How's That Raise Looking Now?

Randi Weingarten likes to brag that she has won substantial raises for New York City public school teachers over the last few years that have raised teacher salaries by 40% between 2002 and 2008.

To my mind, it's NOT a raise when you have to work extra time and extra days while giving up work protections like grievance and seniority transfer rights to get more money.

To my mind, that's increased compensation for an increased workload with a decrease in work protections.

In any case, it is true that Weingarten has gotten pretty big increases salaries for UFT members in the last few years compared to pre-2002. But even as my salary has increased (along with my workload), I've noticed that my standard of living hasn't.

Reading today's NY Daily News, I think I've figured out why - my increased compensation from Mayor Moneybags for teaching in the New York City public school system has barely kept pace with price increases since 2002.

An MTA Metrocard is 41% higher now than in 2002.

The average homeowners' heating bill is 90% higher now than in 2002.

A gallon of milk cost less than $3 in 2002. Now it costs $4 - a 33% increase.

The cost of bread, soybean products and corn have also risen dramatically in the last five years.

Health care costs? My allergy medicine has increased 200% a month, visits to the allergist have gone up 50%.

Housing costs? Well, you know how high the price of real estate has gone in the last five years. While home prices have fallen 5.3% nation-wide in the last half year or so, they are still on the rise here in New York City. With a low dollar helping foreigners buy real estate in New York at steep discounts, that trend doesn't seem like it will end in the near-term.

The cost of rent? Also on the rise and with apartment availability near all-time lows, not expected to decrease any time soon. My own rent has gone from $1850 to $2400 a month between 2004 and 2007.

How about college costs? CUNY tuition has risen from $3200 a year to $4000 a year.

According to the Daily News, the consumer price index (CPI) for the New York City area has risen 18.5% between 2002 and 2007, and that's not including health care costs. With oil near $95 a barrel and gas well over $3 a gallon, price inflation will only be accelerating in coming months. Bloomberg News reports that the U.S. government bond market is showing increasing anxiety that the plummeting value of the dollar will result in runaway inflation:

The combination of the currency's 31 percent decline during George W. Bush's presidency, oil prices near a record high and interest rates at a four-year low have convinced investors that consumer prices are poised to accelerate. While all Treasuries have gained during the worst U.S. housing market since 1991, none have done better than Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.

When investors start putting their money into inflation-protected bonds, you can be sure they don't believe the Federal Reserve chairman when he says inflation pressures are in check.

With the increase in food, energy, housing, education and health care costs that I have "enjoyed" over the past few years, neither do I.

Which brings me back to Weingarten and those "raises" she has won for me over the last few years.

When I think about the generous 2% "raise" Randi Weingarten won for me this year and the 5% "raise" she won for me next year (along with the change in language in the contract that allows Randi and the mayor to negotiate health care "cost containment initiatives") and I think about all the extra work I have to do as a result of previous contracts, I get pretty irritated.

Add that irritation to the fact that all the extra work I have to do and all the extra money I get for that extra work really amounts to nothing after inflation and I get mad as hell.

Basically, I am working longer and harder to make less money. Plus Randi and Company have set the pattern that anytime New York City teachers want a COLA, they have to concede something like days, time, or work protections.

How about the rest of you? Are you mad as hell too?

Thanks, But No Thanks

New York City stagehands went on strike over the weekend, joining TV screenwriters in work stoppages that have brought Hollywood and the New York TV and theater worlds to a screeching halt.

The NY Times reports that Mayor Bloomberg - himself a hard-nosed contract negotiator and a noted union-buster - offered to help "moderate" the stagehand strike:

At the Veterans Day parade yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters he had offered to provide a moderator as well as a neutral venue to continue the talks, as he did during the musicians’ strike in 2003.

“It is a private dispute,” the mayor said, “and they have to, in the end, work it out. We can’t tell them what to do, but we can make sure that we give them every opportunity.”

The president of Local 1, the stagehands' union, James J. Claffey, told the Times he continues to decline the mayor's generous offer to moderate the dispute and provide a setting for negotiations.

Might that be because the mayor has taken every city union to the cleaners over the past six years in contract negotiations, forcing work rule changes and additional concessions from union members for "raises" that often have amounted to less than a cost of living adjustment?

I dunno what Claffey's thinking is on this point, but as a fellow union-member who has watched my work day, work year and work load increase while my standard of living has fallen, I say it's best not to take any chances.

Tell Mayor Moneybags to go scratch and bang out a deal without his help.

The Calling

Batya at Shiloh Musings writes about whether teaching is "a calling" and she's published a more extensive analysis as an op-ed right here. She claims it isn't actually a calling, but a profession.

While I agree with her overall sentiments, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Teachers in Israel, where Batya works, are embroiled in a strike movement. Batya (in striking contrast to UFT leadership) doesn't see giving management the moon and the stars as a viable option.

The problem, I think, is some who label teaching a "calling" feel that it therefore precludes consideration of salary and working conditions. Teachers who want more money are routinely reviled in the tabloids here, and perhaps Israeli papers are not much different. Still, we have to buy food for our kids and mend their tattered little clothes somehow. We're not ascetics, and we haven't taken vows of poverty.

Our jobs are important, and we touch a lot of young lives. We don't want to strike. But we're taken for granted in the city, and all our union knows how to do is give back and give back more (without even demanding cost of living in return).

Maybe teaching is a calling. Maybe it isn't. But our kids will be stuck with the world we leave them, and raising the standard for working people is the very least we can do, calling or no. Should we leave them a world in which oppressive employers like Green Dot can pretend their sham labor organizations are unions, or should we demand better?

Teaching may be a calling, and it may be a job. It's probably a combination of both. But it's a short-sighted teacher who doesn't understand that better working conditions and fair salaries benefit both us and our kids.

Sucking In The Seventies Redux

Awhile back I posted on my blog that it was starting to feel like the 70's all over again.

With oil near a $100 a barrel, with gold near $850 an ounce, with the dollar at all-time lows, with inflation increasing and economic growth slowing, with the U.S. fighting two foreign wars on credit and with America's reputation abroad falling dramatically, it really does feel like the Ford/Carter/Beame/Koch era all over again.

It's the little stories that add to my feeling that the 70's have come back.

Remember the Rolling Stones song "Shattered" from the 1978 Miss You album?

That song seemed to crystallize the feeling that American society was completely unraveling and nobody could do anything about it:

All this chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter bout
Shmatta, shmatta, shmatta -- I can't give it away on 7th avenue
This towns been wearing tatters (shattered, shattered)
Work and work for love and sex
Ain't you hungry for success, success, success, success
Does it matter? (shattered) does it matter?
I'm shattered.
Shattered

Ahhh, look at me, I'm a shattered
I'm a shattered
Look at me- I'm a shattered, yeah

Pride and joy and greed and sex
Thats what makes our town the best
Pride and joy and dirty dreams and still surviving on the street
And look at me, I'm in tatters, yeah
Ive been battered, what does it matter
Does it matter, uh-huh
Does it matter, uh-huh, I'm a shattered

Don't you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this towns in tatters Ive been shattered
My brains been battered, splattered all over Manhattan

Uh-huh, this towns full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the big apple, don't mind the maggots, huh
Shadoobie, my brains been battered
My friends they come around they
Flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter
Pile it up, pile it high on the platter.

So here we are in 2007 and the crime rate is going up across the country because the Bush administration has taken resources away from crime fighting and put them into anti-terrorism efforts.

A bridge fell in Minneapolis because the government failed to take proper care of it. Infrastructure across the country is falling apart, but many politicians talk tax cuts and privatized roads and bridges rather than developing real plans to fix infrastructure problems.

Here in New York, the MTA has decided to spend billions to expand the 7 train eight blocks and three avenues to help out Mayor Bloomberg's billionaire real estate buddies build up the Far West Side. Meanwhile, the subway system shuts down every time we get a heavy rain and the MTA says they have to raise a round-trip fare to $5.

Steam pipes explode in New York City, burning pedestrians and showering Midtown Manhattan with asbestos. The Con Edison CEO shrugs his shoulders and says it's the city's fault that his company's pipes explode.

Large swaths of California burned last month and some areas of the state couldn't effectively fight the fires because they had cut funds from emergency services like fire fighting.

On the economic front, food, health care, education and energy prices are through the roof while wages aren't keeping up with headline inflation.

Wall Street has been plagued by wild bouts of turbulence - the Dow goes up 200 points one day, then falls 350 the next. One day earlier this year, the Dow fell 500+ points in a couple of minutes.

Banks are writing down billions of dollars from their balance sheets as a result of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. More write-downs are expected to come.

Real estate values, wildly inflated over the last few years, are falling across most areas of the country. So far, real estate values have fallen 5.3% from the high reached in June of 2006. Values are expected to fall another 5%-15% in the next couple of years. Meanwhile home foreclosures are increasing as billions of dollars in sub-prime and Alt-A adjustable rate mortgages reset to higher rates.

Facing lower tax revenues, Mayor Bloomberg has announced 1.5% cuts at city agencies this year, 5% cuts for next. Can lay-offs be far behind if the economy falls into recession next year?

Strikes abound these days. GM workers were on strike for awhile, taxi cab drivers keep walking out every month. Striking screenwriters have shut down series and live TV shows. Striking stagehands have shut down most of Broadway.

Instead of bedbugs, we have staph infections killing kids in NYC public schools.

While the prime rate isn't going up, up, up, many financial analysts expect the Federal Reserve will have to reverse course and raise interest rates by the middle of next year.

Even Alan Greenspan, that most bubblicious of bubble-makers, has warned that inflation is going to be a huge problem in the next thirty years and said he expects the Federal Reserve will have to raise interest rates to double digits to deal with the problem.

You heard that right - Greenspan thinks double digit interest rates will be needed very soon to deal with inflation problems.

With even Greenspan calling for sane fiscal policy to burst his self-created bubbles, doesn't it feel like the 70's all over again?

I think it does.

Shadoobie doobie doo.

Accountability Is for the Little People

The NY Times editorial board today took a stand directly opposing the simplistic A-F grading system embraced by Bloomberg and Klein:

...Bloomberg should ditch the simplistic and counterproductive A through F rating system. It boils down the entire shooting match to a single letter grade that does not convey the full weight of this approach and lends itself to tabloid headlines instead of a real look at a school’s problems.

I couldn't agree more. I'd say, though, the "tabloid headline approach" is precisely what's worked for this mayor in the past. Few, if any, of his "reforms" would pass muster if they were examined closely (as they often are by that pesky Diane Ravitch).

In fact, few observers look very deeply, which is why NY "reforms" are emulated all over the country. I just got an email from Pittsburgh, where they're adopting the NY model of 6-12 schools. I don't know about you, but I have a kid in 6th grade, and I would not be altogether keen on having her share a building with some 21-year-old loser working on his sixth high school credit.

A commenter from LA recently wrote that he follows this blog with interest, as idiotic NY "reforms" (like mayoral control) have a way of showing up on the left coast within 6 months of inception here. I speculated they may have sent us Green Dot solely for revenge, but the fact is people all over the country look to Mayor Bloomberg for examples. Ms. Weingarten can claim the new merit pay program is not a merit pay program (and what on earth is the difference between merit pay and performance pay?), but merit pay proponents all over the country can use the UFT's concession as an excuse to use merit pay in their communities.

Typically, there are huge flaws in the mayor's plan:

...people all over the city were understandably skeptical when a high-performing school was given an F and several low-performing schools — those actually on the state’s failing list — were given A’s and B’s.

Beyond that, people who know the growth models well were displeased to learn that New York’s first crack at the system for elementary and middle schools was based on a single year’s test data, instead of the accepted standard of three years.

Yet you won't be hearing those details on the 6 o'clock news, and that's not what people will remember. Mayor Bloomberg no longer needs results to support his programs. He can simply blame all problems on working people, close the schools in which they work and fill them with non-union or union-lite charters, saving a great deal of money for sports stadiums and luxury boxes.

If this mayor truly gave a damn about schools, he'd insist on good teachers, reasonable class sizes, and decent facilities for all the schools. Instead he focuses on cost-cutting nonsense that utterly fails to address the dysfunction in our system and continues to shove public school kids into obscenely overcrowded buildings, often on toxic waste sites. The mayor's priorities are crystal clear.

For the most part, recent critical press notwithstanding, you'd have no clue from the sleepy media.

So Much For That Bull Market

On October 27, I took a look at the state of the American economy in a post called Bull@#$% Market.

At that time, both the Dow (13,806) and the S&P (1535) were near all-time highs. The Nasdaq (2804), while not near an all-time high, was at its highest level since the dot.com bust in 2000-2001.

The Federal Reserve was meeting in three days and was expected to cut the benchmark interest rate another 25 basis points to 4.5%, further stoking already hot equity and commodity markets.

On the same day that the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee cut interest rates, third quarter Gross Domestic Product numbers were released showing the American economy grew at an annual rate of 3.9% - far higher than what analysts were expecting.

Two days after that, the October job numbers were released showing the economy added 160,000 jobs. This number was also much higher than analysts expected and seemed to indicate that the American economy was not in danger of falling into recession.

All seemed right with the world that week, or as right as things can be while the U.S. is fighting two foreign wars with borrowed money, the domestic real estate market continues to tank, banks are writing down losses from the sub-prime mortgage fall-out, and oil is over $90 a barrel.

Optimism abounded on Wall Street and many people assumed the Fed's interest rate cuts (with at least one more expected in December) would help the Dow and the S&P hit all-time highs before the end of the year.

Since November 2, however, the Dow has fallen to 13,042 and is in danger of dropping below the 13,000 level. The S&P plummeted past the 1490 support level and now stands at 1453. The Nasdaq dropped to 2627.

We're now not that far from having an official "correction" in the market (a drop of 10%-19%).

In addition, plenty of financial companies have announced more write-downs related to sub-prime mortgage exposure (Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Wamu, Wachovia, E-Trade, Merrill Lynch) with both UBS and Bank of America warning of additional write-downs expected in future months.

S&P downgraded its outlook for Washington Mutual Inc. and IndyMac Bancorp Inc. to "Negative" from "Stable," and for Capital One Financial Corp. to "Stable" from "Positive" as a result of continued credit problems.

Compounding problems for Washington Mutual, NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an investigation into whether WaMu improperly pressured home appraisers to provide inflated home values (and inflated profits for the bank) in order to justify making home loans to consumers.

WaMu stock has fallen precipitously as a result, following Citigroup into the toilet.

Cuomo also warned that other banks that colluded with appraisers to inflate home values are in his sights and will receive subpoenas in the near future:

``I don't believe it's just about Washington Mutual,'' Cuomo said at a press conference in Manhattan today. ``I believe it's widespread. I believe it's the rule not the exception. And we're investigating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other investment banks as to the underlying practices that have allowed this to go on for so long.''

Cuomo is also suing First American for conspiring with WaMu to inflate home values.

Further problems for mortgage lenders could hurt an already horrible real estate market.

According to the latest Case-Schiller Home Price Index,U.S. home prices fell 4.5% over the last 12 months and at an annual rate of 8.5% in August.

Home prices are now 5.3% below their peak in June of 2006.

20 out of the top 28 markets in the U.S. are seeing serious declines in prices while inventories are an all-time high.

In a series of articles published today (see here, here, here, and here), Newsday reports that the housing slump is already hurting the Long Island economy as consumers can no longer tap their homes for equity loans and go shopping at the mall or the local car dealership.

Long Island's economy is heavily dependent on consumer spending and with consumers pulling back on purchases and foreclosures increasing in many areas, Long Island is looking at a serious recession in the near-term.

Marketwatch wonders if California, a state responsible for 20% of the nation's GDP, is already in a recession as a result of falling home prices, rising foreclosure activity, slowing consumer spending and rising unemployment:

"California seems to be sliding into recession," wrote Jan Hatzius, chief economist for Goldman Sachs, in a research note earlier this week. Hatzius based his appraisal on the sharp increase in the unemployment rate in the state from 4.7% in November 2006 to 5.6% in September 2007.

While a 5.6% jobless rate may seem low, the important thing is how much it's risen. Hatzius said any increase of more than 0.6 percentage points in California's unemployment rate has always been associated with a national recession.

The consumer is slowing nation-wide, a concern because 70% of the nation's economic activity comes from consumers.

October's retail sales were particularly bad.

2/3rds of retailers missed analysts' expectations.

Same-store sales rose just 1.6 percent last month, the slowest growth since October 1995.

Even when retailers did show growth, much of it came from higher food prices, an inflationary indicator rather than an indication of true growth.

Speaking of inflation, while the Federal Reserve continues to insist that inflation is in check, U.S. consumers aren't buying it.

Consumer confidence is at its lowest level since the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

With gas over $3 a gallon nation-wide and oil near $100 a barrel, consumers say they expect inflationary pressures to increase in coming months and think they will have to spend less on other goods to meet increasing food and energy costs.

That doesn't bode well for the Christmas sales season.

Indeed, some retailers are already cutting prices very early in the season to stoke purchases.

Nonetheless, most analysts estimate that this year's Christmas retail sales will be dismal and worry that a poor X-mas season will further pressure an already weakening economy.

Back on the real estate front, a couple more homebuilders filed for bankruptcy (see here and here) while another of the nation's largest homebuilders, Beazer, stopped paying subcontractors working with them.

The New York City real estate market hasn't taken a hit from the bursting of housing bubble yet, but that's not exactly good news for the American economy either.

With the dollar at an all-time low against a host of other currencies, foreigners are coming in to snap up New York real estate at bargain prices.

While that helps prop up the real estate market for now, it does suggest that long-term economic growth will be hurt as the American dollar approaches bargain basement status.

As Steve Forbes is so fond of saying on CNBC, no country has ever devalued itself into prosperity.

As for the New York market, demand continues to outstrip available homes and apartments in every borough but Staten Island, but much of the demand is fueled by healthy activity on Wall Street.

If the markets continue to tank and Wall Street companies ratchet up lay-offs (so far lay-offs have been limited to divisions of financial companies related to sub-prime mortgages, CDO's, et al.), the New York real estate market will take a hit just like most of the rest of the country already is.

Which brings me back to what I was saying a couple of week's ago - the problems bubbling under the surface of what looks to be a fairly good economy (4.6% unemployment, 1.9% core inflation, stock indices still up for the year) are going to start exploding.

With hundreds of billions of sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages ready to reset to higher rates by the middle of next year and with foreclosure rates already increasing all over the country, the write-downs resulting from the mortgage mess by the financial companies aren't close to being finished.

Which means Wall Street hasn't seen an end to turbulence just yet.

Usually the end of the year brings a stock market rally and big Christmas bonuses for many Wall Streeters.

This year may be a little different.

The Dow has already fallen 7.9% from its record close just one month ago.

As I wrote earlier, a couple of percentage points more and we'll officially be in a correction.

With commodity prices through the roof and the dollar through the floor, it seems unlikely that the Fed will be able to cut rates much more before doing serious harm to the economy (like stagflation.)

Consumers, already overburdened by high debt levels and falling home values, are going to be further hurt by increased commodity prices.

If the consumer stops spending (and the October retail sales data seems to show this already happening), you can bet the economy will fall into an official recession by the middle of next year.

Which means the bull may be out of this market for a while, no matter what Helicopter Ben and his merry money printers at the Fed do to try and save it.

Look Under Every Rock

When UFT President Randi Weingarten approved a merit pay scheme (which isn't merit pay, according to Ms. Weingarten), she included an Easter egg for Chancellor Klein. Apparently, as Woodlass discovered, there could be dire consequences for those who opt out:

A school’s agreement to participate in the bonus program shall be considered, along with other criteria, as a positive factor in determining whether the Participant School is to be phased out or given a year’s moratorium on a possible phase-out. Nothing herein alters applicable law with regard to school closings. [Memorandum, Oct. 23, 2007, no.6]

That is to say, if your school is about to be closed, whether or not it chose to adopt merit pay could be a factor. So if you don't feel like becoming an ATR teacher, wandering the DoE landscape as a permanent sub (at least until the UFT twists the knife they've placed in your back and has you fired), you'd goshdarn well better consider opting into that "optional" merit pay program.

Let's talk charter schools for a moment. Over at Edwize, they've added to their comments section by including incoming links from sites they consider acceptable (not this one, of course--voices of real dissenting teachers can be dangerous). In their most recent attempt to pimp the union-busting, tenure-busting, seniority-busting Green Dot incursion, they included a link to "Democrats for Education Reform."

This group reveals the following:

...the UFT's Jon Gyurko (who used to be the charter school czar in the NYC Department of Education) has a blog post today on EdWize about the union's partnership with Green Dot to do a charter high school in the South Bronx.

It's telling that the UFT sees fit to employ the DoE's former "charter school czar" and of course this speaks volumes as to the priorities of our leadership. The "Democrats" continue:

A very interesting development: Essentially, for example, you have the nation's largest teachers union local endorsing a common-sense, site-based labor contract which doesn't have things like set working hours and is focused on results.

By "common-sense," of course, read no tenure and no seniority rights. By "site-based," infer Green Dot employees will not have the protections in the UFT contract Ms. Weingarten has not yet bargained away. By no "set working hours," read you will work whenever the hell Steve Barr tells you, you won't be compensated for extended jury duty, and you'll be docked whenever you get called away to care for your sick child.

By "focused on results" infer they can hound you out of your job whenever the mood strikes them. The laughable "just cause" job protection has never even been tested. Since there are no seniority rights, they can simply eliminate your position "just cause" they feel like it.

Shame on the UFT, ostensibly a pro-labor organization, for enabling this "union lite" nonsense, which will further erode working conditions for middle-class Americans.

The Backlash Continues

The Times, Sun, Post and Daily News editorial boards may have loved Mayor Bloomberg's and Chancellor Klein's new school report card grading system based upon a complex formula of standardized test score progress, student/parent satisfaction and school environment rather than overall achievement, but parents, educators and even some education reformers are crying foul.

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, called the DOE's school grading system "reductive" and "depressing."

Bard High School Early College, a school where students can earn not only a high school diploma but also two years' worth of college credits and an Associates' degree, received a C in the latest DOE assessment.

Apparently the Bard high school is not making enough yearly progress in turning out students even though the overwhelming majority have completed all of their Regents exam requirements by sophomore year and are holding an AA degree by the time they rent the limo for their high school prom.

Botstein has some pull with the city, so he's getting a second look from the DOE. No doubt Chancellor Klein will do the politically expedient thing, replace the Bard high school's C with an A, and try and put this public embarrassment behind him.

But what about the hundreds of other quality schools with high graduation rates and excellent test scores that have received crappy grades from the DOE because of the reductive nature of the formula the DOE is using?

Sure, those schools can ask for a second look at the report card from the DOE, but I can guarantee you that if they are not high profile schools like the Bard high school or do not have someone in the school or a parent of one of the students with some political muscle, that second look will be pretty cursory.

Andrew Wolf, columnist at the NY Sun who says he first introduced the idea for school report cards in the paper five years ago, issued an apology for that mistake today:

Assigning letter grades to schools may lend itself to press coverage, but does little to improve education. The value added concept, which could and should stand on its own, is now corrupted with a bagful of subjective adjustments, bonus points, and bureaucratic discretions. Once boiled down to the single familiar letter grade, we end up with nothing.

Wolf writes that the tests the DOE are using to cook up their school grades are "poorly conceived or administered" (and if you've ever tried administering a Task I ELA Regents Listening Passage to kids, you'll know what he means.) They have not been designed for the kind of systematic assessments the DOE is doing with these report cards.

On top of that, he notes how using only two years of testing data is problematic because it increases the likelihood of anomalies. He says that this is the most frequent criticism he has heard from testing professionals. You need more than two years of data to get a reasonably accurate measurement.

Wolf concludes by saying that

But most important to me is that trying to boil everything down to a letter grade distorts the process. The weighting of the many factors that comprise the grade become political decisions, open to question after the fact.

Each datum could stand on its own. We should use value added test results to inform instructional decisions about individual students, and instructional strategies for the whole school and, indeed, the entire system.

Similarly, the opinion surveys of teachers, parents, and students can stand on their own. So can attendance figures and the dozens of other indicators that make up the score. Weighting all of this and distilling an artificial letter grade may be newsworthy, but not productive.

Finally, there's the question of the city administering, grading, and evaluating the school system it itself runs. The legislature should insist on turning these functions over to an independent entity, one that would ensure that the conclusions are objective, not part of an enterprise whose goal includes advancing the political fortunes of whoever happens to be mayor.

Indeed, that seems to be what much of this is all about - increasing the political fortunes of Mayor Bloomberg (erstwhile independent presidential candidate) and Chancellor Klein (erstwhile Attorney General or Secretary of Education in either a Bloomberg or Clinton administration.)

Both Bloomberg and Klein knew that editorial writers and tabloid editors would eat up a school grading system that could be boiled down to a simple letter grade, even if that system is a hodgepodge of data that ultimately distorts the actual performance of students, teachers, and administrators at many (especially high-performing) schools.

They got what they wanted - headlines declaring how innovative the grading system is and TV coverage of Mayor Bloomberg lecturing the TV audience about school accountability.

But in reality, this vaunted new school grading system - propped up by no-bid testing contracts and an $80 million computer system - is doing more harm than good to students, educators and schools.

But as I noted earlier, the report cards haven't been created to help students, educators, or schools.

They've been created to help the political fortunes of Bloomberg and Klein.

Y'all Come Back Now, Hear?

NYC Educator received 890 visitors yesterday. That may not sound like much compared to big time blogs, but it's a pretty good day for us.

Thanks very much for reading.

Green Dots on the Big Apple

In the most recent issue of New York Teacher, an article celebrates the coming of Green Dot charter schools to NYC:

The new school will also give its unionized teachers an explicit say in school policy and curriculum; a full and fair disciplinary process based on a “just cause” standard from the first day an educator is employed; a professional work day rather than one defined in minutes; and the flexibility to adjust the contract in critical areas over time.

Note the "just cause" standard, which does not appear to have been tested in practice, is not tenure. Green Dot has very particular notions about tenure. Here's what Steve Barr said while guest blogging on Eduwonk:

...our teachers gladly give up tenure for a more relevant just cause.

Just cause indeed. Here's what Green Dot's website says their teachers have:

...no tenure or seniority preference...

That's fairly straightforward, isn't it?

...a professional work day rather than defined minutes...

Does this mean you'll be executives, making your own hours? Then why do they dock you if you have to leave for an emergency?

Are you content to rely on the kindness of Steve Barr? He does seem like a nice guy. I understand he buys pizza for teachers when he visits schools to encourage them to dump their unions. And he's utterly charming in interviews. Here's how he describes comments from A.J. Duffy, a real live LA union leader, who suggested he might be cherry-picking students:

“It’s bullshit,” says Barr. “It’s like me saying, ‘Duffy’s a pig fucker.’ Have I seen him fuck a pig? Do I have photos? No. So I can’t say it. He should check these things out before he says them.”

I can certainly see why Ms. Weingarten is so thrilled about partnering up with him. And there are other tangible benefits for teachers. Let's just check some other goodies from the Green Dot contract:

1. Teachers are encouraged to do jury duty during vacation time. Jury duty is compensated up to five days. If you’re stuck beyond that, too bad for you.

2. If your kid’s school calls, or anything happens requiring you to leave more than half a day, you’re docked a full day’s pay. If you miss less than half, you’re docked a half day’s pay.

3. Layoffs are based on “legal requirements and qualifications,” “satisfactory evaluation,” and “expertise and relevant experience.” Seniority is considered only if they’re not able to make a determination based on these factors.

4. Strikes are not permitted, and violations will go to binding arbitration.

5. If teachers choose a PPO health plan (like GHI), Green Dot will pay a maximum of $525 a month.

6. Maximum teacher salary is $74,182.

That's an interesting twist on giving higher pay to teachers, as the UFT article claims. And you'll find a lot more on what "just cause" is right here (Scroll to the bottom). The UFT has never addressed any of these points, and they've been completely silent on the absence of seniority rights at Green Dot.

Green Dot is very important to the UFT. That's why the UFT Academic High School VP doesn't hesitate to libel me in Edwize (blatantly attributing an LA Times statement to me) when I criticize it. It's high time our union stopped representing charter schools (which are not subject to the grading system that may cost you your jobs) and started representing working teachers again.

Working Americans are not much in need of union-lite systems where you can be dismissed "just cause" your boss feels like it.

Holding Charter Schools Accountable

As I noted yesterday, the NY Post reports that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have decided that New York City's charter schools do not have to operate under the same accountability rules as New York City's public schools.

While all of the city's 1,224 public schools either received a report card or will receive one in the very near future based upon a complex combination of test score progress, student/parent satisfaction with the school and graduation rate, the city's 60 charter schools will not.

According to the Department of Education, charter schools cannot be judged by the same accountability rules as public schools because "they don't measure student, teacher and parent satisfaction using the same Department of Education surveys."

Even some charter school advocates say the DOE's failure to issue report cards for charters makes it look like the charter's have something to hide.

Other charter school advocates dismiss the criticism, noting that the high level of accountability built into charter school contracts serves as enough of a public record.

But if that's so, then why not hand out the DOE surveys to parents, teachers, and students at charter schools the way they were handed out at public schools and grade charters under the exact same accountability standards as the public schools?

If charter schools operators and advocates want to be taken seriously in this debate, then they need to force the DOE to issue report cards using the same ridiculous accountability measurements for charters as they used for public schools (see here for just how ridiculous the standards used are.)

Eva Moskowitz, former mayoral candidate and current charter school operator, said as much to the Post:

"There's no reason we couldn't fill [the survey] out. We'd be happy to do that," said Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Charter Network, which operates a school in Harlem. "If you were a charter-school operator and the chancellor asked you to fill out a survey, would you do it? I would.

And Merryl Tisch, vice chancellor of the state Board of Regents, noted that not issuing report cards for charters makes the whole movement look suspicious:

"I think it's a mistake not to assess them the same way public schools are assessed. "There have been charter schools that have really struggled along the way," she said. "What's wrong with letting people know that?"

Indeed.

While charter schools in New York City are being given a pass by city officials, Ohio officials, led by Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann and Democratic governor Ted Strickland (pictured above), are cracking down on poor quality/failing charter schools.

You see, in Ohio, any idiot who wants to operate a charter school can get one.

Republicans, friendly to charter schools, ran all the statewide offices in Ohio for a very long time and helped license tons of charters since 1998.

According to the NY Times, Ohio has over 70 groups, including universities, nonprofits and many unconventional agencies, who can authorize charter schools.

Major Republicans donors, former Ohio football stars and lots of other people with no experience or knowledge of education have been allowed to open charter schools in Ohio.

As you can imagine, many of these schools are not so good.

William Peterson, a former University of Dayton football star with no experience in school administration, opened four charter schools.

All are now in "academic emergency" and the state's attorney general is suing to close at least one of them.

Commercial companies run plenty of charter schools in Ohio as well.

The Times reports that David Brennan, an Akron industrialist and a major donor to Republican candidates, has been authorized by the state to run 30 charter schools.

Most of his 30 charters are on academic watch or academic emergency.

In 2007, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.

Before 2007, little oversight was done to assure that failing charters either improved or closed.

It's probable that failing charters would have continued to be given free passes by Republican officials in Ohio, but last year's election swept most of them out of office.

Corruption scandals involving stolen pension funds regulated by the former state attorney general Ken Blackwell and pay-for-play episodes involving the former governor Robert Taft helped end the GOP's decades-long reign of Ohio.

At the federal level, Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney was sentenced to 30 months in jail in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Democrats took five out of the top six offices in the state and began exerting oversight powers upon the state's charter schools.

The NY Times reports that Attorney General Dann is suing to close down three failing charter schools and is investigating dozens of others.

According to the Times, it is the first effort by any state attorney general to close down failing charter schools.

Governor Strickland has backed Dann up in his efforts:

“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”

Charter school advocates are not sitting still as their beloved charter school movement comes under assault. They are alleging that the attorney general's attempts to close failing charter schools are a political attack:

“These suits are the latest in a long line of Democratic assaults on the charter school program in Ohio,” said Terry Ryan, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which sponsors several Ohio charter schools. Mr. Ryan said it was hypocritical to sue failing charters without moving against Ohio’s scores of failing neighborhood schools.

The Times says that a pro-charter group is helping to pay the legal fees for the three failing charter schools that Attorney General Dann is trying to close down.

Attorney General Dann dismisses charter school proponents' criticism that he is launching a political attack against charters, saying that he simply is using oversight powers to regulate charters more vigorously than did his Republican predecessors:

“We’re already changing behavior,” he said. “If you think all the other failing charter schools aren’t trying to figure out how to improve their academic performance, you’re mistaken.”

He added, “There are some great charter schools in Ohio that fill a gap in our education system.”

Perhaps there are some great charter schools in Ohio.

But with at least half of them given D or F grades and with charter school advocates supporting all charter schools whether they are successful or not and helping to provide legal fees to keep failing charter schools opened and operating, it looks like the great ones are being swamped by the tons of bad ones.

I'm all for closing truly bad public schools.

I do not believe the 50 public schools Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to close here in New York City all deserved to be closed.

For example, PS 35 in Staten Island has 98% of students passing the math test and 86% passing the reading test, yet the school received an F from the DOE in the latest assessment.

Clearly, PS 35 should not be considered a failing school, nor should it be a candidate for closure.

I am sure, however, that there are a few schools in that list of 50 F's that have chronically bad records and ought to be closed down.

You can be sure that the charter school advocates like the folks at the Fordham Foundation will be screaming bloody murder if they are not closed down.

And yet those same charter school advocates aren't screaming bloody murder that charter schools aren't being held to the same accountability standards as public schools by the NYCDOE and they certainly aren't screaming bloody murder to have failing charter schools in Ohio shut down.

Instead charter school advocates are defending those failing charter schools and providing money for legal fees and lawyers to help keep those failing charter schools opened and operating.

As I said yesterday, all schools are created equal, but charter school seems to be just a little more equal than others.

Right Wing Prof Holds Court...

..and presents this week's Carnival of Education.

The Backlash Starts

The day after Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein released 1,224 public school report cards based upon a complex formula of increased performance on test scores and oblique comparisons to a few other "similar" schools, a backlash from parents has started.

The NY Times reports that some parents of students in schools with sterling reputations are hopping mad that some of these schools received less than sterling grades from the Department of Education in the latest DOE assessment.

Many schools that received accolades in last year's Department of Education-sponsored Quality Review assessment received mediocre or downright bad grades in the latest progress-based DOE assessment.

Many schools where students regularly do exceedingly well on No Child Left Behind assessments were also given mediocre grades. Some were even given F's.

The NY Daily News looks at one school - PS 35 in Staten Island - where students ace the standardized tests (86% of students pass the reading test, 98% pass the math test) and reports that the school received a failing grade because

Schools are judged on whether student test scores were higher in 2007 than the prior year. At PS 35, where kids had among the best scores, only 35% showed improvement in reading and only 23% in math.

Because scores were up across the city in 2007, PS 35 actually earned negative points when compared both with the city and its peers. Its average rating came to -0.239. That was multiplied by 55 to give the school -13.1 points.

There you have it, folks - a school where 86% of the kids pass the reading test and 98% pass the math test is "failing" because it only showed 35% improvement in reading and 23% in math from 2006 to 2007.

On the face of it, that assessment is ridiculous.

Sure, PS 35 could have improved more in their reading test scores, but should the school really be labeled "failing" and become a candidate for closure because only 86% of students passed the reading test and only 35% showed improvement on the test from 2006 to 2007?

Should PS 35 be considered failing because only 98% of students passed the math test and only 23% showed improvement on the test from 2006 to 2007?

I think most rational people would say that PS 35 should not be labeled a "failing school" under such a misguided assessment.

Yet Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein, obsessed with data and intent upon shaking up the school system as much as possible before their autocratic tenure comes to a merciful end (three Department of Education reorganizations and counting!), have decided that it is perfectly rationale to say that PS 35 is a "failing school."

Presumably the closure notice will come later in the year, the principal will be fired and half the staff will be dumped into the system-wide substitute teacher pool.

And the education reformers and their supporters - folks like Errol Louis at the NY Daily News and the editorial boards at the Times, Post, News and Sun - will all cheer and say "Hurrah!!! Those lazy educators who are hurting our children are being held accountable by the mayor and the chancellor!!! Now we know which teachers should be fired and which teachers should be given merit pay and which teachers should be placed on notice that if they don't shape up, they'll follow some of their colleagues into career oblivion!!! Hurrah!!!"

And a school like PS 35 - where students overwhelmingly meet proficiency, where 35% of students showed improvement on the reading test and 23% showed improvement on the math test in 2007, where 86% passed the reading test and 98% passed the math test - will be closed.

What a victory for education reform!

Heckuva job, education reformers!

Heckuva job, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Klein!

You've really showed the nation how to proceed with education reform.

Label schools where 86% of students are proficient at reading and 98% are proficient at math as "failing" and close 'em.

That'll bring "real reform" to the system.

POSTSCRIPT: The NY Post reports that while all 1,224 public schools in the city received grades under the DOE's new progress-based assessment initiative, the city's 60 charter schools did not.

According to the Department of Education, charter schools "don't measure student, teacher and parent satisfaction using the same Department of Education survey" as the other public schools, therefore they cannot be held accountable under the same progress-based assessment initiative.

Charter school advocates say charter schools already have a "high level of accountability built into charter school contracts" and that should be enough.

Yet if charter schools are so doing so well at educating students, why shouldn't they be held to the same accountability standards as regular public schools?

If regular schools can be placed in a pool of "similar schools" and rated according to overall test score achievement and yearly progress, then so can charter schools.

The fact that they were not held accountable under the same progress-based assessment standards is not a surprise, however.

Some of the city's new small schools - part of the mayor's vaunted "small schools initiative" - were also not given grades under the new DOE assessment.

It seems that all public schools are equal but charter schools and small schools opened by the mayor and the Gates Foundation are created just a little more equal than others.

School Grades

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein unveiled their vaunted school report cards yesterday.

50 schools received F's, another 99 received D's.

The NY Sun reports that the mayor and the chancellor usually close between 5 and 15 schools a year, but the mayor threatened to close as many as 149 schools this year.

But some of the schools that received poor grades in the latest DOE assessment received good grades under other assessments.

For instance, some schools that do well under No Child Left Behind measurements received low grades in the latest DOE assessment while other schools that have low tests scores received high grades from the DOE.

The Daily News reports that

The prestigious Center School on the upper West Side - a sought-after school that had a 91% passing rate on eighth-grade state math exams - was slapped with a D.

Public School 35 on Staten Island received an F despite 98% of fourth-graders passing math exams. Junior High School 151 in the South Bronx earned a B even though just just 8.5% of eighth-graders passed math.

The NY Times also lists schools with excellent reputations that were slapped with some surprisingly low grades by the DOE:

Several esteemed elementary schools that middle-class parents often factor in to their real estate decisions — including Public School 6 on the Upper East Side, P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side, P.S. 234 in TriBeCa and P.S. 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, — received B’s. Other popular schools fared worse. P.S. 154 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, received a D, as did Central Park East I in Harlem.

The chancellor responded to criticism from parents and educators that some schools have been short-changed by the grading system that relies on improved test scores each year by saying that

The city is trying to create a "rising tide," and all schools at all levels need to continue moving upward.

"If you're not making progress, if your kids are not moving forward, then I don't think the school is doing well," Klein said.

Of course, if you take that statement to its logical conclusion, it means that all schools will have to eventually reach 100% proficiency for all students on every test or risk being labeled "failing" by the DOE assessment and thus at risk for closing.

It's ridiculous to say that because a school doesn't have 100% proficiency every year, it ultimately has "failed."

And yet that's exactly what No Child Left Behind (which also uses 100% proficiency as a benchmark) and the latest Kleinberg school assessment movement are doing.

Chester Finn wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the quest for 100% proficiency is a fantasy:

No educator in America believes this can be achieved anytime soon, not with 100% of the kids and by any reasonable standard of proficiency. The truth is that boosting our students' proficiency from today's 35% to 70% or 80% would be a transformative accomplishment. But no politician dares say that, lest he instantly be skewered with "which 20% of the kids don't you care about?"

Meanwhile, the federal mandate to produce 100% proficiency fosters low standards, game-playing by states and districts, and cynicism and rear-end-covering by educators.

You can bet that the latest DOE assessment will garner more game-playing with tests, cynicism and rear-end covering.

Remember, many of the tests used in the DOE assessment are graded in-school.

Anybody want to bet some principals and assistant principals are going to put pressure on teachers to grade a little easier on tests that have already been dumbed down by the city and the state?

When those test scores magically increase next year, will that be cause for celebration?

And how about those schools that received A's this year? What happens when a school with 90%+ proficiency doesn't increase next year?

Will that mean that the school is "failing" and needs to be threatened with a shutdown or will it mean that educators at that school are already doing an excellent job of helping as many students as they can to do as well as they can?

Randi Weingarten, president of the UFT, noted that high-performing schools are disadvantaged by the new DOE assessment:

“If you have kids that are high-performing kids, you have to continue to push them in lots of different areas, not narrow the curriculum to math and English.”

Of course it was Weingarten and the UFT that allowed hooey like school report cards, additional standardized tests, and teacher merit pay tied to those tests to happen in the first place by enabling total mayoral control for the Little Autocrat Mayor.

Unfortunately with the mayor able to make all decisions for the school system without input or accountability from anybody outside of his own circle of cronies, students are just going to have to put up with more and more test prep and less and less real learning.

Art, music, drama, and other enrichment activities will continue to disappear from the curriculum as schools spend more and more time and resources on math and reading. Science and history will also take a back seat to the subjects that count for the tests.

At the end of the day, Bloomberg, Klein and the other education reformers will continue to pat themselves on the back that they are increasing education standards and helping better achievement for students from all backgrounds.

And they have - no generation of children has ever been better at filling in little circles with number two pencils than this one.

As for actually being able to think critically, appreciate art, music, and drama, or read or write anything that doesn't have a test prompt above it, not so much.

And personal growth or life skills like financial literacy and conflict resolution - sorry, that will have to be done on their own time.

Heckuva job, Kleinberg.

Heckuva job, education reformers.

No Bathroom For You

The NY Daily News reports that students at Bronx Little School have to share one bathroom for both boys and girls.

Over the summer, the Department of Education began remodeling work on the girls' bathroom.

The boys' bathroom has become a unisex bathroom for both boys and girls

As a result, teachers have to take boys and girls to the bathroom in separate shifts.

Some students in the pre-K to fifth grade school, unable to wait for teachers to take them to the bathroom, suffer accidents in the classroom.

Parents have begun sending kids off to school with book bags, lunch boxes and extra pants to change into after they soil themselves.

Parents want to know why the bathroom is being remodeled during the school year instead of the summer.

Principal Janice Gordon said through a DOE spokesman that parents were overstating the number of bathroom accidents and the school keeps extra clothes around anyway just in case young students have accidents.

Plus two regular bathroom breaks are scheduled throughout the 6 hour school day and kids ought to be able to hold it until those regularly scheduled breaks.

After reading yesterday's cover story about Mayor Bloomberg's life in Newsweek, I suspect the mayor is less than sympathetic to kids who don't have the willpower to keep from going to the bathroom.

In the Newsweek article, Jon Meacham writes about how Mayor Bloomberg learned valuable lessons growing up as a little Jewish boy among a bunch of Boston hooligans and anti-Semites who used to be mean to him.

From this tough upbringing, the mayor learned self-reliance, determination, ambition, and direction.

He also learned how to hold it when the Boston toughs wouldn't let him use the school bathroom without paying for it.

The kids at Boston Little School really should feel special.

Like Mayor Bloomberg got when he was a kid, they're getting very valuable lessons in self-reliance, determination, ambition, direction, and of course how to hold for hours at a time when you gotta go.

So take that, parents of Boston Little School students.

This has been a teachable moment for your kids.

And who knows better about teachable moments than Mayor Bloomberg and his newly reorganized Department of Education.

Newsweek Does Bloomberg's P.R. For Him

When you're a media mogul with a billionaire dollar TV, radio, and Internet empire, you can drive your own press coverage.

Mayor Moneybags, ever the savvy media mogul, managed to get editor Jon Meacham to put him on the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek and write a glowing 11 page article about him and his presidential ambitions.

The article reads like little more than a press release from Bloomberg LP's p.r. department with Meacham slobbering all over the little mayor with such sycophantic assessments as this one:

From TR to FDR to Reagan, our greatest politicians have understood that showmanship is a critical element of leadership, and Bloomberg is among the best showmen and leaders at work in American politics.

Much of the rest of the article is full of similarly laudatory drivel. Clearly Bloomberg would not have given Meacham access to him if the article wasn't going to be overwhelmingly positive and help him drive home important campaign themes and memes for his future White House bid in 2008.

So Bloomberg is allowed to wax nostalgic about growing up in New England and tell what it was like to face the challenge of anti-semitism and still come out ahead by working harder than everybody else and believing in the American Dream.

Bloomberg is described as a man who is a "good father" (take that bad daddy Rudy Giuliani) with "limitless energy" (take that lazy Fred Thompson) who has "patriotism in his blood" (take that Super Patriot John McCain) and plenty of "sanity" (take that Ross Perot.)

He is lauded as a someone who "has learned a lot in his city-hall years" (take that George W. Bush, who has apparently learned nothing during his White House years) and prides himself on his "candor" (take that super-secretive Hillary Clinton) and "centrism" (take that John Edwards.)

Most of all, Bloomberg's pals and Bloomberg himself are given space to tell what a wonderful guy he is and how he has brought everybody together in New York City in ways that Bad Daddy Rudy Giuliani didn't and couldn't.

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (the guy who supported "uniter" George W. Bush in 2004) says Bloomberg has made New York a "more tolerant place" by "virtue of his personality."

Bloomberg himself says he can do for the country and the world what he has done for New York City:

"The job of being president is to lead the country and the legislature, and it is pulling those together. And because America is the only remaining superpower, you are the leader of the free world, it is having the credibility and working with other countries to get them all to work together to stop genocide, to stop nuclear proliferation, to make sure we have fair trade among countries … Trade, immigration, terrorism, fighting disease—all of those things require cooperation. And one of the sad things is that at the moment America is not liked around the world. We are closing our eyes. We have this view that we can do it alone, as we are getting more into a world where you can't. You couldn't do it before, and you certainly can't do it now, and it's inconceivable that you could do it tomorrow. And I don't hear from the candidates how they would go about pulling the world together, getting people to respect us. How do you get people to respect you? Show them recognition, respect, that you are listening to them. I don't care how smart we are, other people have good ideas, and what works here isn't perfect for them."

So there you have it - vote for Bloomberg in '08.

He's a uniter who listens to others, can make the world a more tolerant place, knows what problems need to be solved and knows how to solve them.

Plus he's a nice guy and his ex-wife loves him.

Oh, and the press love him too (Little Tommy Friedman of the New York Times all but declared his support for a Bloomberg presidency at a dinner for Conservation International when he introduced Bloomberg by saying "The only thing a lot of us would like to change about Michael is his job title, but I won't go there …")

It's not until page 8 that Meacham manages to mention the sexual harassment and gender discrimination allegations that have plagued Bloomberg throughout his career:

he is far from a universally revered boss; there have been serious questions raised about the treatment of women within the Bloomberg corporate culture. In 1998, in a complaint against Bloomberg and the company filed in federal court in Manhattan, Sekiko Garrison, one of the earliest recruits to Bloomberg's largely female sales force, claimed that Bloomberg insulted and harassed her and other female employees. Garrison's most startling allegation was that when she told Bloomberg she had become pregnant, he told her to "kill it." She said that Bloomberg also expressed dismay that she was the 16th company employee to go on maternity leave. (A Bloomberg LP official called the allegations about discrimination against pregnant women "ridiculous … untrue," and said that the company "really goes above and beyond the norm in providing family benefits, and it's an incredibly family-friendly culture.")

In 2000, Bloomberg tried to walk out of a deposition after being asked about claims that he had pointed to various women in his office with the explanation, "I'd do her." "It was resolved," Neal Brickman, Garrison's lawyer, told NEWSWEEK. "I'm very happy with the resolution." He added that he could provide no further details—including financial details—about the settlement because the terms were "confidential." (Bloomberg and his city-hall office declined to comment on the details of the lawsuit. "We made a settlement and agreed not to talk about it," Bloomberg told me.)

But even here Meacham does Bloomberg's public relations work for him and dismisses the charges, writing that Bloomberg's friends say Bloomberg has "steadily grown out of a prolonged adolescence" which presumably means he's no longer telling female staffers he wants to "do" them.

I guess that means he's safe to be around White House interns.

At any rate, the Newsweek cover story will get the Washington CW class all atwitter about a potential Bloomberg bid.

You can bet that most of the Beltway press are rooting for Bloomberg to run (as Little Tommy Friedman acknowledged this week), especially as the current press favorite, Barack Obama, continues to peter out as a candidate (the latest Newsweek poll shows Obama trailing Hillary Clinton by 20 points even after the Democratic debate in Philly last week in which Clinton was hammered from all sides as "phony," "dishonest" and a "loser.")

With over a billion bucks to throw into the race and with plenty of cronies in the media like Jon Meacham at Newsweek and Little Tommy Friedman at the NY Times to do much of his public relations work for him, Bloomberg will have a much easier shot at running for the presidency as an independent than any other independent candidate in recent history.

This doesn't mean he actually has a shot to win.

He doesn't.

But he will affect the race in ways that are difficult to figure right now.

The latest Newsweek poll finds a Bloomberg candidacy hurts Republicans and helps Dems, but I still find it hard to believe that pro-gun control, pro-carbon emissions tax, pro-gay rights guy who the NRA loathes takes votes away from the GOP.

I will make one prediction that I think is a gimme: as we get closer to the primary season and as the Republican and Democratic nominees for president become clearer, additional laudatory Bloomberg stories will show up in the mainstream media, planted by the mayor's top political aide Kevin Sheekey (the same Bloomberg aide embroiled in a lobbying scandal that the Daily News reported on last week.)

Bloomberg hopes that voters will be turned off by the polarizing figures of Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani and he can come in as the "uniter" with the can-do spirit and "limitless energy" who can "go about pulling the world together."

With Jon Meacham, Little Tommy Friedman and so many other reporters and press people waving their pom-poms for Mayor Moneybags, I wouldn't totally count him out even against long odds.

A billion dollars and positive press coverage can go a long way toward making Moneybags into a viable presidential alternative to Rudy and Hillary.

Saint Rudy Talks Numbers

Well, we all know Saint Rudy's favorite number--9/11. After all, on 9/10 he was a bum, about to slink away from NYC, and the next day he was America's sweetheart. That's pretty good for a guy most people would be afraid to invite to their houses for spaghetti.

And it's damn good for a guy who went to court to demand the right to bring his mistress to a home he shared with his wife and young children. No Bill Clinton there. More like, "Damn right I was with Ms. Lewinski, and I'm bringing her home to meet the wife and kids right now."

But now Rudy is on a mission to make sure health care doesn't get to the bootless and unhorsed. To that end, he put an ad on the radio:

In the radio ad, Giuliani, who has suffered prostate cancer, said the U.S. survival rate for the disease was 82 percent, but the survival rate in Britain was just 44 percent "under socialized medicine."

It appears, though, that Mr. Giuliani got his statistics from the same folks who said we needed to invade Iraq:

A health department spokesman said the latest figures from Britain's Office of National Statistics showed a five-year survival rate of 74.4 percent for prostate cancer.

That's a significant difference. And that's not all:

Even that difference, as experts explained, probably has nothing to do with the British National Health Service and much to do with the aggressive screening programs employed in this country. (And for the moment, let's merely mention another highly pertinent issue, namely that the great majority of prostate cancers occur in men over 65, which indicates that many if not most are treated successfully under Medicare -- our version of national health insurance for the elderly -- or by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which comes as close to truly socialist healthcare as any system in the world.)

But the supreme irony is this--Saint Rudy was actually treated under a government program--specifically GHI, then a non-profit health care network popular with New York City employees (like me). So I guess it's easy for him to say we don't need to help those who've got nothing. After all, that was his entire approach to the school system--My kids don't go there, so what the hell do I care? That's why he had no problem proposing welfare recipients be required to work in public schools. Why shouldn't people chronically unable to find jobs serve as role models for our kids? After all, they're not his kids.

Sadly, that approach is precisely the one taken by the current administration, which has no qualms about sending kids to toxic waste sites or fighting tooth and nail when people ask leased schools be inspected as thoroughly as city-owned schools. Note they don't build sports stadiums on toxic waste sites. The billionaires who own the teams would never put up with that.

I read somewhere, "If Rudy becomes president, every day will be 9/11"

Free Samples

Click here if you'd like to hear Raising Sand, the new CD by Robert Plant and angelic Alison Krauss.

Including Through the Morning, Through the Night, by Gene Clark, one of the best songs ever, and some great, quirky all-around rockabilly and blues stuff.

We Get Letters

As you may have heard, Ms. Randi Weingarten, UFT President, has interrupted her ascension to DC and whatever else it is she does to examine the problems of teachers in rubber rooms. She also has several members of the UFT patronage mill looking into this issue. Here's an account of one instance of her involvement:

I'm sure you know that Randi had a Rubber Room Meeting at 52 Broadway. She had at least 200 RR people show up. After showing up at 5:00PM instead of 4:10PM...,

First of all, it's well known that Ms. Weingarten travels in a chauffeured car paid for through UFT dues. How many times have you told the chauffeur to garage the limo, only to have him drive around the block in an effort to impress his girlfriends? So you can't automatically assume the lateness was her fault. Furthermore, every teacher has had to deal with late students, and as far as I can tell, lateness is never their fault.

...she listed "10 Points" in a Power Point presentation that she was going to address concerning the TRC. Most of them were nebulous. The weasel, of course, did not hand out a copy of any of them to the attendees. What she is a master of however is filibustering. After each comment by a teacher she'd talk as long as possible to change the topic to nonsensical issues or to obfuscate the issue.

Well, let's give credit where credit is due. At least Ms. Weingarten takes the time to ostensibly answer questions. Over at Edwize, her minions simply delete inconvenient comments and pretend they don't exist. So you're ahead of the game right there.

We listened to a lot of horror stories about what principals can do to teachers. One story was about how one administrator was sentenced to 30 years in prison for some sex crime. Nevertheless, this administrators U evaluation of a teacher was used to send a teacher to the rubber room. You can't make this stuff up.

Well, that's not entirely Ms. Weingarten's fault. The creation of the "imperial principal" was made possible not only by the UFT, but by Bloomberg and Klein as well. Ms. Weingarten did not actually write the "reforms." She simply declined to oppose them and accepted them for compensation increases that failed to meet cost of living.

Here at NYC Educator, we endeavor to tell the whole truth, and we certainly hope Ms. Weingarten will appreciate our spirited defense of her actions. That's just the kind of folks we are.

Mayor Bloomberg Wants To Give Students Cell Phones

Remember Mayor Bloomberg's war against cell phones in the public schools?

Remember how Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein refused to listen to parents implore him to overturn the ban on students carrying cell phones in public schools?

Remember how he vetoed a city council bill that gave students permission to carry, though not use, cell phones in schools (just in case they need to talk to mom or dad in an emergency)?

Remember how the city council overrode his veto 46-2 back in September, but Mayor Bloomberg said "Nahh, nahh, I don't have to enforce your stupid bill!!!"?

Well, I remember, and I have to tell you that I was quite surprised today to read in the NY Times that Mayor Bloomberg plans to give cell phones away to students as rewards for good grades.

The giveaway will part of the mayor's "merit" program that pays students for achievement and doles out "school-wide bonuses" to teachers based on standardized test scores.

The mayor, not often given to noticing irony in his proposals and policies, sees no contradiction in his proposing to give students free cell phones if they get good grades but guaranteeing confiscation of them if they carry them into their schools.

Luckily other people get the irony:

Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, who sponsored a bill to try to loosen the cellphone ban by requiring schools to allow students to carry phones to and from school, said the proposal was “almost funny.”

“The fact that they even would think that this might be a powerful incentive for students is delicious,” Mr. Fidler said. “It’s a clear indication that people at a level below the mayor and the chancellor realize that this is a vital piece of technology.”

Yes, a cell phone IS a vital piece of technology these days, especially after 9/11 when we learned that it is important parents be able to contact their children wherever they may be.

I can understand why Bloomberg doesn't want students to use cell phones in schools, but I have to tell you, I have never had a problem with kids and their cell phones.

Whenever I see a kid using his cell phone in class, I simply ask the student to please put the cell phone away.

He or she has always complied with my request.

I know occasionally kids give teachers a hard time over cell phone use, but by and large most kids know they're not supposed to be using the phones in school and put them away when asked.

So come on Mr. Mayor, why not comply with the overwhelming wishes of parents, students and city council members and allow students to carry cell phones in school?

I mean, you can't offer a cell phone to a student as reward for achievement and then not actually let him or her carry it.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

In Leo Casey's most recent column on Edwize, he decries the politics of personal attack. I found that ironic, and posted this response:

When the LA Times suggested teachers were throwing tenure out the window to join Green Dot, I reported it. Mr. Casey then suggested I was making up facts to suit my daily rant, or some such thing.

It's always illuminating to hear Mr. Casey's denunciations of personal attacks. However, Mr. Casey has no qualms about publicly libeling real working teachers when it suits his convenience.

What a disgrace that 80,000 working teachers must subsidize such blatant hypocrisy.

Minutes later, the reliable UFT censors deleted my comment. Apparently, personal attacks are fine if you're part of the UFT aristocracy. Responding to them, however, is strictly forbidden. In fact, Edwize is supposedly non-political, so you may not even mention caucuses, particularly the Unity Caucus and its monopolistic antics. Nonetheless, Edwize has no problem mentioning ICE, the opposition caucus. in an article entitled "A Grave Injustice to the UFT Tradition of Union Democracy."

Speaking of union democracy, here's an apt quote from Life After the Rubber Room:

When I was chapter chair the representative from the Manhattan High Schools was not part of the ruling Unity party. This apparently bothered the UFT leadership so much that they changed the way people vote. They used an old trick used by segregationists in the 60's. If you were afraid that a minority group would elect representatives you switched to an at-large system. If you had 10 house representatives and 20% of your population was black you changed the way voting was done to have the representatives elected at large. This almost assured that all of the representatives were white.

In our case, of course, they ensured that all the representatives were from Unity. It was designed to shut out New Action. New Action used to be a viable opposition party, but now endorses Ms. Weingarten in exchange for patronage gigs and double pensions for its leaders. Ms. Weingarten now calls them the "responsible opposition," and greatly respects them for not actually opposing her. Now they throw a few seats to New Action, and work to shut out ICE, the opposition party that actually opposes the patronage mill.

As a teacher and a parent, I find the notion of saying one thing and doing another repugnant. Unfortunately, when you don't have the truth on your side, there are few viable alternatives. Perhaps the UFT's peculiar notion of democracy is a contributing factor when over 75% of teachers don't even bother voting in the union election.