The Mariachi Chancellor, El Rey

I honestly don't know a whole lot about Richard Carranza. I see good and bad things. On the plus side, he's a former English Language Learner, or ELL. This gives me hope that he might see through the miserable Part 154 that robs ELLs of both direct English instruction and also core content instruction. In 2017, we ought to offer our most needy kids something better than sink or swim.

Also, he seems to be an advocate for public schools. The last guy the mayor picked, Tom Carvel or somebody, looked like an advocate for school choice in the Jeb Bush mode. Florida's not where I would go to model public schools, though the weather seems pretty nice. Alas, Carvel not only failed to bring the weather over, but also failed to show himself.

On the other hand, there are the stories about Carranza, largely in the Daily News, from his failure to perform miracles, to creepy treatment of female subordinates, resulting in a 75K payoff. I'm not personally too put off by the miracle thing, because miracle stories, like accomplishments of Texas and Michelle Rhee, usually turn out to be outright fabrications. Carranza seems to have a thing for TFA, while I think he'd be better off finding local talent. In fact, I wonder why the mayor couldn't find anyone in NY. The mayor said mayoral control was all about him doing what he wanted to do, but that's not really true.

When de Blasio was elected, he not only stated opposition to charters, but also blocked a Moskowitz Academy or two. Cuomo and his Heavy Hearted Assembly rapidly passed a law that NYC would have to pay rent for charters of which it didn't approve. This said to me that mayoral control was valid only if the mayor was a reformy. They never passed laws against Bloomberg. Evidently, de Blasio hasn't put that together just yet.

Carranza says there's no daylight between his vision and that of the mayor, but I have no idea what the mayor's vision is anymore. When he first ran, he seemed great. He opposed charters and reforminess. He was the anti-Bloomberg. I supported him even as the UFT was pushing that guy, what's his name, who told the Daily News that teachers didn't deserve the raise cops and firefighters got.

These days I have no idea what the mayor stands for. He left a whole bunch of Bloomberg's people in place, so we still lose at step two hearings even when we're 100% correct. He left a bunch of scumbag lawyers in "legal" who believe in doing whatever the hell they feel like and think screwing UFT members is the national pastime. He picks an outright reformy to be chancellor and then immediate turns around and picks a guy who appears to support public schools. Though the NY Post thinks de Blasio's Che Guevara, he negotiated the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory for city workers.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a music teacher I respect a lot who said the new chancellor was a great singer. I later found a video over at Leonie Haimson's site, which I've posted below. He is a very good singer, and he also plays the violin. You have to respect that. Maybe I'm culturally biased or something, but his choice of song is pretty unusual as far as I'm concerned. It's called El Rey, or the king, and it seems like a tribute to machismo or something:

Con dinero
Y sin dinero
Yo hago siempre
Lo que quiero
Y mi palabra
Es la ley 

That says, roughly, if I'm rich or if I'm broke, I do any damn thing I feel like, and my word is the law. It's the kind of song Donald Trump might tweet if he had any music in his miserable, barren soul. El Rey is about a man whose "queen" appears to have dumped him for his miserable attitude, a man who's learned nothing whatsoever from it. While it's tongue in cheek, I'm not at all sure I'd teach it in a class. Given Chancellor's Regulation A-421 about verbal abuse, I'd be very nervous about it. You know, it might make some student feel uneasy. 

I might be sitting in the principal's office being accused of sexism and getting a letter in my file for sharing that song, but there's our chancellor, with an orchestra full of students, performing it. Putting the potential sexism aside, the notion of being the king is the kind of thing I'd expect from Bloomberg or Trump, not an educator. Does the new chancellor have a sharper sense of humor than I do, or is he broadcasting the future?

Only time will tell.

Rick and Morty and Unity

I have a confession. At night I watch cartoons on Adult Swim until I fall asleep. One of the most bizarre cartoons they show at night is called Rick and Morty. It's about a grandfather who's some kind of scientific genius dragging Morty all over the universe.

The other night, there was an episode about a group called Unity. It's this being or consciousness that's constantly replicating itself. It does this by vomiting in the mouths of its victims and taking over their bodies. See the video below for an example.

You may not be surprised that I saw parallels to our union, what with the organization having the exact same name. The pale looking guy in the middle is Rick, and all the blue people around him are Unity. So that could be me at a chapter leader meeting, except for the scientific genius part. Of course this episode took it a little further. Evidently Rick was having an affair with Unity, seemingly in the form of the young blue woman to his left, your right.

Now as far as I know, signing up for UFT Unity does not entail having someone vomit in your mouth. Rather, it entails signing this loyalty oath, which used to be available on the Unity website. For some reason, they took it down after PJSTA posted it publicly. The best way to advance in the union is to sign it. If you don't, well, that pension consulting gig might elude you.

I'll tell you the truth--I really like some people in Unity. I'll tell you another truth--I really don't like some other people in Unity. They don't seem to have a code about how they treat non-Unity members. So some people in Unity are reasonable and open, while others are kind of defensive and proprietary. I figure it's better to be reasonable and open, particularly if you purport to represent the union, but that's just me.

Now I understand forming a political caucus. I'm part of one, as a matter of fact. I also understand espousing a particular series of values. I share a lot of Unity's ostensible values. I'm absolutely pro-teacher and pro-union. I don't believe in abuse by administrators, and I think we need to take a stand against Boy Wonders  (even if they're girls).

Sometimes, though, I'm not sure. I don't understand why we supported mayoral control, ever, and I'm not sure why we didn't oppose it vehemently when it came up this year. Though it hasn't been as bad under de Blasio, there's no guarantee he'll be around forever. We suffered through 20 years of GOP mayors here in deep blue NYC, Also, de Blasio's mayoral control has been far from absolute, as the state did an end run around it, forcing him to pay rent for charters. (Of course, my bursting at the seams school has 4728 incoming students, and no one's forcing him to pay rent for us.)

I certainly understand the argument that, in times of crisis, we need to pull together. The only thing is, I can't recall when we were not in crisis. It wasn't time to oppose when we were facing Bloomberg, or Cuomo, and it isn't time to oppose when we face Trump, or "the Presidential Election," as Unity calls him. I can only suppose it wasn't time to oppose when we faced Giuliani either, though I wasn't involved with union politics back then. Is the answer, then, to keep your mouth shut forever and ever and just hope for the best?

Of course not. Unity is wrong sometimes. The Democrats, with Unity's early endorsement, lost the last national election because they presented the populous with a warmed-over agenda that consisted largely of, "We aren't Trump." In fact, I voted for Hillary in the general precisely on that basis. But I enthusiastically pulled the lever for Bernie Sanders in the primary.

We're gonna have to pull out all the stops after Janus. It might not be good enough to say, "Well, you still have a job," when you're sent out to teach subjects you don't understand and rotate schools week to week. It might not be good enough to say, "Well, we did the best we could," when Moskowitz takes over your school and places a non-union test-prep factory in its stead. It won't be good enough to hear "Fifty years ago we sacrificed money for class size regs," while you stand in front of 50 kids in a trailer and try to persuade them that anyone other than you takes them seriously.

And whether Unity knows it or not, that's why a vibrant opposition is necessary. There are voices that need to be heard, and with three out of four teachers not even voting in union elections, I'm not highly optimistic union is a prime concern for them. We all sink or swim together, and I'll work toward the latter. If we want everyone to pay union dues, we're gonna have to stop pandering toward a privileged class. That's the sort of thing that empowers the likes of Donald Trump, and it ain't gonna work for us.

Mayoral Control Is a Lose-Lose

I've opposed mayoral control since its inception, originally because it went to uber-reformy Michael Bloomberg. During his seemingly endless tenure, I learned more about it. I think Diane Ravitch wrote in Death and Life of the Great American School System that it was a reformy tool designed to bypass democracy. Unlike Bloomberg and Trump, I believe in democracy.

Now you'd think that having a professed charter foe like de Blasio in office might make mayoral control better. You'd be wrong because to Andrew Cuomo and the bought-off members of the Assembly and Senate, reforminess is almost like breathing. Because NYC has chosen a mayor who doesn't support the people who sent them suitcases full of cash, they passed a law that the city has to pay charter rent even if it disapproves of the actual charter.

It's fundamentally unfair that NYC has to shoulder the mandates of reformy suburban reps who wouldn't build charters in their own district on a bet. This notwithstanding, there was a barrage of pro-mayoral control talk recently, from self-appointed public education experts as diverse as Andrew Cuomo, Arne Duncan and Al Sharpton. The outcry led to a special session to push mayoral control and a two-year renewal. And we were told it was a clean deal, with no givebacks to the charter sector.

That sounded too good to be true, didn't it? Well it was, and NYC is now going to have 22 more charter schools. Reformy StudentsFirstNY is jumping up and down with giddiness, as are all the astroturf groups that represent the hedge funders who care so much about public education. Evidently these were charters that were granted but somehow did not make it as charters.

There's a lot of talk about charter quality, but the fact is they don't simply take a representative cross section of students. The fact is they don't hold on to the students they have, and they aren't burdened with the stats of the students they shed. The fact is all the students they don't finish with end up in public schools, and we are then vilified for their test scores. Even more importantly, the only stats the media regards as significant are test scores. There's something fundamentally wrong with a school that needs to keep extra clothing around for when kids pee their pants. If kids in your class peed their pants from fear, you'd be sitting in a rubber room somewhere, not making a half-million salary like Eva Moskowitz.

UFT's position is odd. As an organization we favor mayoral control, but not in its current form. Thus there was no UFT presence at some demonstration favoring it. On the other hand, there was no fervent opposition either. We just kind of stood on the sidelines. Thus, it appears that not only is the city getting another 22 charters, but it's also paying more money to charter operators. I don't suppose Moskowitz will have to wait eight years (like we did) before giving herself that hefty raise.

Here's the thing--charters are a Trojan Horse. They are designed to undermine and destroy us, and they hire people to move just in that direction. Jenny Sedelis works for StudentsFirstNY. I don't know what she does, but I know I've seen her name in many, many articles about reforminess. Moskowitz just won a lawsuit allowing her to take city money for preK while ignoring city rules about preK.

It seems to me that any school that wishes to take city money ought to be bound to follow city rules, including chancellor's regs. If I were to treat kids the way Eva does, I'd be in a rubber room. Someone who runs a chain of schools that treats kids like that ought to be in prison, meeting like-minded child abusers.

Reverend Al and His Pals Support Mayoral Control

You can stop holding your breath. Al Sharpton has finally weighed in on the mayoral control issue, and he strongly supports it. (It is, incidentally, a done deal now, for two years.) You won't be surprised that some of his friends support it too. Mike Bloomberg was a big fan, and Arne Duncan has also supported it. Newt Gingrich has yet to weigh in because he's running around telling important lies about the GOP's most recent assault on health care.

Of course Sharpton trots out the standard line that scores have improved, ignoring the fact that this is a nationwide trend, mayoral control or no. Reverend Al further can't be bothered to notice New York's rich history of rampant test score manipulation. All the reformies jumped up and down when they improved under Al's pal Mike Bloomberg, and viciously ridiculed Diane Ravitch, who noticed the NAEP scores painted a vastly different picture. The following year, the New York Times and others noticed she was right, and Mike Bloomberg's draconian methods made no significant difference.

I particularly like this line:

There’s no disputing this fact: Mayoral control is the best way to run the largest public school system in the nation.

How could anyone argue with that, since there's no disputing it? But actually, there is. Diane Ravitch has been calling it a myth for years, and wrote in one of her books that it was a reformy shortcut to circumvent democracy. Bill Gates didn't spend $4 million promoting it just for fun,  Leonie Haimson calls it fundamentally undemocratic. I argued in the Daily News that it was destructive to public education. So there is, in fact, dispute, and I'd argue Sharpton has put forth another of those new and trendy "alternative facts" here.

I was particularly fond of this line:

First, public comment rules would change and the Board of Education would be able to meet in “executive session” — in other words, behind closed doors. The board could therefore make decisions without public comment.

I've been to many PEP meetings, as well as school closing hearings, and I've never seen Al Sharpton show his face. Had Sharpton bothered to show up, he'd have noticed that community residents do indeed get to speak, for two minutes each. He'd also have noticed that not only PEP members, but also school chancellors sat there playing around on their Blackberries blatantly ignoring what communities had to say. He'd also have noticed that decisions had already been made, and that the mayor's reps voted as told, regardless of community input. Liza Featherstone called the PEP a fake school board, and everything I've seen and heard supports that.

In fact, Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired three PEP members rather than allow them to vote against him. I'd argue, therefore, that NYC's form of mayoral control more closely resembles mayoral dictatorship. Sharpton can call previous forms of educational input corrupt and ineffective, but taking community control away is fundamentally anti-democratic. Furthermore, this is not an "either or" situation. In creating a better system, we could reform the old one if need be. Nonetheless, I'd rather see communities in control than a mayor.

It's particularly egregious that mayoral control is absolute only when we have a reformy mayor. Bill de Blasio openly opposed charter schools when he ran, yet NY State would not allow him to block Eva Moskowitz. Instead it instituted a law forcing the city to pay rent for charters whether it wanted them or not.

I have no idea why Reverend Al is suddenly an authority on education. I know his interest seemed to coincide with a $500,000 contrbution, and that he rapidly thereafter embraced reformies like Duncan, Bloomberg, and Newt. I know that none of them support working people or union, and I know the kids we serve will suffer for it. I know when push came to shove at Jamaica High School and elsewhere, Sharpton was nowhere to be found.

I see absolutely no reason to listen to his highly flawed arguments now.

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.

Mulgrew Cleans Up His Act, a Little Bit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NY State Senate Thinks Mayoral Control Is Gubernatorial Control

I'm really pretty gobstruck by this story. For the 12 longest years of my life, Michael Bloomberg had mayoral control. This basically meant Michael Bloomberg could do what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and as much as he wanted. The three-year-old child in him must have been thrilled. No more of that ridiculous democracy impeding him getting things his way, and no more communities voting in people who thought they should have control over the schools in their communities.

But then, after Bloomberg bought himself a third term against the twice-voiced will of the people, he couldn't or wouldn't purchase a fourth. And the people of New York rose up and voted for a mayor who was against charter schools. Of course, Andy Cuomo, who took tons of cash from charter schools, wasn't having any of it, so he passed a law, applicable only in New York City, that said we had to pay rent for the charters we didn't want. This, of course, was after they tried to pass a bill killing seniority rights for teachers in New York City only.

Anyway, Governor Andy's BFFs in the State Senate decided they'd offer mayoral control to de Blasio, that hippie commie weirdo, for only one year. But it was important that he have an "inspector" so that Cuomo could question every move he made in case it weren't reformy enough. And waddya know, this bill would sunset in a year so that Bill de Blasio could interrupt campaigning to beg Andy, who hates his guts, to renew it again.

You know it's funny how little faith people have in all the We, the People stuff nowadays. I mean, Bill de Blasio could stand up and say that the people who, you know, actually patronize the schools ought to have a voice in how they're run. That's what I think, and that's why I oppose mayoral control. Of course I also oppose it because it's really designed to circumvent democracy and allow the reformies to do Whatever They Damn Well Please with our students. That's why I really wish de Blasio would let it go.

But Andy Cuomo wants to make it worse. You see, what with all that money Andy takes from Moskowitz BFFs, he wants to make sure that de Blasio, who was overwhelmingly elected, doesn't get to actually do what he promised he would when elected. Essentially mayoral control is absolute. The mayor gets the last word and that's it, no questions asked. Unless the mayor doesn't do what Eva Moskowitz wants in which case Daddy comes to the classroom and embarrasses you every time you make a decision.

Now if Andrew Cuomo gave a golly gosh darn about We, the People, he'd create something other than the ridiculous PEP, where the public gets to say a few words and the fake school board then does whatever the mayor has told it to. But what Andrew Cuomo cares about is Andrew Cuomo, and he wants everyone under his thumb, not just We, the People, but also He, Bill de Blasio.

As far as Andrew Cuomo is concerned, We, the People, can go straight to hell. And frankly, it serves us right for allowing such a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, self-serving, self-centered, grasping, juvenile windbag to be our governor. Mayoral control was always a mistake, and the best outcome here would be its expiration. I won't mourn it.

Who Should Run the United Federation of Teachers?

If you're happy with how things have been going, you can vote for Michael Mulgrew and his gang of 800 loyalty oath signers. You can let them know you love being under a microscope. You can tell them you love being judged by a rubric, and it makes no difference to you whether or not supervisors even understand it. You can tell them it's swell that you can't address supervisory fabrication in observations until and unless you receive an ineffective rating.

You can tell them you're pleased they failed not once, but twice to oppose autocratic billionaire Michael Bloomberg as he bought Gracie mansion. You can pat them on the back for supporting his mayoral control not only at its inception, but also after it was proven to be an abject disaster. You can thank them for not only supporting charter schools, but also for creating and even co-locating them.

You can let UFT Unity and Michael Mulgrew know that you have no problem with their sitting on their hands as Joel Klein established a Leadership Academy and trained a small army of administrators to paint targets on the backs of working teachers. You can tell them you approve of being judged by test scores of students you may or may not even teach. You can let them know that you think it's a great idea to be judged on what Diane Ravitch and the American Statistical Assiciation regard as junk science.

You can pat UFT Unity on the back for having handed you a contract that ushered in second tier due process for ATR teachers, the most vulnerable among us. You can tell them you're pleased to wait until 2020 for the raise that NYPD, FDNY and most city workers got in 2009. You can say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" as they make teachers on leave wait at least two years to get the small portion of retro pay we received a few months ago.

In fact, you can thank them for their failure to actively support or promote opt-out. You can listen to Mulgrew take credit for the cosmetic changes Cuomo proposed, the ones that were actually inspired by opt-out activists like those in this video, Jia Lee, Lauren Cohen, and Kristin Taylor. You can pretend that Cuomo is afraid of Mulgrew instead of the vibrant grassroots opt-out movement that has tabloids all over the state in a frenzy.

On the other hand, you may wish to support the future, and you may wish to repudiate the reforminess that has infected and degraded not only our profession, but also the education of our children. That's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do so by voting for not only Jia Lee for UFT President, but also the entire coalition of MORE/ New Action. I'm tired of being told that black is white, that hot is cold, that day is night.

If you are too, you will join me in demanding fundamental change in our union. MORE/ New Action has a slate of hundreds of activists who will stand up for what we know to be right. That's why I'm proud to be running with them. Vote for them, vote for me, and vote for a long-needed new direction in our union, the United Federation of Teachers. 

Why Does Bill de B. Want Mayoral Control?

In the news, I've been reading that Mayor Bill de Blasio wants mayoral control to be permanent, rather than sunset every three years. Emperor Cuomo opposes this idea, for reasons beyond my meager comprehension. It could just be that he wants to stick it to de Blasio, who after all happens to be a powerful politician who is not Andrew Cuomo. Or it could just be that you can't predict the behavior of malignant narcissistic self-important self-serving sociopathic lunatics.  Who knows what evil lurks in the alleged heart of Andrew Cuomo?

Anyway, I know some of you may be eating, so I'll change the subject. Mayor de Blasio is much more of a mystery, because despite his being, admittedly, a politician, I've seen no signs he's insane. Mayoral control was a disaster under he whose name should not be spoken (Bloomberg, for those of you who are new here). He closed schools, created charters, placed lifetime teachers into the Absent Teacher Reserve, allowed them to be relentlessly stereotyped, and when it came up again, UFT leadership asked for some modifications, failed to get them, and supported it to again. That's what they call "solutions-driven unionism." No doubt you have some other term for it.

I guess everyone likes power, Bill de B. included. But here's the thing--the man ran on a platform that suggested he wished to stop, or at least slow down, the rampant reforminess that had been stinking up the place for the past decades. That was one of the reasons I worked for him, contributed to his campaign, and went to the inauguration. Sure, I froze to death, but it was worth it to see the sour pusses on Bloomberg and Cuomo, neither of whom the tasteful Mr. de Blasio invited to say word one.

But last year Emperor Andy decided that it was too much to allow de B. mayoral control. When de Blasio tried to stop Eva Moskowitz from spreading her corporate-backed charters, Andy went and passed some law saying if he wouldn't colocate them he had to pay for them anyway. Cuomo then became a big hero, appearing at the atrocious Albany rally to which Eva dragged all her little pawn/ students. I can't help but recall what UFT leadership did to block this, which was absolutely nothing. I also can't help but recall a very highly-placed source in NYSUT who assured me my union president approved of this.

So here's my real question--aside from the power over charter schools, which de Blasio doesn't have anymore, and the power to close schools and shuffle kids, making it appear something is happening when that is not the case, there are certain perks the mayor gets under mayoral control. One is the abomination called the PEP, the fake Board of Education that allows communities to get up and comment and then does whatever the hell the mayor wants. I'm not precisely sure why anyone who believed in democracy rather than dictatorship would want such a thing, but there you have it.

Cuomo appears to be doing the right thing here, but that's surely only because he has no understanding of the implications. If his reformy BFFs take Gracie Mansion again, they'll have to renew it just like he whose name should not be spoken. Of course, if even UFT will not oppose this awful idea, it won't much matter anyway. 

With Cuomo in place, mayoral control is only effective with a mayor like Bloomberg, who believes in Eva Moskowitz more than life itself. Cuomo has shown himself perfectly willing to block anything resembling sanity in mayoral control. So while there may be some marginal temporary benefit, somewhere, for Bill de Blasio in not having to renew mayoral control, in the long-run, it's a disaster for democracy, for New York City, and for 1.1 million schoolchildren.

And in the end, for this mayor, it's only as much control as Emperor Andy wishes to relinquish, with deep pocketed Moskowitz BFFs having a veto over absolutely everything. Say it ain't so, Bill.  Give power back to the communities that make up our public schools.

UFT Leadership Pays Valuable Lip Service to Class Size

The United Federation of Teachers leadership has come up with a brilliant plan. Let's tax the absentee landlords to come up with money to fund class size reductions. All we need is the support of Governor 1% and the newly elected GOP majority.

The fact that they vehemently oppose all those things should be no problem whatsoever. So what if Andy Cuomo takes a "principled stand" against taxing millionaires and has the audacity to compare it to his father's opposition to the death penalty? Anyway, once we overcome that minor obstacle,  in a number of years, maybe we'll have lower class sizes.

It may seem like a great idea to do this via legislation, but all legislation will mean is there will be money, maybe. That hasn't always worked as planned in our state. There was supposed to be money via the CFE lawsuit, but it was delayed for years and we're still waiting on money. I suppose UFT leadership looks fairly caring when they make a big public demand for smaller class sizes. I certainly support them, as do most people who actually care about the education of our children.

But the fact is the only instrument that controls class size is the UFT Contract. Recently, UFT has failed to show any particular fervor over enforcing existing limits. That is really disturbing, and makes me doubt the sincerity of this very public call. In fact, even disregarding the sloppy enforcement of current class size limits, the fact is that UFT has done absolutely nothing to improve class size since I started teaching in 1984. That's quite a record.

UFT will endorse mayoral control, even after it's demonstrated to be an abject disaster, but won't raise a peep about reducing contractual class size. UFT will support charter schools, start and colocate its own charter schools, endorsing the barbaric process of displacing public schools, but won't lift a finger to reduce class size. UFT will fall for merit pay schemes, drastic reduction of seniority rights, degredation of tenure, two-tier due process, dumping staff of entire schools, but won't fight even a relatively not insane mayor for class size.

For the thirty years I've been teaching, UFT has done nothing to reduce class size. Nada. Zip. Diddly squat. Now they wish to appear to care. Don't be fooled.

Decades of evidence suggest UFT leadership doesn't give a fiddler's fart about how many kids are in your classroom. Don't even think about how many kids are in your school, or how many schools are in your building. Last spring when Andy and Eva undermined the democratically elected Mayor of NYC to force him to pay for Moskowitz Academies, UFT leadership said little and did nothing. A very highly placed NYSUT source told me Mulgrew supported this move. While I can't prove that, it's crystal clear he did nothing to oppose it.

It's a nice sound byte for UFT leadership. But if they really cared about class sizes, it would be part of contract negotiations, which has not been the case in decades. 

When a Reformy Governor Takes Control of Mayoral Control

 by special guest blogger Harris Lirtzman

       If you picked “321” a few days ago, get to your local deli for your $500.  You won.

        But, unfortunately, someone else lost because that’s the number of days it took for Andrew Cuomo effectively to take “control” of the City’s schools out of the hands of our current mayor.  Of course, Mayor de Blasio technically still “controls” the schools until June 30, 2015 but now he does so in name only. 

Last spring, our new mayor ran into a buzz-saw named Andrew Cuomo on a number of education policy issues.  During his campaign for mayor, de Blasio advocated a tax on high income earners to fund his plan for universal pre-K in the City.  Governor Cuomo disagreed.  The mayor put a large pile of chips that he’d earned in his sweeping victory on his proposal.  Andrew Cuomo picked up the chips and announced that he would provide funding for pre-K programs around the state through the State budget process. 

Andrew Cuomo is a man who doesn’t step back from a fight. A few weeks later, our mayor put a few more of his chips down on a plan that gave the go ahead for the expansion of a raft of charter schools previously approved by Mayor Bloomberg, but blocked the co-location in over-crowded public schools of three Success Academy schools run by the formidable Eva Moskowitz.  Moskowitz closed her schools for a day and bused thousands of her students and their parents to Albany for a rally that was billed as a field trip to observe how State government operates.  Governor Cuomo announced at the Moskowitz rally that he disagreed with the mayor, pledged his firm support for charter schools and picked up the pile of chips the mayor had put down. 

Andrew Cuomo is a man who means what he says. Just before the last election he announced that the public school system in New York State “was one of the only remaining public monopolies” and that he would break it.  Andrew Cuomo is an impatient man with both eyes firmly planted on his legacy.  Just after the election, he announced “What I will have thus far: marriage quality, gun safety, on a different level pension reform, fiscal reform and education reform, teacher evaluation, performance,” Cuomo said. “These things are profound changes that 50 years from now will have made a significant difference in this state.”  

Andrew Cuomo is a man who likes putting chips that belong to other politicians into his own pocket. Last week, Cuomo’s Education Commissioner, John King, demanded that the City provide a plan for remediating 94 low-performing city schools.  A few days later, the Mayor found a few more chips behind the sofa cushion in his office and announced to much fanfare a “School Renewal Program” that was hailed as a repudiation of the school-closing policies of the Bloomberg era and the beginning of a new approach that would turn troubled schools into community schools with “wraparound” social services provided by local organizations.  Teachers at schools in the “Renewal” program would be required to reapply for their jobs as part of an agreement worked out with the United Federation of Teachers that puts teachers displaced from any of those schools into a gray middle zone between assigned teacher and ATR. 

But that wasn’t enough for Andrew Cuomo because the legacy he wants people to associate with him fifty years from now is breaking the “public education monopoly” and the teachers union that has been desperately placating him since 2010.  On Monday, Andrew Cuomo began to execute his plan.  He had Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, announce that the part of the mayor’s “Renewal” plan that involved teachers didn’t go far enough.  She said, “From the state’s perspective, if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring, we will move to close them….It depends upon what they do with the money... There needs to be the capacity to manage how and where we place our teachers….You gotta give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

        No one thinks that Boys and Girls High School and the 93 other schools in the “Renewal” cohort work well or that every teacher who teaches in one is a genius.  But the new principal at Boys and Girls was given a $25,000 bonus to take on the job for one year, with an option to return to the “school where his heart is,” while working one day a week at his old school.  That new principal immediately began to do what every principal has done for twelve years: he started to pick his own students in order to “goose” his numbers by forcing those with low credit accumulation, including the president of the junior class, to transfer out of the school.  

But what Andrew Cuomo really cares about is breaking the union that provides the monopolist teachers who staff the last great monopoly.  He wants to close those 94 schools in six months just as schools have been closed for the last twelve years rather than support them with the extra resources and services that the mayor wants to give them.  The problem with those schools is not principals who don’t want to run them or a long-standing lack of support for some of the most disempowered communities in the City.  Once again, it is those monopolist teachers who are to blame. 

Andrew Cuomo wants to make sure that the progressive mayor of New York City and its teachers union can’t “control” the schools that rightfully belong to the investment bankers and charter companies that funded Cuomo’s reelection campaign.  And the truly wonderful thing for Andrew Cuomo is that he doesn’t have to do something messy like change the law that provides for mayoral control of the City’s schools.  He can just take effective control out of the hands of this mayor by fiat through his complacent Board of Regents while reserving the right to give back control to some other mayor who looks more like the City’s last mayor.

Mr. de Blasio, we hope you enjoyed your time “controlling” the City’s schools. But the next time you walk into Tweed to meet with “your” Chancellor be sure to bring an ID card.  You’ll be asked for one.  As for those last few chips you still have, hold onto them tightly and use them for something you really do control, like the Parks Department.

You Don't Need the Amazing Kreskin to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

A lot of people are upset about paying union dues. After all, it's a thousand bucks a year or so, your roof needs fixing, and that could make for a hell of a night out. And there are legitimate complaints. For one thing, I'm paying NYSUT and AFT to represent me, but in fact they do not. I represent the largest school in Queens and we get no voice at all. In fact, the only way I could get us a voice would be to sign an odious loyalty oath promising to support whatever I'm told, and if I did that we still wouldn't have a voice.

NYSUT put up a poll asking what we'd like from them. I told them I'd like democracy. My union brothers and sisters from PJSTA essentially said the same thing, but in far greater detail. After all, their locals can't pick who they'd like to represent them because of the UFT's massively huge rubber stamp. UFT-installed President Magee and her newly double-pensioned pals know if they support local representation they'll get booted out just like their predecessors. If it's a choice between democracy and going back to that classroom, we can guess pretty accurately where they're headed.

And yet there is a necessity for union. Though ours is inept, falling for one reformy thing after another, though they've watered down our Contract time after time to save their ridiculous seat at the table, it still protects people, and we still can have a voice where we work. Just about any day I'd rather be union than depend on the tender mercies of Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, and their merry band of fanatical ideologues.

So when I see things like this on Facebook, I know what they really are. How could the union use my money for politics? In fact, it's the union's job to try to influence politics. Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts. Our union, of course, does a terrible job, picking Thompson four years too late, after he demonstrated his utter lack of conviction by telling the Daily News editorial board that the city couldn't afford to give teachers they raise everyone else got. And in the end, by delaying the raise ten years, the crack negotiators of UFT managedto make sure we didn't get it. They sold out our brother and sister teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, managing to give back without even getting an equitable contract. As if that weren't enough, they managed to dump the worst pattern in my living memory on every city union. Anyone remember how we felt about DC37 when they dumped the zeroes on us? I do.

What the article is pushing, and it's not at all subtle about it, is right to work, and in California no less. This is a system in which you pay union dues only if you feel like it. While those who push it will tell you it's about your individual freedom, it's really about decimating union so they can do whatever to you and your brother and sister unionists, along with the non-unionists who want representation without paying for it. They don't like all those stinking rules, and would just as soon fire you over a whim as look at you. But some people will be fooled.

Now me, I still pay into COPE, even though I have grave reservations over what the UFT machine does with my money. And I'd probably continue to pay dues even if they became optional for as long as the union could hold out. But that would likely not be very long. UFT members are not like CTU members, and won't hit the streets en masse to support a union President who wants to punch us in the face and push us in the dirt if we touch his Common Core. Few are inspired by people more interested in free trips or patronage gis than doing their jobs, and there are all too many such people.

Since the UFT has enabled mayoral control, since it's enabled junk science and two-tier due process, since it sat silently while almost every comprehensive high school was closed, since it did nothing when Cuomo and Eva Moskowitz betrayed mayoral control under de Blasio it hasn't got a whole lot of street cred with the reformies. That's why they're coming full speed ahead after tenure. 

And don't fool yourself. They'll push right to work in NY in a New York minute. It would be nice for UFT and NYSUT if the most active members in the city and state would stand with them and support them. But it's a two-way street and our leader is not Karen Lewis, but rather a guy who will punch us in the face if we fail to support his favored corporate reforms.

This notwithstanding, it would be smart politics if they simply stopped building brick walls around activists moved by conscience rather than perks. People looking for free trips will not inspire the membership, dispirited and discouraged from decades of nonsense from these very cynical hangers-on.

Are our leaders so juvenile they cannot bear to entertain opinions that vary from their own? Do they really need to conceal themselves inside some massive echo chamber in which their notions are never challenged or even openly discussed? I find when you listen to others, you sometimes learn they're right, adjust your opinion accordingly, and do better.

Look where the echo chamber has gotten us. You don't need to consult the tarot cards to see where it's headed.

The Myth of the Myth of the Blogger Beast

As the UFT lines up its delegates to march in uniform rows to all vote the Unity line at the AFT convention in Los Angeles, I am sorry to say you probably won't see many Blogger Beasts present.

Yet, amid the foul stenches emitted by modern-day educational "reform," there lurk in cavernous depths, close to the unbearable heat of the Common Core, strange breeds of creatures known to Michael Mulgrew simply as mythological ed. bloggers.

According to Mr. Mulgrew, these Blogger Beasts traffic in myth.  They are not to be trusted.  It is better that you self-censor yourself and never dare to visit their dens, such as this one, or any of those in the right-hand margin of this web page, lest the foundations of your worldview begin to shake.

Blogger Beasts sometimes spew forth venom.  They even question policies supported by the Union, for example:

1.  the "myth" of increasing retiree votes at the expense of drowning out the voices of the active rank and file.

2.  the "myth" of mayoral control of education for the best interests of all

3.  the "myth" that Unity members are discouraged from blogging or from reading most ed. blogs

4.  the "myth" of a loyalty oath tied to powerful purse strings

5.  the "myth" of a million buckaroos accepted from Eli Broad for its UFT charter school and then the pairing with Steve Barr of Green-Dot schools and parent-trigger-law fame

6.  the "myth" of gumming up the works for teachers as well as administrators by supporting 22 domains of evaluation

7.  the AFT "myth" of fighting corporate reformers while accepting millions from them

8.  the AFT-UFT "myth" of supporting anti-Teacher, anti-Union politicians like Malloy in Connecticut and Cuomo in N.Y. state

9.  the "myth" of striking at the heart of solidarity and tenure by accepting a second-tier status of due-process for ATRs

10.  the "myth" of listening to its concerned members, parents and even its own delegates, before pushing its own sometimes sub-par policies along as the best that we can do--or, go to the back of the line, # 151

How will you know a Blogger Beast if you see one?  Good question.

These Blogger Beasts, come in many sizes, shapes and forms, but all hail from a breed which works tirelessly, without recompense to promote the interests of public-school children.  They refuse to take "mythological" loyalty oaths or to vote against the desires of their constituency or of their conscience (because they actually take time to consider the issues and discuss them with their colleagues and people who comment at their sites).  And, as is fitting in the best democracies, whether Blogger Beasts have wings, clawed feet, or five or more heads, they will always refuse when told to raise them reflex style.  

They Need to LIKE Us

There is this pernicious philosophy that runs from the top of the AFT all the way down to the deep thinkers at Revive NYSUT.  This philosophy has really flourished right here in our own UFT, where in 2005 we decimated seniority privileges and enabled a mayoral school-closing spree.We need to get a seat at the table. Otherwise they won't like us.

Now, of course, when NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi declares the IDC a detriment to progress, Revive ringleader Andy Pallotta detects "nothing negative" in their relationship with teachers. Who cares if they push bills that enable and promote charters at the expense of our public schools, our public school children, and our union members?

We have to make nice. Then, maybe we can get invited to some gala luncheon after they take yet another step toward decimating union. And besides, if we don't support them, maybe they won't like us.

Diane Ravitch says mayoral control is a tool so folks like Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walmart family can do whatever they wish. We've just lived through a decade of mayoral control. We've been to school closing hearings. We've stood with entire communities, people who spoke passionately about their schools. We watched Joel Klein and his minions play with their blackberries and ignore us. We watched almost every comprehensive high school disappear to be replaced by charters and little academies, often as not with no union presence.

But we got our seat at the table. So, when mayoral control came up for renewal, we pushed for changes, failed to get them, and then supported it again anyway.

Should we make nice with IDC so Rochester and Yonkers can experience the wonders of mayoral control? If we give it to them, maybe they'll like us.

Let's invite Bill Gates to the AFT convention. So what if he turns around and condemns teacher pensions? So what if he starts a small school initiative, later admits it doesn't work, but we're still saddled with a bunch of small schools, likely as not basket weaving academies with no basket weavers. It's the thought that counts.

Hey, let's participate in Bill Gates MET, measures of effective teaching. Then he can turn around and tell Arne Duncan to impose junk science on the entire country. When the abysmal and invalid results are out, Bill can write a column in the NY Times to deflect the blame.

But we have a seat at the table. And he likes us. Several times he's appeared with Randi Weingarten, and he never pushed her down the stairs or anything, at least not literally, so he must be a great guy! (Of course he pushed a film that made her look like the antichrist, but that's just a little harmless fun between friends.)

Let's get a seat at the table with Andrew Cuomo. We'll be good guys and sit out the endorsement. That way AFL-CIO can endorse him, since we didn't vote no.

So what if Governor Cuomo imposes a crushing GEA that means less money for our kids?

So what if he concurrently imposes a tax cap that makes it impossible to compensate for the GEA? So what if NO votes to kids count more than YES votes in NY State?

We have a seat at the table. And he likes us.

Here's the truth--Bill Gates is not an education expert. We are education experts.

Andrew Cuomo is not a student lobbyist. We are student lobbyists.

And they don't need to like us. They need to respect us, our students, and their parents.

And they will never do that as long as we grant them unconditional support even us they fight us and everything we stand for.

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.

Why Confuse Union Leadership with Mary Poppins?

Is union leadership practically perfect in every way? Why would anyone even contend they were?

It's the loyalty oath, of course.

Still, how can you be a thoroughly effective advocate when you're sworn to express no opinions but those you're told to have? What if those opinions are not in the best interests of those you represent? And how many members even know that the union is ruled by an invitation-only group that whose meetings are top-secret, a group which half a century ago expelled members for opposing the Vietnam War?

Sometimes I grow weary of nonsense. Often, in fact. A commenter here has made several false statements in response to posts here. Most recently, this commenter asserted that the new evaluation system did not affect due process at all. That's not true.

The primary reason that's not true is that teachers facing 3020a, up until now, have had the burden of proof on the city. That is, the city was required to prove their incompetence. Now, if a "validator" agrees with the city, that teachers will have to prove either their competence, or lack of incompetence. That's going to be tough.

While it's true that U-rating appeals have been basically a rubber stamp for the city, the new agreement provides that up to 13% of negative ratings will go to an independent arbitrator. While I cannot predict how the de Blasio administration will deal with such ratings, and while I certainly hope they will be more reasonable than the fanatical ideologues Bloomberg put in place, I wouldn't wish to be the one who tells 87% of teachers facing high-stakes ratings how sorry I was. Nor do I see the equity in promising fairness to only 13% of people in trouble.

In case that's not enough, the history of jointly-appointed independent arbitrators has been one of compromise, so it's likely only half of the lucky 13% will prevail. Should that be the case, the UFT rationale that about 13% of cases prevailed in the past will prove not to be a good one.

I'm always amazed to hear UFT leadership criticize Bloomberg for top-down decision making, precisely what it practices. In fact, our leadership has supported mayoral control, junk science VAM rating for teachers, Common Core, high-stakes testing, and a contract that eviscerated many hard-won victories. We've embraced a highly-flawed reformy agenda.

We endorsed a mayoral candidate who publicly opposed raises for teachers, even though other unions got them. UFT worked feverishly to get Bill Thompson elected, but with de Blasio surging, I declined to participate. When the UFT came to its senses, after a chapter leader meeting I was the only one who went and made calls for de Blasio. With me were two members from my school, and we represented 50% of the phone bank.

I don't have anything against anyone who chooses to join Unity, and I'm friends with a lot of Unity members. As in any group, some are wonderful, while others are not so wonderful. Regardless, I take exception when people lie, as a commenter did when he claimed there was no loyalty oath. I happen to have a copy of the Unity application. It says, exactly, that the applicant promises:

• To express criticism of caucus policies within the Caucus;
  
• To support the decisions of Caucus / Union leadership in public or Union forums;
  
• To support in Union elections only those individuals who are endorsed by the Caucus, and to actively campaign for his / her election;
  
• To run for Union office only with the support of the caucus;
  
• To serve, if elected to Union office, in a manner consistent with Union / Caucus policies
  and to give full and faithful service in that office;
  

Personally, I'm hard-pressed to see how that allows for public dissent with Unity policy. Comments here are open, and Unity members are welcome to say what they wish.

But it's utter nonsense to dispute the loyalty pledge, and independent thought is not precisely what those clauses encourage. It's hard for me to understand how union activism is stoked by policies like these. And it's particularly hard to understand how placing brick walls around dissenting factions aids union democracy, the union itself, or working teachers (86% of whom don't deem it worth their time to even vote in union elections).

It's particularly hard to understand when people like Diane Ravitch (and me) are proven right, as in Bill de Blasio, mayoral control, VAM, Common Core, and everything else that we've been on the wrong side of.

How to Get a Voice in the UFT

While I face dozens of complaints about the new paradigm of endless observations, incessant testing, and listening to King and Silent Merryl recite that they understand, they really understand, but are prepared to do nothing, I continually wonder what the UFT is doing about it.

Here's what I know for sure:

1. We support Common Core.
2. We support the rating of teachers via junk science VAM.
3. We support endless observations.
4. We'd like them to kind of slow down a bit, and hope it becomes marginally less awful under Bill de Blasio.

This is not inspiring to my colleagues or me. Yesterday I was speaking to a supervisor about the Wednesday night rally in Mineola. She asked me why I don't get more involved in the central union. That was actually the most interesting question anyone had asked me for a while.

There are only a few ways to be involved in the union. You can be independent, like I am, and blog, and write for anyone that will publish you, shout from the rooftops, and hope for the best. You can even stand for chapter leader. But once people realize you aren't Unity, you can't get recognized in the DA. If you're called on by mistake, you may perhaps inspire some hilarious joke. A few months ago I saw a guy who questioned the Thompson endorsement being told he didn't believe in democracy.

The other way is to join the Unity Caucus. Then, you can go to conventions, get the coveted decoder ring, and learn the secret handshake. You can go to their meetings, you can wear a fez or do whatever it is they do. Nobody much knows what that is, since they're not talking and most members don't even realize they exist. To join Unity, you pledge that you will support all Unity positions in public. In effect, once you get in, you aren't allowed to express your own opinions in public, unless they happily coincide with those of the caucus.

Can you imagine being a chapter leader and having to support Common Core, VAM, mayoral control and endless observations? I'd hide in the basement if I were sworn to do that. Though there's an NEA poll suggesting that teachers overwhelmingly support Common Core, they clearly didn't ask any teachers in my building. I do not know a single one who supports it. Not one. And I'm seeing parents of young children, people who never gave a crap about union activity whatsoever,  furious about it. They tell me mostly about articles I've already read, but now they're telling me bearded karate guy/ troglodyte Chuck Norris is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. I'm really relieved my kid is now a senior (and yes, in a public high school).

I realize that a majority of the 14% of working teachers who bothered to vote selected the Unity Caucus. I realize that the retirees, who shouldn't be voting for anything but retiree matters, love it when they come down to Florida and give them free lunch.

But getting a voice in the UFT is a tough thing. Either shout from the rooftops until you're hoarse, or join the cabal, go to a few conventions, and shut the hell up.

It's Catch 22. The best catch there is.

Mulgrew Asks for Changes He Claimed We Already Achieved in 2009

I was a little confused by a quote from Unity-New Action presidential candidate Michael Mulgrew. Mulgrew says he does not want to go back to the school board system:

Instead, he said, the union just wants checks and balances on the mayor’s power. In other cities with mayoral control, he said, “Everybody else figured out you needed checks and balances.”

In fact, I'm more than a little confused by that. That's because in 2009, I distinctly recall reading his statement that mayoral control had already achieved that.

We are pleased that the New York State Senate has passed legislation on school governance. The passage of the Senate bill will ensure that the checks and balances that we applauded in the Assembly bill will now be included in the law.

Curiouser and curiouser. If we already had checks and balances, why do we now need to call for checks and balances? In other stories, Mulgrew refers to mayoral control as mayoral dictatorship. Of course that's correct. But there are those of us who were well aware of it, and saying so publicly in 2009.

So why has it taken Unity-New Action four more years and scores of additional school closures to figure that out? And why is our union leadership so intent on building brick walls to fortify themselves against working UFT teachers who take the time to think these things through?

Could it be because they live in an echo chamber and systematically shut out any and all voices that seriously question them? Do they feel paying lip service to this notion during campaign season will make us all forget the UFT supported mayoral dictatorship not once, but twice?

To Know or Not to Know?

Mayor Bloomberg is a stalwart supporter of "value-added" scores being released to the public. After all parents need to have this information. The fact that it is thoroughly unreliable, with margins of error so wide you could drive tanks through them is of no importance whatsoever. They need to know!

However, there are also things they don't need to know. For example, they don't need to know how many trailers are being used in Fun City. After all, in 2005 there were 400 of them, and Mayor Bloomberg declared we'd be rid of them by 2012. Now, in 2012, there are 400 of them, and it's fairly clear by any standard just how much value Mayor4Life has added. However, if the city stops releasing information, no one will know about this anymore, and it will no longer be a problem.

The other thing, of course, that no one needs to know, is the status of class sizes. After all, it's kind of embarrassing when you take a billion dollars to reduce class sizes and they just go up year after year. Of course, when you allow ten thousand teachers to retire and fail to replace them, it's more or less inevitable. So once you stop releasing that information, no one knows about it, and the problem is solved.

Now sure, there are those rabble-rousers who complain, oh, the press is sending reporters and camera crews to the homes of teachers with poor ratings, they're being publicly humiliated over the crackpot science you negotiated for them, and they're afraid to leave their homes to go to work. Well, let them get out and become Mayor if they want to change things! Didn't Mayor Bloomberg buy this office fair and square, more than once? Didn't he change the damn law the idiot voters twice affirmed so he could buy it a third time? Let them go out and establish a school board that listens to no one but them, if they're so damn touchy!

The public has a right to know whatever Mayor Bloomberg says they have a right to know! That's how we do things in Mayor Bloomberg's New York!

Was It Worth It, and Did We Even Get It?

 by special guest blogger Michael Fiorillo


In recent years UFT members have repeatedly been told how good we have it, how effective the union has been, and how generous the city has been with us. The Mayor, the Chancellor and the UFT /Unity leadership rarely lose an opportunity to remind us how many resources  have been directed to the schools under mayoral control.  In fact, when asked why the union agreed to mayoral control of the schools in 2002, both Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew  say that it was done to bring more funding. In particular, they never miss an opportunity to tell us how we’ve been showered with money. In the September 6^th, 2007 edition of the New York Teacher, Randi Weingarten wrote in regard to the recently agreed-to contract, “These raises will bring the  total base salary increase since 2002 to at least 43 percent.”

That’s the phrase we keep hearing over and over from the Mayor , the Chancellor,  the UFT/Unity leadership and their official stenographers in the mainstream media : 43% since 2002!

Leaving aside  the  strong hint of extortion that  hovers  behind this (“Give me dictatorial control or we’ll continue to  starve the schools you work in or give you a new contract”), are these numbers even true?

In fact, the mighty 43%  is a fiction that serves the propaganda interests of both the Bloomberg/Klein regime and the UFT /Unity leadership. Here’s why it’s false:

-       Tweed and the Unity leadership both date the start of our raises with the 2002  contract. While technically true, they conveniently ignore the fact that teachers were working without a contract for the previous two years, and had not received a raise since 1999. Thus, our increases should be computed over an eleven, not eight, year period.  This effectively reduces the percentage.

-       Additionally, part of those increases was paid for with additional time, which      

makes it an exchange of time for money, not a bona fide raise. A pay

raise is more money for the same amount of work (unless, of course, you work at City Hall, Tweed or 52 Broadway). Approximately eight percent

of the so-called 43% was a time-for-money swap: thirty minutes

added to the length of the school day, and the two days before Labor Day (one of

which has been pushed to the end of the school year, the other paid for with a

reduction in the interest paid by the TDA Guaranteed plan).

-       According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics , the Consumer Price Index for

The NY Metropolitan Area between 2000 and 2010  showed a decline in purchasing power of 25%. . Also keep in mind that the CPI understates inflation by leaving out food and energy costs.

So, our increases should be measured over eleven, not eight , years, should account for the extra time we are working, as well as the effects of inflation.  An honest accounting would show  real average increases of 3.6% (rounded up) instead to of the officially touted 5.4%.

Now, while that 3.6% average gain is far better than most people have seen in this era of attacks on wages and living standards, keep in mind what else we’ve given up and been subjected to: loss of seniority transfers and the emergence of  the career-destroying ATR pool, loss of the right to grieve letters  in our personnel files, union acceptance of merit pay,  an explosion in the number  of teachers placed in the rubber rooms,  rampant school closings , charter invasions, UFT/Unity passivity in the overriding of term limits,  Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew’s unilateral support for extending  mayoral dictatorship of the schools (in clear contradiction of the recommendations of their very own governance committee), and a de facto endorsement of Bloomberg’s purchasing a third term.

So to answer the question posed by the title: no, it wasn’t worth it, and we didn’t even get it.