was ostensibly to keep up the morale of FDNY and NYPD, to whom he'd been denying contracts for years (At that point, NYPD, originally an ardent supporter, had already begun demonstrating against Giuliani).

Then there was the lawsuit demanding the right to bring his mistress into the home he shared with his wife and two young children, and then there was Bernard Kerik (and we don't seem to have heard the last of him).

Now here's Fred Brown, a Giuliani delegate who lives in a Battery Park high-rise, but votes and holds office in the Bronx. Brown claims it's OK because he owns property in the Bronx. Never mind that it's not actually located in the district he votes in--he's a Rudy supporter, so it's OK.

There's been a lot of chatter in the comments section about the double-zero contract that we took (during one of the biggest economic booms in NYC history). The UFT was the first to vote on this contract. The UFT President wrote a letter to rank-and-file stating anyone who thought we could do better must be "smoking something," and that we'd better get used to double zeros and a 25-year maximum. Nonetheless, rank-and-file rejected this contract.

Immediately thereafter, DC37 voted it up, and many municipal unions followed. A modified version of the contract was presented to the UFT, raising maximum to 22 rather than 25 years, and a demoralized UFT voted for it. As someone who reached maximum salary last year, I can tell you that the UFT Prez was wrong, and that we certainly benefited from our initial rejection.

But later, it was discovered that DC37 leaders had falsified their union election, the one that passed double-zeros and set the precedent for other municipal unions. Several DC37 leaders were relocated up the river to do a stretch. The fact that the municipal contracts were all based on blatant fraud did not trouble Saint Rudy at all. The contracts all stood.

What's the moral here? Morality must be strictly adhered to by working people, while important folks like Saint Rudy can do whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want.

Slow Learners

Some people learn more slowly than others, and as such need special attention. Sometimes we give kids time-and-a-half on tests so they can keep up with their peers. Sometimes kids thrive when given the attention they need.

Unfortunately, some people never learn at all, and keep making the same mistakes over and over. When the UFT paper loudly declared "Class Size Victory," the details made it very clear that Mayor Bloomberg had the option to reduce class size by a fraction of a kid, or not at all, and that there would be no consequences whatsoever for any failure to do so. When class sizes were "reduced" by a fraction of a student, UFT leadership was shocked and outraged.

When Mayor Bloomberg followed his merit pay deal with a million-dollar panel, ostensibly to identify and eliminate bad teachers, the UFT leadership was shocked and outraged. How could he do such a thing? Isn't Mayor Bloomberg the same guy who, after forging a contract agreement, unilaterally denied sabbatical leave to all teachers for just as long as he could get away with it? As I recall, the UFT had to go to court to enforce the contract they had just negotiated. They were shocked and outraged, of course.

So when Mayor Bloomberg's double-secret plan to evaluate teachers based on student scores came out, how did the UFT react? They were shocked and outraged, again. Only it turns out, they knew about it in advance. Edwize writer City Sue sits on the panel that administers the plan. Like all UFT employees, she admits no fault, ever:

President Weingarten had angrily refused to endorse the project last summer and had won a concession that results would not be used to evaluate any UFT member.

Naturally. And when President Weingarten found out otherwise, I've no doubt she was shocked and outraged.

City Sue figured there was little cause for concern:

Still, to skip to the bottom line before I fill in the details, remember we have a signed contract until October 2009. By then Klein and Company will be packing their bags.

I'm not altogether convinced that a new administration will be the end of the shock and outrage. Only someone willfully ignoring history could come to such a conclusion. We can’t count on a friend in City Hall. I’ve been teaching for 23 years, and we’ve almost never had one. While I remember a brief flash of sympathy from Mayor Dinkins, he quickly turned his back on us, rather than defending education as important.

It’s high time for the UFT to become more proactive, more assertive, and less dependent on who may or may not be the next mayor, governor, president, or whatever. Governor Spitzer, for example (and I voted for him as enthusiastically as anyone), has just drastically reduced funds that could’ve been used to reduce class sizes in NYC.

It's time for the UFT to push a pro-teacher, pro-education agenda, to take charge for a change. We can't just stand around waiting to see what Mayor Bloomberg (or whoever) does next. Among other things, kids are packed into Mayor Bloomberg's crumbling testing factories like so many sardines. They can't wait any longer and neither can we.

Next time the Unity/New Action patronage employees visit you're school, cut them off when they tell you how shocked and outraged they are. Ask them what on earth they're doing to justify those double salaries and pensions. They'll probably respond with shock and outrage.

Today, we need more.

Grading Teachers

The NY Times reports today that New York City has "embarked upon an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced" in which 2,500 public school teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests.

The program, which may be a breach of the teachers contract, is considered so "contentious" that it has been kept secret from some of the teachers who are being scrutinized in the 140 elementary and middle schools participating in the program.

The Times article says DOE officials will not say publicly what they plan to do with the information being collected, but Chris Cerf, a deputy chancellor of the NYCDOE and former head of Edison Schools, surely gives a good indication:

“If the only thing we do is make this data available to every person in the city — every teacher, every parent, every principal, and say do with it what you will — that will have been a powerful step forward,” said Chris Cerf, the deputy schools chancellor who is overseeing the project. “If you know as a parent what’s the deal, I think that whole aspect will change behavior.”

The Times reports the UFT has known about the program for months but does not know which schools are involved because of "confidentiality" agreements between the DOE and the principals who agreed to participate in the program.

The Times says UFT President Weingarten is concerned about the program:

Randi Weingarten, the union president, said she had grave reservations about the project, and would fight if the city tried to use the information for tenure or formal evaluations or even publicized it. She and the city disagree over whether such moves would be allowed under the contract.

“There is no way that any of this current data could actually, fairly, honestly or with any integrity be used to isolate the contributions of an individual teacher,” Ms. Weingarten said. “If one permitted this, it would be one of the worst decisions of my professional life.”

Ha - what a joke! When Ms. Weingarten and the UFT leadership agreed to merit pay for teachers based upon standardized test scores earlier this school year, they opened the door to all kinds of funky other things related to test scores - including grading teachers based upon scores whether the tests were meant for that purpose or not.

While the Times reports that DOE officials "adamantly deny" they plan to hand out letter grades to teachers and base tenure decisions solely on test score performance, those of us in the system know better.

That's exactly where this is going in the near future. And just as giving letter grades to schools based upon a formula overly weighted toward annual test score improvement has proven reductive and harmful (schools with 85%-95% test score passing rates have been handed D's and F's by the DOE for failing to improve on their test scores while schools with 30%-50% test score passing rates have been handed A's and B's because their test scores have improved from one year to the next), so too will handing out letter grades to teachers.

And before my friends at the Democrats For The Return Of Feudalism and other education "reform" groups starting chirping about how I must be a bad teacher because I'm complaining about being held accountable to standards, let me tell you that I am a teacher who works at a school that received an A and a "Well Developed" assignation from the DOE in this year's assessments, I teach at least three sections of ELA Regents prep each year (sometimes four or five if I teach remedial Regents prep in the Spring), and have very high passing rates every year.

I'm attacking this program not because I'm worried I will be exposed as a "bad teacher," but because I do not believe the testing regimen as currently constituted was designed to provide enough insight into teachers' performances to base salary decisions, tenure decisions and personnel decisions nor do I think any one annual standardized test should be given the kind of weight Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein and others are giving them.

And yet, that is where we are headed, and despite Ms. Weingarten's "Oh, I am so concerned about this program..." tone, Ms. Weingarten and the UFT leadership have partnered with Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein and the other education "reformers" to bring them to us.

The NY Sun reports that Ms. Weingarten is widely expected to move up the ladder this year and take over the reins of the American Federation of Teachers when the current head steps down.

That means all the concessions that Ms. Weingarten has made here in New York on merit pay, on additional days and additional time, on grievance rights, on seniority rights, on authoritarian mayoral control, on charter schools, on curriculum and a host of other issues can now be made at a national level so that teachers all across the nation can learn just how much fun it is to be lead by Rod Paige's favorite teachers union head.

Frankly, I'm not as mad at Bloomberg, Klein and Cerf for the merit pay, the additional standardized tests a year (10 and counting so far), the additional days and time, the loss of grievance and seniority rights, and all the other things they've done to take more power for the DOE and diminish the power and work conditions of the teachers in the system as I am at Randi Weingarten, Leo Casey, and the other sell-outs at the UFT who have enabled all these things while telling us to our faces they're fighting them.

That's who is at fault here. And despite her "grave reservations" to the contrary about the newest DOE horror show - measuring teachers in secret by how much their students improve on test scores, you can bet Ms. Weingarten is either in favor of the program or doesn't care enough to stop it.

UFT Defends Liebman

Edwize, to its everlasting disgrace, has become an apologist for James Liebman, running two articles in one short week which defend him. Amazingly, this comes right on the heels of Samuel Freedman's devastating column.

First, "Maisie" wrote a piece about how Mr. Liebman was "smart and decent," and incredibly, defended him by explaining he was just following orders. I can recall cases where that defense proved ineffective. Most recently, they got a student to write for them, putting forth the preposterous suggestion that our supposed unwillingness to compromise was somehow setting back the issue of class size.

Actually, Mr. Liebman has blatantly tried to spin class size, the number one concern of parents (on his own survey) into a secondary issue. He has declared that reductions that do not reach 15 or less are ineffective. Anyone who has not seen him spar with Patrick Sullivan at PEP ought to. In fact, the consistent failure of this administration to act on class size more or less speaks for itself.

The student refer