The Only Thing Worse than a Two-Party System

A two-party system has been problematic for the United States. We were particularly hurt by it this year, and will feel its effects for at least four years to come. I didn't think there was anyone worse than GW Bush, but American ingenuity is and always has been unlimited, and we've managed to find someone.

It was pretty frustrating to see a brilliant candidate like Bernie Sanders fight a David and Goliath battle against a preordained candidate like Hillary Clinton. A big reason was that we'd become accustomed to Democrats who didn't really stand for working people and gave us valuable lip service instead.

Health care for all? A pipe dream. Unionized labor? Not necessarily bad, but we support non-unionized charters and Barack Obama could never find shoes comfortable enough to take a stand in Wisconsin, let alone anywhere else. A living wage? Maybe we'll compromise and give you a higher non-living wage. College education for all? Maybe Donald Trump will send Ivanka to Queens College, so forget it.

So what do we get? Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. With that menu, I chose Hillary Clinton, though I had very strong reservations about her. I don't regret it because I'm proud to be among the near 3-million votes she got over Big Orange. Trump's pathological lies and execrable bigotry put me off big time. His victory put me off even more.

As frustrating as that is, it's just as frustrating facing a union controlled by only UFT Unity. Now it wouldn't be so bad if they were out there fighting for us, but I don't get that feeling at all. We've given in so many times, on so many bad ideas, that I wonder whether leadership knows the difference. It's hard to forget, for example, that the only time I've ever seen Michael Mulgrew fighting mad was when he was defending Common Core and offering to punch all our faces out.  But that's the tip of the iceberg.

The iceberg itself is full of mayoral control, which we endorsed for Mayor Mike both before and after he showed himself as our blood enemy. There are the Green Dot Charters that Randi brought to the Big Apple, partnering UFT with Steve Barr after he snookered LA teachers but good. And who can forget the 2005 contract that not only sent seniority placement the way of the dinosaur, but also gave us the Absent Teacher Reserve, the one with which we're still grappling now.

But they're always right. It doesn't matter what they do. When they win something, it's a victory. When they lose something, it's another victory. When they support Hillary, they tell us how smart they are. In fact, they're still defending that decision, despite the massive and ruinous consequences that will rain upon us in the coming months. They never do anything wrong. They never have and they never will. As long as you're willing to accept that, you can sign an oath and join the team.

Here's the thing, though. The team is losing on a massive scale, The ship is sinking and leadership is still telling us how clever they are. When we ask what on earth we're gonna do about this they tell us there's a new loud and proud campaign--more of the same. It's very hard to tell an entrenched and patronage powered bureaucracy that we need to actually organize in ways that haven't been attempted in decades, ways they've not seen in their professional lives.

But the only thing really worse than a two party system is a one-party system, and as long as the Prime Directive remains perpetuating the system, the smart money is on massive and crushing losses the likes of which we've never known before.

UFT Leadership--Wake Up or Give Up

I was a little upset at the AFT's early endorsement of Hillary. I had one or two issues with candidate Clinton. But they did a "scientific survey" that asked who knows whom who knows what, and that was it.

Of course no one asked me or anyone I know, but I don't travel in the circles Randi or Mike do. I'm just a lowly teacher who talks to other lowly teachers, you know, the kind who get rated by Danielson and live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Michael Mulgrew, like every UFT officer, has never experienced that, so why should he worry?

Anyway, we all know how the Hillary Project came out. We now face a GOP President, Congress, Senate, and any moment now, Supreme Court. This last detail has not escaped the attention of UFT leadership. It appears that, while Friedrichs did not prevail, some copycat will. This will make the United States of America effectively a "right to work" state.

Now "right to work" is a misnomer. Everyone has the right to work. It's just that, in a union shop, you may be required to actually pay into the group that negotiates for you. What "right to work"  really means is "right to not pay dues." It's a right to weaken union, and a right to weaken collective bargaining. In Wisconsin, it's crippled union, as was its intention.

NY State is a bastion of liberalism, more or less, and it is possible that legislation could circumvent it. Of course it's questionable whether our esteemed governor, who ran on a platform of going after unions, would support it. But it's possible with the urging of UFT and NYSUT (among others), NY State could pass legislation that says everyone must pay union dues.

The thing is, there's a bit of a timing issue here. Next year a Constitutional Convention will appear on the NY ballot, and it's imperative we defeat that. Otherwise, folks like our buddy Andrew Cuomo could open up our pensions and make us all explore cat food diets into our golden years. It would be really unfortunate if the two things were to overlap and our enemies could twist our support for union into a campaign against our pensions. Of course that may not be a problem if the Friedrichs copycat doesn't rear its head in the next 12 months.

But there's another problem, and it's more fundamental. That problem is the insidious nature of the loyalty oath powered United Federation of Teachers. We are not an activist-driven union, and in fact we are the polar opposite. A full three fourths of our membership deem it a waste of time to even vote in union elections. Most think about union only when it's time to get a pair of glasses every other year. UFT hasn't done a boots on the ground activity in over a year, and even those are mostly populated by loyalty oath signers shoring up patronage points toward keeping their trips or jobs.

So now leadership has concrete concerns about what to do if they lose the dues checkoff. Predictably, their instincts are completely off-base, trying not to alienate Donald Trump supporters in the ranks. The thinking appears to be, if we're nice to them, maybe they'll volunteer to pay dues when the time comes. That is, of course, ridiculous. It's yet another step in the direction of not taking chances, the same direction that brought us the spectacular and devastating loss of the Presidential election.

Hillary did not stand for universal health care. She did not stand for a living wage for all Americans. She did not stand for free college tuition, and even advanced the preposterous argument that such a move would subsidize the children of Donald Trump (as though they'd even consider state schools). The AFT supported these positions, and no less than President Randi Weingarten ridiculed Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros" in tweets that stereotyped us as thugs. How primitive of us to want better lives for Americans, to want our brothers and sisters to enjoy the same rights as citizens of most non third-world countries.

UFT is but one local, but it's 28% of NYSUT and controls 33% of NYSUT votes. NYSUT is but one state, but it's the largest delegation in AFT. So make no mistake, we are the tail that wags the AFT dog. Our unwillingness to take stands, to take risks, to mobilize our ranks is deliberate. It concentrates power in the hands of the very few, and they are not gonna relinquish it any time soon. NYPD and FDNY may find the overwhelming majority of their members voluntarily pay dues, but that won't happen with us. The people who sit on the 14th floor at 52 Broadway aren't judged by Danielson and have little empathy for those of us who are.

The fact that they are too cowardly to even utter the name of Donald Trump in a resolution condemning the bigotry he's engendered just underlines how utterly out of touch they are. This bodes ill for our survival as a union. We have a President who urges us to get on social media, but can't be bothered with it himself. We have a President who doesn't bother to answer email from chapter leaders. We have a President who can't even be bothered to sit through his own Executive Board meetings. He walks in whenever he feels like it if he shows up at all. Then gives a little talk, and leaves without even listening to anyone else. How much more out of touch can you get?

If there is any chance of our surviving in a Right to Work United States of America, it's time for a sea change in our sleepy and complacent leadership. Otherwise, it's clear the only thing they value are those cushy offices on the 14th floor. I wonder if they'll be able to pay for them with a 70% drop in dues revenue.

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.

Guilty!

We endorsed Hillary Clinton early. We didn't bother having a real vote, but chose rather to use a poll, initiated by AFT leadership. Now everyone I knew was sure Hillary would get the endorsement, and she did. Not one person I know was surveyed. The AFT claimed it was scientific, but shared no details as to why.

I voted for Hillary, eventually, but I really loved Bernie Sanders. Now Bernie wasn't perfect, particularly regarding my main issue, education, but it looked like he cared about us in general. Who's not tired of dealing with co-pays and all that nonsense? A family member of mine was hospitalized last year, and we're still dealing with bills, payments that were made and not recorded, and various threats to ruin our credit over bills we'd be happy to pay, if only we knew they hadn't already been paid. Who wants Americans to go bankrupt over catastrophic medical emergencies?

Obamacare is not bad in that my daughter is covered until 26, and people can no longer be denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions. But alas, the recalcitrant GOP wants to see it fail, and refuses to cooperate with the President to improve it. The solution is not a little adjustment, but rather a single-payer system that covers all Americans. Obama did the best he could, and now what little progress he made will be reversed. It doesn't matter that his program is essentially what the GOP offered to President Clinton.

People wanted hope and change, and they still do. We chose Barack Obama because that's what he represented. Hillary never embraced that mantle. She represented More of the Same. That was her brand. For months, on Facebook, people for whom I'd previously had great respect insinuated I was a wild-eyed lunatic. They called us "Bernie Bros," like we were a bunch of witless thugs. They posted nasty and stereotypical stories. We were a bunch of crazies because we wanted affordable college and a living wage.

Hillary was the safe alternative. She didn't look wild. She'd been around forever. She'd done this and that. Decades ago, she worked with some organization or other that helped children. Most importantly, she and Randi Weingarten had been BFFs forever. So the organization to which you and I pay dues but have no vote, the organization which has no representation whatsoever elected from NYC high schools, has spoken. You all love Hillary, it decided.

But we didn't. I didn't. I voted for her because her opponent was a vile worm. But I wasn't enthusiastic at all. The whole no enthusiasm thing is what got Donald Trump to be President. Now we've seen bad decisions before. Weingarten presided over the election that gave us Bloomberg, going from one candidate to the next like musical chairs. She then failed to endorse against him term 3, leaving Bill Thompson so far in the lurch that he later told the Daily News the city couldn't afford teacher raises.

Then UFT endorsed Thompson against a surging Bill de Blasio. It was certainly easy for me to support de Blasio against a guy who'd publicly declared that teachers shouldn't get the raises NYPD and FDNY got. But you always wonder whether de Blasio would've treated us better if we'd been with him from the start. Would we be waiting until 2020 for money our brothers and sisters got in 2009 if we'd chosen correctly? Who knows?

More recently, someone in UFT told me that the early choice for Hillary was a wise one because she'd owe us. OK, I thought, and I actually went to make calls for her. But the circuits were overloaded or something and I got turned away. Maybe it was a sign. But we screwed up again. The American people, like me, are hungry for someone who will devote something more than lip service to our urgent needs. Con man Donald Trump persuaded enough people in the heartland that he was better at that than Clinton.

And millions who came out for Obama took a nap while Donald Trump took the Presidency. Maybe building brick walls around union activists motivated by more than patronage is not the way to go after all.

What Freaks Out AFT?

Is AFT leadership really freaked out that Joel Klein would actively support Hillary Clinton? Well, yes, probably they are. The question is really why. After all, AFT President Randi Weingarten negotiated multiple contracts with him, notably the one in 2005 that created the ATR. While Randi was President, there was a UFT blog called Edwize that suggested the ATR was just a temporary thing and that all the teachers would eventually find jobs. What Randi and her crack negotiators failed to anticipate was that Klein would hire new teachers even as thousands of UFT members lingered in the ATR.

Of course, Mulgrew killed Edwize and there's no more public record of that. (Mulgrew's approach to social media is to urge members to get on Twitter and say this or that while avoiding it utterly himself.) But the 2005 contract was a celebration of reforminess, and there was nothing in it that was worse than the ATR agreement, a direct hit on the seniority privileges Klein so detested. Even now, Mulgrew has to get up in front of the DA and rationalize it, saying there are fewer ATR teachers this year than last.

While leadership has, to its credit, hung tough in not allowing ATR teachers to be fired for the offense of having no permanent position, it's also placed them between a rock and a hard place. By removing the option of UFT seniority transfers (Full disclosure--I took one, and I've very glad I did), it sorely reduces member ability to escape a self-serving or vindictive supervisor. By supporting so called fair student funding it makes principals less likely to select senior teachers. Of course, a whole lot of principals would think twice anyway before hiring pain in the ass teachers with experience who know their rights. By allowing principals an absolute veto, as the 2005 contract did, they made things even worse.

Joel Klein is as bad as anyone from AFT says. He closed schools, likely as not on false premises. He supports all things reformy, no matter what. He advocated for a "thin contract" for UFT that would have reduced us to at-will employees or worse. He supported Eva Moskowitz with no reservations, and was pretty much there at her beck and call. He regularly trashes tenure, increasing pay, and pretty much anything in support of working teachers. He has nothing but respect for business people, and seems to defer to their judgment in all things. Though he claims to place children first, he'd set them out into a world with no job protections, where they'd be at the mercy of his BFFs in places like Walmart.

There's really no defense for something or someone like a Joel Klein, not if you're an advocate for working people. Yet despite all the nonsense he spouts, the United Federation of Teachers, led by now-AFT President Randi Weingarten enabled a whole lot of it. The ATR was far from the only
"reform" we supported. We supported mayoral control under Klein and Bloomberg. When it came up again, we demanded a few changes, failed to get them, and supported it again. We supported teachers being rated via VAM junk science, and Michael Mulgrew even boasted of having a hand in writing the law that enabled it.

We supported charter schools, failing to envision what they would become. We even started a charter school, now evidently failing. Not only that, but we colocated it, becoming an active part of the cancer that undermines city schools. We can complain about Klein, but we were best buds with him and Bloomberg for a while, and it led us places it was demonstrably unwise to go.

Even after Klein left, we actively supported reforminess. No one who's seen it will ever forget UFT President Michael Mulgrew, in a rare display of some kind of passion, offering to punch us in the face and push our faces in the dirt for messing with his beloved Common Core. And even now, as he's ostensibly against it,  the UFT has not only failed to support the opt-out movement, but also indulged in outrageous criticism of not only those of us who do, but also the movement itself.

Yes, Joel Klein is unacceptable, and it's high time we noticed. But Arne Duncan was no better, and AFT ignored that, endorsing Barack Obama term two with no reservations whatsoever. Perhaps President Hillary will sensibly refrain from naming a fanatical ideologue like Klein.  But that isn't enough. We really need to stop appeasing the reformies by giving them this and that, and then feigning shock when they want more.

It's not enough for AFT leadership to freak out when Joel Klein's name is mentioned. We need to fight against not only him, but also all the baseless nonsense he represents. Thus far we've enabled quite a bit of it. That's not on Joel Klein, but rather on us.

We need to stop laying all the responsibility at Joel Klein's doorstep. It's our fault he managed to push his execrable agenda so far. We need to stop not only him, but also his insane ideas. That means "not Joel Klein" is too low a standard by far. We need federal officials who are not insane.

I will vote for Hillary because Donald Trump comes a long way from meeting that standard. But she's got a way to go before she earns my trust. Let's remind her that we supported her early, and let's demand she actually do something for it. Let's put her feet to the fire, and if she doesn't respond, let's ask leadership why the hell we supported her, particularly against Bernie Sanders.

AFT and DNC Joined at the Hip

In this piece from Education Week, there's a clear connection between the DNC, which has recently been exposed as in the tank for Hillary, and the AFT, which has pretty much always been in the tank for Hillary. Tweets from AFT President Randi Weingarten are now peppered with anti-Trump items, but before Hillary pulled ahead the flavor of the month was those awful "Bernie Bros" and their terrible abusiveness.

Evidently Common Core is now the third rail of American politics, loved by virtually no one except Randi Weingarten and Hillary Clinton. Even UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who was gonna punch our faces and push them in the dirt, now talks of Common Core as though it's dead and buried. Of course it isn't. I fully expect the Common Core name to be erased and replaced. Maybe they'll be the Happy Smile Standards. But it'll be a while before we teach love of reading rather than close reading.

Clearly the AFT wanted to avoid that particular third rail and focus more on Mom and Apple Pie. I sat there for four days and the only really interesting parts of it were when someone stood up and started trash-talking Mom, or saying the Apple Pie was full of cyanide. So while AFT leadership can pat itself on the back for having passed a bunch of resolutions about how the world would be better if people were nicer, it's not difficult to have the appearance of unity when you avoid talking about topics that really trouble teachers.

That, of course, is not to mention that almost 30% of the delegates came from UFT, who'd have nominated a ham sandwich for President of the United States if Leroy Barr told them to. In fact, Mulgrew called Hillary the most qualified presidential nominee ever, or some such thing. Everything is pretty black and white when you're bound by loyalty oath, and you can't or won't look at the gray areas.

So it's better to have 2600 delegates stand around and pretend we don't have Common Core. They can pass some watered-down amendment suggesting some nebulous opposition to testing up the wazoo and continue to trash the opt-out activists who actually caused Emperor Andy to make some superficial concessions.

Let's be clear--it is the job of AFT to represent us, the working teachers who do this job each and every day. It is not the job of AFT to represent the DNC, or their clearly unethical priority to get Hillary nominated by any means necessary. In fact, while the Republicans are fairly awful, it's not the job of the AFT to work with the DNC unless it's advancing the education goals that will help us and the students we serve.

I'd argue that DNC has done a wretched job of that over the last few years. President Obama is the reformiest President ever. He's pushed charter schools, insisted that teachers be rated by junk science, appointed some of the very worst people on earth as Secretaries of Education, and ignored the concerns of activist parents and teachers. He's allowed Arne Duncan to make some of the most offensive comments I've ever heard, like Katrina being the best thing to happen to NOLA education, and shows virtually no awareness of what is actually going on in K-12 education.

How that merits our support, let alone our loyalty, is beyond me. And frankly, given our evident unconditional support, let alone the dollars flying to Hillary from Broad and Walton, I fail to see any reason to believe she will do any better than Obama did.

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.

Lederman Wins, Unions Pay Valuable Lip Service

It's kind of amazing that Shari Lederman won her case challenging her junk science rating. I mean, junk science is the thing that Bill Gates staked his reputation as a self-appointed expert on. Not only that, but President Barack Obama and his Education Stooge Arne Duncan tied junk science rating to Race to the Top, and forced it down the throats of cash-starved states.

I mean, sure, the American Statistical Association says teachers are responsible for 1-14% of student test scores, and sure, we do more than show kids how to pass tests, but when DFER gives all that money to a candidate, they expect results. And they certainly got them, along with Common Core and charter schools and all that other great stuff.

The question, really, is why Shari Lederman had to do this on her own dime. I mean, why didn't NYSUT stake her? Why did her husband have to do the whole case pro bono? What about all the other teachers rated by this nonsense who suffered for no reason? I know a teacher who was rated ineffective only because of test scores, but she hasn't got a lawyer for a husband. Is NYSUT or UFT going to jump to her aid?

Well, not hardly. Michael Mulgrew boasted of having helped write the law that enabled this junk science. Did he really do it? Who knows? And what difference does it really make? He was proud of it. And he still boasts about the 700 teachers who got ineffective ratings last year. I can tell you for a fact that not one of them shares his joy, and that the consequences of this rating are far more severe than that of the unsatisfactory rating. After all, in 70% of the cases, the state no longer has to prove these teachers are incompetent. These teachers have to prove they are not incompetent, and how the hell they do that I have no idea.

And even as Mulgrew boasts of how few teachers are being rated ineffective, he thanked Cuomo's Heavy Hearted Assembly for passing a new APPR designed to rate even more teachers ineffective. And what has NYSUT and UFT done to help teachers like Shari Lederman?

Nada. Zip. Diddly squat. Why the hell aren't our leaders footing the bills of teachers wishing to challenge these ratings?

Well, they have other priorities. The UFT has to pay millions to transfer 800 living rubber stamps to conventions several times a year. I think they're going to Minneapolis this year. I don't suppose they'll have Bill Gates as keynote again, as he lives pretty far away and probably doesn't want to strain himself.

But honestly, why shouldn't UFT get in the business of helping poorly rated teachers lawyer up? I mean, sure they supported junk science, and it was a great victory, but why not oppose junk science and make that a great victory too? I remember well when that mean old Michael Bloomberg wanted to judge us by only 7 components of Danielson but we held out for all 22. I remember the subsequent great victory when we got it reduced to 8. There was the great victory when UFT demanded artifacts, and another when we didn't have them anymore.

Then there was the great victory of the UFT transfer plan, and the subsequent great victory when excessed UFT members became ATRs. There was the great victory when we won Common Core, and the great victory when we were suddenly against it and no longer threatening to beat the crap out of those who opposed it.

So let's get with the program and get on the right side of things. Most teachers can't afford the prolonged and costly lawsuits it will take to bring sanity to New York State law. Randi Weingarten is praising the Lederman decision. She's the big cheese, right? So let's put our money where her mouth is and back up working teachers.

Problem is, at every DA I go to, Mulgrew defends junk science, saying it subtracts from the judgment of principals. But if the judgment of principals is so bad that a crap shoot improves it, the problem is the principals. Let's stop pussyfooting around, lobby for principals who are not insane, and get off the junk science train once and for all.

Common Core Not Doing Its Job. Too Bad for You, America

Naturally, I'm as shocked as anyone to hear the NAEP scores are not skyrocketing. Reading scores are stagnant and math scores are actually going down. Who would've thunk it? After all, we've made kids do close reading. What could be better for a student than reading and analyzing the Gettysburg Address with absolutely no context? It's about time we got rid of those ridiculous methods that insist we actually understand what we read.

And now we can stop wasting time reading novels. Finally we can take excerpts from them and analyze them until the end of time. What's more valuable than that? Or we can take a short story and analyze it for 17 days. What motivates students more than that? I, for one, am sick of all this "loving literature" and "loving to read" nonsense, and it's about time we let kids know that reading only exists so that we can answer questions about it on tests.

Along with that, of course, is the new visionary approach to math. I mean, finally we're doing away with simple equations and making things more creative. I mean, why make math simple when you can make it complicated. There's nothing people like more than solving problems in ways that are more complicated than necessary, and using common core math will surely make people love math as much as it makes them love reading, which is to say, not at all. That's what we call "rigor."

And the point of "rigor," of course, is to develop "grit." Once you have "grit," you can accomplish the most tedious and pointless tasks in the most inefficient fashion, and still get up and say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" After all, children are work product for our highly respected corporations, and someone's got to do this kind of work. Our friends over at the Walmart family contribute big money to refominess, and of course people trained like this might not run screaming to jump out of tall buildings after lives as Walmart associates. That's good for Walmart, as the alternative might be to pay a living wage or something.

Fortunately, we have Common Core champions, like Hillary Clinton, who will make sure our children continue to be trained in these things. The fact that they don't actually benefit anyone is neither here nor there. Hey, it must be OK because even AFT President Randi Weingarten supports it. And if that's not enough, UFT President Michael Mulgrew will punch your face and push it in the dirt if you don't.

The fact that none of this actually helps our children understand anything better is neither here nor there. Bill Gates spent a bazillion dollars funding this stuff, and that ought to be good enough for anyone. So shut up and sit down, America.

The Best Meeting Ever

I go to a lot of meetings. The whole chapter leader thing places you on all sorts of committees at the school and every time anything happens there's a meeting about it. And then there are UFT chapter leader meetings. I usually go to the borough high school meeting and the DA. But when the HS VP comes to Queens I try to see her too.

Last night I got to Queens UFT around 3:30. I walked into the meeting room and it was empty. I was a little early, but that never happened before. But lo and behold, there were all kinds of sandwiches and salads and drinks. I figured I'd eat all the sandwiches and then call for an adjournment. It would be the fastest meeting ever, depending on how the sandwiches were.

I gotta say, the turkey was very good, but the eggplant looked and tasted like a dishrag. Anyway, a little after four, people started coming in. Three of them. There went 75% of my sandwiches. Eventually ten or twelve people showed up. It was disappointing because I like when the VP comes to Queens. In my opinion, she should hold all of her meetings there. But how do we persuade her when only a dozen people show up?

Well it turned out that Randi Weingarten was downstairs giving pep talks about Hillary, for whom UFT is phonebanking. I voted for Randi once. It was some time in the 90s. I was not at all involved in union politics but I had some primal instinct that told me union was a good thing, so when our President showed up at the school library, I ventured upstairs to listen.

She called Rudy Giuliani a prick, which very much endeared her to me. After all, I read the papers, and it was absolutely clear to me that Rudy was a prick. But I'd never heard anyone just say it out loud before. How perceptive, I thought.

She was with the High School VP, who at that time, I think, was John Soldini. Soldini got up and made a stirring speech about how there was absolutely not truth the the rumor that the UFT was going to make anyone wait 25 years to hit maximum salary. Anyone who told you such a thing was a filthy liar. I raised my hand.

"How come, if UFT doesn't want it to take 25 years to reach maximum, did I receive something in the mail from Sandy Feldman urging me to vote for a contract that called for a 25-year maximum? Didn't she say I must be smoking something if I thought I could do better?"

Soldini, clearly, had not been expecting that particular question. He hemmed and hawed for a few moments. Randi walked in front of him and gave some kind of answer. I don't remember what it was, and I don't remember it being particularly persuasive, but at that moment I really respected her for getting up to answer the impossible question. I decided she was the smartest person in the room and I had to vote for her.

That year, I spent 45 minutes splitting my ballot. I voted Randi for President, and everyone I could find in New Action for everything else. Sadly, my enthusiasm for Randi's negotiating skill began to wane around 2002. I thought it was a very, very bad idea to barter time for money. I remembered the zeros we'd gotten from Rudy and thought such raises could easily be washed away in another tide of zeros.

2005 was the year I finally woke up. It took me twenty years of teaching, which makes me question how successful the loud and proud campaign is gonna be.

Last night I was talking to a union rep. We got out on the 4th floor and someone came out to hush us. Randi was talking. Should I go in and listen?

Nah.

The Magic Formula

Sue Edelman has a piece in the Post about how several schools have avoided takeover. Evidently whether or not a school gets taken over entails graduation rates, Regents passing rates, and whether or not you are in the bottom 5% of schools. So these schools dodged a bullet, but the article suggests they are still not doing that well.

I wonder what the difference is between a school in the bottom 5%, which appears to be bad, and the bottom 6%, which somehow is not. What makes schools only in the bottom 7% so much better? I can't really say, but I guess if you live by the numbers, you die by the numbers.

When you reaize that test scores pretty much all coincide with income or lack thereof, you might determine we should simply close all schools that poor people attend. Under that model, which is pretty much status quo anyway, we could judge the students by income. For example, we could find out how many students qualified for free lunch and simply expel them. That'll get those test scores up in a hurry.

Of course the solution to so-called failing schools, according to Governor Cuomo, is to place them under receivership. Let the state run them. That's worked out fabulously in Roosevelt New York, just a few miles north of my home in Freeport. A young woman who took my blood pressure at a doctor's office went there, and told me many stories of what the high school was like under state control. I'm surprised my blood pressure didn't spike right then and there.

Now the state does not necessarily have to take over these schools with high percentages of poor people. Perhaps we could let Eva Moskowitz in to work her magic. Of course, a lot of charters have not done so well under that particular paradigm. Locke High School was taken over by Green Dot, Randi Weingarten's favorite charter chain (UFT partnered with them to bring them to NYC), and they didn't fare all that well.

But the important thing is to take these schools away from their communities, which are too poor to have or run their own schools. And once we get rid of that bottom 5%, there'll be another bottom 5% to worry about. Maybe if we keep attacking public schools 5% at a time, eventually there'll be so few left that the hedge funders will be able to drown union in a bathtub or something. That's something folks like Broad, Gates, and the Walmart heirs have wet dreams about.

Until and unless we attack poverty, like Finland did, there are going to be a whole lot of schools our insane system deems failing on the basis of tests that may or may not measure what's important.

It's too bad we've been vilified and libeled so widely and for so long. I'm no genius, but I can write tests for my kids a whole lot better than the companies getting paid millions to assess them.

Why Does the UFT Have Elections?

That's a question MORE asks on a recent blog post. I support MORE, and I will appear on their ballot this year, but I have to say I find the question hilarious and sad at the same time. It's hilarious because the answer to any such question ought to be obvious, but sad because in fact it is not. After all, since its inception the UFT has been controlled by the same caucus, and though there have been occasional cracks they've been patched and painted over. Absolute power has been the rule rather than the exception.

So why are there elections? I mean, if the same people win all the time it's a valid question. Why not just anoint a royal family and have them pass the throne down from one generation to the next? After all, that's pretty much what we do. Shanker picks Feldman, who picks Weingarten, who picks Mulgrew. Who's Mulgrew gonna pick? Or does Weingarten get to make the pick from DC? Tough to say.

Any election, ostensibly, is for the people to select leadership. But after decades of seeing the same people in power, anyone who follows the elections can come to no other conclusion than they matter little, if even at all. Only once did opposition find its way into an actual leadership position, when Michael Shulman won UFT Academic VP. Unity, of course, immediately contested the election. There was another election and Shulman had the temerity to win again.

This, of course, was unacceptable. As soon as leadership got rid of Shulman, they changed the rules so those pain-in-the-ass high school teachers could no longer actually select their VP. Instead, they made it an "at large" position, so that elementary teachers, nurses, and retirees could keep us from exercising our choice. So there are no more UFT officers who haven't signed the loyalty oath, and we can all be quite certain every one of them is bound to rep leadership rather than membership. If that isn't blatantly anti-democratic, I don't know what is.

UFT also used to allow chapter leaders to elect the district reps whose job it is to support them. However, chapter leaders repeatedly elected non-Unity district reps. This, of course, was unacceptable. Leadership, therefore, simply took the choice away from chapter leaders and placed their own people in. Thus, no more district reps with agendas to represent membership if such interests clash with those of leadership.

Thus we have an election in which fewer than 20% of working teachers deem it worth their time to vote, an election in which more than half of the actual vote comes from retirees with no stake whatsoever in who negotiates contracts for active UFT members.

So, with all due respect to MORE, there is an obvious answer to why the UFT has elections, but the true answer is to maintain the appearance of democracy while furiously propping up the status quo. 

Democracy--AFT Style

I just read a retweet from Randi Weingarten. It was some teacher in Texas (or somewhere) who voted for Hillary and wrote about how proud she was that her union had endorsed Hillary. Now that's fine. You can be proud of anything or anyone you want, and as long as you don't try to shove it down my throat I won't give you any grief about it.

Here's the thing, though. I represent the largest school in Queens, one of a handful of the largest schools in the largest district in the country. I was not asked who I wanted AFT to represent, and I don't know a single other person who was either. I'm told there was a scientific survey, but I'm not sure exactly what it means. For one thing, I haven't seen a single question on this survey, and for another I have no idea exactly what sort of science we're discussing here. Is it the same kind that rounds out my teacher rating?

And who exactly filled out this scientific survey? Again, not I or anyone I know. In fact, time after time I read survey reports saying teachers support Common Core, or Hillary, and I wonder why the surveys show that teachers support whatever leadership does. Personally, I can't think of a single working teacher who supports Common Core. I know some very smart teachers who've found ways to deal with it and ways to help their students do the same, but I haven't heard a word of enthusiasm about it even from them.

Months ago when AFT began its exhaustive search for whom to endorse, I was invited to be part of a conference call featuring Randi Weingarten. At this call, supposedly, we could push a button or something and get to speak our minds. I couldn't help but notice the first person who spoke was this NYS Unity guy who wrote a column about me. The guy called me a part time union leader and a part time teacher, and said I was obsessive over having lost the NYSUT race for EVP, all of which is ridiculous.

Randi, of course, posted a link to this blog (I won't), and kept it up, saying what I great blog it was. I was kind of surprised at how impressed she was by a combination ad hominem/ strawman personal attack. Nonetheless, when I pointed out to her that the characterization of me as a part time teacher/ part time unionist insulted not only me, but also every working chapter leader in the city she took it down.

Anyway, I decided whatever pearls of wisdom this NYS Unity employee had to offer were probably not worth my time, and turned it off. Of all the hundreds of people on this call, it was absolutely impossible that guy's call happened to be first by coincidence. So in Democracy, AFT style, you get in this long queue, and they call on whoever they're gonna call on.

And then there's the UFT winner-take-all system, which means anyone who disagrees with Punchy Mike Mulgrew gets no voice whatsoever in AFT or NYSUT. It was pretty obvious that AFT was gonna endorse Hillary, just as it was obvious that UFT was gonna endorse that mayoral candidate, what's his name, who told the Daily News the city just couldn't afford to give teachers the raise everyone else got.

We have a shot at changing that this May. It's usually in April, but in a typical quirk of UFT-style democracy, May happens to be when a 3.5% raise kicks in. So May it is. I'm sure that decision was made just as democratically as our decisions to endorse Hillary, to support Common Core, to support junk science ratings, to support mayoral control, and to allow Reformy John King the right to arbitrate our rating system. 

Who's the Next Education President?

There's a lot of loose talk about what's ahead for our union leaders. Friends keep saying Randi Weingarten is eyeing a position in the Hillary Clinton cabinet, and Michael Mulgrew is next AFT President. At least part of that is a good bet, as every single UFT President has moved on to be AFT President. And Randi is certainly waving the Hillary flag, going so far as to be freaked out over the now pretty much irrelevant flap over DNC data.

Please Read-IA Starting Line on Bernie Sanders-DNC data battle-why wld Bernie's folks do this? https://t.co/XV81x1rmW5 via @demfromct

— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) December 19, 2015

I was a little taken aback by that, as I doubt Senator Sanders plays that way, and I told her so.

Don't know, but I read they fired the guy who did it. Why would Hillary take money from Eli Broad? @rweingarten @DemFromCT

— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) December 19, 2015

Randi has a response, of course.

@TeacherArthurG @DemFromCT -you mean the WSJ article report? Clinton has made clear she doesnt support charters supplanting public schools

— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) December 19, 2015

I'm uncomfortable with what Hillary has "made clear," as I value action a whole lot more than words. I frequently read tweets and columns from Randi about how people like Hillary and Obama have said this or that. Obama, in particular, has now outdone GW Bush as the most anti-public education President of all time. I also question why, if Hillary is not all that reformy, that Eli Broad would be sending her money. I don't think he does things like that just for fun. 

Would a victorious Hillary place a teacher union leader as Secretary of Education? While I have my issues with Randi, I'd certainly like her better than Arne Duncan, or the execrable John King. My sense is that Hillary would stab Randi in the back in a New York minute. I very much doubt she wants to read headlines in the tabloids and even the faux-liberal NY Times about how she'd sold out to the teacher unions.

But it's a tough time for Hillary supporters, what with Bernie Sanders, with a DNC that appears in the bag for Hillary, with virtually no media coverage, still outpolling her against every GOP candidate. Senator Sanders has not really keyed into educational issues the way I'd like, but I support his overall policies and will certainly vote for him in a primary.

Eight years ago I voted for Hillary against Obama in the NYS primary. I thought she was marginally less likely to be hostile to us than Obama. While Obama has been such a disappointment I was unable to vote for him a second time, I'm still only marginally hopeful that she would represent an improvement. The fact that Broad puts his money on her makes that hope even more marginal.

I hope Sanders can accomplish what Obama did eight years ago. American voters deserve a real choice, and while Hillary looks better than Donald Trump, that's really not something worth bragging about.

NY State's Unity Caucus Launches a Despicable Attack Against PJSTA President Beth Dimino

NYS Unity Caucus, of course, is the one that's behind Revive NYSUT. This is the Caucus that promised to oppose Common Core and Cuomo. Yet Karen Magee, pictured at left, offered the logical fallacy that it was CCSS or chaos at an AFT convention. That's called a black and white fallacy, insinuating that there are only two possiblities when there are, in fact, many more. Another Revive lie, also in the picture, was its claim to be against Cuomo. Revive/ Unity failed to oppose him not only in two primaries featuring the incredible Zephyr Teachout, but also in the general election.

Revive was a coup in NYSUT that was supported by Michael Mulgrew and his loyalty oath signing UFT Unity Caucus. UFT is by far the largest group in NYSUT and is pretty much the tail that wags the dog.

The NYS Unity blog is a largely self-congratulating tool, a piece in its ineffectual social media arsenal. It doesn't publish much, but just attacked my friend PJSTA President Beth Dimino. It is not widely read, and I'd never seen it until someone sent me the link. I'm not going to link or send traffic to it, but I will respond to it. Let's begin with the first sentence:

It is with great regret that we feel compelled to respond to a recent yet familiar rant by Beth Dimino, Chair of the Stronger Together Caucus and President of the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association on Facebook. 

First of all, this is classic passive aggressiveness. We're sorry, but.... Everyone knows that once you say "but," you can disregard everything that's come before it. If they regretted it so much they would not say it. A claim like that is plainly disingenuous.

The UNITY Caucus has taken the high road for a year and a half but eventually, enough is enough.

I'm not particularly sure what the high road is for Unity Caucus. This smells like the same writer who did a similar hatchet job on me, full of nonsensical strawman assertions. In fact, AFT President Randi Weingarten thought that was just fine, and linked to it on Twitter.  She removed the link after I pointed out that the writer, by falsely calling me a part time teacher and part time unionist, managed to insult not only me, but also every UFT chapter leader in the city.  

I will spare you some of the invective, but this piece revolves around her refusal to pay into VOTE-COPE, known in NYC simply as COPE. This is the political fund used by NYSUT and UFT. It is, in fact, completely optional. There are things, most obviously NYSUT's failure to oppose Cuomo, and its dominance by folks who mistake logical fallacy for argument, that cause people like Beth (and me) to question their judgment. Here's more from Unity:

By publicly encouraging others to defund VOTE-COPE on Facebook, “Go into school tomorrow and reduce your VOTE-COPE contributions to $0.00!” she is feeding conservative legislators the ammunition they need to pull our union apart.

First of all, it wasn't Beth Dimino who gave tens of thousands of dollars to Senator Flanagan, who has helped enable the reforminess now making NYSUT members miserable statewide. It wasn't Beth Dimino who supported Senator Serphin Maltese, who helped break two Catholic school unions. Nor was it Beth Dimino who supported George Pataki, who thanked us by vetoing improvements to the Taylor Law. No, that was our COPE money. 

Some might say she should consider joining in with the Koch brothers and other right winged-politicians if her goal is to kill the union.

Let's be clear--this writer just said that, while attempting to sugar-coat the statement with "Some might say." Let's further examine the logical fallacy inherent in this sentence. Obviously, there's that strawman. Beth Dimino is one of the most passionate unionists I've ever met. The notion that she wants to kill union is preposterous, a pure concoction of the Unity writer. Secondly, by invoking the Koch Brothers, there's guilt by association, another logical fallacy. 

Let's be further clear that there is a movement to kill union and it is in no way supported by Beth Dimino. It is enabled, however, by our history of concession to reforminess. Look at the UFT 2005 Contract. Look at Michael Mulgrew helping to craft the APPR law. Look at him praising the Heavy Hearts legislature for making it worse. Look at Bill Gates addressing the AFT Convention. And those are just a few of the low lights.

When you cannot muster a proactive argument, logical fallacy is one way to go. What's truly pathetic is that this is what our leadership chooses to put forth as their voice. Among teachers, there are quite a few thinkers, quite a few creative and passionate souls. Judging from what passes for argument among leadership, and how they choose to treat people who speak their minds, they haven't got the remotest notion what a creative and passionate thinker even is.

Related: PJSTA defends its President. 

Related: ICE-UFT blog

Meet the New Boss, Even Worse Than the Old Boss

There's a very interesting piece up at US News by Andrew Rotherham, AKA Eduwonk. I don't agree with Rotherham about a whole lot in education, but I find myself wishing I agreed with a whole lot of this particular column. Rotherham certainly has a way with words, whether you agree with him or not:

It's too soon to fully judge Duncan's tenure. There are lots of strong opinions in Washington and around the country about Duncan. Privately, insiders' views range from "he's the most committed and effective secretary of education in the department's history" to "he's a jock who's in way over his head on policy."

Wow. I wish I agreed with that. But with the entire country embracing Race to the Top, Gun to the Head policies like Common Core, I'm not feeling the love. The high-stakes testing and developmentally inappropriate tasks for our children (and not his, or Duncan's, or Obama's) are intolerable. That's not to mention the junk-science teacher ratings that have been foisted upon us, rejected by none other than the American Statistical Association.

Education is apparently on the president's "Eff-It" list. At this year's White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama said that he didn't have a bucket list, but with time running out on his administration, he did have something that rhymed with it. The president's choice of John King* to oversee the department after Duncan is a signal he's not that concerned with education politics at this point.  

That's clever, but not precisely accurate. It appears to me that President Obama, who's certainly in a position to say "Eff-it" to pretty much anything, has decided to continue with the reformy policies that are King's signature. While it wasn't clear to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who deemed King suitable as an independent arbiter for our evaluation system, it's quite clear to anyone paying attention that John King supports all things reformy, specifically including Common Core and junk science evaluations.

The education debate is about to get nastier. John King is an accomplished African American educator who helped found a highly regarded charter school in Boston. His personal story is as compelling as any education official in the country. Most reform critics don't want to tangle with him publicly, if for no other reason than they have sense enough to recognize the gross optics of well-heeled white people explaining to an African American man why we shouldn't have demanding expectations for educators serving low-income minority youth.

I'm not sure the education debate can get any nastier. For one thing, our unions are under attack, and SCOTUS may reduce us to virtual "Right to Work" status. For another, accomplished though King may be, I've seen precious little evidence of thoughfulness from him, Diane Ravitch goes so far as to call him "brilliant" based on his academic credentials. But King is remarkably thin-skinned and unable to deal with criticism. He thinks it's beyond the pale when people comment that his signature programs, Common Core and junk science, are not good enough for his own children, in private schools.

Furthermore, John King shows little evidence of being able to play well with others. He actually canceled a series of public meetings when people dared disagree with him. In fact, he went so far as to call teachers and parents special interests. That's what we get for advocating for the kids we love, I guess. In Spanish, they say, "Tiene doctorado pero no es educado."  This means, roughly, he has a doctorate but he isn't educated. In Spanish, being educated means not simply sitting through some classes, but rather behaving well. King's been to Harvard but treats the people he ostensibly serves with a sorely limited scope ranging from indifference to outright contempt.

There is no way to read King's ascension other than as a slap in the face to teachers unions, especially the New York-centric American Federation of Teachers, which has been sharply critical of the future secretary.

If it's a slap in the face, that's not precisely the "Eff-it" Rotherham mentioned earlier. If Obama is "not that concerned" with education politics, why would he bother to slap us in the face?

The thing I'm saddest to disagree with is this:

Look for them to ratchet up the pressure on Hillary Clinton to distance herself from reform in a visible way, particularly in a primary fight where she needs labor's support and her political problems lie to the left.

I've seen no evidence of pressure on Hillary Clinton to do anything but smile as both AFT and NEA endorsed her.  In fact, though we had ample evidence of Barack Obama's reforminess in 2012, we endorsed him unconditionally. This was very odd, as LGBT and immigrant groups managed to extract concessions from him. If Hillary Clinton has distanced herself from reformy Obama policies in any way, I'd love to hear about it.

How about it, AFT, UFT and NYSUT leadership? Is Rotherham right? Have you got any demands for Hillary?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks to Sean Crowley for the photo.

Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

That's the mantra of Norm Scott, and nowhere is it more apparent than in this Facebook post from AFT President Randi Weingarten:

Ok-I am not beyond a selfie with the President.... particularly on Labor Day when he says as he did at the Greater Boston Labor Council Bkfst: "if I were looking for a good job that builds security for my family, I would join a union" 

Now I certainly don't begrudge Randi a selfie with the President of the United States. And the guy has done some good things. While I'd much prefer single payer, Obamacare keeps my daughter (and many others) on a medical plan until 26. Americans don't have to face rejection for pre-existing conditions to acquire an insurance policy. While there should be none, there will at least be fewer bankruptcies on the basis of catastrophic medical emergency.

But on the union front, President Obama has not particularly walked the walk. I mean that in a very literal sense. When campaigning, he said he was going to find a pair of comfortable shoes and walk with labor if it was in trouble. Yet search though he may have, we did not see hide nor hair of him in Wisconsin when there was a popular uprising against current Presidential candidate Scott Walker. I mean, I understand losing stuff in the closet, but he's the President of the United States. I have to assume he doesn't need to run to the mall when he needs a new pair of shoes.

As a teacher, I am now rated by junk science test scores. This is a direct result of Obama's Race to the Top. At a time when states were dying for money, Obama pushed high stakes testing and junk science to a level GW Bush could only have dreamed of.  This has demoralized every teacher I know. The only ones crowing about it are the leaders of E4E, and they aren't teachers anymore anyway. The American Statistical Association is very clear that judging teachers by test scores is nonsense, and the President, along with every editorial board in New York and dozens more around the country, can't be bothered to acknowledge that, let alone respond.

And while it's nice that Obama will be photographed with Randi, now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election or midterms, I haven't seen him fret much about union over the rest of his term. One of the large reasons I voted for him the first time he ran was that he promised to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would've enabled unionization via card check. It would've prevented a lot of anti-union management from prevention unionization. As far as I can tell, he did not lift a finger to do that, and I voted for the Green candidate rather than Obama mach two.

Right now we are at a crisis. We are facing a SCOTUS decision that will effective render all public unions right to work status. Without automatic deduction of dues, Wisconsin unions have withered and all but died. This will be particularly damaging to a union like UFT that's been hands off and managed top-down. If fewer than 20% of working teachers can be bothered to vote in union elections, what percentage will pay dues?

As bad as leadership is these days, they can be persuaded, and if enough of us crawl out of our collective coma, they can even be replaced. But there's gonna be little hope for that if nothing is done. And as far as I can tell, President Barack Obama has done considerably less than nothing for union over the last seven years or so.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is MaryEllen Elia

 I was pretty shocked when NY State Regents unanimously nominated MaryEllen Elia to be NY State Commissioner of Education. For one thing, I had heard Michael Mulgrew speak of the great hope he had in the Regents to modify the new and draconian APPR law. Given that, I was surprised they'd select someone with such enthusiasm for testing, junk science, and all things reformy. It makes me really wonder exactly how much interest (if any) the Regents have in doing the right thing.

It's true Elia gave lip service to being a teacher, and to seeing herself as a teacher. But every teacher I know abhors the new system that judges us, now even moreso, on student tests. It's not even a secret anymore that the state takes these tests and manipulates the cut scores so they show whatever it is the state feels like proving that week. The only teachers I know of who support this stuff at all are those in Educators 4 Excellence, you know, the ones who take Gates money just like Elia did in Florida. And while their leaders, Evan Stone and Whoever the Other One Is, were briefly teachers, they aren't anymore.

And that's exactly who Elia went to speak to yesterday. And let's be clear--that is a political statement. If Elia wanted to speak to teachers, she could have tried for an audience with NYSUT or UFT. There's certainly precedent for reformies getting audiences with unions, like Gates addressing the AFT. (When that happened, Randi Weingarten seemed to encourage the troops in ridiculing the protesters. Gates thanked AFT by trashing teacher pensions just days later.)

.@MaryEllenElia says she is a commissioner who will never bash teachers #e4eNY

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) August 20, 2015

That's great to hear. I hate it when politicians, op-eds and editorial boards bash teachers. I'm acutely aware of it because it happens almost every single day. Teachers don't want to be accountable because they object to having their jobs dependent on junk science. Teachers shouldn't talk to one another in teacher lounges. Teacher unions should be punched in the face.

Of course, the clever politicians who bash us often differentiate between teachers and teacher unions. "I would never bash teachers. I love teachers. My mother was a teacher. Yes, I had a mother." They blather on as though only Satanists are in teacher unions, and they only hate Satan. I suppose someone should inform those pols that teachers are in teacher unions, and that when they punch unions in the face they punch us in the face. Of course Elia hasn't yet broadcasted her intention to punch teacher unions in the face. Instead, she came up with this little gem:

.@MaryEllenElia says any teacher who encourages opt-out is unethical #e4eNY

— Ben Chapman (@NYDNBenChapman) August 20, 2015

Now, here's the thing about stereotypes--they are always hurtful, and they are always wrong. It doesn't even matter if they're positive. And make no mistake, Elia's statement is not positive at all. She's calling me and thousands of my brothers and sisters unethical. She's saying Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson, Carol Burris, Jeanette Deuterman, Beth Dimino and Jia Lee are promoting evil. And yet it's Elia herself who takes a salary several times that of any working teacher to carry out an agenda based on junk science.

It's Elia who supports giving every child in New York the same test. It doesn't matter to Elia if that results in a developmentally inappropriate curriculum. If the kids have learning disabilities, if they don't speak English, if they're malnourished, if their parents both work 200 hours a week, if they live in rotating shelters, too bad for them. The State has spoken.

Just because you're selective about the group of teachers you bash, you're still a teacher-basher. And with all due respect, I've seen absolutely no evidence that MaryEllen Elia is in any position whatsoever to lecture anyone about ethics.

We Never Learn Anything

We keep voting in the same people, they keep doing the same things, it failed before, it's failing now, and it will fail in the future. Yet we hope against hope that this time it will work. We give the reformies a little bit to show them how flexible we are. We buy into one of their awful ideas, and then another. Then we sit and wait for them to say thank you. But that just doesn't happen. The time we let Bill Gates keynote and AFT convention, he thanked us, walked out, and then started attacking our pensions.

Now the UFT and AFT are waist deep in this PROSE program, the one that enables huge class sizes. It's the bestest thing ever. It means, instead of that silly old contract we negotiated, we can run schools like charters. How cool is that? Maybe once the Post columnists read about that, they'll say, "Hey, those union leaders are not so bad. Maybe we should give them a shot at running the Moskowitz schools."

Only that's not the way it works. Every time you give the reformies a millimeter, they want a kilometer. That's why there are multiple suits attacking tenure. That's why the Supreme Court is now eyeing a suit intended to pretty much crush public unions as we know it. And that's why you'll find this piece, in the NY Post, ridiculing Weingarten and Mulgrew as self-serving clowns.

Basically, the piece moves from the absolutely false premise that charters are a solution to the low test score issue to the conclusion that the PROSE program emulates them. Maybe it does. And it's been bandied about as a solution to various problems by not only Mulgrew, but also Weingarten. Now here's the problem--the low test score crisis is caused NOT by the UFT Contract, but rather by high concentrations of poverty and high needs students. Charter schools tend not to take severe special ed. cases or beginning ESL students, and have various screening methods to ensure they don't just take everyone (like we do). They also dump kids and don't replace them. This system is hardly a miracle.

By being flexible we buy into the false assumption that it is the teachers and schools failing the students. That's problematic because it gives our enemies more ammunition to attack us and our schools. We also allow Post polemicists to write pieces like this, telling the public the privatization schemes are the obvious solutions. How does he thank the helpful union leaders?

It’s not really about education, then. It’s about control — top down, contractually mandated control. Put another way, “We’re fine with innovation, as long as it’s our innovation. We’re good with bureaucratic flexibility, as long as we say it’s OK. And anybody who tries to do this without approval shall face our wrath!”
 
This is progress?

Thus, Weingarten and Mulgrew receive no credit whatsoever for their willingness to compromise on our Contract. The writer throws in a nice little strawman about how reformies will face the wrath of union leaders if they don't cooperate. Not only did Weingarten and Mulgrew fail to say any such thing, but the assumption they even implied it is preposterous. UFT supports charter schools and has done for years. UFT runs charter schools, though one failed rather spectacularly last year, and has even co-located them. UFT proudly brought the odious Steve Barr's Green Dot to NYC. We're up for anything! We're the cool kids! We do charters, mayoral control, co-location, two-tier due process, whatever!

Here's the thing though--whatever we do, they want more. Even when we stand up for reforminess instead of common sense, we are reviled. These people hate us and everything we stand for. We are the last bastion of vibrant unionism in these United States and they mean to destroy us. We have seen over and over that it's not only counter-productive, but simply idiotic to play nice with these folks.

Yet this is what we do, again and again. We endorse presidential candidates, and ask nothing in return. We hear our presidents say, "This candidate said this and that." And then when they fail to do this or that, when they work against us, they talk to us like Squealer from Animal Farm. "Strategy, comrades, strategy."

How many times does the strategy have to fail before we at least try out a new one?