In Which I Am Exposed as a Fraud

Yesterday, so help me, I gave a test. It was a test I wrote myself, and as a unionized teacher, I am one lazy bastard. I therefore wrote 50 questions so they could be two points each. I know, I know, it may have been better with 43 questions, or 1,083 questions, and it probably would have been more successful if I gave it with a part filled with experimental questions that didn't count at all. I'm sure if I were Pearson that's what I'd have done. But that's not even the worst of it.

For one thing, I actually counted the questions as two points each. Not only that, but I told the students in advance that I was gonna do that. So now, if I want to fail 70% of the students, like NY State did, I simply cannot. It's truly bad planning. I should follow the example of the pros and not tell anyone how much anything is worth. I should have written an impenetrable rubric explaining what I valued and how much. But I failed to do that.

And not only that, but the next time I see those kids I'm gonna actually return the tests, let them look at them, and if I made mistakes I will let them come up to me and tell me about them so that they can get even more credit. It's really indefensible. I'd like it to stop there, but it gets worse. I am a very fast marker and I sometimes miss errors. I admit it. And sometimes kids come up to me and tell me about them. I am such an awful teacher that I ignore any and all errors not in the favor of my kids. Now I ask you, would a computer do that?

This is just one more reason why NY State was very smart to remove us from grading our own kids. After all, we can't be trusted at all, and if the computers make mistakes, they make them with everybody so they are fair mistakes. That makes sense, doesn't it?

I saved the very worst part for last. When you give tests that are two points each, sometimes kids get a grade of 64. That's one point below passing. Naturally, a kid with 65 should pass and a kid with 64 should not. This is because, as everyone knows, 65 is the absolute low point on a test, below which you are an absolute failure. In fact, 64 is no different from zero. You get 64, you get no credit. Go to summer school. Take the class again. Spend another year in high school. Whatever it takes.

So here is my most egregious offense. Whenever a kid gets a 64 on a test I give, I just change it to 65. And no, this is not "scrubbing." It's even worse. I do not bother to recheck the paper to find some error I made. I don't even think about it. I just write 65 on the paper and that's pretty much it. In fact, I did that once yesterday.

When I told the boy who'd gotten 65 that I was a little disappointed, he looked a little relieved. At least he'd passed. Then I told him that he'd actually gotten a 64 and I'd just changed it to 65. You can imagine how wracked with guilt I must have been at that moment. I knew I had sinned. I knew I had validated every idea Merryl Tisch ever had about the perfidy of public school teachers. The kid looked at me for a moment.

"You are an excellent teacher," he said.

If You Set Standards Low Enough, You'll Never Be Disappointed

That, evidently, is the new Unity motto. Otherwise, why would the cover of NY Teacher feature someone who used to work in a charter school and thinks public school is better. What's next? 

It took my blithering 30-year-old supervisor two years to fire me for no reason, but he could have done so immediately at a charter school.

My supervisor is abusive, but the supervisor at the charter school was even more abusive.

I was tortured for two hours, but it sure beats the hell out of being tortured for eight hours.

I guess this is the union loud and proud campaign, but holy crap are their standards low. Everyone knows it sucks to work in a charter school. That's why anyone with half a brain and half a choice opts not to.  But the fact is conditions in public schools vary widely as well. It would be just as easy, for example, for NY Teacher to find teachers who worked in an awful public school for a crazy principal, but now work in a better school with a less crazy principal. The teacher wasn't supported in her charter and is supported in a public school? How tough would it be for Moskowitz to find a failed public school teacher who'd say the reverse?

In any case, this is simply not a good argument. And the fact is, as Mulgrew likes to point out, that the contract is worth less than the paper they've yet to print it on if it isn't enforced. And, sorry Unity, but a whole lot of your loyalty-oath bound chapter leaders are simply not bothering with it. I'm ashamed to say I've had Unity chapter leaders who slept through meetings, through classes, and through life. In my meager defense, I at least had the good sense to never depend on them to help me with anything.

That is my fault, and the fault of my colleagues. After all, who's stupid enough to take a job where you constantly find yourself in conflict with your principal? That would be me, I guess, but the job, like any other, isn't really all that difficult if you don't do it. And that's where Unity excels. Even if you utterly fail to represent your members, you still get free trips and union gigs if only you do Whatever the Hell Leroy Barr Tells You. And even cooler, if your colleagues dump you for not doing your job, they keep you not only as a convention delegate, but also in your part time job.

Even as I was writing this, a colleague walked in to tell me about her retirement consultation. I asked her how it went and she said the rep told her to ask me for a COPE card. I wondered what the hell a COPE contribution had to do with her retirement, and she said that COPE would help fight the 2017 Constitutional Convention. Now that's true. On the other hand, COPE didn't do anything to fight Cuomo, who may enable said convention, in the Working Families primary, the Democratic primary, or the general election. Perhaps leaders were still tired from battling for COPE funds over the quality of quail in a ritzy Albany steakhouse.

If this is the best argument for union loud and proud that leadership can muster for a front page article, we are well and truly screwed. This is a great argument for new leadership, in case any were needed. 

Cartoon by Fred Klonsky

Charter or Public?

Anyone who actually follows reality knows charters don't outperform public schools. Even Waiting for Superman, that steaming pile of propaganda, acknowledged that only 17% of them actually outperformed public schools. And the big secret, not so secret anymore, is that charter students that do better tend not to reflect the same demographics as a public school. My public school takes everyone that walks through the door, no matter what disability, and no matter if they speak not a single word of English. I don't need to check very thoroughly as to how many Moskowitz Academy students just got here yesterday from El Salvador.

It's kind of amazing. If we could make rules that demanded parents participated in our school, if we get rid of students who were inconvenient, if we could harrass parents into withdrawing students who didn't get high scores, we'd have even better stats. Now that's not anything I want to do. As a matter of fact, of the kids I teach, approximately zero of them would make it into the much-coveted Moskowitz Academy. That's better for my kids, because I don't make them pee their pants so they can get in a few minutes of extra test-prep. It's better for them because I can actually teach them English rather than make them close-read tedious crap that they would surely hate.

But it's better for me too. For one thing, I don't work for Eva Moskowitz. No one makes me get onto buses and go to Albany and rally for miserable, no-excuses conditions for kids. No one makes me use lesson plans written by people who have no interest in anything but test scores. No one makes me live in fear that I must abuse children for scores rather than make them love learning. No one makes me march children around like they're little martinets, or make them submit to tedium and "rigor" that no children ought to endure.

Young teachers are acutely aware that public schools are better places to work than charters. Right now, for example, it isn't all that easy to get a job teaching in public school. And every single charter school teacher I've ever met, without exception, is there because there were no available public school jobs. Who on earth wants their jobs to be subject to the caprices and whims of Eva Moskowitz? Basically no one.

So if your kid is in a charter, even if your kid is far away from those scary public school kids, your kid has teachers who, for whatever reason, are unable to get public school gigs. Now I know some very good teachers who've had to teach in charters. After all, insane public school supervisors, of which there are plenty, can and will fire untenured teachers for petty personal reasons, or to make themselves look good. The bad luck of these teachers is the good luck of charters.

On the other hand, I'm gonna doubt that's the majority of charter teachers. I recall a particularly inept student teacher I had a few years back. She demanded a reference, which I declined to give, and them complained to my supervisor about it. I'm not exactly sure what she thought my supervisor would do. Would she place a letter in my file for not recommending an incompetent teacher? In any case, she did not.

But that student teacher, after an exhaustive search failed to yield a public school gig, ended up in a charter. This teacher placed things on the board that my students recognized as incorrect. I hope her charter students are as perceptive as mine were. If not, well, too bad for them. In fairness, she doesn't work for Eva.

But it's hard for me to imagine why anyone would rather work a charter than a public school. We serve everyone. That's our job. If you don't think it's yours, maybe you shouldn't have gone into this whole teaching thing in the first place. I'm sure there are good charter teachers, teachers who are there by choice. Maybe they aren't crazy. But I don't think those teachers ought to work under those conditions, and I don't think the kids I serve should grow up to face those conditions either.

Youth and Money

Like everyone, I'm not as young as I used to be. And having spent most of my life as a teacher, I don't know a whole lot about money. But my students know pretty much everything, and they're ready to let me know at a moment's notice.

Yesterday we were talking about what people do and do not have to do, and I had them imagine what they wouldn't have to do if they were millionaires. Getting up early was the most popular thing to not do once they hit it rich. But a few kids had other ideas. Several said they wouldn't have to go to school, and one boy, a really smart one (usually), said he wouldn't have to go to college.

I asked whether the only reason they went to school was so they could make money, and I got a whole lot of nods in the affirmative. I asked the boy if there was any other reason to go to college, and he shook his head. Absolutely not. I tried another approach. I asked the girls if they wanted to go out with a guy with a lot of money who never went to school. Happily, for me at least, they said no. I asked why not. "He'd be stupid," one girl ventured.

But the guy didn't care. He was not going to college if he had money, and that was that. I could see him imagining what life would be like with no school and all that cash.

I was a little more disturbed by a conversation I watched with a few young teachers in a department office. Some former students had come to visit, and they were talking about their futures. One student said he wanted to be a teacher. "Absolutely not," said a young teacher. "Think about what you want in life. Do you just want to make a little money and only go on vacation once in a while? Or would you rather get a job where you can travel a lot and do whatever you want?" The other young teacher nodded in agreement.

This made me very said. I've had multiple conversations with young teachers in which they tell me how lucky I am that I can retire. I look at them and wonder what their next thirty years will be like. I think about those teachers telling the kids how awful it is to be a teacher who can't travel all the time and it makes me very sad. I mean, if traveling all the time is a priority, maybe they should've joined the military. I don't know.

I love it when kids challenge me. I love it when they light up and realize things. If I wanted to quit and go sit around a pool in Florida or someplace I'd do it. But honestly, I think after a week I'd be bored out of my gourd.

There are reasons why I'd advise people not to become teachers. But while I'd like more money about as much as anyone, that's not really one of them. For me, what I don't like has almost nothing to do with what I wake up and do every day. It has to do with Bill Gates, the Waltons, and all the outside experts who pull ideas out of their asses and impose them on us with all that money my students and young colleagues want so much.

I hope we can get our values a little clearer. I'd like my students to know that having a job you love is something you can't really place a price on.

Special Needs, Special Waits

I'm not at all surprised to read that NYC is failing to serve kids with special needs. It's a tough process getting kids evaluated, and it's even tougher to help the kids that I serve. I don't lightly refer kids for services, but I'm sometimes assigned kids who've missed school for years in their first languages, and just lack the connections to function in my classes, let alone others.

It's really amazing to me when I find out a kid missed five years of school. I had a father tell me once that in his country, if you didn't sign the kid up by a certain deadline, you couldn't sign the kid up until the following year. I listened to his story and marveled he had the audacity to tell it. I mean, if I missed signing my kid up for one year, I'd surely not miss the next one. But this guy, according to his own story, had missed five years in a row.

Of course he could've been lying. I've been in countries where I saw children selling Chiclets on the street. The child labor laws in some countries are a little lax. And it's possible the family was so poor they put the kids to work. That's a sad truth, but a lot better than the story he was telling me. It's also possible the guy was just as uneducated as his kid, but the fact was he'd somehow found the wherewithal to get his family over here.

In any case, the end result was a child who had few or no reading and writing skills in his first language. What I do is try to trick kids into loving English, and then once they do that their first language skills kind of move on over. This is usually not a very hard sell, as the entire world around my kids almost revolves around English. Of course there are exceptions. There are kids who really don't want to be here, and there are kids who are frustrated by the demands of writing a new language when they haven't got the benefit of an old one.

Kids like that need special programs. There was a program like that in my school a few years back, but we don't run it anymore. Citywide, I don't know of any initiative for kids who are illiterate, whether born here or elsewhere. Rather, we rely on Common Core stuff which ordinary kids hate, and hope that somehow special needs kids magically overcome not only their own illiteracy, but also learn the well-hidden pleasure of reading a short piece of fiction and dissecting every aspect of it over several months. Since that doesn't work at all for anyone, it's kind of an uphill battle.

As if that weren't enough, when you refer an ELL for special services they need someone who speaks the language to do the interview. Even though you may have dozens of people who speak the language right in your building, and hundreds more walking up and down the streets of your nieghborhood, you need a special DOE-approved person. The DOE has incredibly high standards and every single person they hire is an absolute jewel. Everyone who reads the local papers knows that, because they never have a cross word to say about any DOE employee, ever.

So you sit and wait months for the interview, because there are so few people who speak foreign languages in New York City. Maybe the DOE imports them. Maybe they have to take super-duper special tests. Maybe they have a secret decoder ring approved personally by Carmen Fariña. Maybe they have to sleep with someone very important. It's really tough to say.

Anyway, while you wait months and months, the kids sit in classes that are developmentally inappropriate for them. They watch the kids around them do things they can't. They fail tests in every subject without exception. Surely this makes them feel fabulous about themselves.

Of course, even in a world where absolutely everyone takes the same tests no matter what, it's entirely the fault of their teachers for failing to sufficiently differentiate.

Adios a Calle Perdido

Perdido actually means lost in English, and we've lost a great blogger in Reality Based Educator. He finally got tired of blogging about absolutely everything fifteen times a day. I've been following him for years, and he really got in a groove over at Perdido Street. He used to focus more on politics and money, which didn't grab me quite as much, but over the last few years he turned his laser-like eye to education, and he was just on fire.

Every few days I look at my short list of bloggers, and see how many weeks it's been since hemos perdido a Perdido. It's a month, and I guess I'm gonna have to move that up to the big list on top, until and unless he comes back. I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I keep thinking I'll wake up one morning and he'll have come to his senses.

RBE sent me the tip about the GOP judge Obama was thinking about, but by the time I got around to blogging it he'd already been out of the running for two days. If he sends me something else I'm gonna have to be a little more timely. The thing is, sometimes I have to think about stuff for a while before I write about it. RBE had no such limitations. He thought about things right then and there, and had them down multiple times a day. I have no idea how the hell he did that. It's all I can do to put out one thing every day.

For one thing, my job is insane. Now I'm not complaining, because I kind of thrive on that, and the job is my choice. But I'm the CL of a large school, and I teach four classes. I don't even know how I manage to get out of bed in the morning, let alone go to work and put out a blog. (That's how I rationalize blogging so much less than RBE.)

But it's a great loss. RBE read everything, everywhere, and knew everything, often before it happened. Now I have to rely on Chalkbeat NY for info every morning, and mostly all they do is tell me whether or not it's a good day for Eva Moskowitz.  It's not much of a substitute. There are other blogs I really like, but no one is quite so compulsive (and I mean that in the best way you can possibly call anyone compulsive).

Full disclosure--I've written to RBE and told him he could blog here whenever he wished. I could always use a day off. And I will tell you I know he said goodbye once before and came to his senses.

But whatever you decide, RBE, thanks for years of great blogging. I'm proud to be in your company when Mulgrew calls us filthy dirty liars, purveyors of myth, or whatever it is he says on days his mother hasn't told him to curb his filthy gutter mouth.

Why Does the UFT Have Elections?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Purveyor of Myth in Chief

Michael Mulgrew stood up at the New York Hilton in front of hundreds of UFT Delegates and said that bloggers trafficked in "myth." He fancied himself generous for calling us liars in a manner he deemed subtle. This, of course, was in response to blogs he claims not to read. Then he told us our health care wouldn't be cut.

Let's be clear. In a way, those who say America has the best health care in the world are telling the truth. All you have to do is pay for the best doctors in the best hospitals, and you get the best care. You can have private rooms in hospitals. You can even have them bring all those machines to your home. You get what you pay for.

And UFT members have a great deal of choice. The only difference, of course, is they will now pay more to exercise it. They need only reach a little farther inside their wallets, and they can have the same choices and level of care that they'd previously enjoyed. How much, exactly, was laid out over at  the JD2718 blog.

Emergency Room 200% ↑
Urgent Care  233% ↑
All Specialists 50%↑
Blood Work  33% ↑
MRI 233%↑
Physical Therapy 33% ↑

So let's be clear--it was not the bloggers who lied. This blog released a piece that a Capital NY reporter had gotten a hold of,  a piece a UFT source later told me was rejected in negotiation. But it's pretty obvious that we still haven't got a paper contract, and we still don't know exactly which changes we will and will not see. Mulgrew rolled the dice and is hoping for the best, I suppose. At his salary, a few bucks here and there in co-pays won't make a whole lot of difference anyway.

I'm gonna quote a little further language cited over at JD2718:

H. Healthcare Savings
a. The UFT and the City/DOE agree the UFT will exercise its best efforts to have the MLC agree to the following:
i. for fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015), CONTRACT AGREEMENT 2014 there shall be $400 million in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health  care program.
ii. for fiscal year 2016 (July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016), there shall be $700 million in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
iii. for fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016-June 30, 2017), there shall be $1 billion in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
iv. for fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018), there shall be $1.3 billion in savings on a citywide basis in health care costs in the NYC health care program.
v. for every fiscal year thereafter, the savings on a citywide basis in health care costs shall continue on a recurring basis.
vi. The parties agree that the above savings to be achieved on a Citywide basis are a material term of this agreement.
vii. In the event the MLC does not agree to the above citywide targets, the arbitrator shall determine the UFT’s proportional share of the savings target and, absent an agreement by these parties, shall implement the process for the satisfaction of these savings targets.

In case the implications are not clear enough, we've signed a blank check. GHI is a hugely popular program among city workers because it gives a great deal of choice, unlike HMOs. But now members who exercise this choice will have to pay more for it. There is simply no other explanation.

Now I will grant Mulgrew is not a blogger. Our President cannot be called a blogger by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn't blog, and in fact he killed the only blog the union even had.  He doesn't tweet, he doesn't do Facebook, and he doesn't even answer email.

But however many self-satisfied smirks he affects, he lies right to our faces. This is indeed a degradation of health care, and those of us who find the now ubiquitous urgent care centers convenient will find them a little less so. And every single loyalty oath signer, likely as not your chapter leader, is bound to support those lies. We've signed a blank check and we have no idea whatsoever what further compromises will be made in our health care.

And lest you forget, we did so only to have the money FDNY and NYPD got, the money they got with no givebacks, but to get it full of givebacks ,and a full eleven years after they did. We sacrificed the ATR teachers and left our health care in the hands of faceless and nameless bureaucrats. In return for this, we negotiated the lowest pattern increase in my living memory, 10% over 7 years, imposed not only on us, but on all our brother and sister unionists.

This, my friends, is what Michael Mulgrew sold to the UFT. This is the deal for which he literally shut down opposition voices at the Hilton. After years of nothing, UFT members were so desperate they voted for it. It's very sad that people were so beaten down they saw no alternative, and even sadder that they were sold it by Mulgrew's appeals to fear, e.g. there's no God-given right to retro, and we'll move behind 151 other unions if we don't just take it.

A few facts are evident here. One is is it's hard to imagine any of the 151 other unions doing a worse job of negotiating than Michael Mulgrew and the people he constantly refers to as "very smart." Thus, we may indeed have been better off waiting.

The other is someone is indeed lying to the UFT, and it ain't a blogger

Will Obama Sacrifice Labor for a SCOTUS Pick?

I have some friends who support Hillary. Passionately. In fact, some of them support her so passionately that they cannot bear to hear that some of us will not vote for her. The biggest argument is Supreme Court nominees. Evidently, if we don't support Hillary Clinton, Scalia will be infinitely cloned and SCOTUS will continue to make insane, anti-democratic rulings.

Of course I'm just as unhappy as they are with that prospect, and there's no way I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump or any of the GOP gang. But I've pretty much had it with Democrats who don't support working people. Obama enabled the very worst education policies I've ever seen, managing to outdo GW Bush. He failed to enact card check for unions or find the comfortable shoes he said he needed to walk with us. His shoes were so uncomfortable he never set foot in Wisconsin as Walker decimated union.

So I'm understandably wary of Clinton, who seems more of the same. As if that weren't enough, she blurted out the idiotic notion of closing all schools that weren't above average. That means closing half of all schools all the time. She then said we would never, ever get single payer. More recently, she advocated longer hours and school days, emphasizing quantity over quality. If kids aren't happy now, or even if we judge schools via reformy test scores, more of the same isn't gonna make anything better.

Now I read that Obama is considering GOP Governor Brian Sandoval for SCOTUS. Evidently he's aligned on certain issues with the President. However, he's known as anti-labor. Were he to be confirmed, what would that mean for the Friedrichs case? Is President Obama ready to sell public unions down the river in order to confirm a nominee? Or is he just trying to embarrass the Republicans by demonstrating they'd reject one of their own simply to avoid cooperating with him?

Either way, were Obama to nominate someone like this, it means he didn't deserve our votes. This whole triangulation strategy was created by Bill Clinton, and Obama seems to be following in his footsteps. The prime mode of following appears to be throwing teachers and public unions under the bus. I, for one, have had it with this nonsense. I declined to vote for Obama during his second term, and I'm not voting for Hillary this time around. If she beats Bernie I'll probably vote for the Green candidate, or find some other third party candidate who appears not to be insane.

It appears that Obama, who we supported twice, may not even meet the low standard of appointing a Supreme Court justice who shares our values. If that's the case, I expect Hillary is ready to follow in his footsteps, even as she criticizes Bernie Sanders for failing to sufficiently embrace Obama. For the life of me, I can't figure why our leadership supports people who are so eager to stab us in the back. I can't understand why we endorse without asking for anything in return.

But this teacher no longer votes for people who don't support public education. It's time for union leadership to wake up or get out of the way.

The Power of No

I teach a lot of students from China. Sometimes I ask them "Why?" and they reply, "No why." It's a mysterious thing, but it's a great answer as far as they're concerned. They can pretty much use it anytime, and it sounds a lot better than my standby, "I don't know." Of course a lot of people have trouble saying that, for reasons that I will never quite fathom.

But once my students get started in the negative, it's tough to turn them around. My afternoon class is usually pretty cooperative, though a little quiet for my taste. Yesterday I wanted to do an activity in which they get up and ask each other questions.  I improvised a lead-in that, in retrospect, was an absolute disaster. I said, "How come I always stand up and you always sit down? Let's do an activity where I sit down and you stand up."

They were having none of it. "No," came the response, from various corners of the room. Heads shook in resolute refusal. I decided to explain that I would stand too, but at that point it no longer made any difference. It was no, no, and no, and that was that.

In the midst of this, someone determined the room was too cold. "Close the window," she said. I told her she could close the window if she wanted it closed that bad. "No," she replied. All of a sudden, everyone wanted the window closed. "Close the window," demanded the shyest girl in the class, the one who almost never says anything.

"Listen, you are all healthy and 15 years old, and I'm an old man with one foot in the grave," I said. "If you want the window closed, get up and close it."

"No," said many voices, though not quite in unison.

The shy girl repeatedly demanded I close the window. I had finally gotten her to talk, and just for this. I said, "OK, I'll close the window if you guys get up and talk."

I closed the window. "Okay, now get up and start asking questions."

"No."

I should have known. I said, "OK fine. Don't get up. You can shout at one another. But there are 12 questions and you have to ask 12 different people. Good luck."

Several of my students started shouting at one another. Some actually got up, eventually, and started asking each other questions. But it was pretty scary standing there with all those kids in full mutiny. Who would've thunk a bunch of relatively quiet kids could muster such determination?

Mulgrew and the Secret Sauce

When I read articles like this one, by Campbell Brown, I feel a little like Michael Mulgrew were a contortionist, busily painting targets on his own back. The best part about this article is the Post's description of Brown's group as "nonpartisan." For someone who isn't partisan, she's certainly got a pretty extreme opinion. I'm certainly partisan. I think she's a tool of those who wish to destroy us, and that's why she (or whoever writes for her) writes such blather.

But the fact is, along with Mulgrew, we're also to blame for this. The reformy playbook says schools are failing and need to be fixed. It says the problem is the teachers, that we have too many job protections, that we are awful, and whatever else the papers constantly berate us for. The solutions, of course, are to rate us by rubrics, give tests, and get rid of the teachers whose students don't do well enough on said tests.

Bill Gates, guru to the reformies, has pretty much admitted that poverty is too much for him to tackle. Instead, he imposes his will on schools by waving money around. He encourages charters, junk science ratings, Common Core, and endless testing. To Bill Gates, a test score is the only indication of progress. For him, it's something we should all be striving to improve. And via targeted money he and his reformies enabled Race to the Top, which pretty much compelled the entire nation to submit.

Our leadership, unfortunately, buys into this narrative. That's why they started UFT charter schools and actually co-located them just like Eva Moskowitz does. Brown, of course, condemns UFT for not taking a representative portion of high-needs children, though she has not one word of objection when Moskowitz does precisely the same. I haven't heard a peep from her about the blatant abuse of children in Moskowitz schools, recently available on video. So much for her "non-partisan" nonsense.

Now I may have a discouraging word or two about Mulgrew and his pals in leadership, but I don't think they'd condone the sort of abuse that goes on in Moskowitz schools. Well, too bad for them, because that's how you play the charter game successfully. We ought not to be in in at all. We ought not to be emulating those who want us to disappear. We ought to recognize the value of public schools and advocate for programs that help all the kids we serve, rather than placing band aids here and there and hoping for the best. It's particularly egregious because the charter game, as played these days, is designed precisely to enable invidious comparisons between public and private schools.

As if that's not all, I've been hearing from Mulgrew for months about his plans to turn around so-called failing schools in the city. Despite his inability to resuscitate ailing UFT charters, he musters the hubris to proclaim he has the secret sauce that has eluded the reformies forever. We bought their faulty premise and are playing their rigged game. That's why we fail to step up and support opt-out, the most powerful support for NY students at this time. That's why, when ESL students are robbed of instruction by Part 154, UFT leadership does absolutely nothing to help. That's why we give Campbell Brown ammunition to make faulty arguments proclaiming that the UFT Contract is the source of school failure.

I have a message for you, Michael Mulgrew. The people you call smart and tactful each and every month are not nearly so smart as you think. That's why we are where we are. If you were smart, you'd stop playing the reformy game, which is rigged even more than the upcoming UFT election.

A Lesson I Learned Outside the Classroom

Someone on Facebook asked me about a lesson I learned outside the classroom, and it reminded me of this story. I wrote it for the first time when I was taking some ridiculous 6-hour licensing exam called the NTE, as best I recall. They asked for the same thing.

It was around 1985, and I was teaching English at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx. I was just coming in one day. It was my second year teaching. JFT is a big building, and I think it had escalators. I came up one and saw a terrible fight between two girls. I saw what looked like bloody tufts of hair on the floor. One girl was on top of the other, and it looked to me like one of them was going to die.

A small crowd had gathered, and was watching. No one was doing anything to stop the fight. I tried to pull the girl on top off the one on the bottom, and it didn't work well. When I picked up the top girl, the bottom one came right up with her. And they were still fighting. There was a really big guy across from me, a student I suppose, and he looked to me like Mike Tyson. We kind of looked at each other, and he came over to separate the girls.

I was feeling pretty confident this drama was coming to a close, but the girl I was holding was full of surprises. While I was holding her and she was pummeling her hapless victim, Mike Tyson ambled over and she kicked him right on his ass. Within moments, security arrived. I was shocked but not hurt. I never found out what happened to anyone else.

But later that day, I got called into the principal's office. This, in my view, was not a good thing. For one thing, the principal was always introducing himself to me and telling me how he loved to meet the new teachers. Fortunately, he never, ever remembered who I was. I was fearful our relationship would take a new turn, and he'd start remembering me. That didn't happen, but here's what did.

He looked at me very seriously. He asked me if I had tried to break up a fight. I copped to it. He said that it was not my job to break up fights. He told me that if I had gotten hurt my health insurance would not have covered me. I wasn't much of a hero to begin with, but I never broke up a fight after that. And that's what I learned outside of the classroom.

And the picture? That, evidently, is how I appear to my students today.

Democracy--AFT Style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fixing the ATR--We Lag Behind New Jersey

Reformy Chris Cerf has put a bunch of unassigned teachers to work in Newark. This is ironic, because he was part of Joel Klein's band of fanatic ideologues, and likely as not had a hand in the creation of the Absent Teacher Reserve. The ATR was one of the many hideous creations of the 2005 contract. The now-dead Edwize reported it was a temporary thing, failing to anticipate that Klein would hire new teachers while current ones remained in limbo.

Here in NYC, we have hundreds still in the ATR pool. Reformy Chalkbeat NY reports 1,083 ATR teachers currently working. This, of course, fails to consider the hundreds (or thousands) of provisionally appointed ATRs working all over the city, and hoping for appointments. Alas, the permanent appointments are few and far between. In my school, a few veteran teachers have been permanently appointed, and we hope this trend will continue. Some of us worked very hard to make this happen. Nonetheless this appears to be far from the norm.

Here's the thing--Bloomberg and Klein are gone, and de Blasio won by a huge margin running as the anti-Bloomberg. So why on earth can't he and the UFT come to an agreement about placing the ATRs somewhere? Now that there's precedent, in New Jersey under Cerf for goodness sake, you'd think we'd be able to work something out.

I haven't heard a peep from Mulgrew or his minions about this, but I do know that they're fine with reporting only the number of ATR teachers lacking even provisional placement. They're also fine with dumping seniority privileges which would have enabled teachers at closing schools placement in other schools. Mulgrew gets up in front of the DA and claims this is a victory because there are more transfers under his Open Market system than under previous ones. Mulgrew doesn't take into account that principals may be eager to hire lower-paid and more compliant new teachers than those with experience.

The current system is labeled one of mutual consent. Oddly, this means the principal can pretty much turn down anyone but teachers must take assignments. In fact, ATR teachers who miss two interviews can be and are fired. This is a real money saver for the city. They send out notices via the cumbersome and inefficient DOE email, and if you miss two messages they can dump you. That's pretty much it, and this firing system has proven more efficient than even the second-class due process that Mulgrew championed. Mulgrew is happy to suggest that any ATR who twice shouts in the hall ought to face a one-day 3020a process, but I've yet to hear of that being used. Why bother, when the city can pick them off for missing email?

It's time to end this charade. It's time to stop stereotyping people for the crime of working in closed schools. I'm sick to death of reading baseless assertions that ATR teachers are no good, and even more sick of seeing them judged by roving supervisors, at least one of which I've personally observed to be borderline insane. It's ridiculous, in fact, to observe teachers subbing and judge their merit. They have no chance to build bonds that longterm teachers have, and it is in fact these bonds that make classes what they are.

I know it's tough for Mulgrew to admit failure. In fact, he never does. What Mulgrew does is take new positions and pretend the old ones don't exist. For example, Mulgrew enjoyed a great victory when he negotiated all 22 areas of the Danielson rubric be observed. Bloomberg only wanted a few. Mulgrew enjoyed another great victory when he negotiated only a few.

So why not work toward getting all ATRs permanent placement? Mulgrew could pretend he never supported any other position and declare yet another great victory. The city could save millions of dollars. It's a win-win, and since Mulgrew never reads blogs, he could say he didn't hear about it here.

We need to let all our teachers teach. If the city wants subs, let them hire subs. Let's put all the ATR teachers back to work, let's have the ATR counselors offer much-needed help to our children, and for goodness sake, let's give the ATR assistant principals brooms and mops and let them do something worthwhile for a change. Everyone needs to contribute.

Reformy John King--Hypocrite of the Year

In a headline that appears to belong on The Onion, New York's own Reformy John King is "trying to repair the Obama administration's frayed relationship with teachers." This is kind of incredible. First of all, if President Obama wished to score points with teachers, he would not begin by appointing someone who appears to hate us and everything we stand for. And yes, that would be King.

In New York, King held hearings on Common Core. When he found himself criticized, the King called public school teachers and parents "special interests." He then canceled all subsequent hearings until an outraged public forced him to come out of his office and face the music. King passionately supported the miserable Common Core, and became indignant when New Yorkers asked why he placed his own children in schools that did not use it.

In one of his first major speeches as acting U.S. secretary of education, John King apologized to teachers for the role that the federal government has played in creating a climate in which teachers feel “attacked and unfairly blamed.”

It is borderline surreal to read these words. King himself championed the New York junk science rating system. It never bothered him that value-added teacher rating had no established validity. He totally ignored NY State principals who said that this was the wrong way to go. When the American Statistical Association declared that teachers affected student scores by a factor of 1-14%, King did not raise a whisper of acknowledgement.

Another disappointment is the reaction of NEA President Lily Eskelson Garcia:

“We definitely hear something new coming out of Dr. King,” she said, adding that while his words “mean a lot to us,” teachers are now interested in seeing how he backs up those words with actions.

The fact is she ought to know better. Candidate Barack Obama went to the NEA and promised to do things "with" teachers, not "to" us.  He followed that up by appointing Arne Duncan Secretary of Education, racing to the top, and imposing junk science ratings and Common Core on most of the country via a gun to its head. When Arne said Katrina was the best thing to happen to NOLA education, Obama didn't chastize him at all. When Arne made his idiotic remark about soccer moms' kids not being so smart, based on ridiculous Common Core tests, Obama said nothing.

Making John King Duncan's successor was a slap in the face to working teachers. It's very disappointing neither Eskelson Garcia nor Weingarten would come right out and say so. Of course, they're both busy campaigning for Hillary Clinton, who has promised to close any school that isn't "above average."

King would have us entirely forget his own tenure in New York and make believe we trust him. I certainly hope we aren't stupid enough to fall for that.

UFT Then and Now

I'm on a mailing list from a UFT rep who goes around to schools organizing for the union. He sends an email every week or so. Sometimes there are interesting bits. The one I just received certainly caught my attention. Here's a little piece of it.

Thank You, Senior Members!

         I hope you all enjoyed your midwinter break.  Now that you are back in your school, be sure to thank your senior colleagues, those who were working in Spring 1991, twenty-five years ago, for paying for it.

         That’s right.

         Back then under Mayor David Dinkins the city, in financial crisis, asked each and every UFT member for a loan of $500*.  In exchange we got

         -a liberalized sabbatical and leave policy

         -a buyout for Tier I members

         And

         -the midwinter break.

         It wasn’t free.  It didn’t come from Kris Kringle, Befana the Witch, or the Tooth Fairy.  Your colleagues and your union paid for it.

         Be sure to thank them. *Happy ending.  Everybody got paid back in three years at 6% interest.

Now consider that. I was working when Dinkins was mayor, and I certainly lent the city that money, so it's nice to be appreciated. But I don't expect young teachers to thank me anytime soon. For one thing, I don't see any buyout for them, and there hasn't been one for many years. For another,  they likely as not have never even met a Tier One teacher, and there's no buyout for them, let alone anyone else right now. A whole lot of them are on the far inferior Tier Six. In fact, for them, even the 25/55 we got via the grab bag of goodies we gave the city in 2005 is now gone. I like the midwinter break, but I'm pretty sure it entailed a shuffling of days.

The most egregious omission here, though, has nothing to do with any of the above. It's the failure to note that the most recent contract, the one new and not-so-new teachers are actually working under, entails a significantly larger, longer-term loan to the city. I can't say exactly how much newer teachers are deferring, but I know I myself have deferred in excess of forty thousand dollars, not for three years, but rather eleven. I'm not gonna see the money I earned in 2009 until 2020. I'm not getting 6% interest on that, but rather the 0% cannily negotiated by UFT President Michael Mulgrew and his crack team.

If I were a new teacher, knowing this, and knowing I lent a whole lot more than $500 to the city, I'd find this comparison fairly upsetting. And if I were, say, on leave for some reason (maternity is a big one), I'd be pretty pissed off that I got zero retro and had to wait two more years for the big magical chest to open again. And as for rewards for this contract, aside from the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory, the only one that pops into my mind is the second-tier due process rights we got for ATR teachers. Hardly something worth boasting about, if you ask me.

I suspect this was reaching out to try and get new members to appreciate union, given the Friedrichs case. I'm pretty surprised it failed to take into account the death of Antonin Scalia, which pretty much stops Friedrichs in her tracks (for now at least). Friedrichs' principled Koch brothers-financed quest toward more work for less pay has certainly been slowed.

Of course, on Scalia's death and its consequences, we've heard only crickets from UFT leadership. Doubtless it will be painted as a victory, just as every time UFT leadership blows its nose is a victory. But exactly what sort of victory it is needs to be considered by those who run 52 Broadway. They are very smart, as Michael Mulgrew reminds us on a monthly basis, and need to consider how to paint this for membership. After all, we aren't that smart, sophisticated, or knowledgeable. Many of us have yet to realize, for example, that the only reliable source of information, since Mulgrew axed Edwize,  is NY Teacher. A whole lot of us still rely on dubious sources like Diane Ravitch or opt-out activists, despite what the very smart people in leadership have decreed.

Anyone who compares then and now is not going to take a favorable view of the comparison. Personally, I'm not sure it was a good idea to reach out with this.  This is a pretty elementary comparison to make, and leaves me thoroughly unimpressed with the progress of UFT leadership.

Fewer Teachers? Lapsed Morale? Mulgrew Says Everything's Coming Up Roses

Lohud reports there are 13,000 fewer teachers in NY State than there were five years ago.  I know there are thousands fewer teachers in NYC alone, though I can't say offhand just how much of that figure it represents. We know that in NYC, Emperor Bloomberg had a habit of allowing teacher ranks to drop through attrition. Retiring? Fine. One more person I don't have to pay, figured Emperor Mike, and screw the inevitable larger class sizes they'd cause.

For the rest of the state, there is the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which Cuomo now proposes to end, but which has still cut state aid for drastically for many districts since 2009. Couple that with the Cuomo's tax cap of 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower (a measly .12% this year, if I recall correctly), and districts all over the state are strung out for cash. Cuomo, who fancies himself a "student lobbyist" has set it up so districts need a super-majority to aid their children. This, in fact, gives more power to those who'd deny students than those who'd support them, let alone "lobby" for them.

Cuomo gives lip service to moves he's made toward a less insane system, like his so-called moratorium on Common Core testing. This is much ballyhooed not only by Cuomo, but also by UFT leadership, which placed it on the cover of the most recent copy of NY Teacher. In fact, this affects only the scores on state ELA and math tests in grades 3-8, so for most of us, it's meaningless. In fact, it's not even clear whether these scores are entirely not going to be counted in future years.

With all teachers about to be rated 50% via test scores, an entirely invalid measure, it's getting harder to encourage newcomers to go for this job. We now know that we are to be observed by "independent" observers, since of course school supervisors may be prejudiced in favor of the people with whom they work. What an outrage. This follows, of course, the state's brilliant move not to allow teachers to grade their own students. After all, we're just a bunch of thieving, unscrupulous, self-serving bottom feeders who will do anything to look good. We'll never be paragons of integrity like Andrew Cuomo.

We're looking at an insane law, a law for which UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanked our Heavy Hearted Legislature, and a law which neither UFT nor NYSUT appears poised to reform. Mulgrew told us that he'd decided to focus on funding rather than reasonable evaluation. Doubtless, as he always says, he has very smart people with very smart reasons why we should not fight the increase in junk science evaluation for working teachers.

So while UFT declares victory on the cover of NY Teacher, we're looking at yet another evaluation system. This is becoming an annual event in NYC. Once you get a little bit used to the nonsense used to rate you, Cuomo decides not enough of us are being fired and makes up some new and more draconian BS for the teacher-hating charter school enthusiasts who give him so much money. To try and appease the opt-out people who frighten the crap out of him, he proposes a few changes, including the "moratorium" and nebulous promises to adjust Common Core.

UFT leadership declares victory, as it always does no matter what, and opt-out promises to keep up the fight. Again, we are on the wrong side doing the wrong thing, just as we were when Mulgrew promised to punch our faces out if we touched his precious Common Core. Of course, now it's a victory that Cuomo is doing just that, and he spend $1.4 million on a commercial telling NY State what a great guy we thing Cuomo is.

It's hard for me to believe these words as I write them, but that's pretty much the way it is. It's time for our union to get on the right side of history, whether Michael Mulgrew likes it or not. Fortunately, there are teacher groups who notice this and are urging leadership toward sanity.

It makes me kind of wish the UFT election were not rigged, so that it weren't dominated by retirees, so that high school teachers could select their own VP, and so that the winner take all system didn't mean absolutely every delegate to NYSUT and AFT were a loyalty oath signer bound do do Any Damn Thing Leroy Barr Says.

But I'm a dreamer. I'm a teacher and it's my job to see potential and act on it.

Still Not Feeling the Love for Hillary

Lately I've been getting attacked pretty frequently on Facebook by a few people who insist I vote for Hillary Clinton. When they get really upset, they start telling me how stupid I am. I'm unfamiliar with high school civics. I don't understand how things work. What about 1972? Didn't we lose in 1972? Sanders is Ralph Nader. He's a spoiler.

When you tell them that Sanders has pledged to support the Democratic nominee, they are not happy. It doesn't matter. Sometimes they accuse me of supporting the Republicans. If I don't vote for Hillary, I'm supporting Donald Trump. How do I feel about that?

They don't seem to understand the meaning of democracy. If, in fact, I want to vote for Donald Trump, I can. I don't, but still I have reasons not to vote for Hillary. For one thing, I voted for Barack Obama the first time he ran. I was pretty horrified as he enacted the worst education policies I've ever seen. I regretted my vote, and when he ran for re-election chose Jill Stein from the Green Party. So when Hillary said she would close schools that weren't above average, I decided that was enough for me.

But she followed this up by saying we would never, ever get single payer. Evidently those of us who think America should have universal health coverage are wild-eyed dreamers. Now I've been sick, and even with excellent health insurance I recall wading through complicated, virtually incomprehensible bills, and spending hours calling my medical insurance company, and my hospital insurance company, and actually visiting the hospital to try and clear things up. This was a process that took months.

But that's nothing.

Sometimes I play fiddle in bluegrass bands. It's kind of my hobby. One Saturday night, I was playing in a Pennsylvania theater, in a band that opened for someone who was fairly well known in our circles. It was a pretty nice gig. We had a dressing room, and the theater sent us to a nearby restaurant for lunch and dinner.

I remember I ate with the banjo player from the main band. He ordered a Reuben sandwich, and so did I. I don't remember much of what we talked about. I do remember, though, that he was the only member of the other band who looked under 300 pounds. That's why I was pretty surprised to hear that he dropped dead the following Tuesday.

Evidently he'd been having chest pains and didn't want to go to the ER. After all, an ER visit can cost 3,000 bucks, and that's after the negotiated discounts your insurance company has. This banjo player had none of those discounts, and in case you didn't know, banjo playing is not generally a well-paying job. I'm not even sure if he was the regular banjo player. But banjo players, regular or not, like all Americans, deserve better than this.

.@HillaryClinton If you really believe this, it's time for you to support #FightFor15/hr min wage and #SinglePayer health care. #Talkischeap

— Danielle Muscato (@daniellemuscato) February 17, 2016

My friend's father had to sell his house to pay his wife's medical bills. He moved into the basement of his son's house, where one Christmas Eve he blew his brains out with a gun.

America needs universal health, not excuses from self-serving politicians who care about nothing but winning the election. And for those of you who want to lecture me about the Supreme Court, if Hillary needs my  vote in NY State so desperately it's that pivotal, she is toast anyway.

You vote for who you like. I'm voting for Bernie in the primary, and I'm not voting for a reformy politician who wants to fire me, or any of my brother and sister teachers.

How I Won Friedrichs and Jia Lee Didn't

Hey it's me again, "Punchy" Mike Mulgrew, here to give you an important update on the thing that's been keeping some people up nights, the Friedrichs case. OK, it hasn't been keeping me up nights, because I have very smart people to worry about this stuff so I don't have to. They calculate and strategize, and measure each and every bit of data. They have slide rules and everything. Now I can't explain their thinking, because it's secret, and I don't understand it anyway, but the point is they think about this stuff and figure it out, so that should be good enough for anybody.

What's indisputable is this---under our leadership, Justice Antonin Scalia has died, and unless he comes back as a zombie or something, it looks like that pretty much rules out his vote on Friedrichs. We figure, even if Obama doesn't get to appoint a new justice, it doesn't matter because it's gonna be 4-4. That means the lower court ruling holds and Friedrichs loses. Everyone has to pay, members and non-members, and we won't have to bother with all that organizing and stuff it looked like we might have to do. Sheesh, that's a relief. I really didn't feel like doing that, not that I was gonna do it anyway. Of course I have people for that.

So here's the thing. I keep hearing about this Jia Lee character who seems to want to run against me. Can you imagine? I have to control my base instincts so as not to use bad language right now, but who the hell does this character think she is? I'm even hearing that newspapers write about her. Can they even do that?  I'm the President, dammit. They run my picture and quote her. What's up with that? This is just one more case of the NY Post running some radical point of view without coming to me, the reasonable center, who could have one of my people make up some quote or something.

So let me ask you this. Do you think, under the leadership of someone like Jia Lee, that Scalia would have died and we'd have won Friedrichs? Of course you can't say that. What you can say, with 100% certainty, is that under my leadership, with the input of all the smart people who write my op-eds and tell me what to say, that we dealt with this. All those of you who made jokes about our contingency plans can go screw yourselves. There are reasons we can't tell you what our plans are. And it doesn't matter what you say because the fact is that we won this one, and we win them all.

Now sure you can vote for Jia Lee and all the disloyal bastards she represents. But the next time we're in a crisis, can you be sure the Supreme Court Justice will die before the case gets heard? Of course not. That's why I'm telling you not to change horses in midstream, and to elect me again. We now have a history of Supreme Court Justices dying before they could enter judgments that would harm us. Can MORE say that? Of course not. And just remember if there's some odd confluence of events and Friedrichs comes up again, it isn't my fault. Who could predict things like that, or Bloomberg winning, or his third term?

I'd just like to say one more thing. I'm sick and tired of hearing about the blogs, the ones I don't read, saying that our Unity members sign a loyalty oath. Let me make this very clear, once and for all. It is not a loyalty oath. It's simply an agreement that they will all do whatever we say they're gonna do.  We make our top secret decisions via a very fair process, with our elite, handpicked members. I can't tell you what that process is because then I'd have to have you killed, and there's a whole lot of paperwork in rubbing people out and attributing the expenses to caterers of gala luncheons. But I have very smart people arrange all this stuff, so it's OK.

Anyway, I want you to get on social media, on Twitter and MySpace, or whatever the hell it is you kids do nowadays, and tell everyone what a great job I'm doing, and not to vote for that Jia Lee character. I hear she hangs around with, you know, bloggers and other lowlife characters. I don't approve of blogs, and that's why I killed Edwize. Sure no one read it, but that's not the point. The point is I don't want you reading any blogs at all. The only info you need is in NY Teacher.

So, in retrospect, don't vote for that weirdo Jia Lee, and remember, under our leadership not only have we won Friedrichs, but we also haven't had a catastrophic natural disaster in over three years. Can Jia Lee and her gang of MORE/ New Action bastards say that?

Of course not. The choice is clear folks. See you at the next DA. I have a lot of hilarious in jokes that none of you will understand, and I can't wait to share them with you.

Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets

The big story in reformy Chalkbeat NY's Rise and Shine, of course, is Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz is under fire for the documented cruelty of one of her teachers. Alan Singer points out that this teacher is not actually certified but a Moskowitz mentor teacher nonetheless. Moskowitz, who refuses to sign the standard agreement for her pre-K program, can apparently certify anyone she wants however she pleases.

Chalkbeat links to a number of stories stating that this sort of behavior would not be acceptable in wealthier schools. Doubtless that's true. I certainly would not want my child in this teacher's class, and it's hard to imagine parents who feel otherwise. In fact, the NY Times report suggesting students regularly pee their pants rather than asking for a moment less test prep leads me to believe this behavior is not, as Moskowitz claimed, an anomaly.

The fact is Chancellor's Regulation A-421, against verbal abuse, would have landed this teacher in a ton of hot water. In NYC public schools, you simply are not permitted to address children in an abusive or hostile manner. In fact, the wording is such that pretty much anything that makes a kid feel uneasy can be construed as abuse. If you say, "hello," and it makes the kid feel bad somehow, a crazy principal could bring you up on charges.

Nonetheless, I do not condone what this teacher did to this first grader. A teacher ought to be supportive rather than abusive, and anyone watching the video can see what's going on here. Children make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes all the time. We are human and ought to allow for children being human too. In fact, being children, they have a much better excuse than we do for mistakes. It isn't just private schools of the well-to-do that wouldn't put up with this nonsense. No public school principals worth their salt would accept this behavior.

Here's the thing--charter schools are not subject to chancellor's regs. Abusive to children? Well, if it helps you get high test scores that's fine. Traumatized kids? Too bad. As long as Eva gets her test scores it doesn't matter. Does Eva have to follow the rules we do, the ones that say we can't grade standardized tests of our own students? Who knows? Rules don't apply to revolutionaries. After all, she's on a mission to privatize education and get it out of the hands of those nasty unionized career teachers. Certification? Bah humbug. Trained teachers might not know how to terrorize kids into high test scores with all that touchy feely stuff they learned at "college."

At the end of the day, Eva says she's sick of apologizing. Sick of apologizing for her "got to go" list, sick of apologizing for the kids who pee their pants, and sick of apologizing for the downright abusiveness of her staff. Of course she hasn't apologized for her failure to sign the pre-K agreement.

And why should she? Under a law her BFF Andy Cuomo passed, the city has to subsidize her schools whether or not they want them. She didn't get where she was by following rules, and if she has to abuse and terrorize kids to get what she wants, that ought to be good enough for anyone.