FMPR Stands Tall in the Bronx

Saturday night I attended a Bronx forum with Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico leadership. It was organized by tireless UFT activist Aixa Rodriguez. MORE's Jia Lee and New Action's Jonathan Halabi were also in attendance.

If you've been following the news about Puerto Rico, even a little bit, you know it's in an economic mess. They're 72 billion dollars in debt, and controlled by a board that pretty much doesn't give a crap about the people who live there. Pensions have been eliminated for most public workers. Though teachers have somehow avoided that particular fate, funding for them should disappear sometime next year. This is a dire issue, as Puerto Rican teachers neither pay nor receive social security.

I'm fascinated by the saga of union in Puerto Rico. FMPR was formed in 1966 as an alternative to AMPR, which they call a company union. FMPR leadership says AMPR views teachers as professionals, whereas they view us as working people. This is an interesting distinction, because UFT often calls iteself a union of professionals. Does being a "professional" somehow preclude being a working person?

Another thing that makes things a little cloudy is that AMPR represents administrators. I've always thought it odd that administration had a union at all, but being in the same union with them would be awkward indeed. As a chapter leader, I'm generally careful about how I speak with and treat UFT members. I'm a little more direct with administrators. I'm not sure how I'd do my job if I were uneasy about being directly adversarial with administration when necessary.

FMPR is upset because AMPR leadership didn't oppose school closings. Does that remind you of anyone? Under today's AMPR leadership, 45,000 teachers somehow became 32,000 teachers. This is similar to (although considerably worse than) what happened under Bloomberg in NYC as he failed to replace retirees. I can't be the only one who's noticed that 34 students in a class has become more the norm than the max these days.

In 1999, public employee strikes were prohibited by law in Puerto Rico. That's the same year FMPR became the exclusive bargaining agent for Puerto Rican teachers. In 2008, FMPR led a 10-day strike. While they won a raise for teachers, they also incurred the wrath of the government, which decertified them as a bargaining agent. That year, Puerto Rican teachers were given a choice to affiliate with AMPR. AMPR was the only name on the ballot, and managed to lose anyway. (Can you imagine one of those countries who gets a "democratic" yes or no vote on the dictator in which the dictator loses?)

A few years later, again given the choice of AMPR or nothing, Puerto Rican teachers chose AMPR. I suppose they believe AMPR is better than nothing. Now personally, I don't see, "Better Than Nothing" as the optimal campaign slogan. I guess if you have no opponent, though, it'll do well enough.

In 2005, FMPR disaffiliated itself from AFT. This is undoubtedly why we had trouble getting them support at the UFT Executive Board and Delegate Assembly. FMPR did not feel AFT was doing enough for them. On Saturday night they labeled AFT as unresponsive and corporate. I can understand that. I pay dues to AFT, but I have no vote in it, and no one UFT sends represents my point of view or that of my caucus. And it's not just me. 20,000 NYC high school teachers selected MORE/ New Action to represent them, yet not only AFT, but also NYSUT and NEA have only UFT Unity loyalty oath signers voting.

The AFT disaffiliation had other unintended consequences for FMPR. Because their formal name labeled themselves part of AFT, the government was able to follow up the decertification with a 2010 ruling that they were not a "bonafide" organization. I found that incredible. It was as though the government had declared they didn't exist, and expected them to simply disappear as a result. Somehow, despite having been decertified, they were still collecting union dues. That ended in 2010.

However, 4500 Puerto Rican teachers choose to remain with this activist group, and though their salaries run from only 21-40K per year, they choose to pay dues to two groups. FMPR leaders were fired from their teaching jobs, but they persevered, working multiple jobs to get by. These people never give up no matter what the government does to them.

FMPR is still quite active, supporting one-day strikes and various events. I was happy to hear they greeted Arne Duncan with a one-day strike in 2011. When students strike they support them by showing up and bringing them food and encouragement. So far they've been able to sidestep charter schools and privatization, but that may not last, as recent government dictates allow for it.

Activism is a tricky thing. If things are not that bad, activism is often dormant. Puerto Rico hasn't got that problem, because unfortunately things are dire over there. They don't bother paying substitute teachers these days, and just send kids home when teachers are sick. In the face of school closings even worse than those of rabid Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, students may not even be able to get to school. And who will fight for transportation for those stranded kids? FMPR, of course.

I went to the UFT Mayday rally. I saw maybe 20 people from Unity, and about the same number from MORE/ New Action. In Puerto Rico, 60,000 people took to the streets. They're tired of paying debts incurred by banks, debts they had nothing to do with. They're tired of being on austerity because the crooks in the government mismanaged finances and took no responsibility whatsoever.

Take a look at the Orange Man in DC and ask yourself how hard it would be for that to happen here. There but for the grace of God go us. I'm impressed by the passion and determination of FMPR leadership. It's something we need not only to support, but also emulate.

AFT is now excited about the possibility of affiliating itself with AMPR and gaining a boost in membership. I guess, as we face the specter of Right to Work America, that's a smart move. A smarter move, though, would be to foster and replicate FMPR-style activism.

Alternatively, we can sit on our hands, wait until things get as bad here as they are in Puerto Rico now, and continue hoping for the best.

Demcracy for USA and UFT Too

There's a national movement to thwart and override the insidious Electoral College. So far ten states have signed on. If enough states to make an electoral majority agree, it will go into effect. Once they hit 270 votes, these states will automatically pledge their electors to whoever wins the popular vote. Thus, the choice of the people will be President of the United States.

Now some may say this would favor the Democrats, who've been burned twice in sixteen years. But GW Bush came close to winning the national vote and losing the election term two. Our current President-elect believed that Romney had won the national vote and lost the election, and had a tweet storm over the awful injustice he'd felt that represented.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

In fact, in another he called for revolution. Alas, in 2016, after the same thing happened, he felt somewhat differently.

Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

You see how that works? Now I look at AFT President Randi Weingarten, who's looking at the popular vote rather than the Electoral College:

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—and not by a narrow margin. Let’s not forget that in all the finger pointing. https://t.co/FTmERgUQ4n

— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) November 12, 2016

And with that, I see a lot of talk about something Randi and Leo Casey call a "circular firing squad." Essentially, this seems to mean that we are criticizing union leadership rather than Donald Trump. Randi called it, "the first thing all of you want to do." I'm curious who, "all of you" are, and why that's different from the blatantly stereotypical, "you people" remarks you hear every now and again.

This notwithstanding, I am bone weary of being told to sit down and shut up by union leadership. I've been hearing that from them since 2005, when I took exception to the contract that created the ATR. This is hardly the way we invite dialogue or involve members. To her credit, Randi offered to meet with us over this. I'm happy to do that, and hopefully it will happen.

Nonetheless, the proper response to dissenting voices in union is not shutting them down. It's ridiculous to surround yourself with loyalty oath signers and expect what they tell you is reflective of what membership thinks and feels.  They will say and act as told. I've had Unity members tell me it was good that the burden of proof was on teachers at 3020a, because that way they could own it. It's pretty outrageous that people paid to represent us would actively advocate for us being guilty until proven innocent. I've watched UFT employees tell chapter leaders how lucky they are not to have to live on a teacher salary. I've had members report getting very bad advice from UFT pension consultants, and seen no consequence for that.

But when you represent us based on loyalty rather than competence, that's the kind of thinking you promote. If Randi does indeed meet with us, we will advocate for representative democracy within the union. UFT has some pretty odd rules that shut out the voice of high school teachers and chapter leaders, just to name a few, and we have got precisely zero voice in NYSUT, NEA, and AFT.

We'll soon see if they want to do something about that, or if they'd rather continue with the same sort of rules that made Donald Trump President of the United States.

Platitudes Ahoy from Hillary at NEA

Writer Dana Goldstein is highly impressed by Hillary's talking points at the NEA. She says it represents a new beginning for teachers, and calls her "the teachers' candidate." Yet she's also highly impressed by recent actions of the Obama administration.

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a mea culpa of sorts on the overuse of standardized testing, and his successor John King has drawn attention to racial segregation and overly harsh school discipline.

While it's nice that these guys have finally taken the crucial step of paying valuable lip service to these things, the fact is they've done jack squat on the testing front, and John King is, in fact, trying to subvert ESSA to ensure that more testing be done, spirit and letter of the law be damned. And despite the alleged philosophical evolution of President Obama, I haven't heard him raise a peep over King's disregard for the law.

You'll pardon me for not getting overly enthusiastic here, but I've watched our AFT President Randi Weingarten very carefully, along with our local President Michael Mulgrew, and I've heard a lot about what President Obama has said. Those words have not changed much for those of us who actually do the work. Things seem to get worse each and every year, no matter what they say. Here's more on our commander-in-chief:

Two years later, in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama referenced teacher tenure more harshly, saying, “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.” If we could fire bad teachers and replace them with better ones, the thinking went, we could narrow the academic fissures between rich and poor children.

Obama wasn’t wrong about the excesses of teacher tenure.

I love that Goldstein feels no pressure to, you know, offer any evidence for that statement. In fact, tenure does not give teachers jobs for life. Tenure just means, or at least used to mean, that admin has to prove teachers are unfit before they fire them. Generally no one, including Goldstein, questions why these teachers received tenure if they were indeed unfit. And no one questions why administrators didn't bother to go after these teachers before. But now that Cuomo has managed to place the burden of proof on teachers to prove they are not unfit, a virtually impossible burden, perhaps writers like Goldstein find things improved. Who knows? She herself feels no need to even offer an explanation.

And while it's nice that Obama pays lip service to factors other than teachers, and it's nice that Hillary does as well, there's no evidence here that anything is going to change, and no promises to actually, you know, do anything about it. Were Hillary saying she was going to do away with all VAM junk science, it would be something worth talking about. But I didn't hear that, and Goldstein didn't report it. Here's the important part of Goldstein's argument:

I wrote a book on our historical tendency to blame teachers for society’s ills.

That's what you call an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy, if not a self-serving advertisement. I don't care if she's written ten books. Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein have written books too, and they're still still full of crap. Show me why I should listen to you. Here's what self-appointed expert Goldstein has learned:

Teacher accountability isn’t a bad thing; any functional system has mechanisms in place to remove low performers and, even more importantly, help them improve. 

You see that? It's more important to help them improve, but despite all the nice words about external factors from Hillary and Obama and her uncited sources, there's still that bad teacher floating around the pool polluting the water for everyone else.  And here's Goldstein's conclusion:

It’s safe to say it is a new day for the Democratic Party on education policy. But here’s hoping that Clinton’s turn toward the unions doesn’t mean she lets go of some of the Obama administration’s more promising recent ideas.

Despite the fact that Hillary was addressing an audience of teachers and clearly catered her remarks to evoke applause, despite the fact that this was a speech, not an act, and despite the fact that teachers booed her remarks about charters, which she clearly plans to support and expand, this writer, who "wrote a book," is  certain it's a new day. Frankly, I didn't even see how Hillary's promise of "a seat at the table" has any meaning whatsoever. I've been to many legally imposed public meetings where those who were supposed to listen had their minds made up and did whatever they came to do anyway. I've joined entire communities to speak at that table as Bloomberg's operatives played video games below it, ignoring us entirely.

If Hillary becomes President, it's incumbent upon activists like us and opt-out to keep the pressure on. We already know that AFT and NEA are content with status quo and unconditionally accept every word that comes out of the mouths of educational demagogues they wish to support. It's what they do, not what they say, and thus far Hillary Clinton has done nothing but sit idly by while her former boss followed each and every reformy druther of Bill Gates. She's accepted money and support from Broad and the Walmart family, and this teacher does not believe reformies are paying for any "new beginning" that involves improving the lot of public school teachers or students.

Go ahead and prove me wrong, Hillary. But don't take me for such a fool that, after decades of reforminess, I should just take your word things will be better even as you offer no specifics whatsoever.

Sharing the Joy

I've been following a Twitter exchange for some time now. Apparently someone who works for NEA wants parents to have non-voting status in NEA, and a few Badass Teachers have actively lobbied against this notion. I'm not sure why.

As a teacher, as chapter leader of the largest school in Queens, and as an NYSUT-NEA member, I've long had non-voting status in NEA. In fact, NEA has just elected a new President who's a strong supporter of Common Core, and no one ever asked me or a single person I represent whether or not we wanted to be represented by a CCSS proponent. I say, if we're not asking teachers what they think, why not follow by not asking parents either?

Parents have as much right to be ignored by union leadership as we do. If NEA and AFT are going to not represent members, can't they also manage to not represent parents? It's pretty clear to me that both parents and teachers in NY State oppose Common Core. As long as leadership doesn't give a crap what teachers think, why not extend public school parents an olive branch by letting them know they don't give a crap what they think either?

I've been teaching for almost 30 years, and I say there's no reason to be overly possessive of our lack of voice in union. Those of us in the United Federation of Teachers know better than anyone what it is to have no voice, so I feel particularly qualified to opine on this. In fact, every single representative we have in NYSUT, NEA, and AFT has signed a loyalty oath to represent leadership rather than rank and file, so it doesn't matter at all what members think. Our reps will do as they're told.

To make sure they do, we've done away with quaint notions like secret ballots. Anyone who raises their hand or fills out a ballot knows that leadership can check to make sure they voted the right way, and anyone who doesn't can be ejected instantly from the elite, invite-only Unity Caucus. This is a time-honored tradition that goes back to Albert Shanker tossing people out for opposing the Vietnam War.

As teachers, we're all about differentiation. We can't just treat everyone in the same way. But I have faith in our leadership. They ignored us when we had reservations about mayoral control. When it proved an unmitigated disaster, they ignored us again and supported it. When Bill Gates asked our help in a VAM experiment with no verifiable basis in objective reality, leadership ignored us and plodded ahead. When VAM became law, leadership ignored the fact that it's junk science and helped write it into both law and contract all over the country. When Common Core came around, despite the fact there was no research to suggest it had any validity, leadership ignored membership and supported it anyway.

Our leadership has considerable experience ignoring membership. Our local leadership, in particular, deserves credit for managing to shut out rank and file almost completely to support pretty much every nonsensical corporate reform notion that's come down the pike. In fact, though we supported mayoral control over Bloomberg, we managed to fail to fight for it when it was stripped for de Blasio's desire to slow down charters.

So I say, with no reservation or hesitation, if parents wish to share our non-voting status in national union, let's not bicker over it. I have no voice whatsoever in UFT, NEA, AFT or NYSUT, and I'm perfectly willing to share that status with parents, or indeed anyone who covets it. And I have faith our leadership, with a little practice, will find a way to ignore them every bit as effectively as they ignore us.

No one does it better.

Obama: Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Leonie Haimson has a great new piece pointing out that the preposterous things we demand from American children don't apply to the kids of the President of the United States. Sasha and Malia attend the Sidwell Friends School, where they are not subject to high-stakes tests, and where they enjoy small class sizes. Obama was very vocal in criticizing Romney for opposing reasonable class sizes, yet his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, did the same thing months earlier.

One would think this would suggest a change in Education Secretaries for term two, but one would be mistaken. Many public school parents and working teachers are upset with his insane and non-science-based policies, but it appears we're headed for more of the same. I often question why the NEA and AFT supported a second term for such policies and I get varying responses. One is that Romney would have been worse. Indeed, Romney supported not only all the crap Obama supports, but also vouchers. However, Obama's education policies are pretty bad, as evidenced by supporters like Jeb Bush.

The other talking point I get from union reps is that Obama has said many positive things about class size, but again he never refuted Duncan's contradictory statements. More importantly, there has been absolutely no action to support these words. Also, Obama has spoken out against excessive testing, but policies like Race to the Top and Common Core will almost certainly exacerbate the problem. Sad to say, his words look very much like lip service, and, unless they are accompanied by deeds, will surely be meaningless.

Would it have been tougher for a GOP President to have enabled such things? Probably. Democrats may have opposed such nonsense on principle had it been suggested by a Republican. But we are Barack Obama's Sister Souljah moment, and nonsensical VAM evaluations will surely result in teachers being fired for no reason whatsoever. However, now that Democrats have jumped on the "reform" bandwagon, this is a tough issue for us. Until these programs fail, as they certainly will, and enough people notice it, which may or may not happen, we're stuck here.

We missed a golden opportunity by not making demands before endorsing Obama. LGBT and immigrant groups extracted concessions from this President, and I marvel day after day why our union leaders, in what promised to be a very close election, did not deem this worth negotiating over.

You Have to Blame Someone

Today, at GothamSchools, I had a conversation with my buddy Reality-Based Educator. We were discussing the abysmal reporting that referred to release from the draconian, unattainable, and ultimately absurd terms of NCLB as being "freed." That's far from accurate. It is true, of course, that these states will not be responsible for passing 100% of their students. But, like everything, this comes with a price.

In this case, the price includes a junk-science evaluation system, known as value-added, or VAM. This means that when students fail, individual teachers will be held responsible. Naturally, it's the teacher's fault if the student didn't have breakfast, has no electricity at home, or doesn't have a home at all. Why doesn't that teacher use that 40 bucks of Teacher's Choice money to rent apartments for all the kids in need? And how dare they complain of not having a raise in four years when we've just promised them forty bucks? That's enough to almost cover dinner for two at a crappy diner! But I digress.

It's important, after a decade of "reform," to blame someone for its utter failure. It's unrealistic for anyone claiming to be "reality-based" to expect politicians to take credit for an entire decade of crocodile tears over education that has borne no substantive improvement whatsoever. So folks like Bloomberg, Gates, and Obama need to pinpoint someone with whom the blame will really stick.

Can you play the race card here? You could, but it's no longer as chic as it once was to wear a sheet over your head and burn things on people's lawns. And in the city, the only people riding horses are cops. You can't really strike fear in people's hearts with your head out the window of a Honda Civic.

You could do the whole gay-bashing thing, but unfortunately corporate politicians like Bloomberg, Cuomo, and Obama have already gone out and rejected that. This makes them look liberal even as they fail to stand up for middle class and working class people, and they're not about to toss that away anytime soon.

So what's left? That's right. Attack the teachers. Their jobs, unattractive to most for decades, look good in this time of recession, and it's pretty easy to tell people that teachers simply have things too good. In fact, Joe Biden had the audacity to get in front of the NEA the other day, and with a straight face told the delegates that Romney was going to go after teachers. Not only did the delegates seem to buy that, ignoring the blatant fact that Obama is already going after us, but lots of them were walking around with Educators for Obama t-shirts.

So why shouldn't they go after us? We lap it up like the most pathetic fraternity pledges, with ample, "Thank you sir, may I have another," thrown in for good measure.

Increase in Homeless Students Attributed to Bad Teaching

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg commented on the increase in homeless students over the last few years.

"Clearly the teachers are not doing their jobs," pointed out Mayor Bloomberg.  "Why didn't they warn kids about the danger of being homeless? Sure, it may not be part of the curriculum, but it's common sense."

Mayor Bloomberg promised to lobby for any teacher with a significant percentage of homeless students to be labeled "ineffective" under the new rating system. "Schools with a lot of homeless students ought to be closed," commented the mayor. "There are plenty of up-and-coming charters that could use that space, and I guarantee you the students they pick will not be homeless. This is why, here in New York, we offer school choice to absolutely anyone who wins a lottery."

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said homelessness was unacceptable, and vowed to "do something to" teachers of homeless students.

Asked for comment, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, "This is a step in the right direction. It's about time we made teachers accountable for the plights of their students. If teachers can't correct things like homelessness and poverty, they need to be replaced, hopefully by young, idealistic, non-union TFAs who can be hired cheaply and replaced every few years. Ideally we'd have natural disasters like Katrina to wipe out unionized systems like we did in New Orleans, but meanwhile I'm grateful we have visionary leaders like Michael Bloomberg. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the billionaires who fund DFER for hand-picking me for this gig. Where else but the US would someone with a failed program as miserable as the one I enacted in Chicago be able to advance so rapidly?"

President Barack Obama listened carefully to Secretary Duncan and added, "It's vital to our national interest to have someone to blame for things like homelessness. After all, we've extended Bush tax cuts for billionaires, so we really don't have the money to deal with things like that, or poverty, or job creation. There's no way I could snag that second term if people blamed me for this stuff.  Therefore, from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to thank teachers for being convenient scapegoats, and I'd particularly like to thank them and their unions for supporting us no matter what outrageous crap we take part in. Where else could you praise a Rhode Island school for firing all its teachers and still get the support of national teacher unions? God bless teachers, God bless their unions, and God bless the United States of America."

Everything Is on the Table

I've heard quite a bit of talk about getting a "seat at the table," most of it from the UFT. For example, we decided to partner with Bill Gates to study teacher evaluation via testing, and now "value-added" is all the rage. Gates endorses it, it was widely placed into practice before this study concluded, and teachers have lost jobs based on various flawed iterations of this system.

I recall the NEA speaking out against the nonsense propagated by Gates and Duncan, and was therefore shocked that they've apparently decided to not only endorse the Obama/ Duncan team, but also to support some undefined teacher evaluation program that appears not to even exist.

Apparently, the allure of Obama has something to do with GOP candidates being even worse. I'll acknowledge that's a strong possibility, but it provides slim justification for an endorsement. In fact, at this point, an endorsement is a wink, a nod, and an ironclad agreement that no matter how his administration ignores, disrespects, slanders and vilifies us, he has our vote. That's an egregious error. UFT withheld endorsement of faux-Democrat Cuomo, and I hope AFT will do the same for President Hopey-Changey.

As for judging teachers via student achievement, the NEA's decision is a decidedly mixed bag.

...the union also made clear that it continued to oppose the use of existing standardized test scores to judge teachers, a core part of the federally backed teacher evaluation overhauls already under way in at least 15 states. 

This is a good decision. Everything I read suggests that there is no validity to any form of "value-added" currently being utilized. There is, then, the problem of how the hell to use it without any apparent system that's remotely effective. When and if they find one, though, the NEA has come to a very peculiar determination of how it should be used:

Some teachers also balked at another section of the policy — the proposal that failing teachers be given only one year to improve, instead of the standard two. But in the end a clear majority voted yes. 

How on earth can they come to that conclusion based on tests that do not, by their own admission, even exist?  And why do we need a union to help us get rid of so-called "failing" teachers? We know, for example, that "failing" schools simply means schools full of high-needs students, like Jamaica High School. On a smaller scale, couldn't teachers have more high-needs kids and consequently be determined failing, through no fault of their own?

It's time we stopped accepting baseless and unfounded labels. Having a "seat at the table" is absurd if not only no one is listening, but we ourselves also buy into unfounded assumptions. I'm reminded of Michael Moore's assertion that it's absurd to put "everything on the table," in the video below.

We need to deal in objective reality, even if it eludes the billionaires and hedge-funders who've taken over the education of our children. As Moore so ably points out, things that make no sense whatsoever do not even merit discussion (let alone endorsement).

Vice President Biden Speaks to NEA

Biden suggests we should vote for him because he, and Obama, and Duncan are not Scott Walker. He says they should work with us, not against us. And he's right, of course.

Why, then, do they applaud Hurricane Katrina for bringing us more charter schools?  Why do they cheer when the entire teaching staff of a Rhode Island school is fired? Why do they allow Duncan to use his plainly failed Renaissance 2010 program as a template for America? And how on earth can they take marching orders from Bill Gates rather than we, the people?

NEA is contemplating an early endorsement of President Obama. I hope they decline. During the last campaign, Obama promised NEA to do things with us, not to us. He's broken that promise, and repeatedly. He fooled me once. Will he fool the NEA twice?

I hope not. If we support people who stab us in the back, who take orders from billionaires, who stab us in the front, we can expect and deserve only more of the same.

On this Independence Day, let's not only celebrate; let's also declare ourselves free of politicians who do not support us, be they Democrats, Republicans, or whatever.

Update: Fred Klonsky reports the NEA has endorsed Obama.