Slavery Prohibited, BUT...

You may generally disregard everything and anything preceding the word but. The important part comes afterward. When your supervisor says he liked parts of your lesson but, you're likely as not facing one of those much-coveted ineffective ratings.

Netflix has a real must-watch documentary on right now. I've cited the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, the one that prohibits slavery, when my members haven't gotten paid by the DOE. But this amendment is no joke, and the prohibition against slavery is far from total. People who are incarcerated can be compelled to work for little or no compensation. That's convenient for companies who want to get around those pesky sweat shop laws, and also for people who need that eight-dollar pair of jeans from JC Penney.

You don't get to see arguments like these on popular venues like Netflix all that frequently. The whole law and order mantra through the 70s and 80s has resulted in an explosion of the number of US prisoners, composed largely of people of color. We've gone from 300K back in 1970 to over 2 million today. Much of this was enabled by laws pushed by ALEC, a partnership of corporations and politicians it bought and paid for. We all know there's an explicit connection between tax cuts for the rich and reduced services for most Americans

You see the usual suspects like Nixon, Reagan and Bush. It shows that Bush one's people were explicitly aware of the message they were sending. It shows the participation of the Clintons, who've since stepped back a little. Bill Clinton was brilliant in reversing the perception that Democrats were soft on crime, helped to remove judicial discretion, and pushed the awful and simplistic three strikes you're out law, imitated by states. He's since backed up on this, but the damage is done. Trump has actually amped up the message, and wants to push us further into this quagmire. He still pushes not only the law and order message, but urges further tax cuts for the likes of himself.

When people are afraid, they buy guns and bullets. And one of the reasons to keep people afraid is so they'll do just that. Walmart makes a ton of money selling weapons. That's one reason Walmart was a member of ALEC. And that's why, even though they dropped out for PR reasons, members of the Walmart family still quietly contribute.

A portion of this film addresses the way immigrants are criminalized, warehoused in inadequate facilities that benefit only the ALEC members (or former ALEC members) who run them. In fact, Part 154 deprives New York immigrants direct instruction in English. What on earth are people supposed to do if they aren't even supported in their quest to speak the dominant language?

ALEC is painted as a great evil in this, an insidious organization that dispenses with any vestige of common decency in order to create profit for its members. If millions of people have to be virtual slaves to support its needs, so be it. But we who focus on education have heard of ALEC before.  Indeed, ALEC does not simply push laws like Stand Your Ground, the one that allowed George Zimmerman to get away with killing Trayvon Martin (even after authorities instructed Zimmerman to stop following him).

ALEC supports privatization of not only prisons, but also schools. Corporations that had supported ALEC, like Microsoft and Walmart, are still pushing for that, only via other means. Not a day goes by that I don't read fawning coverage on how the charters are working miracles with children we, the unionized teachers, are neglecting. Gates and Walmart don't give money to charter-loving Chalkbeat just for the heck of it. (Full disclosure--I was recruited to write for Chalkbeat, but my POV did not fit in with their agenda.)

Rahm Emanuel can fire unionized teachers and hire TFA members. He can close 50 public schools, dump all their students into those remaining, and still pump cash into charters. In Detroit, the conditions in public schools are horrendous. And if you need a downside of charters, that's a good please to look. Nonetheless, media regularly trumpets the story that charters are the silver bullet, and it doesn't matter if they abuse children, falsify graduation rates, expel inconvenient students, pick and choose who they accept, or even dismiss entire cohorts.

School closings are yet another symptom of the privatization push. If you think the ATR was created just for fun, think again. We've got maybe a thousand teachers running around from school to school, week to week. This does awful things to people, and it's probably intended to. If it rids them of a few unionized teachers it works. Replacing them with disposable temps cuts less into the all-important profits.

Our school system is directly affected by all the same people who've poisoned our prison system. Voucher supporter Corey Booker, in the Netflix documentary,  can talk about how prisons enable institutional racism, but that hasn't prevented him from taking money from the very people who push such things.

The scourge of poverty, studiously ignored by all the reformies, is what we'd be studying if we really wanted to improve education. How on earth can we reasonably discuss educational equity when more than half of our children live in poverty? ALEC's agenda includes the decimation of union, as personified by members like Scott Walker. How do worsened working conditions and fewer opportunities help our children? Your guess is as good as mine, and you'd better believe that charters don't want or support union.

Don't miss this important documentary. If you don't have Netflix, visit someone who does and watch it together. And while you do, bear in mind that the same people who've enabled this horror in our public prison system are actively in process of using our children for even more profit. They're not assigning them to forced labor just yet, but they're substituting test prep for learning and tedium for reading.

Reforminess may not be placing our kids in literal prison, but it's an atrocity nonetheless. 

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.

The Moskowitz Anomoly

Eva says the "got to go" list was an anomaly, one of those wacky things that happens once in a blue moon.  Yet there have been stories for years of kids pushed out of Moskowitz Academies, for inconvenient behavior, low test scores, whatever. Eva is now demanding public funding for the Moskowitz pre-K but refusing to submit to required oversight by the city. Rules are for the little people, and that would be us, the people who serve all children.

If there's an "anomoly," it's the fact that this particular list was placed in writing.

@campbell_brown @SuccessCharters @NYCSchools next time they will not make the mistake of leaving a paper trail.

— Gary Rubinstein (@garyrubinstein) October 30, 2015

Eva's test scores are no miracle. They're a product of the drill and kill method she favors that values test scores over children. How else do you explain children soiling themselves as a matter of course under the abusive leadership she fosters and defends. In a public school, this would be considered child abuse. If you didn't allow a child to go to the bathroom and that child soiled herself, you'd be guilty of corporal punishment under CR A-420. When my dog asks to go out, I jump up and take him. Therefore I treat my dog better than Moskowitz treats the children under her care.

Anyone who tells you Moskowitz is an amazing success story is ignorant, willingly or otherwise. There is no way I'd subject my kid or yours to the ridiculous and joyless discipline inherent in her test factories. There is also no way I'd equate a Moskowitz Academy with "Success." In my view, success entails a certain degree of happiness. Creating compliant drones is great for companies like Walmart which pay poorly for lives of drudgery. Doubtless that's why the Walmart family is all in for charters. Nonetheless I want something much better for the children I serve.

That's just one reason I don't work for the likes of Eva. A better reason is I have a better job. I serve all high-needs kids, none of whom will get a great standardized test score, and none of whom would be accepted into a Moskowitz Academy. Despite recent reforminess, I still have better working conditions than Moskowitz teachers ever will. I want my kid and yours to have better working conditions and therefore reject the preposterous claims that we somehow oppose "excellence." If "excellence" entails forcing working people to demonstrate publicly against their own interests, like Eva just forced her teachers to do, who needs it?

Moskowitz Academies take public money, but are not public schools. Public schools serve the public, and do not discriminate against ELLs or kids with disabilities. They don't write "got to go" lists about kids whose scores will hurt the bottom line. The stakes attached to scores are there because Eva and her BFFs are waging war against us, the last bastion of unionism in these Unitied States.

It's an important war, because if we really cared about "excellence," we'd want our kids to have excellent lives, as opposed to excellent test scores. Hobbling union deprives our children of opportunity and makes it more likely they'll spend years of drudgery in service of Eva's BFF the Walmart family.

Moskowitz is a demagogue and I applaud NY Times reporter Kate Taylor for shedding further light on her misleading and unethical practices.

Fear Is a Luxury We Cannot Afford

If the intent of the APPR law, which our union leadership boasted of co-writing, was to freak teachers out continually, I'm pretty sure they've achieved their goal. Though we're already on the second year of the Junk Science Express, I see little sign that anyone is used to it. Teachers are afraid to let out a peep. I hear from teachers all over the city asking me, "Can my principal do this?" and I send back chapter and verse suggesting, "No, absolutely not."

Yet these teachers are often afraid not only to file a grievance, but often to even contact their chapter leaders, who they suspect or accuse of being in cahoots with admin. One teacher reported her chapter leader said, "I can't take sides on this issue." In fact, when there are contractual violations, it's hard for me to figure how a chapter leader could not take sides.

The thing is, people are afraid. They're terrified. If I grieve those four classes in a row, will my small-minded vindictive supervisor come in and trash me in an observation? If I complain that I have five different classrooms on seven different floors, will I be condemning myself to two years of ineffective ratings and get the fast train to Palookaville?

One argument you'll get from the union is that ratings were completely subjective before this, that a principal could simply say, "You stink," and that that would be it. The problem is, though, there were not necessarily such dire consequences. The DOE would need to prove you were incompetent, and if they didn't do so, you were back in your job.

Things are a little different now, and we're finally seeing the first lawsuit over the insane law that punchy Mike was so happy about. Apparently junk science can be problematic, particularly when someone's got outright evidence there's no basis for it whatsoever. But what if you haven't got incredibly wonderful test scores to use as evidence?

If you're a New York City teacher and that's the case, you are in a heap of pain. One ineffective rating brings you a few visits from a peer evaluator. If this person, who jumped for extra money to sit in judgment of brother and sister UFT members, declares thumbs up, the DOE will have to prove your incompetence. However, if this fine upstanding citizen votes thumbs down, it will be on you to prove a negative, something that will be an uphill battle.

Of course it may not come to that. UFT has arranged that 13% of ineffective rating appeals will go to an impartial arbiter rather than the evil DOE. I suppose those 13% will have a better chance. However, 87% will go straight to the DOE, and it isn't a large leap of faith to determine where the DOE will tell those 87% to go.

This is not how you treat people you want to inspire children. This is not how you treat your dog, if you love your dog. So in 2014, NYC teachers fall somewhere below the status of beloved dog, and people shake their heads in wonder that half of us walk away before hitting five years. APs dream of pliable young teachers and wonder why they can't hold onto them.

I think there's something wrong with me because I stopped being afraid at some point. I have no idea why. But I love being a teacher, and I want others to love it too. Placing guns to people's heads is simply not the way to make that happen. Personally, I don't believe that the demagogues who push this nonsense give a golly goshdarn about teacher quality.

They just want to drag it down to the lowest common denominator, and make us as replaceable as Walmart associates. Do you think it's a coincidence that the Walmart family spends so much supporting reforminess? I don't.

The only people who can save our job and our kids are us. If we let people walk all over us, they won't hesitate. Don't give up your rights and expect to be rewarded for it. Whether or not I'm crazy, we simply can't afford to be afraid.

Wayne Barrett Is Shocked, Shocked

It's important to Wayne Barrett that you know he is progressive.

I am a progressive, 

How can you argue with that? After all, that's clear. You are, therefore, supposed to take his argument against union that much more seriously. But that's not all:

...have been one since the 1960s, when I became a New York City public school teacher for a few years and learned that my union, the United Federation of Teachers, was much better at representing my interests than those of the kids I taught. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise.

Wait a minute. Is Barrett stating that the United Federation of Teachers represents the interests of (gasp!) teachers? Now I'm shocked too! But what Barrett also does here is advance the meme that the interests of teachers are counter to those of students. Why aren't we out rallying for more work for less pay? After all, isn't that what the children of America need?

Despite Barrett's boast of how amazingly progressive he is, teacher v. student is precisely the argument you'll hear from Michelle Rhee, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Chris Christie, and virtually all other supporters of corporate reform. Are we to determine, then, that there is no possibility they could be wrong? That appears to be the conclusion. Were Barrett to oppose abortion, gay rights, or a woman's right to choose, I can only suppose there'd be universal opposition to those issues as well. Barrett continues:

Seen through a progressive lens, all that should matter in these school skirmishes is whether a charter, a contract or an employment rule benefits students. Whenever progressive Democrats instead choose teacher power over the futures of minority kids, they are putting a big bucks lobby ahead of a core but comparatively powerless constituency.

It's pretty remarkable that Barrett forgets all the money billionaires Gates, Broad, and the Walmart family have invested in charters. Does he seriously expect us to entertain the outlandish notion that they are powerless? Does he expect us not to realize all the power and money they put behind charters? Does Barrett expect us to ignore the fact that their money dwarfs that of unions, or that Gates' has basically imposed his agenda on the nation, with the full cooperation of President Barack Obama?

Does he expect we don't know the attrition rates of charters? For example, the fabled Eva Moskowitz Academy just graduated its first class. Over half of its students not only disappeared, but were not even replaced. Are we to ignore that, as uber-progressive Barrett did?

You may, for example, have gotten the impression, when the WFP appeared poised last month to nominate charter foe Diane Ravitch to oppose Gov. Cuomo, a charter champion, in his reelection bid, that these nonprofit-run public schools are a Republican hedge-fund conspiracy. That's what the WFP, a sometimes-blunt instrument exploited by the interests that bankroll it, and 75-year-old Ravitch, the adopted guru of the UFT and de Blasio administration, would have us believe.

I wonder why Ravitch's age is of any relevance to Barrett's argument. Nonetheless, it's one of the most preposterous arguments I've ever seen, particularly if Barrett is as progressive as he claims. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ravitch was poised to win the nomination, and if that's not clear to you, you can ask Zephyr Teachout. Teachout lost the nomination, and it's pretty clear the teacher union did not support her.

As if that's not enough, the fact is the UFT, far from labeling them a "Republican hedge-fund conspiracy" not only supports charter schools, but has opened and co-sponsored them. AFT made Bill Gates the keynote at its convention. UFT and Ravitch differ on not only issues like charters, but also mayoral control, Common Core, and VAM ratings, all of which UFT has supported and Ravitch has opposed.

It's remarkable that someone as "progressive" as Barrett fails to comprehend the corporate influence on the modern Democratic party.

Even Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham professor who ran unsuccessfully against Cuomo for the WFP designation after Ravitch dropped out and now plans to challenge him in a Democratic primary partly because of his "support of corporate school reform," is the protégé of new charter school backer Howard Dean.

This is classic guilt by association. Barrett, despite acknowledging her opposition to Cuomo's corporate reform, sees fit to extrapolate Teachout's positions from those with whom she's acquainted rather than her actual words criticizing Cuomo's education positions or the obvious act of her opposing him.

Aside from the pyrotechnics involved in constructing Barrett's arguments, it's pretty disappointing that the self-styled progressive appears to oppose higher wages for those of us who, unlike him, have chosen to continue to educate all of New York's children, whether or not they meet the selective standards of Eva Moskowitz. I'd say one bottom line for anyone progressive is supporting working people. And lest Barrett shed further crocodile tears for the children he sees as well-served by charters, they will grow up and need jobs too.

It's my hope that we can offer our children something better than what Walmart has spent millions and millions creating for them. And like many of my colleagues, I'm poised to support real progressives to counter the Walmart message.

The Gates/ Walton/ Broad Fix for That Nagging Teacher Problem

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A cheery little reverie by special guest blogger Michael Fiorillo

- Proclaim austerity for the public schools, while continuing to expand charters.

- Put non-educators in positions of power, from Assistant Principal on up.

- Maintain a climate of scapegoating and witch hunting for “bad teachers,” who are posited as the cause of poverty and student failure, doing everything possible to keep debate from addressing systemic inequities.

- Neutralize and eventually eliminate teacher unions (the former largely accomplished in the case of the AFT). As part of that process, eliminate tenure, seniority and defined benefit pensions.

- Create and maintain a climate of constant disruption and destabilization, with cascading mandates that are impossible to keep up or comply with.

- Create teacher evaluations based on Common Core-related high stakes tests for which no curriculum has been developed. Arbitrarily impose cut scores on those exams that cast students, teachers and schools as failing, as was done by NYS Education Commissioner John King and Regent Meryl Tisch.

- Get teachers and administrators, whether through extortion (see RttT funding) threats or non-stop propaganda, to accept the premises of “data-driven” everything, even when that data is irrelevant, opaque, contradictory, or just plain wrong.

- Get everyone to internalize the premises and language of so-called education reform:

 - Parents are not citizens with rights, but “customers” who are provided                        “choices” that are in practice restricted by the decisions of those in charge, based on policies developed by an educational-industrial complex made up of foundations, McKinsey-type consultants and captive academics.

- Students are “assets” and “products,” whose value is to be enhanced (see the definition of VAM) by teachers before being offered to employers.

 - Teachers are fungible units of “human capital,” to be deployed as policy-makers and management see fit. Since human capital depreciates over time,it needs to be replaced by fresh capital, branded as “the Best and Brightest.”

- Schools are part of an investment “portfolio,” explicitly including the real estate they inhabit, and are subject to the “demands” of the market and the preferences of policy-makers and management.

- Create an intimidating, punitive environment, where the questions and qualms of teachers are either disregarded or responded to with threats.

- Get the university education programs on board under threat of continuing attack. Once they acquiesce, go after them anyway, and deregulate the teacher licensing process so that it’s easier to hire temps.

- Eliminate instruction that is deemed irrelevant to the most narrowly-cast labor market needs of employers, getting rid of art, music, dance, electives, etc., thereby reducing the focus of education to preparation for passive acceptance of low-wage employment.

- Embed software and electronic gadgets in every facet of the classroom and school, from reading to test taking, with the intention of automating/digitizing as much classroom input and output as possible.

- Use the automation/digitiliztion of the classroom to enlarge class size - something explicitly promoted by Bill Gates - and transform teachers into overseers of student digital production that is connected to massive databases, so that every keystroke is data that can be potentially monetized.

- Cash your bonus checks, exercise your stock options, declare Excellence and Civil Rights achieved, and go on to Better Things.

Statement of Candidacy for NYSUT Executive Vice-President

I’m very proud to teach ESL at Francis Lewis High School, one of the largest schools in NYC, where I am also UFT chapter leader.

When repeatedly failed schemes, like merit pay, are promoted by Governor Cuomo, NYSUT needs strong leaders. NYSUT needs to represent all teachers, whether or not they support mayoral control, VAM, or Common Core. I’ve written in the NY Daily News and elsewhere against all these corporate reforms, and as a result, have been shut out of participation in NYSUT and AFT by UFT leadership.

Former AFT President David Selden wrote that teachers were expelled from the invitation-only UFT-Unity caucus for opposing the Vietnam War. A half-century later, little has changed within UFT-Unity. Our elections are winner-take-all, and all our NYSUT and AFT reps are hand-picked by UFT-Unity, which demands a signed oath to publicly support its positions. I can’t and won’t support baseless, counter-productive corporate reforms. I’ve opted to use the press instead.

UFT-Unity twice failed to oppose mayoral control in NYC, where it’s amounted to mayoral dictatorship. Nationally, mayoral control has enabled people like Gates, Broad and the Waltons to foist their anti-union notions upon public schools.

We know Common Core has never been tested anywhere. We know teachers, parents, and students all over NY are suffering due to its developmentally inappropriate expectations. John King labels vocal parents and teachers special interests, but sits mute when corporate-backed Students First NY monopolizes forums to shut parents, teachers, and students out.

VAM, as Diane Ravitch writes, is junk science. AFT President Randi Weingarten now says, “VAM is a sham.” Rather than co-write laws that can enable our brother and sister teachers to lose jobs over junk science, we should work toward crafting something supportive and research-based. In NYC, leadership boasted we’d negotiate a fair evaluation system, but we ended up having one forced on us by John King.

In fact, John King is right about one thing. We are a special interest. Our special interest is the children of New York State. Despite media voices proclaiming otherwise, we want our students to have the very best teachers and learning conditions. We want to foster readers and thinkers, and we won’t achieve that by restricting instruction to corporate-designed learning modules and script-reading, clock-watching teachers.

We want our kids to think freely and independently. Let’s set an example by promoting free and independent thought within our own union.

In Which I Broaden My Horizons

I'm the chapter leader of a very large school. As a consequence, people complain to me about everything. Why doesn't the faucet work in the ladies' room? How come the kid in my third row hasn't been suspended? Why can't you get us a new contract?

I muddle through as best I can, and I get a little better at it each year. I help everyone I can, and if I can't, I can usually find someone who can. But the questions this year are fundamentally different.

Where has the joy gone, they ask. I used to think it was a privilege to have this job and to be able to teach these kids. Now they give me reading lists of things neither I nor anyone in the known universe wants to read. You know, they don't want joy. They want rigor. Who the hell wakes up in the morning and wishes for rigor? Do people other than John King walk around wishing one another a rigorous day?

Teachers come to me and talk of their children. They used to love school. Now they pretend they're sick and don't even want to get out of bed. Should 8-year-old children be behaving like that? My daughter used to read every night. Now she does homework until ten or eleven o' clock and doesn't have time for that. My son can't understand the math in his book. I had to go to his school, pretend he had left something in his desk, and photograph every page of his math book on my iPad. Then I had to get someone to explain it to me so I could explain it to him.

Now administrators are complaining to me. This is unusual because my job is supposed to entail complaining to them. They ask what I'm going to do about it. My kid has given up. He demands to go out and play with his friends. I refuse until he finishes his homework, but rather than do so, he'll sit in his room motionless until bedtime.

My kid's teacher is teaching history by posting 5 million facts on the board. My kid's supposed to memorize them and regurgitate them for the test. This is what passes for high-level thinking under Common Core. Teachers are beaten down. Children are beaten down. And at forums across the state, John King and Merryl Tisch are shouted down. They say, "We hear you," and happily do the same thing. They don't need to worry because their kids go to private schools that don't treat children like this.

I have never seen so many people so dispirited and beaten down. I don't feel it for myself because I'm kind of fatalistic. I've had a good run, I still love what I do, and I am 100% positive I know better than Tisch, King or Gates what my students need. If they fire me for junk science, so be it. I'll get by.

But whatever they do, I will do everything in my power to get the truth out, and to make sure children and teachers who come after us don't have to suffer through such nonsense. King and Tisch can sit and pretend to listen today, tomorrow, or a hundred times more.

But those of us who care about education will not shut up, will not give up, will not give them one moment's peace until their agenda serves us and our children, rather than Gates, Walton, Broad, and all the other billionaires who wouldn't spit on us or our children if we were on fire.

Common Core Geniuses and Our Children

Today at Perdido Street School, we see one of the most absurd conceivable uses of Common Core Curriculum--rating classic books by  grade level. Reality-Based Educator quotes another fine publication:

Here’s a pop quiz: according to the measurements used in the new Common Core Standards, which of these books would be complex enough for a ninth grader?

a. Huckleberry Finn
b. To Kill a Mockingbird
c. Jane Eyre
d. Sports Illustrated for Kids' Awesome Athletes!
The only correct answer is “d,” since all the others have a “Lexile” score so low that they are deemed most appropriate for fourth, fifth, or sixth graders. This idea might seem ridiculous, but it’s based on a metric that is transforming the way American schools teach reading.

It's almost inconceivable anyone would dream to rate books this way, but in 2013, in the United States of America, Bill Gates thinks it's a good idea. Therefore Arne Duncan and Reformy John King also think it's a good idea, and unless you're a "special interest," like a teacher or parent, you should too. I'm not trained in Common Core and am therefore an ignorant galoot who doesn't appreciate anything, but I'm a pretty avid reader. There's a quote that I heard as a child that has stayed with me for a long time:

Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes a genius to attain simplicity.
~Woody Guthrie

To me, this means if you can communicate with a large group of people you're doing a better job than you are if only few people understand, or care to understand you. There's a reason people still sing This Land Is Your Land decades after Woody's death, and that reason has nothing to do with the amount of large words Woody chose to insert. There's a reason people will still read To Kill a Mockingbird years after the silly sports book has been forgotten.

But alas, to the geniuses who invented Common Core, the qualities that make a work classic are of no consequence whatsoever. The important thing is to use as many unfamiliar, archaic and difficult words as possible. Because to them, the more tedious crap a kid can manage to slog through, the better a student it makes the kid. I've had multiple parents of young children tell me this year, the first of Common Core around here, their kids who used to love to read now cry at night and fake being sick in the morning to avoid school. That's a shame.

It's our job to inspire children, to make them love life, to make them appreciate what we have to offer so they themselves can offer something someday. Common Core doesn't understand that. A favorite book series of mine is The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency. It uses simple language, and manages to convey wisdom and humor while doing so. I've been able to teach it to ESL students, who loved it.

If you can trick kids into loving reading, they'll be more likely to read on their own, and to excel even when they need to slog through the tedious crap we all have to encournter. I went to college and had my fair share of professors who made me purchase books of awful essays just because they happened to have written one. I did what I had to do, got through the coursework, and sold or tossed the unmemorable volumes.

But that was only because I grew up in a house full of novels and mystery books. I read whatever my parents left lying around, and it was almost invariably more interesting that whatever my teachers prescribed. Kids without this advantage need teachers who will give them high-interest reading, not arbitrary crap deemed to be their level simply because it contains a lot of words.

It's tragic that ignorant, unimaginative non-educators are now dictating what our children will do in school. Is this really making them college-ready? More likely it's making them Walmart-Associate ready, or why would Gates, Walton, and Broad be ponying up for this crap?

They don't use it on their kids.

Why in the hell are we tolerating their experiments with ours?

Diane Ravitch and the Corporate Reign of Error

I've been teaching for almost thirty years, and I don't know precisely when my colleagues and I became public enemy number one. But after reading Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch I'm getting a pretty good handle on why.

Corporate reformers like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family seem to believe teachers have done a disservice to kindergarteners by allowing them to blow bubbles in their milk and push trucks around on the floor. Why weren't we training them to take valuable multiple-choice exams? Why did an entire generation of Americans, including public school teachers, misdirect its energies by trying to eradicate poverty? Couldn't we just fervently ignore it, as corporate reformers have done so successfully?

In Reign of Error, Ravitch demonstrates how, by ignoring poverty, America has managed to shift blame to public schools for its consequences. That's clear when the Governor of New York declares schools with poor test scores deserve the "death penalty," and the mayor of Chicago closes 50 schools in one fell swoop.  The fact that all so-called failing schools have high percentages of high-needs kids is either attributed to coincidence or ignored  completely. Standard practice is to replace them with privately run schools that generally perform either no better or much worse. Still, no one can argue they don't place more tax money into the pockets of investors.

Reign of Error  shows us corporate reform is largely about where the money goes. Americans are led to believe teachers earn too much, and entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch and the Walmart family earn too little. To correct this inequity, corporate reformers work to erase collective bargaining, unionism, teacher tenure, and other outrages that have left middle-class people able to make a living. This, of course, is all done in the name of helping children.

The most trendy way to redirect public money into private hands is via charter schools. If charters don't have unions, they don't have to worry about collective bargaining. If they largely exclude learning disabled and ESL students, they not only improve their test scores, but also save a ton of money on mandated services. Charter trailblazer Geoffrey Canada, who pays himself a half-million per year, turned away an entire student cohort rather than deal with their impending scores.

Ravitch points out in detail the excellent investment opportunities charters can provide. People who have enough money to really appreciate it can get more of it before it's frittered away on the education of impoverished children. They save even more money for needy rich people by hiring less-qualified instructors, thereby cutting teacher salaries. And wealthy foreigners have literally bought green cards via investing in charters

Charters are all about choice. They therefore choose whether they're public or private depending on the circumstances. Their reps go to court to prevent audits, because in those cases they're private schools. But they happily accept government support because in those cases they're public schools. And even if they fail on test scores, the sole criterion by which corporate reformers judge schools, it makes no difference. They're still, evidently, providing the all-important choice of where our still-needy children will fail these tests.

Reign of Error shines a bright light on cyber charters, which save quite a bit of cash for eager investors. Unlike brick and mortar charters, cybers cannot jack up rents 900% for profit. But they make up for it in other ways. Cyber charters divert many millions that might otherwise be wasted on live teachers and human interaction with children. While graduation rates are abysmal, and a CREDO study found 100% of them perform worse than public schools, there is no denying their immense profitability.

On every page of Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch paints a portrait that's conspicuously absent from mainstream media. She shows us a tangled web, and paints every thread with an arrow pointing to where our tax dollars are really headed. Anyone who's interested in the true meaning of corporate reform needs to read this book. If you're already focused on what moves and motivates our educational system, it will surely sharpen that focus. If not, it will be an eye-opener.

And for the naysayers, Ravitch goes into detail about what America would do if it really wanted to help children, rather than simply test them and redirect public money. Here's hoping that school boards and mayors everywhere read this book.

June 2015

After two years of John King's brilliant new evaluation plan, every single teacher in NY has been fired, except for E4E members, who have now all moved into administration. With hundreds of new administrators having been hired, it proved very easy to do the observations required under King's decree.

Mayor Christine Quinn commented, "This has been a tough transition. It's disappointing to discover that every single working teacher was ineffective, but it's important we put Students First, Always, and to that end, we are turning all the schools over to Eva Moskowitz, who has done a sterling job."

"Of course, students will have to audition to get into Moskowitz academies, and those with special needs, or those who don't speak English, will be joining all of our ex-teachers. We're so grateful that Walmart, after opening superstores in all five boroughs, will be inviting all the ex-teachers to be associates. Furthermore, they will accept those students who are not a good fit for the Moskowitz academies."

"Walmart will have the ex-teachers train the students to fold towels, assemble furniture, assign low-low prices, and will grant diplomas based on how well they feel students would fare as Walmart associates if they were hiring. The thought is that the very best students will stay to continue to train incoming students, and as incoming students progress, the older students and ex-teachers will be fired."

"Eventually, with this model, few or no people would actually be paid to work and profits could be maximized. This will make for a better Walmart, particularly since Moskowitz schools will be offering Walmart management courses in lieu of English and mathematics. After all, it was English and mathematics that caused our schools to fail in such large numbers, and we simply can't have that happening in Moskowitz academies."

"Now last year was tough, as half of working teachers did not come back in September, and given that all teachers were rated ineffective, we simply could not hire new ones. And thanks to Commissioner John King for resisting the teacher union's efforts to replace them. After all, if the system chose so poorly in the past, how could we trust it to do any better? And we were finally able to achieve Mayor Bloomberg's vision of 70 kids in a class. It's kind of sad we will have to fire all the teachers who helped us out last year, but we simply cannot subject our students to failed teachers."

"Finally, I have had the city council overturn the term limits law and cancel all upcoming elections. Now that we've finally reached Mayor Bloomberg's ultimate educational vision, there is really no need to teach anyone, and it's simply unacceptable to have an uneducated populous selecting a government. That is a very serious responsibility, and I will not toy with it."

"As for the press, please make like a tree and go screw yourselves." At this point Mayor Quinn made a rather disrespectful gesture and left the stage.

Obama to Teachers--Drop Dead

To show how much he appreciates the endorsements of NEA and AFT, President Barack Obama declared this week, Teacher Appreciation Week, to be National Charter School Week. So all you public school teachers wasting your time with kids who don't speak English, kids who have special needs, kids who need alternate assessment, and all the other kids who don't improve the test scores can go straight to hell. The President has taken your week and given it to Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michelle Rhee and the Walmart family.

In fact, this President does not appreciate teachers. Otherwise, why would he push for value-added/ junk science evaluation methods that depend as much on chance as on skill? Why would he applaud the firing of an entire staff of teachers (that largely served ESL students)? And for goodness sake, how on earth could he tolerate a Secretary of Education who declared Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in NOLA?

President Obama takes us for granted, as well he should. We endorsed him solely because we've determined his opponent is even worse. Were I a union bigshot, urging you to vote for him, I'd need to say, "Vote for him, because he doesn't stink as badly as the other guy!" Or perhaps I could say, "Vote for Obama! Next to the other guy, he appears almost adequate."

These are hardly slogans that make me jump up and down. Obama fooled me once. Shame on him for that. And far more shame on him for disrespecting every working teacher in America just to kiss up to his corporate buddies. Those who teach our children ought to be celebrated rather than reviled.

Have you got a message for this President?

Don't Buy a Used Car from this Man

Governor One Percent, Andrew "I am the Government" Cuomo is taking yet another principled stand. You may recall his first principled stand, when he made sure the millionaires who bought and paid for him wouldn't have to continue paying that nasty millionaires tax. Now he's standing up for the millionaires once again, billionaires like Gates, Broad and the Wal-Mart family actually, in demanding that an untested, ineffectual, and very troublesome evaluation system be imposed on city teachers.

Never mind that over a quarter of the state's principals have signed a petition opposing the system. Never mind that value-added evaluation is unsupported by research. Never mind that principals who've dealt with it find it insane, unworkable, and largely incomprehensible. The important thing, in Governor One Percent's principled opinion, is that the self-appointed billionaires education experts have decided it's a good idea, and if they have that much money, how could they possibly make a mistake of any kind?

So Governor Andy, apparently, will round up the usual suspects and appoint a commission. That way, it won't look like he alone made the decision to unilaterally break the agreement he made with state unions. And, in fact, he didn't. More likely Bill Gates, or DFER instructed him what to think, and he thought it. After all, there are suitcases of money to be had for politicians whose principles are for sale.

Still there is reason in our fair state. Several people have publicly challenged the governor to include, say, public school parents or teachers, or anyone who actually uses the system the "experts" are working their magic on.  Will the governor listen? Tough to say.

But don't bet on him disappointing his 1% constituency, the folks who own him body and soul.

Rahmbo Demands More Work for Less Pay

There are plenty of reasons why Chicago ought not to rush into a longer school day. Their day is shorter than ours, and it's worth examining, or negotiating. But Mayor Rahm, formerly Obama's right hand man, does not seem to believe in negotiation. For example, a 4% salary increase negotiated via collective bargaining was unilaterally withdrawn.

Now, the mayor wants a longer school day. The day in Chicago is currently 5 hours, and he'd like it to be six and a half. For this, he offers a 2% compensation increase. First of all, given the withdrawal of the previously negotiated increase, why on earth would any teacher, indeed anyone whatsoever trust these folks? If breaking your word isn't bad faith, I don't know what is. But let's put that aside for a moment, and look at the proposal.

Five hours is 300 minutes. Six and a half hours is 390 minutes. That's a 30% increase in time, for a 2% increase in compensation. In all the articles I've read about Chicago, I have yet to see that pointed out. This offer is a slap in the face to teachers, and to American working people. That it comes from an alleged Democrat makes it even more offensive. If Democrats want working people to work for nothing, we are indeed in trouble.

Worse, in Chicago, Rahm can take an end run around the union by having individual schools vote on the proposal. A handful have done so and approved, apparently. I don't approve of working people receiving a 30% time increase for a 2% pay increase. It's not a raise, (which, for the uninitiated, entails receiving more money for doing the same job) and it's outrageous on its face. That mainstream media sees fit to ignore this is disgraceful.

It doesn't take a very deep thinker to realize that if Chicago goes this route, Bill Gates, the Wal-Mart family, the Koch brothers and all their front organizations will push the same sort of crap on us. Let's hope the valiant union in Chicago hangs tough.

And let's make damn sure to follow their example.

Arne Duncan's Dirty Tricks

Mike Klonksy posted about rumors from USDOE insiders that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has convened a "Ravitch Group" to dig up dirt on Duncan critic Diane Ravitch and feed it to the press to undercut her credibility and damage her public standing.

Klonsky has no smoking gun on the existence of a Ravitch Group other than "word" from DOE insiders, but notes how Duncan-friendly journalists like Jonathan Alter and David Brooks seem to get their anti-Ravitch talking points simultaneously and run with their anti-Ravitch stories in synchronicity.

He wonders if any journalists are on the Duncan payroll, the way "journalist" Armstrong Williams was paid by the Bush DOE to write nice things (i.e., propaganda) about Bush education policy.

Finally he suggests journalists not on the Duncan payroll start asking questions about the "Ravitch Group" and see if it indeed exists and, if so, ask why Duncan and the DOE are spending money on it in a time of budgetary austerity.

Now I don't have any inside knowledge of whether the "Ravitch Group" exists or not.

I do know this.

Arne Duncan doesn't have to pay journalists like Jonathan Alter to carry his anti-Ravitch water for him when "philanthropists" like Michael Bloomberg will.

Arne Duncan doesn't have to fund or engage in pushback efforts against Diane Ravitch and other critics of corporate education policy when Bill Gates will.

Arne Duncan doesn't have to push to have anti-Ravitch stories published when corporate media like the Comcast-owned NBC/MSNBC or the Murdoch-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal will be happy to do the work for him.

And yet, Secretary Duncan still seems to need to go after Diane Ravitch personally even when he has all these well-funded allies to do the work for him.

Why is that?

It seems at once a mix of Nixonian arrogance and paranoia on Duncan's part.

Duncan, who is feted regularly on shows like MSNBC's Morning Joe, is not used to somebody in public life calling him on his b.s.

He is used to getting his way on policy, however - from Race to the Top to the jobs bills that saw cuts to food stamps rather than cuts to RttT, Duncan has pretty much gotten his way on everything since he got to Washington.

At least until now.

He hasn't been getting his way on the No Child Left Behind re-authorization timetable he wants, nor on getting the Congress to pass the Obama blueprint for it.

And Duncan doesn't like not getting his way.

Not at all.

As Valerie Strauss noted in this post about the Obama administration's treatment of the Save Our Schools leadership last week, the people in the Obama White House and the Duncan Department of Education suffer from an "arrogance of certainty" that they are right about education policy and anybody who isn't on board is to be marginalized, disempowered, or, if the person is somebody with power and a platform like Diane Ravitch, to be attacked and discredited.

They have decided that failed policies like tying teacher evaluations to test scores and merit pay based upon those same tests are the right policy, research be damned (see here, here, and here.)

They have decided that a national standardized curriculum with national standardized tests that will be used to evaluate schools, administrators, and teachers is the right policy, federalism and local control of schools not withstanding.

They have decided that they will promote these reforms through NCLB waivers whether they are allowed to by law or not, they will continue down this BLAME THE TEACHERS road even when it is pretty clear that the problems in the public education system are NOT the fault of teachers.

When Ravitch calls Duncan on this stuff, he doesn't like it.

So he attacks or has his allies in the corporate reform movement attack in concert with him.

Whether Arne Duncan has actually convened an "official" Ravitch Group or not, whether he has hired some modern versions of Chuck Colson and Donald Segretti to engage in acts of political sabotage and dirty tricks against Diane Ravitch and other critics of the Obama/Duncan policies, or circulated an actual "Enemies List" within the USDOE, the effect is the same as if he had.

This is a White House and a USDOE engaged in promoting its top-down, corporate-friendly education agenda, bent on marginalizing or destroying anybody not on board with it and willing to lie, cheat and deceive in order to get their agenda across, as Duncan has been doing with his threats about AYP.

They're not interested in hearing from anybody on the other side of the issues, they are not interested in honest debate or actual scientific research - they have already concluded that the education reform policies promoted by Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg and the Walton Family are the ones that will be the law and practice of the land and they intend to destroy anybody who threatens that outcome.

Diane Ravitch happens to be the most public, most erudite and most vocal critic, so she gets the brunt of the Duncan/Gates/Ed Deform attacks.

But make no mistake, what they are doing to her, they are doing to all their critics and opponents.

And in that, they are very Nixonian indeed.

UPDATE: Mike posts that Duncan p.r. official Justin Hamilton issued a snarky non-denial tweet, saying the rumors of the "Ravitch Group" ought to be filed with rumors of "Black Helicopters."

Why not just emphatically say "No, there is no Ravitch Group at the Department of Education"?

Whenever politicians or their flacks issue hyperbolic dismissals of things, my b.s. meter starts to go off.

Private Funding For Public Testing

Earlier this year, the New York State Regents canceled the January 2012 Regents exams.

You see, there was no money in the state piggy bank for the January Regents exams.

Not after the Regents needed to implement all those other state tests as part of the Race to the Top program that requires students be tested in all subjects at every grade level and teachers be evaluated using these scores.

Not after the austerity budget Tea Party Democrat Andrew Cuomo had passed in New York State.

Now the January Regents exams really don't cost all that much - just $1.4 million dollars.

Hell, that's less than half what NYCDOE computer consultant Willard Lanham stole from the City of New York as part of a technology upgrade to wire classrooms for computerized testing ($3.6 million.)

It's also a lot less than what Wireless Generation is going to see as part of the no-bid contract NY State has handed it's owner, scandal-plagued Rupert Murdoch, to track student test data using the extremely crappy and roundly despised ARIS system ($27 million).

And surely it's a whole lot less than Bloomberg is spending on technology upgrades to classrooms again this year after just upgrading the classroom wiring a few years ago with crooked consultants like Willard Lanham doing the job ($542 million) or the amount that he allowed the City Time crooks to steal as part of a city payroll project ($600 million as reported by the NY Times in June, 2011.)

Yet the state just couldn't find the $1.4 million for the January Regents and this made Mayor Moneybags here in New York City very, very sad.

Now what's a billionaire who has seen his personal net worth sky-rocket since he took office in NYC to do when he wants state tests in order to use the scores to grade teachers but the state cannot afford them?

Why, go to "private donors" for the money, of course!

Over the last several weeks, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a series of unusual fund-raising calls to a handful of wealthy New Yorkers. Would they be willing, he asked, to chip in $250,000 each to save some standardized tests?

The state, he told them, had canceled the January administration of the high school Regents exams, endangering the graduation of thousands of city students. Principals were warning of disastrous consequences and more dropouts. To reinstate the exams for next year, the state needed $1.4 million the State Legislature did not provide.

He placed five calls, and all of the donors said yes. Mr. Bloomberg then pitched in $250,000 from his own private philanthropy. So now January exams are back on across the state in what may be the nation’s first private effort to pay for standardized testing.

Gee, how "generous" of these private donors to pony up the money for the January Regents exams.

But just who are these "private donors"?

Other than explaining that he contributed $250,000 himself, the mayor won't say who these wonderful "private donors" are except to say this:

“They are not trying to court favor with anybody,” he said on Wednesday, announcing the gift and explaining why all the donors, with the exception of the mayor, were anonymous. “They just understand that this is the future of our country, our kids, the future of our city.”

Oh, sure they're not trying to court favor with anybody, they have no agenda to promote and no business angle in this, they just happen to be on Moneybags' iPad 2 and they were all happy to pony up the dough.

Funny how Moneybags didn't make these calls when he was claiming he needed to lay thousands of teachers off to save millions in the city budget.

Maybe a few of them would have ponied up some money then too?

Well, we'll never know the answer to that now, but I guess we do know what the mayor's priorities are - tests over teachers.

Now I for one am glad the January Regents exams are back since it gives many students two chances to pass the tests they will need to pass in order to graduate.

I know that there were some seniors this year who failed to graduate in June because they failed the June U.S. History Regents exam after the January exam was canceled due to snow.

Had there been a January Regents exam, they perhaps would have gotten the wake-up call to prepare better for the June exam rather than now having to sit through summer school test prep classes to take the exam again.

And I know in my school that we test the overwhelming majority of juniors on the ELA Regents exam in January so that we can focus on just a few who need additional preparation and tutoring to pass the exam in June.

So having the January Regents exams back is very helpful.

Nonetheless I am disturbed that Moneybags himself, Oligarch Extraordinaire, has put the money up for these tests, along with some other nameless oligarchs who Bloomberg assures us are just in this because they love the kids.

More and more, you can see how the states and the country as a whole are abdicating their public responsibilities on things like public education and transportation and ceding them to private enterprise or philanthropists.

The United States is becoming a Third World country where the oligarchs get all the tax cuts and tax subsidies they want, the corporations pay nothing in taxes, the starved government has to cut all sorts of programs, and then "private donors" are found to fund the programs they want to fund.

You see, the Tea Party Republicans like Cantor and McConnell and Christie and the Tea Party Democrats like Obama and Cuomo all insist there is just no money to provide any domestic services anymore.

We're just that broke.

And that's where Bloomberg and his "private donors" step in.

Maybe they can make up the shortfall.

And of course, like Bloomberg says, these private donors won't have any agenda to push at all or receive anything in return for their "gifts."

Sure.

Except for all those paper tests with the WALMART logo on 'em and all those computerized tests and test prep programs that can only be run on MICROSOFT products, of course...

Right to Shirk

Diane Ravitch writes an impassioned condemnation of Governor Scott Walker, and his cynical, disingenuous push to kill collective bargaining rights even though all his economic requests--the ones he said were crucial--were met. Of course there'd be no crisis whatsoever had Walker not granted Walmart such a huge tax break, but that's neither here nor there.

Several commenters suggest that unions are extortionists. Simply because they offer advice, representation, negotiation of contracts, benefits, higher wages, and all sorts of other services, you have to not only join, but also pay dues. How dare they? Actually you don't have to join, but unions here require you to pay a fee anyway, so there's not any advantage in not joining.

I know how these people feel. After all, I failed to vote for George W. Bush, not once, but twice. Despite this decision, every time I looked at my paycheck stub, I'd paid plenty to support his programs, many of which I viscerally opposed. There were those endless wars. There was that utter lack of support for organized labor (which I happen to support). Then there were those tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, who least needed them, while we were at war. There were the huge deficits. There were the reprehensible social priorities, the loathsome and cynical disregard for the needs of most Americans, the rampant corruption.

Yet still I had to pay taxes. And now, President Barack Obama, for whom I actually voted, seems not much different from cowboy GW. In fact, his education policies seem not much different from those Johny McCain proposed, the ones that kept me from voting for him. We're still in both wars, the health care bill is a shadow of what I'd hoped for, the Bush tax cuts are extended, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which Obama promised to support, is more dead than Elvis in the face of the GOP House.

Now President Obama spends his time talking education with Jeb Bush rather than walking it in Wisconsin.

If I had half a chance, maybe I'd withhold taxes. If there were a President I liked a bunch of other people would withhold taxes. But when you're part of a community you can't, you don't do that. Those who speak of freedom to withhold union dues do not want union to survive, just as a government couldn't survive with voluntary taxes.

Their talk of freedom is simply nonsense, another distraction. We're all about distractions in this country today. If people were paying attention, the whole country would look like Wisconsin--if not Egypt.

I'm Not Against Tenure, But...

So says faux-Democrat Cory Booker in his love letter to the reformers who put him where he is today. Sure, let's not abolish tenure. Let's simply make it meaningless. The Wal-Mart family did not finance Booker so as to help working people. Wal-Mart money subverts public schools because union is a scourge that must be stopped, so that people can do as they're told, shut the hell up, and work until they die.

Booker hits all the same tired points "reformers" hit every morning instead of the national anthem, including the nonsensical claim teachers get lifetime jobs, and that we need to add merit pay. This, of course, is trotted out despite very recent evidence that it doesn't work. Predictably, Booker goes into the same old nonsense about bad teachers. They are a plague, apparently, and the only way to get rid of them is to worsen working conditions for all teachers. Teachers, says Wal-Mart's favorite mayor, must be compensated based on "effectiveness." Now what the hell that is, Booker doesn't say. Does it mean they get higher test scores? Does it mean they're cute and perky?

I'll tell you precisely what it means. An effective teacher, to disingenuous corporate puppets like Cory Booker, is an at-will employee. Booker rubs shoulders with Democrats and appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a reasonable guy. But he speaks well of anti-teacher Chris Christie and crooked Chris Cerf, because in whatever remains of his heart, he's no different from them or indeed, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

They all represent the same interests. Perhaps Booker takes another approach, not wishing to appear so radical. But make no mistake, like Christie, like Walker, he'll happily roll back the twentieth century so if you don't come in Sunday you won't bother coming in Monday.

How Far Is Wisconsin?

The spectacle of the anti-union, anti-middle class governor of Wisconsin openly trying to break public unions is something I'd never expected to see, even after years of Fox News brainwashing the American public with pro-corporate nonsense. Yet there it is. Walker got his ducks in a row by precluding negotiations with the lame-duck session that preceded him. His first instinct was not to push this legislation, but rather to simply decertify unions. Nonetheless, with the legislation he proposes, unions would have so little power they'd be irrelevant.

Oddly enough, union leaders have already accepted the notions of increased contributions to pensions and health care benefits, claiming they just want to preserve their right to collectively bargain. Of course, giving into these demands before any bargaining process may have rendered collective bargaining, in this instance, a moot point. Nonetheless, Governor Walker says there will be no compromise, and is busing in thousands of idiots from the Tea Party to bolster his principled position--that he can do whatever the hell he feels like and working people can go screw themselves.

One thing you don't read about very much is that Walker issued a tax break that pretty much equals the savings he's trying to recoup on the backs of state workers. It's kind of a Robin Hood thing, except the money goes to Walmart instead of the poor, and takes from the middle class instead of the rich. Another thing not often mentioned is that, under Walker's bill, unions would have to be recertified on an annual basis. Think about Walmart, and how it's managed to avoid union all these years. It closed a store in Canada rather than admit union.  When meat-cutters in a Texas Walmart decided to unionize, it cut meat cutting from the entire chain. It took nine years before Walmart even discussed this. Can you imagine having to face a Walmart-style intimidation campaign on an annual basis?

And this, clearly, is the model Walker likes. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama failed to keep his campaign promise to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Such an act would have made it far more difficult for sleazeballs like Walker and the charter-loving Walmart family to continue thwarting the efforts of working people. Having waited past the point when the House turned GOP, the legislation is pretty much dead in the water.

But we need to keep an eye on Wisconsin. This is clearly the GOP template for the rest of the country, and while a corporatist slimeball like Andrew Cuomo won't yet openly embrace such tactics, he's also declined to continue a popular millionaire tax that could substantially ease our budget gap, preferring to cut schools and medical aid to the poor. He's also stated very clearly he plans to go after unions.

Could it happen here? Not right now. But Wisconsin is a flash point, a place where collective bargaining for public unions originated. Half a century later, look how things have changed. While Cuomo doesn't yet openly embrace Walker-style tactics, and NY's legislature wouldn't likely support him right now, his rhetoric is not all that foreign from Walker's.

There's an apocryphal Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

I'm afraid the interesting times are unfolding right before us. We've done our part to enable them by voting for Bloomberg, voting for Cuomo, and voting for the 2005 UFT Contract. UFT leadership has helped by endorsing numerous deals not in our interest.

High time we all wised up. Otherwise we may as well all get jobs at Walmart.

How to Get Free Publicity

1. Make friends with Michelle Obama, wife of corporate friendly, faux-Democrat Barack Obama.

2. Stock some healthy items, along with the aisles of cheap crap for which you're renowned.

3. Place these items somewhere in your megastore, next to the stuff made in some third-world rathole by people who work for 18 cents an hour.

4. Get her to talk about it in front of your logo, making it appear the American government endorses your company. Point out to President such a move will make him appear business-friendly, rather than the socialist Glenn Beck keeps saying he is.

5. Make sure she gets onto NPR, so all the liberals who don't realize Obama is a corporatist will flock to Walmart for baby carrots.

6. Then, sit and count the pile of money you've made after paying your non-unionized workers the pittance they get, largely as a result of decades of preventing unionization. Try not to publicly dive into pile headfirst, a la Uncle Scrooge.