When Bill Gates decided that teachers needed to be rated by test scores, Mulgrew was not punchy in the least. In fact, he told the DA a few years back that we needed to be part of this great experiment, and in my school several teachers got paid as he conducted an important experiment that none of his employees appeared to understand. This, of course, was a precursor to the brilliant Race to the Top, which led to NY State's APPR law. In fact, the UFT President participated in negotiating this law, and though I know not one single teacher who likes it, he was far from putting up his dukes over it.
When mayoral control came in, the UFT supported it. When it was proven beyond question to be a disaster, we supported it again. As a result of mayoral control, schools all over the city closed, and thousands of teachers ended up as ATRs. Some will never teach their own classes again. In fact, when Bill de Blasio became mayor and tried to stop this nonsense, he was overridden by Governor Cuomo and the legislature. Mike Mulgrew not only punched no one in the face, but lifted not a finger to stop this from happening. Could this have been some quid pro Cuomo? Only he and the UFT Prez know for sure.
The biggie, though, is the UFT Contract. Some of you may recall that we waited six years for it. While cops and firefighters and just about everyone got 8% salary increases between 2008-2010, we got diddly squat. And even after the contract was negotiated, we won't get what they got in 2010 until 2020. What did our two-fisted union leader have to say about that? He said something about retro pay not being a God-given right. This, in fact, is the sort of thing we should have been hearing from management.
And that's not all. We passed the worst pattern increase in my living memory onto our union brothers and sisters. Also, though most of the city unions didn't have any givebacks, we managed to establish a two-tier system of due process---one for most teachers, and another for ATR teachers. Mulgrew himself gave, as an example, shouting in the hall on two occasions as sufficient reason to dismiss an ATR. However, like the health care agreement that's uncertain, this will ultimately fall in the hands of arbitrators.
So when does union leadership get tough? Apparently, when parents statewide determine Common Core is a disaster. When parents are disgusted an arbitrary cutoff fails 70% of our children, rather than get behind them, we will oppose them. We'll say it's the implementation, which is sheer nonsense. In fact this was designed to fail 70% of our kids, and the results were announced before they were publicly released.
This, in fact, was designed to fool New Yorkers into believing that public schools statewide were failing. Arne Duncan's idiotic crack about white soccer moms whose kids weren't so bright pretty much confirmed that. But you don't mess with the mommies.
And our union ought not to be threatening to punch public school parents. In fact, when they disagree with corporate reforms designed to condemn public schools, they are our allies and staunchest supporters.
Art by Fred Klonsky
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