Boots on the Ground

I don't know whether anyone has noticed, but we are in crisis. The President of the United States came to our area yesterday afternoon and endorsed police brutality, while a bunch of police officers stood behind him and applauded. Then the Suffolk police force made a public declaration that they do not, in fact, support the policies they applauded, probably because some lawyer told them they'd be liable when the inevitable lawsuits appeared.

This was one day after Trump's people tried to take health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans so they could give a tax break to people who least need it. Here in NY, we have a bill that could enact single payer floating around in the ether, but going nowhere so far. I'm not sure where the IDC, the Republicans who pretend to be Democrats, who keep Democrats from controlling the Senate, stand on that. I'm not sure where Andrew Cuomo, key enabler of the IDC who now poses as Bernie Sanders, stands on that.

One thing I do know is that union in America is living on borrowed time. Scott Walker essentially killed it in Wisconsin, and that's the model Trump's stolen SCOTUS likely wants to emulate. Maybe the cops don't need to worry, because in Wisconsin they managed to keep their right to collectively bargain. After all, someone has to protect the state house when the bootless and unhorsed come out with torches and pitchforks.

It's great we participated in the Women's March. I've never seen anything like it. I marched with UFT in the Puerto Rican Day parade. It was great, but not broadly political, I showed for the Mayday event. It was pathetic, with maybe a few dozen of us out there, at least half from MORE/ New Action. I will be there for the Labor Day parade, and I invite you to join me. But it's far from enough.

As far as I can see, our response to the outrage that's occurring all over the nation is "Public School Proud." Now I'm Public School Proud. I don't need a campaign to know that. But I'd like to hear about this somewhere other than the UFT Delegate Assembly. Every day I read the papers, and learn of the perfidy of ATR teachers. They are terrible because they don't have regular positions. They are also terrible because they're going to be placed in regular positions.

The WSJ, the NY Post, and Campbell Brown are horrified by the ATR. Why can't they just crawl away and die? After all, Brown is not only a failed journalist and a self-appointed education expert, but she's also named after a soup can. Shouldn't that be credibility enough for anyone? Students First NY, funded by Gates, manages to get a group of a dozen parents to stand around and hold signs, and it's covered by every local paper.

We have tens of thousands of members. Why can't we get a few hundred people to stand somewhere for ATRs, for medical insurance for all, for union, for almost anything, and call a few reporters? Why can't we call them, let the press know of an angle, and get stories out there? It's been years since a large scale UFT action.

I am nobody, but when I became chapter leader, I got my school in every city paper and many local papers. I may do that again, because despite the city's agreement to give us space for our existing students, they've already started to overload us, thus welching on the agreement. It is beyond my comprehension why UFT leadership, with a paid staff and resources that dwarf mine, cannot manage to do what I did alone.

We need to activate membership now, or at least try. It will be a different game in a post-Janus world, and every moment we wait is a moment wasted.

CPE 1 Victory Is Model for Us All--Garg Out, Marilyn and Catlin Back

 Update--All charges have been dropped against CPE 1 UFT Delegate Cailin Preston.

The NY Times, though its coverage is kind of terrible, features the remarkable victory of CPE 1. From this article, you'd have no idea that Principal Garg placed the UFT chapter leader on charges for no reason, according to an arbitrator's ruling. You'd have no idea their delegate is still sitting around cooling his heels in some rubber room somewhere.

What readers of this blog will certainly notice is the difference between how teachers and principals are treated in this system. Garg will retain her salary and title of principal, but will have no school to run. She won't face charges. No 3020a for her. She won't have to worry about making some deal with the DOE to retain her job, she won''t face suspension, and she won't face a fine. There is clearly a double standard at the DOE.

The larger story, though, the one the Times does not seem to grasp, is the incredible activism of the CPE 1 community. They stood strong against an abusive and power-hungry principal. They never wavered, despite ridiculous pressure placed on their teachers and even their parents. Not content to simply remove teachers for no good reason, Garg banned several of the parent activists from the school, making it difficult or impossible to meet their children, some of whom had special needs, at their school. I can understand doing this in extreme cases, but this appears to be nothing but abuse of power.

The aftermath here is tough to say. Will UFT Unity take complete credit for this? Probably. That's what they did for Townsend Harris. The fact is we from MORE/ New Action spent hours meeting with the CPE 1 community and tried to address their concerns. We were part of it. Unity was part of it too, but they were also the part that applauded someone who trash-talked the activist parents and teachers at last week's Executive Board.

The fact is that primary credit should go to the CPE 1 community. I spent a lot of time listening to one of the parents in particular, and I rarely see the sort of passion and dedication that came from both them and the activist teachers combined with the relentlessness it took to sustain this. The parents and  teachers who undertook this are fantastic role modles. Many of us are understandably disheartened and disillusioned, and unwilling to take a stand. Perhaps it's natural that many of us need a crisis like this to bring us to our feet. I saw much the same from Jamaica High School a few years ago, though Bloomberg's abuse of power ensured they did not win that fight.

Nonetheless, there is a fight and we are under assault on multiple fronts. Hopefully, your principal is not an insane vindictive lunatic. Maybe your principal is supportive and understanding. But even if that is the case, we are under attack from the lunatics in the Trump administration, who not only want to cut all the federal money that goes toward reducing class size, but also want to privatize public education. Just because that doesn't work in prisons, with health care, or even in education is no reason for them to halt the profits of their BFFs.

And while Governor Andrew Cuomo has been doing his very best impression of Bernie Sanders lately, the fact is he's imposed a vindictive and idiotic rating system on all of us. Who cares if the American Statistical Association says teachers affect test scores by a factor of 1-14%? Cuomo wants to fire more teachers and be a tough guy. And let's not forget Tier 6 or the tax cap. UFT leadership may be warming to him, but he has no moral compass and will say or do absolutely anything to become President. His ambition is the only thing that matters.

And the city, alas, is no bargain either. While it's come around on Garg, and while it can be pressured, the fact is it needs to be pressured. Common sense didn't work. Looking at the situation objectively didn't work. Relentless pressure and news coverage seems to be what finally took the Arg out of Garg.

And that, my friends, is exactly what we need to practice more of. I'm ready.

Are you?

Executive Board Takeaway

Last night was unusual in many ways. Not so unusual, in what's becoming a trend, we had speakers from various schools. The first was the High School of Applied Communication, which appears to have yet another Principal from Hell. Now the thing about Principals from Hell is they are not always universally despised. Sometimes they garner favor via the issue of perks. I suppose, to some extent, this is human nature. But when staff is under vicious attack for no good reason it's particularly egregious.

For example, a new teacher from CPE 1 stood up and defended Principal Monica Garg, who likely hired him. I've known principals I've liked when my chapter leader did not. When I was at John Adams my first principal was named Lou Acerra. He made himself accessible to me, unlike most principals when I was not chapter leader. I would go in, speak to him, and he would either help me or throw me out of his office. I kind of liked knowing where I stood. Now he was very much disliked by my chapter leader. I don't know why that was.

I do know, however, that my then-principal had not reassigned my chapter leader and delegate and made them face 3020a charges. I also know our principal had not banned parents from visiting the school. Whether or not he had done this, I would never have considered going to a union hall to denounce the activities of my chapter leader or activist parents. For my money, there is far too much apathy and far too few people standing up for their own people, and make no mistake I mean union right now. That's why Donald Trump is President of the United States.

It was remarkable to see this teacher complain that veteran teachers did not participate in PD, as though that were remotely the issue at CPE 1. Given the fact that Garg seems to reassign every teacher who speaks up, I can hardly blame them. It was even more remarkable to hear him say he and whatever teachers he may have been speaking for were willing to meet with the veteran teachers, but not off-campus. I'm not sure how teachers specifically banned from the campus were supposed to meet in the school. 

We saw a success story in Townsend Harris. This is a story in which the UFT joined parent and student activists and precluded a very special school from getting a principal much like Garg. This may have been easier because Jahoda had not yet been appointed. But this is a model to be replicated. Disappointingly, I saw a bunch of Unity Exec. Board members applaud the teacher who defended the anti-union Garg. I have to wonder whether they're instructed to applaud everyone except us.

And that's the thing--we are not enemies of the United Federation of Teachers. We believe in union as strongly as anyone in the room, and likely more so. We believe in standing up. If we didn't, we wouldn't show up twice a month to a forum in which we are vastly outnumbered. Someone needs to give voice to rank and file, and someone needs to say things whether or not leadership wishes to hear them. I don't know how many teachers will withhold dues when the chance comes, but I'd say 20% is low. In order to keep that number as low as possible, leadership needs to demonstrate it will act. Refusing to support resolutions for class sizes and against abusive principals is simply not the way to go. Whether they know it or not, it's good that we're there, even for them.

A case in point is the class size situation at my school. If I were not on the Executive Board I would not have been able to advocate for my members. In fact, if I were Unity I would not have been able to advocate for them either, as I'd have been required to support the rather miserable resolution to which we were subject to last Fall. Because I didn't sign the loyalty oath, I can get up and say how poorly the class size regulations have been working out. While it's great that we've won arbitrations that make them a little better, the fact is they are 50 years old. That's a long time to wait for improvement with no renegotiation. And as I told the body, even if we win, even if they have the compliance call tomorrow, we will have fewer than five weeks of relief for the entire year.

That's a pretty hollow victory, if you ask me. They say the DOE will be aware of us next year. Maybe next year we won't have oversized classes. My members can't hang their hats on a maybe. The indisputable fact is that the class size regs have not worked for my school or the three other large high schools covered by the arbitrator's ruling. How many other schools has it not worked for? Your guess is good as mine but given the regs and how they work I'd conjecture it's a whole lot more than zero.

And then there's the resolution we were sent by email. The resolution basically says that we will oppose Janus, and just like almost every other that's come up, I supported it. But there was no emergency, as in a last-minute endorsement. It's blatantly unfair that Unity can bring up resolutions via email. What if, for example, one of us wanted to get up and table it, or speak against it, or amend the guts out of it, as Unity has done to every resolution we've brought without exception?

Clearly there are two sets of rules in the UFT Executive Board--one for Unity and another for everyone else. While we may be far from the majority, we certainly represent the high schools. I'd argue we also represent a whole lot of the disaffected 75% of members who didn't bother to vote in the UFT election. I vote every chance I get, but in a system like this I certainly understand the cynicism that causes members to toss ballots in the trash.

What I don't understand is why leadership at least ostensibly concerned with Janus has utterly failed to show these people why they're wrong.

Contrary

That's what leadership calls us. Contrary implies simple-mindedness, as though you're a two-year-old who just says "no" to everything. Unity contends, during campaigns, that we oppose whatever they bring up, just for the sake of doing so. We disagree with everything, just because, they say. I've observed UFT elections pretty closely and that's one of their big arguments.

We in MORE are now aligned with New Action, and I couldn't be happier about that. Back when New Action was opposing us, they portrayed themselves as a more reasonable opposition. In fact, I agreed with many of their positions. The only major stumbling block, for me, was their endorsement of the UFT Unity President. I have, in fact, had differences with some things UFT Presidents supported, like mayoral control, the ATR, charter schools, co-locations, school closings, junk science ratings, Common Core, and failure to oppose Bloomberg or Cuomo, just to name a few.

But let's not rehash the past. It's 2017, and the UFT High Schools have selected MORE and New Action to represent them. And represent we do, twice a month at 52 Broadway. For the first time, anyone who wishes to know what happens at the Executive Board can read about it right here. My notes, unlike the official ones, contain the questions and statements from members and guests. I have no idea why the official notes omit them. Why shouldn't UFT members be able to know what goes on?

Now if you've been reading my notes (or even writing them, as I have), a pattern is emerging. The pattern, in fact, is precisely the opposite of what Unity Caucus says it is. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I only recall our opposing one resolution Unity has brought up. Ironically, we applauded it enthusiastically when it first came up, and if they had not brought up a resolution condemning Trump and the bigotry he'd not-so-subtly encouraged, we'd have done so ourselves. In fact we were in negotiations to do so together, but they introduced it before we could do that, precluding an opportunity for us to work together. However, when they removed Trump's name and attributed various atrocities to "the presidential election" we deemed it absurd and toothless, which it was.

On the other hand, Unity Caucus has either voted down, tabled, or severely cut every resolution we've brought up. Abusive administrators? No. Class size? No. Support CPE 1? No. It's too this, it's too that. We do this some other way. We took care of this 50 years ago, and who cares if it doesn't work at all? We fixed this in one place, and it therefore doesn't exist in other places.

There are a whole lot of excuses. And in fact, they don't even need them. When LeRoy Barr stood to table our resolution to support CPE 1, and to oppose the abusive principal in precisely the way Mulgrew suggested we should, several loyalty oath signers immediately raised their hands and said, "Second."

When UFT Unity says there is one caucus that is contrary, they're absolutely correct.

But it isn't us.

Executive Board Takeaway.

 UFT Secretary Howard Schoor appears to be an avid reader of this blog. He seemed anxious to influence my notes on two occasions Monday night. I'd previously criticized his apparent ridicule of the question period, so he wanted to make sure I noticed it was more popular. I certainly noticed Monday, for the first time, that Unity members asked questions. Evidently, after a mere seven months of looking absolutely ridiculous, Unity Caucus has concluded it doesn't reflect particularly well on them when we question many things and they question nothing.

Therefore, Unity Caucus planted some questions, just like they do at the DA. I'll never forget going to the DA when the 2014 Contract came up. The very first question was something like, "Gee Mike, what happens if this contract doesn't pass?" That allowed Mulgrew to launch into his carefully prepared appeals to fear, that we would go to the back of the line of 151 unions and that retro wasn't a God-given right.

This notwithstanding, UFT Unity came up with some remarkably silly questions. The first was about when we would get a raise. A Unity member claimed people were asking him about it. Let's assume, for one moment, that this question was not a plant. That would mean that this hand-picked member of the UFT Executive Board was so uniquely inept and unresourceful that he was unable to go to the UFT website and look up the chart that's right here, or even call the borough office. More likely UFT leadership thought it would be a good idea to have him ask the stupid question and have me report on the raise. Naturally I'm delighted to report that UFT members will soon get a fraction of the raise that NYPD and FDNY managed to get almost ten years ago. Kudos to the Unity geniuses who cleverly negotiated that with no interest, and are making us wait years more for back pay.

Another question went to UFT HS VP Janella Hinds. What progress had she made on the resolution regarding Regents scoring that we passed at the DA twelve days ago? That's enough time to wind up a major negotiation with the DOE, isn't it? Janella said that it was not, in fact, and reported on her survey about SAT administration. It's ironic that this question came up, because I'd repeatedly pushed for that resolution. Schoor characterized me as "begging" for it. I can only speculate that, being in a group that has an army of patronage-crazy loyalty oath signers at its beck and call, Schoor has become less familiar with the concept of advocating for members. That, in fact, is what I was doing. It's kind of my job. I pushed this resolution because I actually teach every day and see firsthand what Regents scoring at remote schools does to people, not to mention various ways principals can make things worse for those who remain. This resolution has the potential to help tens of thousands of high school teachers.

Then, because there are no news reporting organizations and the world's sole source of information is UFT leadership, there was a question about whether ICE had done any raids on public schools.

It was an interesting night for other reasons. We had scores of teachers and parents from Central Park East 1 standing in the back. There were a few members from MORE steering. There was amazing energy in the room, and it was nice to have a sizable group of vocal supporters for once.

 I motivated this resolution to support CPE (that whole advocating thing again), and LeRoy Barr was instantly up to table it. Before he gave a hint as to why he wanted to do that, several nearby Unity loyalists seconded his proposal. Each and every one of them was a loyalty oath signer, bound to support any damn thing they're asked to. They don't need no stinking reasons.

Barr's rationale was that leadership was already doing a lot for CPE 1, and that supporting the resolution would somehow interfere with that. You won't be surprised to learn that I disagree. I motivated the resolution with a direct quote from UFT President Michael Mulgrew. I'm going to reproduce my remarks from this report below:

Tonight we have a school and a school community in crisis, a school suffering under the wholly gratuitous tyranny of an out of control principal. Ironically, this school is one founded on principles of functional democracy, a school that ought to be a model for us all. It’s deplorable to see the ostensible leader of this school trod all over its basic premise, a premise developed by renowned educational activist Deborah Meier. As President Mulgrew told this body just two weeks ago:

"Our biggest issue hands down is (the DOE’s) lack of responsibility with reigning in their principals. We will go after them at the school level. By law the superintendent is in charge. They are responsible for the actions of the principal. It is always best to have documentation when bringing any issues forward." 

Here is our chance to put those words in action. We have abundant documentation. We have firsthand testimony at our fingertips and in this very room. This is a golden opportunity for the United Federation of Teachers to walk the walk. Not only will we be giving much-needed support our brother and sister unionists and community members, but we’ll also be making a stand for the kind of innovative instruction and independent thinking we need to foster and enable for the students we serve.

I urge you to support this resolution and bring it to the Delegate Assembly this month.

We had a great chance to walk the walk and stand against just who Mulgrew said we would. We failed utterly to do this, even though this abusive principal had placed another teacher up for 3020a that very day. When LeRoy Barr asked us to stand for CPE 1, it struck me as odd. Hadn't we just declined to do precisely that? I was not inclined to honor that request. Howard Schoor asked me to report that I failed to stand, literally, for one moment. In fact I was typing furiously at the time, but I'm happy to oblige.

Who failed to stand for CPE 1? Was it us, New Action and MORE, the folks who brought the resolution to support CPE 1? Was it me, the guy who rose to motivate it?

Or was it the caucus that killed it without even bothering to ask why?

You decide.

President's Message--Get on Social Media!

Hi it's me, your old pal "Punchy" Mike Mulgrew! Put em up! Nah. Just kidding. You didn't think I was really gonna hit you over that Common Core stuff, did you? I was just showing everybody I was, you know, passionate and stuff.

Anyhoo, I'm just writing to let you know that we're gonna do a Thunderclap against that bad old Betsy DeVos. Because it's really important we all take to social media and let them know that we're opposed to Betsy DeVos. Do you know that she supports charter schools? Can you imagine? Hey, that's outrageous. Now it's one thing when we support charter schools, because we support, you know, the right kind of charter schools. She supports, more like, you know, the wrong kind of charter schools. Yeah, that's the ticket. Do you support the wrong kind of charter schools? Of course not.

Because, you know, charters divert money that could go to public schools. That's why we sort of oppose them sometimes, except really we don't. In fact, the UFT Charter School (which is one of the good charter schools) is co-located in a public school building. But because it's, you know, a good charter school, well, you know, it's not a bad one, so it's, you know, OK. And we firmly oppose privatization of public schools except, you know, the good kind, like, when we do it.

So anyway here's the thing--Betsy DeVos supports vouchers, and vouchers are bad. Why? Well, they take money away from public schools, and that's bad. Except when it's done for good schools, you know, like the UFT charter, which is OK. So we need to, you know, get on our computers and do the whole social media thing and do a Thunderclap, whatever the hell that is.

Well, OK, when I say that we need to do it, what I actually mean is that you need to do it. You know, I'm the President and stuff, and I'm really busy. I have to, you know, go places and do stuff. And lots of the stuff I do is, you know, important. For example, I missed one of my own Executive Board meetings because I was out traveling around the country campaigning for Hillary. And it was vital that I did that because if I didn't, who knows, maybe Donald Trump would be President and we'd be facing an Education Secretary who supported privatization and charter schools. Not that that would be bad, you understand, if it were a good Education Secretary supporting privatization and charter schools, like, say, Arne Duncan.

Now you remember Arne Duncan, who did that Race to the Top thing. That's why we have this evaluation system. And this evaluation system is much better than the old one. I know, because I helped write the law that created it. Then I thanked the Heavy Hearts Assembly when they passed the new version, and now I've negotiated this new thing with the Matrix and a bunch of new stuff that doesn't exist yet. And who better than me to judge it, because I'm like, objective and stuff because it doesn't affect me at all. How cool is that?

But anyway, like, what I'm saying is, you know, you need to get on social media. Jeez, I use a flip phone and I don't even know what the hell social media is. All I know is that bloggers are purveyors of myth and while I don't read the blogs I know none of them are true, so, like, don't read them.

Oh crap there's another Executive Board meeting on Monday. I'm gonna have to take the elevator all the way down to the second floor and say some crap about something or other. Man I am sure glad to be the President so I don't have to sit through the whole meeting and, like, you know, vote on stuff or speak or listen to anyone. I hear those MORE/ New Action people want to do stuff like, you know, reduce class size and fight against abusive administrators. What a bunch of losers.

Anyway, like, get on social media and do the Thunderclap thing, and, like, say whatever we tell you to say because that's, you know, what activists do. Thanks for all you do, and please keep doing it, because I sure as hell don't want to have to do it myself.

UFT Executive Board Minutes September 26th, 2016

 Apologies to names I missed. I spoke, and included are the notes from which I spoke.

I arrived at 6:06, missed speaker.

Approval of minutes for last meeting—Howie Schoor uses his new gavel.

Adcom minutes approved

President’s report—Secretary starts to explain Mulgrew not here, but Mulgrew objects, clear evidence secretary was mistaken. Mulgrew asks we keep it short for debates. AFT will be giving us instructions on how to support FL, Nevada, and PA. Says we all know what is at stake.

ATR negotiating session did not go well—no agreement. As of Friday 5794 new teacher hires. Asks we support them.

Paperwork being resolved, Manhattan school no longer needs to write goals for conferences.

FSF—we were ruled out of order—had hoped this admin would change it—even Rhee stopped using it. Believes there are political issues preventing its being revoked.

UFT ad—says there are great reviews. Mentions op-ed he wrote against Eva Moskowitz, who wants to double charter cap while half of her classrooms are empty due to discharges. Expects bad press. Says we will win. Plays ad.

Says they always say public ed. is failing, it isn’t. Graduation rate excellent. Community learning schools, with high need numbers, level 1, 2 down, 3, 4 up. We empower members to help kids.

Mulgrew exits.

Staff Director Report

Leroy Barr—Parent conferences, various dates. Wants to push teacher union day 11/6. Making Strides 10/16. We are largest group who raises most money for last few years. Next meeting 10/16 DA 10/19.

Much debate about who had hit with some song, debate continues all night.

Questions

Mike Schirtzer MORE—speaks of issue with budget. School underfunded. Experienced staff. High average teacher salary. Principal has been transparent, DR helpful. Problem is no title one and experienced staff. No per session, no per diem. Lost administrator. Have one principal, one AP, 3 counselors. Will work with SLT and parents. Question—I know we’re doing a lot.We have 33 oversized classes because we’re underfunded. What else can we do as a union?

Secretary—we can bring it up with DOE at next consultation. Asks Jonathan Halabi to provide info about his school as well.


Ashraya Gupta MORE—what data do we have about how many oversized classes there are? Why isn’t it published in NY Teacher anymore? In Detroit a parent took photos of overcrowding. Went viral on net. Teachers can’t do that. How do we highlight this?

Ellen P. Grievance dept. We will post them. Slightly up from last year. Queens HS have most because of space

Arthur Goldstein MORE—By a very conservative estimate, my school is at 200% capacity. Our problem with reducing class size has to do with lack of space, despite 8 trailers and having halved rooms and created additional space via conversion of closets and bookrooms. When de Blasio demolishes our trailers, it will be a disaster for our school community. I suspect we won’t be alone in that. In fact, our neighbors in Forest Hills are having even worse problems.

Let me add that we do simply not need additional seats in Queens. We need additional seats in the schools most requested by students. We need, actually an extension on our building.

I’m really tired of hearing about Students First, Families for Excellent Schools, Educators for Excellence and all the nonsensical reformy groups supported by Gates and hedge-funders. I’d like to see the United Federation of Teachers at the forefront of really making things better for all students.

How can we help to create seats for students and schools that most need them?


Ellie Engler staff director, will set up a meeting. Will meet with space allocation to brainstorm. Says they are open to our ideas. Will set up next month.

Kuljit S. Ahluwalia—New Action—Asks about ATRs. Many feel discriminated against for age. We would like a report broken down by age, experience, license. Perhaps data would help. We would like to know UFT position.

Secretary—We will get you info that we have. We don’t ask ages. ATRs are safe due to contract. Subject to same layoff provisions. Board wanted to limit ATRs. We did not give them that. We do not plan to give that up and ATRs have nothing to be nervous about. Says numbers are down but not exact.

Report from district—George Altomare—reports on Italian American committee. Would like everyone to celebrate Italian American culture month in October. 40th year of celebration. Speaks of BRAVE, anti-bullying, Peter Yarrow doing concert for it.

Secretary celebrates George as founder.

Karen Allford Elementary VP speaks of learning retreat. Says they helped build communication between admin and teachers. UFT community schools make teachers the base. Says there is always UFT teacher center, model teachers, and job-impeded PD. Says we bring programs to school, not cookie cutter models, that there are food pantries or reps from food banks to take care of primary necessities like these and dental, vision.

Paul Egan—Mentions debate, hopes for movement. Will phone bank in October. Says race is tightening. Ohio, PA, FL are important. Asks for members to make calls. We cannot have Donald Trump as President.

Special Order of Business—election appeal report

Secretary shows letter with 7 complaints, considered and rejected by Exec. Board. Are 8 additional complaints from Solidarity Caucus. Opens for debate.

Ellen Dreesen.—says some things are questionable. Were reps from every caucus at every step. We made decisions equitable to every caucus. Questioning of AAA surprising. They make money by being fair. Don’t work only for UFT. Union pays a lot of money to ensure fairness, proper handling. Doesn’t know what was untoward. These questions must be addressed and understood. We use them because they are fair.

Secretary asks for move to accept challenge and reject report. Many yeas. Few nays.

Motion carried.

We are adjourned.

Not Insane---A Supervisory Blueprint

Chalkbeat writes about the "authentic" learning standards pushed by UFT President Michael Mulgrew. I am not at all sure there's any validity to judging teachers by student work, be it tests, portfolios, projects, or whatever, and I've seen no evidence supporting this presumption. In fact, there's a lot of evidence pointing otherwise, including that of the American Statistical Association, which suggests that teachers affect student work by a factor somewhere between 1 to 14%.

When the junk science rating law was passed, Mulgrew boasted of having a hand in writing it. The official position was that we were very smart to place this in law, as it would now be firmly in place (proven wrong when Cuomo and the Heavy Hearts made it worse). It was supposedly a good thing, a counter against crazy supervisors. I know multiple teachers whose ratings have been dragged down by this junk science, some all the way down to ineffective. (In fact, I know one who got crappy ratings from a UFT rat squad person, and much better ones from a working supervisor. That's ironic, because the rat squad was supposed to be a check against crazy supervisors.)

What makes someone want to be a supervisor? Well, there are those who want to help. Maybe some principal respects a certain teacher and asks that this person get trained and contribute. Maybe some people fall into supervisory positions and catch up to keep the jobs. Of course, some people were recruited by Joel Klein's Leadership Academy and were trained to actively go after working teachers. You read a lot about these supervisors in the NY Post, about how they're removed from one position after another, and are given new positions either in schools or shuffling papers at Tweed.

Then there are those who want to "get out of the classroom." In my humble opinion, anyone who wants to do that is unfit to lead. The classroom is the center of school activity. It is where the most important work takes place. Anyone who can't or doesn't want to do that ought not to be rating teachers. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people like that opt to take supervisory courses and are now running around with iPads passing judgment on those of us who actually do the work. I have seen incontrovertible video evidence of supervisors saying any damn thing they like, whether or not it actually took place in the classroom.

On the other hand, supervisors who are not insane can be supportive and reasonable in a system that is (or is not) supportive and reasonable. I'd like to see a focus on hiring and retaining such people, as I think that would lead to retention of teachers and more effective education of students. When I read Carol Burris I know she's smart and capable. She was a teacher, she was a principal, and now she's a writer and movement leader. You will not see that from any supervisor who checks off boxes and settles personal vendettas via teacher ratings.

Mulgrew's intentions notwithstanding, the issue is not which variety of junk science we use to rate teachers. We can jiggle forms of junk science but it won't fundamentally improve the morale of rank and file. No matter which form of junk science we use, crazy incompetent supervisors can jettison anyone they choose. I've seen brilliant, inspired teachers walk because they simply could not take the pressure of working for people who were nuts.

If UFT leadership wishes to really support us, they need to take a bold stand against unproven nonsense of any stripe. You can't just jiggle around nonsense and hope that today's nonsense is better than yesterday's. At the UFT Executive Board, MORE/ New Action proposed moving to get rid of incompetent supervisors. Leroy Barr likened our proposal to a scatter gun, which I assume to mean would attack supervisors indiscriminately.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. If our proposal was not specific enough, let's adjust and tailor it. We could start with little things. Barr mentioned PINI, principals in need of improvement. Let's restore and expand that. Let's re-open the Apples and Worms section in NY teacher and tell members who is and is not doing a good job.

Let's insist that supervisors be not insane. Let's stand together and show working teachers we have their backs. Alternatively, we can continue painting and repainting the lipstick on the pig that is APPR.

If UFT Unity doesn't like our proposal, it behooves them to work with us to find a workable alternative. If not, we'll know that crazy vindictive supervision is not a priority for them.

UFT Executive Board September 19th

 My apologies to those whose names I did not get or misspelled. I will correct them if anyone can provide me info. DR--district representative. CL--chapter leader

Howie Schoor, UFT Secretary, welcomes us. Videotaping and audiotaping not permitted, he says. Hopes for good discussion about issues.

Open Mike--

Norm Scott—Speaks of abuse on part of principals. There is a pattern, a blueprint, by DOE legal and/ or Leadership Academy. UFT unprepared to respond. Norm advises people, anticipates complaints, says they are exacerbated by fair student funding. Asks union pay more attention, perhaps devote TV time to what FSF has done to schools.

Central Park East place 10 of 40 teachers under investigation months after new principal arrived. Other school had 90% turnover. Is this discussed at DR meetings? Do they support membership or urge votes for Hillary? Says there is pattern of supes telling principals to wipe out staffs, go after chapter leaders and get their own. Is declaration of war. We need to stand up, use NY Teacher, publicity and commercials.

Georgia Allignu—WC Bryant High School—on CL elections. Found themselves with no CL in beginning of year as CL was victim, targeted, transferred. Was going to present case for renomination but as they are now planned she says thank you. Says this serves democracy.

Rema Margi—District 15 CL now, was abused by principal in district 7, left school after 14 years. Was part of community, had to leave parents and children. Had a good career, but new principal came and diminished everything. CL, elected previous year, resigned. Was attacked, all administrators observed, multiple times on several days. Frank Hernandez principal. 3 people resigned year before she did, two early retirement, and then 5 people transferred to other DOE schools. Got D rating despite having no previous issues.

At new school, was effective continuously. Year after she left, over 25 members left. Last year, 15 left. One who resigned midyear last year developed panic attacks. Principal had called police accusing him of drug possession. Para wrongfully terminated, overturned. Principal looks good on paper.

Dermot Myrie—Asks how DRs are accountable. Too many teacher abused while DRs collude. Teachers brought up on bogus charges. Can this body show data with # of grievances, charges, discontinuances based on race and age? In my school there is no CL.

Minutes reviewed. Accepted

President’s Report—Mulgrew has not arrived 6:15

Staff Director Leroy Barr thanks us for supporting LIU teachers in resolution. They are back at work with 8 month extended contract. Welcomes us. Speaks of breast cancer awareness month, Making Strides walk.

Secretary mentions how breast cancer walk activates many members who had not previously shown up.

Questions—

Jonathan Halabi, New Action—Body passed res calling for return of unit costing. This was how people were assigned. Now principals have to take experience into account. Bad for school, teachers, students. Said we would work on ending it. What were discussions with DOE and what are we doing about it?

Secretary defers to Mulgrew, who has not yet arrived. Says it may be managerial prerogative

Ashraya Gupta, MORE—At CL meeting we asked about paid family leave, but members don’t know what’s going on.

Secretary says we are still negotiating with city. 30K managerial employees not represented by union had two holidays and .5% of salary taken from them. We will not accept that. We are negotiating. Nothing comes for free from city.

Kuljit S. Ahluwalia New Action—Came from phase out school, Many of my colleagues are ATRS, considered pariahs. What are we going to do for them? Will they get jobs, or just keep moving on?

Secretary—DOE not phasing out schools anymore. Seeing fewer ATRs. Treatment in schools will vary. Depends on principal

Amy Arundell—No exact numbers yet, but generally number is lower than it has been in many years. People being picked up daily. There is no increase.

Secretary advises that ATRs get in touch with Amy.

6:25 Mulgrew arrives.

President’s report—School year off to decent start. Thanks victim support people. Had great communications with NYPD. Says ATR numbers lower than ever since he became President. We don’t know exactly, and also have no evaluation agreement. Negotiations are private but we want authentic learning measures and not standardized tests.

CFE push—small cities filed lawsuit and lost today. Problem for us, though CFE already adjudicated. We want full funding, not dribs and drabs. We need this money now and cannot wait for their appeal.

Mulgrew speaks of Single Shepard Program. Says it will help people with additional guidance counselors who will track students’ entire academic careers. Counselors assigned to kids, not schools.

NYC grad rate now about 70% first time ever.

Secretary says Halabi’s question will not be addressed by President until next week.

6:33 Mulgrew leaves.

Rep thanks Michael Mulgrew for supporting her district. Asks for support 10/16.

Mindy C.—CL Speech Improvement—Had 250 Speech teachers trained all day.
Camille Edy D16—First D16 kickoff. Over 500 teachers.

Paul Egan—Legislative Report—Last Tuesday, Primary Day, by and large positive. Good night in Queens and Brooklyn. Were 4 people targeted. Spent 2 million against us. We spent 250K, but did better job. Latrice won 6 to 1. Pam Harris 5 to 1. Bronx won 4 to 1. Big money did not fare well.

In Manhattan, we worked hard for Robert Jackson but were not successful. Micah Lasher of Students First was not elected. Few hundred votes was difference. Elections decided not so much by those who vote, but by those who don’t. Only 20% showed in that district, and that is relatively high turnout. When people don’t turn out it’s important. Says we need to get Hillary elected as Trump would be bad for unions, working people, Supreme Court.

NY should be OK. We need to look at PA, Ohio, and FL. Too many union members don’t vote. If we’re going to be successful we must put in people who help us. Urges us to get people to vote.

Secretary speaks of COPE money.

Resolutions

In support of streamlining CTE programs

Sterling Roberson—CTE skills and academic based programs preparing students for career and industry. Challenge is in applications. NYSED makes process an impediment. 3-5 years for approval. Calls for NYSED to streamline and simplify process. Asks we support resolution.

No opposition. Debate closed.Passes unanimously.

Removing abusive administrators—

Mike Schirtzer MORE—Speakers told stories of abuse. Abusive administrators are big problem. Bloomberg years remain as 2-year teachers became principals. They really do have blueprints on how to make people miserable, run them out of schools. In fact, schools have budget issues. Ours does because of veteran staff. This causes bad admin to run people out.

We must do something as a union. Teachers, counselors, social workers ought not to feel threatened and harassed. We are a union of 200K and we must take action using any means available to us. Admin with two unfavorable ratings from staff should be removed. If this happens to teachers, why shouldn’t it happen to them?

We need a check and balance, and we need to be the check and balance.

Leroy Barr—Rises to table. We have been engaged with trying to get APs either checked or removed. We had a program principals in need of improvement. Some items here are the same as we’ve pushed. We know they are there, we are engaged in those fights every day, we have no problem bringing entire weight of union against them.

Can’t be scatter gun. Depends on nuances of individual schools. Agree with essence. We want to make sure we are creating a great environment and ensure it for our kids. Want’s to raise title of District Rep tonight. You will never know all the work they do to save the jobs of our members. They do the work every day and you don’t know what they do. Some are behind closed doors. Some members want to leave. There is a variety of answers. We need to talk about how we solve and create good environment for both teachers and students. Asks we table this tonight.

Secretary—Invites voice of support

Marcus McArthur MORE—I walked into a building 6 years ago, my first job, and CLs classroom had been defiled, garbage everywhere. Principal was responsible. Still in power, in that school. Was a lot of fighting and conflict. Was traumatic.

While union has tried, it has been a catastrophe for those who had to work under these conditions. For me, as new teacher, I was completely at mercy of that principal. Didn’t get a classroom, placed with another teacher to retaliate against that teacher. Was a big threat to me remaining as African American male, as special ed. teacher. Without support of staff, I’d have left system like half of special ed. teachers.

Asks reconsideration of resolution. We must take all action in our power. Cannot tolerate such abuse.

Vote on tabling resolution.

Resolution is tabled as Unity appears to vote Yea in unison. MORE-New Action votes Nay.

Secretary says supervisors are represented by union, that there is a yin and a yang.

Meeting adjourned.

Mulgrew Cleans Up His Act, a Little Bit

It's interesting to read, lately, that Mulgrew takes exception to the modifications in suspension  policies by the de Blasio administration. Of course he wasn't the first UFT member to pen an op-ed in the Daily News to that effect. In fact, I was. It's encouraging to see leadership, once again, coming to its senses a little bit, albeit a little late.

Now Politico suggests that Mulgrew is making some distance between himself and the de Blasio administration. For a while they were BFFs. I remember, in particular, one time at the DA when Mulgrew was talking about what great buds he and Carmen Fariña were. He immediately pivoted into a statement that any chapter leaders who didn't have issues with their principals weren't doing their jobs properly.

That's vintage Mulgrew. I can go out to gala luncheons with my contractual adversary, he suggests, but you all have to fight with yours, whether or not it's necessary. It brings to mind his calls to act on social media. Everybody get on Facebook and talk about this thing. Everybody get on Twitter and use this hashtag. Everybody send tweets to these people about this thing. Everybody except me, of course, as I'm just gonna walk around with a flip phone, ignore your email, and not even register on social media sites.

Of course now, while de Blasio isn't winning any popularity contests, maybe it's time to look like we got ahead of things. And there's also this:

Mulgrew is also showing his members he’s willing to stand up to City Hall for them — a political imperative after a small but vocal faction of the union challenged Mulgrew in his re-election bid earlier this year.

Hmmm...who could those people be? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's us, the MORE/ New Action coalition that took almost a third of working teacher votes and won the high school seats. Maybe Mulgrew will now move a little to represent membership rather than leadership, and it's not a moment too soon for me. Any musician will tell you timing is everything. We're a little off on that.

The UFT has maintained it does not endorse the “current version” of mayoral control over city schools, and even as Mulgrew’s foes among State Senate Republicans ravaged de Blasio’s education policies in hearings and in the media, the UFT stayed out of the fray. Mulgrew declined to add his name to the large coalition of officials, business leaders and other union presidents pushing on behalf of the administration for a long-term extension.

Diane Ravitch, in her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, paints mayoral control as a tool used by reformies to bypass all that messy and inconvenient democracy stuff. I couldn't agree more. While it's nice that Mulgrew has taken a cautious step endorsing modification of the tool that closed Jamaica High School and scores of others, it's a little late, and a lot little. The time to have stood against it was when Bloomberg enacted it. In fact, after it proved to be an unmitigated disaster, closing schools and ballooning the ranks of the ATR, leadership demanded changes, failed to get them, and then supported it again.

It would have been nice if someone from UFT had taken a public stand against it. Well, actually someone did, and as it happens, it was me. Mayoral control has become pretty much part of the city's culture. We have a few meetings, listen to what the public says, and then the mayor does any damn thing he pleases. That's not precisely democracy, and in a democracy, no mayors should have total control, be they friendly, hostile, anywhere in between.

If we are moving Mulgrew just a little, then we're making just a little progress and I'm happy to see it. We will work to make more.

UFT Unity and the Vision Thing

Over at Ednotes Online, a bold Unity Caucus member is making anonymous comments to the effect that CTU has been assimilated and resistance is futile. CTU voted as a bloc, and therefore, with no evidence whatsoever, this commenter declares that we are stranded, alone, and that things are hopeless. That's a wholly ironic vision because a whole lot of teachers in NYC feel the same way.

They feel this way because they're caught in a vindictive and unreasonable system. UFT Unity would like you to forget that the new rating system was ushered in by a law their leader, Michael Mulgrew, proclaimed he had a hand in writing. This law made junk science 40% of teacher ratings. Andrew Cuomo loved this, until not enough teachers got fired. He then pushed another law that made junk science 50% of teacher rating. Mulgrew likes this because, he says, this gives less power to administrators.

When we in MORE openly oppose junk science, Mulgrew's people make up nonsense, saying that we want principals to have 100% discretion over evaluations. That's what's called a strawman fallacy. When you can't address your opponent's argument, you just change it, and try to make your opponent address the argument you just invented. It's ridiculous. What we say is that teachers ought not to be evaluated by invalid criteria. In fact, a vindictive administrator could make stuff up and sink a teacher based on observation alone. I have seen video evidence of administrators simply fabricating what happened in classrooms.

Mulgrew argues that more teachers have their ratings brought up by test scores than brought down. That's fine if you fall into that category. But I personally know someone whose rating was brought down to ineffective via test scores alone. If I know one person, there are plenty more. There's an old tenet of English law called Blackstone's Formulation, that says:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

In American parlance, that means you are innocent until proven guilty, and that is the bedrock of American justice.  Another portion of the Mulgrew-endorsed agreement is that teachers, twice judged ineffective and confirmed so by the UFT Rat Squad, are guilty until proven innocent. I have actually seen UFT Unity people defend this, saying teachers should own the process. What this tells me is that those people will say any damn thing to defend their actions, whether or not said actions are beneficial to UFT members. When your core value is justifying what your caucus has done rather than representing members to the best of your ability, there's something very very wrong.

UFT Unity has no problem smearing opt-out based on outright lies to justify their position. They'd
would like to portray us as a bunch of lunatics who run around screaming for no reason. Now anyone who knows me, including my students, will tell you that I don't do that. I scream for effect, to grab or focus attention. My tendency when angry in the classroom is to be very quiet and think about how to fix things. I let the children scream while I figure out the best way of dealing with it. My default is certainly not screaming mode. 

I was elected by the high school teachers of NYC to represent them, and that I will do. What I see is a lot of uncertainly and misery, and that is fostered by ridiculous policies that benefit no one but reformies who hate union and wish to see it eradicated. What I see is a leadership that supports mayoral control, charter schools, colocation, and an erosion of seniority benefits. I see a leadership content to offer 20,000 high school teachers no representation whatsoever in NYSUT, NEA or AFT. I see a leadership that offers ATRs no representation anywhere at all.

I see a leadership that lives in a virtual fishbowl, communication only with people who've signed oaths to support them. I see a leadership that fails to engage rank and file. I see a President who shuns social media but musters the audacity to urge the rest of us to use it as he instructs us. I see a top-down model that criticizes top-down models and perceives no irony whatsoever in doing so.

And now I see seven voices on an Executive Board of 102 who will speak truth to bureaucracy, to reforminess. I'm proud to be part of this long overdue breath of fresh air in Dracula's castle over at 52 Broadway. They can continue to raise petty objections and indulge in juvenile nonsense behind our backs, but they will find the truth in their faces at the Executive Board and elsewhere.

To maintain that we do this simply to be contrary is another strawman. It would be so much easier to simply join Unity, go on free trips, and get some cool union gig in some office somewhere. But someone has to represent the people in the trenches, the people subject to the APPR endorsed by Michael Mulgrew. If he says this is the best of all possible worlds, every single one of his loyalty oath signers is bound to say, "Yes Mike that's absolutely correct.

In fact it's absolutely wrong, and the misery of people doing the work is palpable. Someone needs to be the voice of these people. Right now we are that voice. I'm very proud to represent my long-neglected brothers and sisters, and I will try to work with UFT Unity to do that. If they wish to move forward rather than indulge in petty nonsensical squabbles, I'm happy to do that too.

Time will tell whether or not they are up to the task.

Social Justice Is for Everyone, Including Teachers

Norm Scott says it's hard to "out social justice Randi," and in a lot of ways he's right.  AFT and UFT leadership are certainly diverse. And Randi hits every note when she speaks. There is no doubt whatsoever that she's aware of racial inequality. She's a great advocate for the LGBT community. Communities are well-represented at the AFT Convention. In fact, the only community I know of that has no representation whatsoever at this convention is UFT high school teachers.

That said, social justice does not apply only to race, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. Social justice applies to all groups, and one of them is working teachers. Another is unions. I'll admit to being a little biased here, as I'm unabashedly in favor of both. I oppose things that hurt working teachers and unions, and I think it behooves us to fight them with everything we've got. And if we haven't got what we need to fight them, it's on us to go out and get it.

That's why I am mystified as to how Hillary Rodham Clinton can stand in front of us and babble nonsense about how we can learn from "public charter schools." I don't even know what that means, or what we're differentiating. The fact is every charter school is privately run, judged by different standards, and no charter is on a level playing field. For charters to boast of their stats when people like me are teaching kids who have been in the United States only five minutes is ridiculous.

I'm also mystified as to how my union, the most powerful in the country, can support things like mayoral control. How on earth do we support giving absolute power to a fanatical ideologue like Michael Bloomberg? And when we finally get a mayor who is not insane, why do we not fight tooth and nail when they demand he pay rent for the likes of Eva Moskowitz?

How do we not only support, but also have our President take part in writing a law that has us rated via value-added junk science? How does our President determine the reformiest man on God's green earth, John King, is a reasonable and unbiased arbitrator for our evaluation agreement?

How can UFT leadership attack the opt-out movement, a grassroots uprising of parents outraged about reforminess? How can those who control our union call allies of the movement "reckless and feckless," and make ridiculous arguments about how they cost schools money they don't even have?

I could go on, but here is the point---MORE fights for social justice for teachers. That's why we took the high schools, and that's why we will move ahead and win further. MORE opposes judging teachers by test scores. MORE opposes using our kids as puppets who sit for tests just to prove how much we suck. MORE believes teachers are under assault and need help.

We reach out with both hands to working teachers. We want to help, and we want to force our leadership, if necessary, to help too. I am an open book. I don't work behind the backs of Unity to thwart them when they are trying to support children. But I will fight them with everything I've got if they want to block social justice, say, for ESL students just because they can. MORE believes our working conditions are student learning conditions, and I couldn't agree more.

If Unity wants to play stupid games and write baseless nonsense to discredit us, that's fine. But we are standing up for teachers, we are standing up for children, and we are standing up for communities. We are not afraid, we will not be deterred, and we will not be intimidated by the usual nonsense.

We're open to working together, but we expect nothing. You can't have any social justice unless you include working teachers, and you can't put children first if you put teachers last. And you can't represent teachers if you sign loyalty oaths to leadership and vote as told.

Democracy is from the bottom up. UFT Unity is top down. We will fight for the voices of high school teachers and all teachers. Social justice applies to us too, we aren't going to forget it, and we aren't going to let UFT Unity forget it either.

UFT Unity's War on Logic

An interesting by-product of joining the Unity Caucus and signing the loyalty oath is you have to rationalize everything Unity Caucus does. OK, well not everyone has to. But if you want to move up and impress those who need impressing, you'll do any logical contortion necessary to make their actions appear rational.

A very good example of that was their attack on MORE at the last Delegate Assembly. When you're sworn to defend anything by any means necessary, you aren't restricted by things like truth, logic, or common decency. You say any damn thing and as long as it makes you look superficially good, that's good enough. Unfortunately for Unity there are people like Jeanette Deutermann, who actually think about things before accepting them, and they are liable to publicly call you out.

Even worse, there are entire organizations intent on facing reforminess with truth, and one is NY State Allies for Pubic Education, or NYSAPE. And boy, is it inconvenient to lead a teacher union and be called out by a grassroots education group:

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you? - See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-mulgrew-response.html#sthash.oxAFE1tA.dpuf

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you?

Not particularly flattering, and a hell of a question for people whose jobs, ostensibly, entail representing those of us who work in public education. And that's not even an aberration. A recent Unity propaganda effort was a strawman, that is, because MORE opposes teachers being judged by junk science, they therefore must favor principals having 100% power. This, of course, ignores the fact that principals can sink evaluations in the current system anyway.

A worse factor of the new APPR is that the burden of proof is no longer on the DOE--they need not prove you are incompetent. Under the current system, if the UFT rat squad determines that the principal is right, burden of proof shifts to the teachers, who must prove they are not incompetent. Lawyer friends of mine tell me that proving a negative is very, very tough, and it isn't very hard for me to see why that's correct.

Of course if you're Unity, it's your job to rationalize everything Unity does. I know of several Unity folks who defended this saying it's better that we own it. This hasn't appeared in any official Unity publication yet because first, they don't publicly acknowledge the shifting of the burden, ever, and second, I suppose, because it's an incredibly stupid argument that even the idiots who write Unity propaganda can't bring themselves to use. Here's what Eric Severson, UFT Chapter Leader at Clara Barton, commented:

No it's better that I've been imprisoned without trial and presumed guilty, now I can own it!

Because, in fact, this makes teachers guilty until proven innocent. To me, that's fundamentally un-American. But to great minds of UFT Unity, intent on rationalizing absolutely anything leadership does, it's a gift!

It's remarkable that Unity propagandists are so inept at argument, though it explains a lot about why they negotiate contracts the way they do. I certainly hope they keep placing their collective feet so firmly in their mouths. It's fabulous for blog material. Better, though, would be for them to get off that high horse and work with us toward improving education for teachers, students and communities.

Only time will tell whether UFT Unity will risk its "seat at the table" to work with real activists like us and NYSAPE. But hope springeth eternal.  

In addition to providing your members with false information, you have demonized the brave and outspoken NYC educators who have encouraged opt out. You have inexplicably labeled these educators as “reckless and feckless”. This begs the question, why would an experienced educator and union leader dismiss and insult a historic act of civil disobedience? Surely, you are aware that the opt out movement has yielded the only successful means of resisting harmful “test and punish” policies that hurt not only your members, but all educators and students around the state.

It is no secret that you have failed to support efforts to reject the increased focus on test scores in the new teacher evaluation plan (3012-d), or that you have publicly vowed to defend the common core standards (standards that even the Governor’s skewed CC task force found to be flawed) with violence, if necessary. In addition to your disparaging comments aimed at those who support the opt out movement, your actions as president of the UFT would appear to reveal whose side you are really on.

When teachers, students, and unions were being abused, demonized, and demoralized, a call to action rang out from grassroots parent and educator organizations. Many teachers and local unions heeded the call. Progressive caucuses within the UFT such as MORE and the statewide caucus Stronger Together immediately stepped up and worked alongside parents to fight for the best interests of our children. Where were you? - See more at: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-mulgrew-response.html#sthash.oxAFE1tA.dpuf

UFT Unity and Corporate Values

Leonie Haimson is one of the smartest people I know, and I did myself a disservice by failing to pay close enough attention to her comment:

How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?

I'd been looking at the relative truthiness of the ridiculous Unity leaflet and didn't immediately recognize the precise words Leonie was referencing:

MORE urged students to opt out of the state tests as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate driven education system. 

Now think about that. That is meant as a criticism. Sure, it leads to their nonsensical and misleading assertions about a reward program. But take it on its face, and think about what it implies--precisely what Leonie said it did. Why on earth would any reasonably informed teacher not wish to fight a corporate driven education system? Anyone who's read Diane Ravitch's books knows how destructive and counter-productive such a system is. 

So you have to ask yourself--has UFT Unity leadership bothered to read Ravitch? If so, why would they criticize us? Actually there's a whole lot of evidence that UFT Unity actively supports a corporate driven education system. Do you remember when Mulgrew told the DA that it was necessary for us to participate in the Gates MET system, the one that judged "good" teaching by test scores? 

Does anyone remember the Bill Gates sponsored MET program being a precursor to Race to the Top, which mandated junk science ratings for teachers? Do we remember Michael Mulgrew going to Albany, then coming back and boasting of having helped write the APPR law that made junk science part of our ratings? Do we remember his telling the DA last Wednesday that the "matrix" would take authority away from principals? Doesn't that just mean the junk science is a higher percentage of our rating? Why not just make teacher ratings 100% based on crapshoots? After all, recent research suggests that VAM is never accurate, reliable or valid. So, while it's fairly amazing to see the President of the United Federation of Teachers boasting that we're increasing its value, it certainly helps explain UFT Unity's disgust with those of us who fight against a corporate driven education system. 

Ravitch suggests in Death and Life of the Great American School System that mayoral control is a corporate tool to bypass and subvert democracy. Yet UFT leadership has endorsed it twice, and under uber-reformy Michael Bloomberg to boot. The second time, after it had proven virtually toxic to working teachers and community schools, UFT leadership demanded a few changes, failed to get them, and went ahead and supported it anyway. Now Mulgrew says he supports it, but not as is. Nonetheless mayoral control bypasses community. Those of us who oppose a corporate driven education system oppose it completely. 

The icing on the top of the cake, of course, was when AFT invited Bill Gates to be the keynote at its convention. I've given a lot of thought to what Gates represents, and it certainly isn't working public school teachers or the kids we serve. In fact, shortly after visiting AFT, Gates criticized teacher pensions, calling them a free lunch. I don't know about you, but I've been working for 32 years, and I've earned each and every penny of that pension. Now, with our legislature working on ways to take it away, I'm not seeing the wisdom of cozying up to those who hate us and everything we stand for. Every time we give them something, they want more. We support Gates and he comes for our pensions. We support charters and they come for our tenure. Appeasement didn't work for Chamberlain then and doesn't work for Mulgrew now. 

As for professional autonomy, that's tough to achieve when you're judged by a checklist. Naturally that checklist is endorsed by UFT Unity, because they love them some Danielson. And yet Danielson herself is backing away on it. UFT Unity, whose leaders have never been judged by Danielson, can happily pretend that a rubric makes everything fair, or that all administrators make low inference notes rather than obeying the voices in their heads. But those of us on the ground know better.

Interestingly, when my friend Julie Cavanagh opposed the 2014 contract, UFT Unity's Leo Casey accused her of being against teacher empowerment. This was because the contract contained the PROSE initiative, so Leo made a handy strawman which ignored Julie's real objections and substituted words she'd never uttered. You know, Julie couldn't possibly be talking about the fact that the contract enabled two-tier due process, got us paid a decade after everyone else, or dumped the worst pattern I've ever seen on our brother and sister unionists (considerably worse than those for which we'd criticized DC37 in the past). No, she must have been criticizing PROSE, which was absolutely perfect even though it had never been tested, let alone utilized.

UFT Unity needs to fight dirty because it has no argument. I guess when everyone around you has signed a loyalty oath, you don't expect to ever need one. The only thing UFT Unity knows is that everything it does is right. When Bloomberg wants to use eight components of Danielson, it's an outrage. Unity fights for 22, which is ideal. When Unity pares it down to seven, it's a great victory. No more 22, which is awful. When we get artifacts added, it's a great victory. When we get them removed, it's also a great victory. And what they complain about is pretty much the only thing that's drawn Cuomo, at least ostensibly, out of his relentless assault on teachers.

The weird attribution of Opt Out to the MORE caucus by Unity. Insult to the parents' movement by @TeacherArthurG https://t.co/U4qtNuoXNO

— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 17, 2016

Unity's arguments stem not from reason or practice, but rather from the outlandish assumption that everything it does is right. Therefore everything its opponents do must be wrong. The relative value or lack thereof of Unity positions means nothing. Their arguments come from backing themselves up no matter what, rather than from any basic value or standard. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to swap out positions as often as you or I change our socks. 

Now they've taken a stand against basic values set out by visionary education expert Diane Ravitch. I don't know about you, but I'm proud to stand with Ravitch, with activist parents, and with communities. Unity can continue to alienate all of us and paint itself into corners by making outlandish assertions simply to insult the most vibrant and thoughtful activist group in the UFT. 

But MORE/ New Action is just getting started. We will continue to speak the truth and Unity can squirm and spout its convoluted logic all it likes.

Or they can simply join us to improve our working conditions, which are precisely student learning conditions. Because whatever they choose, we aren't backing down and we aren't going away.   

Opt-out Answers UFT Unity

UFT Unity really managed to put its foot in its mouth with its Delegate Assembly handout. I kind of suspected some opt-out activists would not care for that particular message, laughable and poorly thought out though it  was. Here's one commenter, for example, who found little to love about it:

Oh Michael, Michael, Michael. Now you went and did it. You stayed in the closet for four long years, pretending that you were respectful of the work of 250,000 parents and educators to save your profession and protect public schools. Out of fear of your regime beginning to crumble, you have decided to come out and proclaim in all your glory that you despise the opt out movement and all it represents. Let me be the first to let out a sigh of relief that the pretense is over. Now you can come at us with fists flying in typical Mulgrew fashion. Thank you for being you.

~Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann, Opt-out parent activist 

Others are struck by the idiosyncracies in UFT Unity behavior:

What's actually funny is, the UFT UNITY delegates voted unanimously at last year's RA to support opt out. Leroy made a big production of going to the microphone with Beth Dimino. Wait, I'm sorry, it's not funny, it's sad.

~Michael Lillis, President, Lakeland Federation of Teachers

Evidently they were for it before they were against it. But not everyone is familiar with the Unity philosophy that everything they do is right, and it makes no difference whatsoever if what they say today contradicts what they did yesterday. Thus, whatever they do is right. Of course it sounds odd, but there are precedents for that sort of thinking.

Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal

~Richard Nixon

Alas, not everyone can accept the premise that just because Mulgrew, another President, says it's so, that it is. That notion has not gained wide acceptance outside the Unity bubble.   

Also, the logic of "we have to test 95% or more of our students to get grant money" is the same logic that led to "we have to adopt Common Core so we get Race to the Top money." Just administering all these tests every year costs far more than the grant money this flyer points to as the reward for testing our students

~Eric Severson, UFT Chapter Leader, Clara Barton High School

The grant money, of course, is up to $75,000 for 6% of applicants, who may or may not get the 75K, or way less, since we haven't got an "as little as" figure just yet. Of course others are outraged There is an opt-out movement out there, and they're tired of being talked down to. If they wanted that, they could go to John King, Andy Cuomo or Bill Gates rather than the people whose jobs, ostensibly, entail representing them. 

Disgraceful! Opting-out gives us power to change the system. No kid should take these tests. Shame on @UFT Unity. https://t.co/rtEba1pnW7

— CriticalClassrooms (@lapham_katie) June 16, 2016

Now this is how Unity hopes people will react:. 

How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?

~Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters

OK, well not really. That's what's known as "irony." While Unity deems themselves clever to call us "feckless and reckless," and make puns about MORE, other people are actually thinking about this stuff. Unfortunately for UFT Unity, none of them have signed that loyalty oath. The thing about Unity folk is they hang around people who've signed oaths all the time and aren't very well-equipped to deal with those who have not. And some who haven't signed the oath get right to the point:

This letter is disgraceful. @beth_dimino @Refusethetests @JeanetteDeut @LIOptOut @teka21bat @zamekhta @sullio https://t.co/yNSBMXQBu7

— brian stpierre (@Sashammy) June 15, 2016

Unity leaders aren't used to having to listen to people like that. Maybe we need to forgive them. They know not what they do. Sadly, it's kind of their job to know what they do, and that places the UFT in a precarious situation. It's my inclination to work with them rather than against them. But I won't be silent when attacked. Neither I nor MORE/ New Action nor opt-out is stupid enough to accept strawman arguments and ad hominem nonsense. 

This propaganda piece by the UFT's re-elected Unity leadership is really a disgrace and seeks to undermine the teachers who have stood by NYC parents to support our choice to refuse to have our children be subjected to these inferior test and punish policies. This needs to be called out as the smear campaign that does not respect the decision those 240,000 children's parents across the state made on their child's behalf. So is Mulgrew saying we parents are reckless and feckless too?? Please share widely and support MORE Caucus teachers. The election may be over, but the movement is not!

~Janine Sopp, NYC Opt-out parent activist

UFT Unity now has a choice. They can climb down from that high horse and work with us to help students, teachers and communities. Or they can tell the idiots who write for them to get to work developing more pompous, disingenuous, logic-free nonsense. 

I hope they at least give it a little thought.