Damn Unity

Last Sunday I went to the Rockaway Theatre Company where blogger Norm Scott was in a production of Damn Yankees. It was wonderful, with really impressive singing and music. The orchestra was mostly teachers and students, and there were also a lot of teachers in the cast. It's great to see that such talented people are working to help our kids. Particularly inspiring was the use of children in the cast.

As I watched, I kept thinking of parallels and contrasts with our clueless and counterproductive leadership. Clearly the unbeatable Yankees were the Unity machine, which allows no dissent and shuts out the voices of most working teachers. Would someone sell their soul to oust Unity? Probably not, because the prime mode Unity preserves power is already via a soul-sucking loyalty oath.

In contrast, Unity dissidents gotta have heart. James Eterno had it when he ran an uphill campaign against Mike Mulgrew, and so did Julie Cavanagh. Lauren Cohen had it when she spoke truth to 800 poorly-behaved members of the Unity machine, and Mike Schirtzer showed it when he followed her. Neither let the juvenile catcalls of the paid Unity supporters sway them. Beth Dimino, Brian St. Pierre, and Rob Pearl of the tiny PJSTA showed it when they resisted NYSUT's ouster of Dick Iannuzzi et al, tossed out by the machine for the unforgivable offense of belatedly having heart themselves. We all showed it when we came out for Zephyr Teachout even as NYSUT and UFT abandoned her.

When I was enlisted last spring to run for Executive Vice President of NYSUT, I learned whatever Randi wants, Randi gets. It was certainly an uphill battle. Statewide few people one knew my name, and though I attended every forum I could get to I saw a very small percentage of voters. I myself had no vote, and every single UFT voter, 34% of the total, had signed an oath to oppose not only me per se, but pretty much anyone they were told to. All through the state I heard tales of the statewide Unity Caucus offering patronage gigs and/ or additional representation, often directly via Randi, if they'd vote for Revive. I now regularly hear from patronage recipients what a great job Revive is doing, even though its candidates have now broken most of their campaign promises. That's neither here nor there if they threw you a gig, though.

Then there's the devil, Mr. Applegate. I won't name the insufferable hacks he epitomizes, but I see them fairly regularly. Sometimes they visit here and spout personal insults. In a way, I don't blame them. If I had no argument and felt compelled to say something, I might go straight to ad hominem too, I guess. I know some very smart people in Unity too, but I find them the exception rather than the rule, and that bodes ill for us. I'm absolutely persuaded that people who live 24/7 in the Unity cone of silence are those who negotiate the contracts and decide to get in bed with reformy types, to the direct detriment of teachers, students and communities.

It's not much of a secret that in the end of Damn Yankees. protagonist Joe keeps his soul. At least he was offered baseball stardom, rather than a few convention trips and a $30 an hour gig. I don't know whether we'll ever make inroads into leadership. After all, whatever Randi wants, Randi gets, and she's still out there, actively making cute little deals to keep opposition from making inroads toward actual representation.

But we are still role models, and it behooves us to leave the world a little better for our children and students. Selling out has gotten us nowhere, and we need to show our kids to resist hurtful nonsense. So whatever the odds are, you gotta have heart. And it's on us, the teachers, to lead the way.

That, in fact, may be our most important job.

On Starting From Square One--Every Year...

When you have a handful of years teaching already safely stored in your pockets, you may not take kindly to a system that forces you to start from square one every year.  The system is stacked against your professionalism.  Last year, I had to hand in "artifacts" to prove that I do what I do every day and I do every day what I have done for the last twenty years.  There are no "artifacts" this year, but I still must prove myself anew.  Those twenty years count for nada.  I am once again at square one and under the microscope of NY State.  I can no longer be trusted.

If I am held up to Danielson each year, perhaps 4d will rear its head again.  I might need to volunteer my time and energy to volunteer service to the school or attend functions that have little to do with my teaching.  If I have done all these things in the past, but now find myself busy with children at home or, perhaps, a pressing medical condition, my past record cannot be used in my defense.  Teachers are currently asked sometimes to chaperone student events.  It is a desperate situation because there is no money in it.  So, the sign indicates: "FULFILLS DANIELSON REQUIREMENTS!"

If my students fail miserably on a high-stakes test any year in the future, it does not matter that I once had AP kids average a 3.828 out of 5 (with 91.4% lined up to receive college credit).  If I helped countless kids get Regents credit in the past, all is washed away.  All the kids who achieved personal victory with me in years past in one form or another are now discounted.  If my kids do well, but not as well as an arcane formula demands from them, I may also be royally wrecked as Dr. Lederman in Great Neck.

I cannot control the things that may suddenly make me appear inept.  If I have 39 students and another teacher has twenty, it doesn't figure into the formula.  If my students are living in poverty and my classroom is underfunded and another teacher has a classroom filled by well-fed children with lots of supplies, it doesn't matter.  If my kids stepped off a plane and cannot tell me much more than their names, and they never attended a school anywhere in the world, it makes little difference.  Sometimes I really feel the people who invented this spiffy system in a seeming vacuum are the ones who really need to be schooled.

Loyalty

I travel a lot, so I spend an awful lot of time in my car. I think bluetooth is a gift from heaven. I bought a new car that has it, and I can't believe how much easier my life is. I gave my old car to my daughter, who spent $200 putting a bluetooth receiver in it. I feel like a total fool for not having consulted her years ago.

The great thing about bluetooth is you can get all your phone conversations done while you're driving. No more interrupting all the Important Stuff you do at home. One of my favorite people to talk to when I'm in my car is Mike Schirtzer from MORE. He's got boundless energy and enthusiasm for almost everything, and as far as I can tell he never stops working. He's also a compelling speaker even when not on the phone with me.

The other day I called Mike from the Throgs Neck Bridge, and he spoke about how people in the union made 50 bucks an hour working for UFT. I told him he was wrong, and that it was only 30, at least in my case. I was once on an 18D committee in Queens. For some reason, someone at UFT decided it would be good not only to train me for the committee, but also to have me work on it. I did 8 hours.

It was really interesting. I'd expected to have to fight for teachers who were already in the building, but not a single teacher from the building applied. I also expected to have to fight for experienced teachers over newbies, but the principal announced at the first meeting she only wanted to hire experienced teachers. I was confused. What were we supposed to fight about?

There really wasn't a whole lot, in the end. This school had a special philosophy, and the qualifications asked for a familiarity with it. I read hundreds of applications, mostly generic, that failed to mention it at all. Some said things like, "I am very intelligent." First of all, if you want people to believe you're intelligent it's better to either a. show you are intelligent, or b. have someone else say it for you. More importantly, if you're looking for a job and the requirements are right there for all the world to see, why wouldn't you take a minute and Google the philosophy so you could write how wonderful it is, how interested you are in it, or even that you think it's awful? That's better than telling me how smart you are and failing to even acknowledge it.



I told Mike I loved doing that work, and he told me he'd love to work for the union too. I told him that most UFT jobs were meted out for loyalty. He said he was loyal. When they ask him to go to a march, he goes to the march. When they ask him to wear pink, he wears pink (there's an image I don't much want to contemplate). When he's not sure who to vote for, he consults the UFT endorsements. But wherever they ask him to be, there he is. I frequently go as well. I even made calls to keep the Democrats in control of the Senate this year, for all the good it did.



But Mike is loyal UFT. And so am I. No one believes in union more than we do. Sadly, that's not the sort of loyalty valued by our union. A friend of mine ran against and defeated her sitting chapter leader, who was apparently not bothering much with the whole doing her job thing. The defeated CL was very upset to lose. But when she found out she could still keep her UFT job and go to all the conventions, she was delighted. No more of that time-consuming representing the members. No more sitting through meetings she couldn't care less about. No more phone calls, emails, and getting stopped in the hall about all the things she was failing to do.

And the new chapter leader was never asked to be part of the proud, the few, the loyalty-oath bound Unity Caucus, which supports mayoral control, APPR, charter schools, and any damn thing they are told to.

Mike's a delegate in his school, where they have a well-established chapter leader. I know he'd make a great CL if he ever chose to be one. I know he could be of great service to the union.

But the union would rather have the failed CL from my other friend's school, the one the school voted out for incompetence. That's who UFT chooses to represent you, me and everyone. Why? Because that person will vote as told and never, ever question the wisdom of union leadership.

That's what passes for leadership in the UF of T. And that's who represents you in NYSUT and AFT too. Who the hell else would not only support the spectacle of Bill Gates as keynote, but also ridicule those who see fit to protest? Who the hell else would applaud Biden after four years of abusing our dignity? And who else would applaud President Michael Mulgrew as he called opponents of Common Core lunatics and threatened to punch their faces and push them in the dirt? People with that particular brand of loyalty.

Mike and I would love to work for the union, and not just for the money, which is not all that great anyway. But if it takes the sort of loyalty that means applauding for things that hurt working teachers and the kids and communities we serve, count us both out.

When a Reformy Governor Takes Control of Mayoral Control

 by special guest blogger Harris Lirtzman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Do You Do Every Day?

That's a simple question, but it isn't always so for my students. One of the toughest things for them to get their heads around is simple present, like, "I go to school every day," or, "She likes her job." That little s in the third person singular is what really gets them. A lot of newcomers figure, "Well, they only use it a little bit, so really who will notice if we just forget about it altogether?"

Unfortunately for them, that would be me. I notice my beginners don't get it right, and I notice that at every level afterward ELLs tend not to get it right either. So I make it my mission in life to shove it down their throats no matter what. Yes that is me crying, feigning a heart attack, and playing the tragic violin solo every time some kid utters, "He like to go to the beach." And don't get me started on simple present vs. present progressive. But I digress.

Yesterday, I gave a pretty simple activity and asked the kids to write. Write about what you do every day. It was a straightforward activity I stole from a book. The model was written from the point of view of a college student, which was kind of cool. They learned what a dormitory is and about a different kind of student cafeteria. But there were problems. One of the sentences said something like, "Every day I shave and brush my teeth." I was surprised how many girls wrote that they shaved every day. I had to use a lot of gestures to make the point that it's best to know what words mean before using them.

The thing that surprised me most, though, was what the kids wrote when they weren't copying the model. There was a lot of talk about morning activity, taking a shower, eating breakfast, and whatever. Then there were a number of responses like this:

I go to school from 7:30 until 3:15.

I mean, what does that even mean? It sounds like the kid just sits rotting away in some dark corner until the bell rings. One girl wrote a sentence like that, and then explained that after school she takes a bus and a train to Manhattan where she works every day. This explains why she looks so tired all the time. She also wrote that she eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at work,  I wasted a few minutes urging her to eat breakfast in the morning. She politely nodded but I'm certain she won't change anything.

I questioned several kids who wrote those sentences. Don't you ever do anything when you're in school? To them, it was a strange question. Why are you asking me this? Is it a trick? Are you gonna call my mother again like you did when you caught me playing music from my phone in the trailer bathroom?

But I really wanted to know. Is school just a big inconvenient block cut out of your time so you can't play Call of Duty for a few hours? Is it just a bunch of time set aside for no good reason? Is it torture? I mean, some teachers are so extreme that they won't let you speak your native language in English class. How unfair is that?

Once, when I was teaching a college class, a girl asked, "Why are we doing this?" And another student, a gynecologist from Macedonia, stood up and said, "Because it's a class. You have to do something!" I have no recollection of what we were doing, but I loved his answer. In fact, I like to believe we do things in my class.

But I might be mistaken. I could be a small part of a vague sentence in a paragraph about someone's typical day. And perhaps that kid can't differentiate me from the science teacher, the social studies teacher, the health teacher, or even the PE teacher who makes her put on a uniform and play basketball.

And that shouldn't be frustrating only to me. At the very least, it should be frustrating to the PE teacher too.

On Being Unhindered by Inconvenient Reality

It must be great to be Joel Klein. You can simply blame the UFT for everything. There's that awful contract that restrains you from doing all the wonderful work you aspire to. Never mind that you signed it and had a hand in writing it. And the best thing about it is that even if stuff isn't in the contract, you can just make it up and get it printed in the Atlantic. There's prestige for you. And in fairness, why should New York Times columnists and editorial writers corner the market on reforminess?

Klein laments that he could not meet with teachers because the contract prohibited it. I find that odd because I teach in the largest school in Queens and for his entire eight-year tenure the Kleinster did not see fit to set foot in our school even once. I've read the UFT Contract and I haven't seen the part that says a Chancellor may not enter the school building. In fact, both Cathie Black and Dennis Walcott visited my school and I didn't even file a grievance. Walcott and I actually spoke on several occasions.

But Joel Klein is different. He has deep and abiding respect for clauses in the UFT Contract, even if they do not exist. That's just the kind of guy he is. The union was completely uncooperative when Joel tried to reach out. Just look at how hostile then-UFT President Randi Weingarten looks in the photo above. You can just sense the absolute enmity between the two of them. Clearly she isn't cooperating with him at all.

Odd that Klein was so respectful of the Imaginary UFT Contract,  but had multiple issues abiding by the actual UFT Contract. If I'm not mistaken, one year he decided to deny all sabbaticals. I believe that was taken to arbitration and he lost. Odd that someone absolutely willing to unilaterally ignore the real contract would be so upset by clauses hindering his options under the imaginary one.

What's truly odd to me, though, is that several times I directly spoke to Klein at the PEP. Not only did he fail to utter a single word in response, but he appeared to be playing with his Blackberry and utterly ignoring every word I said about the then-massive overcrowding at Francis Lewis High School. I watched him do the same to James Eterno as he spoke the outrageous conditions at Jamaica High School. In fact, though Eterno emailed Klein about the false assumptions used to close Jamaica High School, that didn't stop Klein from going ahead and closing it on those very assumptions.

But of course that is reality, and Klein can't be bothered with such things when telling his story. That's what enables reforminess, actually. You can't get up and say there are billions of dollars in education and Eva Moskowitz needs to get her taste. You can't say you want to close neighborhood schools and make profits for your BFFs. You can't get up and say you're determined to ignore poverty and cut taxes for people who don't send their kids to public schools. Really, you can't get up and say, "I'm Joel Klein, or Mike Bloomberg, or John King, and I choose not to send my own kids to the schools I make up rules for."

Rather, you can write books about the way you choose to remember things. Because Eva Moskowitz, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and the other people who read such books are highly unlikely to fact-check or read blogs like this one. 

Let the "Reformers" Re-Form Themselves

The facts and formulas we instill in kids are secondary in importance to the manifold other purposes of public education.  We need individuals who can think outside a test bubble.  This has traditionally defined our greatness.

When it comes right down to it, most of us probably remember only a small fraction of what we learned in school.  Yet, we succeed in life because we are able to think creatively and confront positively the problems that appear in life.  These are the problems that you will never find on a test.

I judge my education a success because I gained a love for learning which propels me past the confines of my college and graduate-school years.  I do not deed my learning over to classrooms or workshops for PD credit.  I motivate myself to learn and my students and children further motivate me to self-educate.

In school and at home, I gained confidence in my ability to address new problems.  If the Common Core had repeatedly smacked me down and branded me as a failure, I might have started off with the supposition that I cannot do it.  It might have caused irreversible harm.  How many children are suffering harm today?

We need something more than good test takers.  We need good citizens.  We need emotionally and intellectually healthy people as threads in the fabric of our society.  We don't need beaten-down masses labeled as failures by a test-crazed, self-appointed set of reformers.  We need individuals inspired to achieve their very best.  We need to teach the principles that encourage kids to love learning--and it may not be the same principles for all kids.

We don't need a "common core" to kill individual initiative in the name of standardization.  Greatness is rarely, if ever, achieved in any nation when it becomes set in its ways.  And, we certainly don't need Common-Core testamania to promote incessant prep and then punish students and their teachers.  Maybe what the ed. "reformers" really need to do is re-form their own thinking.

The Silent Majority

That was the term then-President Nixon used to describe his supporters. They weren't all those dirty hippies protesting the Vietnam War. They were the good, solid Americans who never spoke out and put up with whatever nonsense the President saw fit. And it was indeed a few years before they rose up and tossed him out on his presidential keester.

For teachers and unionists facing uncertainty, there's another question. What will it take for us to rise up in significant enough numbers to have an impact? Union has been on the wane since Saint Reagan busted the air traffic controllers, the only union with the peculiar lack of foresight to have supported him. The trend has been exacerbated as we've elected demagogues even in states noted for union support.

Here in NY, for some reason, we elected Andrew Cuomo, a man who clearly has no principled interest beyond the advancement of Andrew Cuomo. I don't know a single person who was enthusiastic about him, but people who bother to actually speak politics with me are not necessarily members of the silent majority. The silent majority sits quietly as our rights are eviscerated.

Andrew Cuomo shocked me four years ago by running on a platform of going after unions. As a lifelong Democrat, I labored under the misconception that we supported union and Republicans opposed. The new paradigm, I guess, is for absolutely everyone to oppose those of us who actually work for a living. I was amazed, yesterday, to see a television commercial boasting new business in NY pays no property, corporate or sales tax. No wonder there's no money left for working people.

So the question, again--how bad must things become before the silent majority speaks out? In our own union, the ATR teachers have finally begun to organize, against the wishes of the leadership that very publicly approved not only their second tier due-process, but also denied them a functional chapter. Leadership doesn't want this chapter--clearly their votes will be less reliable of those of retirees. No one's sending Mike Mulgrew thank you cards for second-tier due process rights, and his punchiness over Common Core does nothing to help ATRs leadership has sold out when other unions had no givebacks.

The best model for organization is Chicago, but there are factors there that really differ from those in NYC. For one thing, their equivalent of ATR teachers are eventually subject to being fired. Though ours are placed in a rough position, UFT has managed to hold the fort on at least that aspect. I doubt many non-ATR teachers realize how demoralizing being an ATR can be, and the fact that they're kept on payroll may make people think it's not such a threat. But we are all ATRs, and it's sad leadership doesn't know that, and sadder we don't realize it.

Another significant factor that differentiates Chicago from NYC is that retirees in Chicago do not vote. Here in fun city, people unaffected by new contracts form the majority of those deciding who negotiates them. I believe retirees should have input on retiree issues and working teachers should have input on working teacher issues. It's nice that UFT has a Florida HQ, but it's ridiculous that more than half of UFT vote comes from retirees.

On bigger picture issues, we have a governor who's publicly threatened to break what he calls the public school monopoly. It's amazing we have an ostensible Democrat governor and he uses such extremist terms. Of course he sends his own kids to private school and happily takes money from DFER, so privatizing public schools means little to him. Is that enough to wake up the over 80% of teachers who can't be bothered even to select their own leadership?

How bad will things have to get before we wake up? Only time will tell.

On Unrepresentative Leadership

I read with interest Principal Carol Burris' column on whether education groups are really listening to their members. It's interesting that the statewide PTA is deaf to the concerns of regional PTAs. When parents see their kids suffering from overtesting and preposterous high stakes, they tend to object. This is something Reformy John King learned when he actually went around the state and heard from people not contained in his particular cone of silence.

Unfortunately, the state PTA leaders appear to be precisely the sort of people Reformy John hangs with, the ones who tell him that everything is wonderful and he is unconditionally a prince. And while it's clear he believes that, I'm not at all certain readers of this blog will concur. So what do you do when you have a leadership that doesn't represent you? According to Carol Burris, you vote the bastards out.

That makes sense to me. Of course, for those of us in the UFT, it's another story. So few of us deem it worth our time to vote that it's very tough to compete with avid patronage recipients. To make things worse, more than half of all voting is done by retirees, who have limited skin in the game. But the very worst aspect of our voting is it's winner take all, and all dissenters, bar none, are shut out. Were that not the case, you certainly wouldn't have a UFT President not only supporting Common Core, but also publicly threatening to beat the crap out of anyone who doesn't.

And whenever it appears there's some slim chance opposition may break a little sunshine into the monopolistic one-sided regime, action is taken. When Mike Shulman won UFT HS VP, they waited until he was out of office and changed the rules so those meddlesome high school teachers couldn't elect anyone who actually represented them. Now the elementary and middle school teachers help us, which ensures a Unity VP even if we choose otherwise.

But that wasn't enough. Randi Weingarten reached out to Shulman's party, New Action, and struck a deal. If New Action would only endorse her, she'd let several seats on the UFT Executive Board go unopposed. At that time, when New Action members like James Eterno refused to buy into the deal, they formed ICE, contested the seats and won them. As opposition voices were completely unacceptable, Unity then cross-endorsed the New Action candidates and made sure that no one they didn't have a deal with got any voice whatsoever.

More recently upstart caucus MORE has gotten a little traction, and that apparently could not be tolerated. So Randi Weingarten met with a teacher who's now formed yet another caucus, a teacher who's already running a campaign for UFT President in 2016. So just in case MORE should catch on enough to threaten even the high school seats New Action now holds, Weingarten and this teacher have made it just that much more difficult. In my opinion, buying out New Action was one of the most effective steps our union has ever taken against democracy. Perhaps this new caucus will prove the second best.

Since absolutely everyone who represents us has either signed a loyalty oath or struck a deal with the UFT Unity Caucus, there is not one single person who represents us at a significant decision-making level. Sure, we can bring things up at the DA, but we're overwhelmed by people who need to vote as told at risk of being ejected from not only their patronage jobs, but also the glitzy free trips to conventions where they reliably say nothing and represent no one.

And then, of course, there is NYSUT and AFT, where we also have no representation whatsoever. I keep hearing ostensible leaders claim teachers support this and that, but they never ask me or anyone I represent. Their bad decision-making and short-sightedness threaten our very survival as union. We all hope our enemies won't kill tenure, but we have to know that whether or not that happens it's far from the end game.

Leadership, in the vain hope that appeasement will keep our enemies at bay, has given in to major reformy initiatives, including mayoral control (which apparently exists only for reformy mayors), charter schools, value-added junk science, and deterioration of seniority rights and due process. Evidently, this leadership is up for just about anything. Personally I don't know one single teacher who supports any of this stuff.

Carol Burris offers a great closing line:

I suppose it is always nice to have a seat at the table. It is important, however, to be sure that those you represent are not the main course.

The question remains--with leadership like we have, and a blatantly rigged election process, how do we go about changing it? How do we achieve a real representative union?

Mr. Mulgrew and the Improved Improvement Program

Hi folks, it's me, "Punchy" Mike Mulgrew. As you know, we have a new chancellor, and because of this we have a new deal for the next two schools that are being reorganized. Now under that mean old Mike Bloomberg, a bunch of new schools would've come in and everyone would've had to reapply for their jobs eventually, if they wanted to stay. But under our new improved agreement, the school will stay the same and everyone will have to reapply for their jobs right now.

But that's not the only improvement we've worked out. Under the old agreement, the school would've had to hold up to 50% or the positions for qualified applicants. Now that was a problem because sometimes fewer than 50% of the staff would get hired. But we've solved that problem by eliminating this requirement entirely. So now whoever gets hired, gets hired, and whoever doesn't, doesn't. We just spin the wheel and see what happens. So you don't have to worry about that either.

As you know, our new contract has a clause for expedited 3020a hearings for ATR teachers. This was, of course, a great improvement over those hearings which went on forever. People got tired. How tedious it was to call witnesses in their defense when they were facing loss of their careers. So we gave them only one day, and that improved things. And now, to improve things even more, we didn't do it this time. Another great improvement was the rotation, week to week and month to month, so ATR teachers could meet so many more people and have so many more opportunities. Anyway, that was such a great improvement that we didn't use it this time, which was also a great improvement.

Here in UFT leadership, we always make changes for the better. For example, it was a great victory when we got all 22 components of Danielson, because that bastard Bloomberg only wanted 7. It was also a great victory when we reduced it to 8, which just about anyone will tell you is a whole lot better than 7. After all, think of that Beatles song, 8 days a week. Who the hell would've listened to it if it were 7 days a week? What's special about that? I defy you to find one person who wants to work 7 days a week. 8 is always better.

So let me make it clear--this new program will not make the teachers ATRs. They'll stay at new schools for a full year. Unless, of course, the principal doesn't want them there and then they won't. That's what we call mutual consent, and it's much better than those bad old days when teachers would just transfer to new schools. Where's the romance in that? Be a gypsy, I say, and travel from place to place. You don't see me just sitting in one school all year round. Sure, I visit, but I'm in and I'm out. That's the best way. That's why we changed the ATR system from a year, to a week, to a month, and then back to a year, and dammit, each and every time we changed it was an incredible improvement.

You know, back in the bad old days, teachers couldn't transfer easily. So we initiated the UFT transfer plan, and then after a few years people could, and that was a great improvement. Then we gave that up and if principals didn't want you, you could go to hell. That was mutual consent and that was a wonderful improvement. This was clear because more people transferred, and that was great. Except for the people who couldn't. But they could go to hell and that was also a great improvement.

So don't worry. There are no more school closings, and that's a fantastic improvement. Unless, of course, de Blasio decides to close schools. Rest assured that if he does, we will come to an agreement about it and that will be a fantastic improvement too.  If you don't believe me, just ask any Unity Caucus member. They've supported me each and every step of the way, and if they didn't, I'd throw their asses out and it's no more jobs or conventions for them, those ungrateful bastards.

So remember, on task, great improvement, working forward, making things better, empowering members. And oh yeah, don't you lay one stinking finger on my Common Core or I'll punch you in the face and push you in the dirt.

Fraternally,

Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If You See Something, Say Something...In a World Without Tenure?

I frequently find myself standing on platforms for public transportation.  I often see the words, "If you see something, say something."

When teachers see something in their school, such as the denial of services to special-ed. students, one would hope that they would say something, too.  But the truth is that in a world, even one in which teachers have tenure, they are easy targets for administrative retribution.  In its most familiar form, one might say something and find a supervisor sitting in the back of one's room the following day.  In more extreme situations, one might find a supervisor possibly  fabricating letters accusing a teacher of pedophilia.

We have all heard stories from across the City of vindictive administrators.  In these days of tight budgets and high-stakes testing-based accountability, there is more cause for administrative abuse.  It may involve tampering with parent surveys.  No matter what whistle you're blowing, you may be given a most difficult program and a very hard time, if not the boot.  Without the protections of tenure, there may be storms that few can weather.  You may witness the grinding of your career "to dust."

I cannot believe in this world in which abuse is so rife, real "reformers" would want to strip teachers of tenure.  We are stuck with a set of "reformers," it seems, who would favor a system that rewards turning a blind eye to the misuse of power and the public trust.  If teachers see something and say something in a world without tenure, they will put their careers at risk.  Although they may not be reporting an unattended, suspicious suitcase, perhaps, ready to explode, nonetheless, they may be reporting harmful and widespread injustices.  Without tenure, teachers may become, more than ever, the victims of a different kind of administrative-led terrorism.

Another Brilliant Victory for Revive NYSUT

A few months back, it was vital that NYSUT be revived. Oddly, this coincided with then-President Richard Iannuzzi taking steps and speaking out against the reforminess that pervaded the state. But they came out with a lot of bold promises, the only one they've been able to keep was likely leaving the Fort Orange club. But I have no doubt they're pretty cozy anyway. If you think they're traveling around sleeping in their cars or staying at Motel 6, you've got another thing coming.

Thus far, their most significant legislative victory has been passing a bill to make sure they get two pensions. What have they done for us? Well, they helped delay Common Core-related junk science scores to be used against teachers. So you have another year or so before you can be fired for that particular strain of junk science.

But Karen Magee, while not quite offering to punch us in the face and push us in the dirt a la Mulgrew, pretty much told the AFT that that the only alternative to Common Core was utter chaos, directly contradicting the pictured pamphlet. And personally, I'm weary of the nonsensical talk from union leaders about divorcing the Core from testing, particularly since we just supported a bond that will provide billions for computer equipment to give the tests we supposedly oppose.

And Cuomo, who we failed to oppose at every step, who we in fact supported at the useless and preposterously named Working Family Party, is now making noise about doubling down on APPR. If you think Magee, Pallotta, or any of the Revive crew opposed APPR in the least when Iannuzzi and Mulgrew negotiated it, I have a bridge in Brooklyn with your name on it.

In a brilliant and creative use of our member dues, NYSUT sent out a voter election guide that I received yesterday, three days after the election was over. In Revive's defense, some of my Facebook friends report having received it as early as Wednesday. They do things like this and wonder why we got trashed on Election Day last Tuesday. Of course it isn't their fault, because nothing ever is.

As for the small things, I bought a car last spring. The salesman offered to sell me insurance. Of course, having MetLife via NYSUT, I knew I had a good deal. After all, we must get a discount or something, what with 600,000 potential paying customers. I thought, oh my gosh, he already sold me a car and he's still not satisfied. But my wife said, no, let's listen.  She dragged me into the insurance guy's office, where we were offered the very same coverage we had with MetLife via Allstate for almost a 50% reduction. When I canceled MetLife, they didn't even ask me why, let alone try to dissuade me.

Apparently Revive NYSUT, who traveled all over the state promising to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb, has not bothered to look at quality-of-life things that affect us lowly members. Of course this was my fault too, for assuming they'd bother to negotiate anything worthwhile for us. I certainly won't make that mistake again. They have priorities, like their double pensions. They barely wasted a moment making sure that none of them would have to go through what they're putting former Secretary-Treasurer Lee Cutler through. You won't see a Revive member kicked off the gravy train without recourse anytime soon.

And I don't doubt for a moment the double pension deal was negotiated before any of the younger Revive members agreed to run. You don't think they'd risk being treated the way they treat Lee Cutler, do you?

As for the rest of us, MetLife is happily advertising its overpriced coverage on Facebook this week. Apparently they enjoy profiting from their cozy relationship with NYSUT. And evidently Revive NYSUT leadership is either unaware, doesn't give a damn how overpriced this coverage may be, or both. It continues breaking promises, being utterly ineffectual, failing to take and follow up on substantive stands, and painting a smiley face on deals that benefit leadership and do nothing whatsoever for those of us who still do the actual work of helping New York's children.

Hamlet and Randi

When I first started this blog in 05, I started to learn a lot about my union. I started it with the intent of offsetting the insane nonsense I regularly read about public schools. While I thought the 02 contract was poorly conceived, giving time for money when we could later get zeros that would make us end up working for free, I didn't have much idea about UFT history or leadership.

Then the 05 contract hit, and I could not believe how absolutely awful it was. Along with others, like Chaz, Paul Rubin, and James Eterno, I went to war in the comments section of Edwize, the now moribund UFT blog. It was ironic because I had just negotiated the notion of writing on Edwize and had thought of scrapping this blog in favor of writing for UFT. I had been published a few times in NY Teacher and it seemed like a good idea.

I found I was the enemy, to be welcomed with some of the most inane ad hominem nonsense I'd ever seen. I was pretty shocked that the great minds of my union couldn't muster real arguments.

I became pretty nasty too, and for years said the most awful things about then-UFT President Randi Weingarten and her staunch defender Leo Casey. I'm not quite as nasty as I used to be, and I try not to get so personal as I used to. Still, I'm amazed at the absolute audacity of this political machine, and I now know it entails not only UFT, but also NYSUT and AFT. They are either wholly subsidiaries of UFT, or perhaps of Randi herself. I can't tell. Maybe someone out there can.

So there is a machine, and it does something, but I'm not entirely sure what. Diane Ravitch posted that Randi was not voting for Cuomo, but later had to modify the headline. Randi said something like she was voting all WFP, but that she was not beginning with the top of the ticket. A clever commenter suggested perhaps she was beginning at the bottom, and in fact nowhere did she explicitly say she was not voting for the alleged Democrat who just called public schools a monopoly.

It's pretty clear to me that Randi's a polished politician and I'm not. I mean, I can't understand why we supported mayoral control the first time, let alone after it proved an unmitigated disaster and we failed to amend it. I don't know why we support charter schools or Common Core. It's a mystery to me why we partnered with Steve Barr and brought Green Dot to NY, particularly when he thanked us by working for parent trigger. I don't know why Bill Gates was keynote at AFT, particularly when he thanked us by trashing our pensions as soon as he walked out. Though Randi now opposes VAM, she's supported multiple agreements to use it, including ours.

Mostly, I have no idea why we scuttled Zephyr Teachout's bid to take the WFP nomination. We managed to deprive New Yorkers of a great choice for a truly progressive candidate, we managed to show that Revive NYSUT's claims of opposing Cuomo were ridiculous nonsense, and we managed to place WFP below the truly progressive Green Party, if not off the ballot altogether.

So Randi clearly takes much more nuanced positions than I do, and spends a great deal of time thinking about them, pondering the possibilities, considering all sides, and perhaps even more sides than all sides. I look at things that hurt working teachers, and say, "Who needs that?" I can't look at them and say, "Well, maybe it's not that bad. Let's try it." Of course, not being a mind reader, I have no idea whether or not Randi thinks that either.

But I'd love to know why on earth she couldn't just say outright, "Andrew Cuomo is a despicable, unprincipled, disingenuous opportunistic thug and I won't vote for him."

If anyone knows, please clue me in. I'm all ears.

Related: Perdido Street weighs in.

In Case of Emergency, Tackle the Student

We had an interesting speaker at our school yesterday, a security expert. He told us that a shooting in NYC was inevitable, just a matter of time. Made me wonder why we didn't just all give up right now. I kind of tuned out after that, since I had a whole lot of other things on my mind. I mean, it may happen. Maybe Eva Moskowitz will decide that would be the last nail in the coffin and hire some kid to shoot up some school. Maybe she'll do it herself, being the bold innovator she is.

You know, it's a much surer bet we're all going to die one day, but I don't walk into my classroom and announce it to my students. Of course, the man was talking about lockdown drills, a relatively new thing in which we prepare for what our speaker deemed a certainty. Several of my colleagues reported he said that, in the case of a real lockdown, right before you lock the door, you should check who's outside. If a kid doesn't wish to come in, you'd be within your rights to tackle him, or her I suppose, and drag the person in if necessary.

All day long, shocked teachers asked me about that. It's problematic, to say the least. Last week, for example, someone pulled a fire alarm and we all marched out to stand in the rain. Fun as it was to stand around outside without an umbrella, there was no fire. In fact, there usually isn't, particularly during planned drills. And the only reason there are drills is so that no one panics when the real thing occurs.

So imagine that, tomorrow, the real thing occurs, and we have a lockdown. You, being a selfless hero, notice a student walking down the hall. You ask her to stop but she refuses. Or maybe she's wearing earphones and doesn't even hear you. Being trained, you tackle her. She breaks three ribs but you drag her to the safety of your locked unlighted classroom. Maybe, if you actually saved her life, you're a hero. Or maybe someone made a mistake. It's not like it hasn't happened before, and mistakes are far more inevitable than, say, school shootings.

Thus, before you know it, you're in the principal's office with me facing charges on Chancellor's Regulation A-420, corporal punishment. After all, the parents have called the school threatening to sue and demanding you pay her hospital bills, not to mention pain and suffering. Campbell Brown has written a new article excoriating you and demanding you be fired immediately with no due process because you are the baddest of the bad apples and must be cored and skinned without mercy.

I defend you by saying you were just following orders and the principal says that didn't work in Nuremberg and won't work now either. I say you were doing it for her own good and the principal points out that no one ever wants to do anything for their own good. You reminisce about all the bassoon lessons your parents forced you to take and all the steamed vegetables they forced you to eat for your own good. I point out that we were explicitly instructed to do this at the assembly and the principal asks why you weren't playing Words with Friends like everyone else.

Things look dire.

Will the principal throw you to the dogs? Have the geniuses at Tweed already determined your fate? Is it rubber room? 3020a? A letter in file? Will they put you out on a highway somewhere with an orange jumpsuit and make you pick up the garbage?

Or will they say you were absolutely right to do this and give you a medal? After all, if this were a real emergency you may indeed have saved the girl's life.

On the other hand, doctors have saved people's lives and been sued, according to several reputable medical dramas I've watched. And a one-second Google search suggests these things actually happen.  But hey, it wouldn't happen to a teacher. People love teachers. That's why we go 6 years without a contract, and Buffalo goes ten. That's why people are attacking tenure. That's why papers scream to have us judged by junk science scores, and every tinhorn politician wants to make them even worse so more of us can be fired.

Honestly, you never know what you're going to do in an emergency situation. If you actually know there's a shooter, that behavior might be reasonable. Or you might be endangering the lives of the students in your room in your care by leaving the door open the one extra second it takes you to tackle the girl. Who knows?

The guy who spoke to us yesterday thought he did. I'm not so sure.

The Contract from Hell

It was odd watching this new contract come along. First, the much-ballyhooed 300-member contract committee overwhelmingly approved it without even having seen the Memorandum of Agreement. This committee was, of course, top secret, so no one could ever say what the hell it was that they did. And in the end it didn't much matter. After all, what's the point of having a committee that will vote absolutely anything up sight unseen?

I guess it's good PR. Sure, we haven't got a contract, but we have this great committee. And to pretend the game isn't rigged we actually placed those from opposition on it, though in numbers so small they can't make any difference whatsoever.

Anyway, when details finally started coming out, whew, what a stench. The money everyone else got in 2010 doesn't come to us until 10 years later. Our ATR teachers get second-tier due process and the President of the union, taking a precious moment away from face punching, states that if ATR teachers get caught shouting in the halls of two different schools they ought to go up for expedited 3020a. He says it will be good because some teachers deemed the process too long. After all, it's certainly a nuisance to have to call witnesses to testify in your favor when you're fighting for your livelihood. Why not just get the thing over in one day and see if that Walmart place is still hiring?

My AP was a teacher until about a year ago. I don't know how much money she'd get if the city was giving, but so far its offer is zero. I have friends who were fired, and one of them was fired for no reason at all other than they could. Although the city allowed them to work, it's now refusing to pay them at the rate it negotiated. I guess that's a big money saver for the city, and if they're mad at the union, well, at least they won't get to vote in the UFT election for some rabblerouser who believes in democracy or any other such nonsense.

Actually, about the only good thing that could be said about the contract was that those who left before last July would get a big check with all that retro coming at once. Except now it appears they may not. It turns out that neither UFT nor DOE anticipated that if you offered a huge retirement incentive, a whole lot of people would retire.

So what does that mean? Is it a broken promise from DOE? How are they going to come up with the rest of that money? Will they pay a portion of it and make them wait until 2020 for the rest? Will they just take it out of what they promised us? Will they mortgage Manhattan Island?

Tough to say. But it's yet another broken promise, akin to the one that we will absolutely not have to pay into medical. Who knows whether or not that's true? Surely not the people who promised us otherwise. Why do you establish a finite dollar number when you don't know how much you will need to fulfill an agreement?

Only our crack negotiators know for sure.

You MUST Vote Tomorrow

I don't think I've made it a great secret that, along with Diane Ravitch and others, I support Howie Hawkins for Governor. Cuomo is an ogre, an abomination, a bizarro version of his dad. He's said public schools are a monopoly that needs to be broken. He's taken money from DFER, from charters, and shows no evidence that he's actually thought about anything except which side would give him the most cash.

His Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, opposes the Triborough Amendment that kept our contract in place even as Bloomberg stubbornly refused to grant us the compensation increases he'd granted virtually everyone else. He supports vouchers, and has criticized Cuomo for not passing tax credits for those who attend private schools. Despite his lip service to being a public education supporter, no one could support public education and have such policies.

Howie Hawkins is a working person, and not only supports working people, but also speaks in favor of working teachers. In fact, his running mate is a former teacher. I realize he's not likely to win, but we'll be strengthening the Green Party and giving it better ballot placement by giving it as many votes as possible. Given the Working Families Party has sold out working families by suppporting corporate Cuomo instead of brilliant Zephyr Teachout, the Green Party is the only option for those of us who really believe that working people deserve a fair shake.

I will never, ever vote for another anti-public education candidate again. The first time Barack Obama ran, I voted for him despite reservations. He proved my reservations were not only well-founded, but not nearly strong enough. He took the odious education policies of GW Bush and pushed them into overdrive. The second time he ran, I voted Green. It was not enough, as people argued, that Obama was less odious than Romney. I can't support people anymore simply because they make me vomit less copiously than their opponents. I have no idea why Americans, the majority of whom don't vote at all, accept such miserable choices.

The first time Cuomo ran, he ran on a platform of going after unions. As a lifelong Democrat, I find it amazing that Democrats can run on such platforms. You're left wondering who hates you less, candidate A or candidate B. That's not enough of a choice.

But whatever you think, and whatever you choose, you need to make your voice heard. You may listen to me or not, but you need to get off your ass and vote tomorrow. We are role models and it's unacceptable for us to tell our kids we don't give a damn who controls their schools or makes decisions about their lives.

I always leave a few minutes early and vote before I go to work. Please take the time and do it too. Don't tell folks like Andrew Cuomo know you are nobody and will tolerate anything, because that's precisely what he'd like to hear, and precisely the message you give when you fail to vote.

My Kingdom for a Package of Markers!

For the first half of my career, I lived in a cloud of chalk dust.  It couldn't have been healthy.  The boards had to be periodically cleaned.  Now, chalkboards are a thing of the past.  They have been replaced by Smartboards with whiteboards--which still need to be cleaned, but without all the clouds of dust swirling overhead.  The visible clouds have been replaced by less visible, yet seemingly more noxious, odors emitted by the markers.  

Personally, I miss the world of chalk.  Chalk is cheap, or so they almost say.  The board markers are comparatively expensive and usually in short supply.  They have a short life.  They can eat up teachers' choice.  Adieu to all those scholarly things I used to purchase when cheap chalk was in limitless supply.

I recently stumbled upon some markers and took only two.  I didn't want to hoard like a comrade of the former Soviet Union whose eyes pop out of his head when a truckload of consumer goods rolls into town.  But, similarly, I do not wish to feel like the nineteenth-century sweat-shop lady forced to pay for the oil, needles and electricity for her machine.  Oh, my kingdom for a package of markers!

Give Up the Ghost on Andy, Randi

Governor Cuomo uttered the words "public school monopoly" to the Daily News editorial board. This is an extremist statement, and I usually hear it from fanatical ideologues who care little or nothing about how important public education is. The thing these people have in common is a desire to dismantle it.

Of course, monopoly applies to businesses, not public services. You will never hear Scott Walker complain about a police monopoly because when the people rise up against him with torches and pitchforks he depends on the police to protect him. That's why, when a demagogue like Walker eviscerates collective bargaining and union for teachers, he leaves it in place for police. After all, if you're Scott Walker, you don't want some disgruntled police officer to say, oops, I'm sorry governor that the peasants have climbed over the fence and dragged you to justice.

AFT President Randi Weingarten dismisses it as campaign rhetoric, and has apparently taken the extreme step of responding with a strongly worded letter. Actually, we have no idea whether it's really strongly worded since the letter is not public. Nonetheless, a letter was written, a stamp was affixed to it, and an official government representative is likely dispatching it to our esteemed governor even as we speak.

Rob Astorino, Triborough Amendment opponent, supporter of vouchers and tax incentives that would weaken if not erase public education, opponent of abortion and marriage rights, saw fit to write a hollow and insincere letter saying he supported teachers. After all, as I frequently hear from Astorino supporters, his wife is a teacher. That's like saying Cuomo is sincere in his women's party line because his mother is a woman. In fact, if you want to go all the way on that, his ex-wife is a woman, and his girlfriend Sandra Lee is a woman too (even though she cooks things that women and other humans ought not to eat).

Astorino supporters I know offer vague anecdotes. Rob is a swell guy, they say. He would never do bad things. Even though he writes about dismantling protections and benefits for public employees, he probably doesn't mean it. Hey, people can change, and I don't need any stinking evidence they have. And just because Scott Walker does fundraisers for Rob doesn't mean they have anything in common. So what if Rob thinks Andrew Cuomo's crippling tax cap doesn't go far enough? For all we know he doesn't even mean it. After all, politicians lie all the time.

Randi appears to take a similar message from Cuomo's you can all go to hell sentiment. She says it's campaign rhetoric. When Cuomo says he knows teachers don't like being judged by junk science but he's going to make things even worse it's probably just loose talk. So what if he takes suitcases from cash from DFER and eviscerates mayoral control by more or less giving carte blanche to Eva Moskowitz? So what if he not only participates in but also helps initiate Eva's Albany demonstration?

Randi is absolutely right when she says Astorino is a poor alternative. But it's clear she will not use the same terms to condemn Cuomo. It's also a very good bet Cuomo will win a second term. After all, our union leadership pretty much made sure the most effective challenger who was not insane, Zephyr Teachout, did not win the Working Families line. 

Randi says NYSUT will go after Cuomo if he follows through. That's fine, but the time for NYSUT to go after Cuomo was at the Working Families Convention. Unfortunately NYSUT is entirely a subsidiary of the loyalty-oath-loving UFT Unity Caucus and would not dream of opposing Cuomo without their OK, even though Revive NYSUT explicitly promised they opposed him when campaigning.

So here's my open request to Randi Weingarten. Let's stop kowtowing to faux-Democrats who are bought and paid for by our enemies. Cuomo ran for his first term by saying he'd go after unions. That was when I decided, for the very first time, to vote Green. After all, who needs a Democrat who will go after unions? Isn't that what Republicans are for?

I will not vote for any more anti-public education candidates again, ever. Sorry Andy. Sorry, second-term Barack. And if Hillary spouts such bilge, then a pox on her house too. Let's stop pretending these people are our friends. In fact, let's work to see them unemployed as fervently as they work to see us unemployed.

I'm voting for public education supporter Howie Hawkins for Governor on Tuesday. I urge you to join me. And Randi, if you still vote in New York, I urge you to join me too.

As Education Commenter, Frank Bruni Is a Great Food Critic

by special guest blogger Harris Lirtzman

Time Magazine’s most recent issue offers for its readers the picture of a perfectly round, deep red apple about to be squashed to a pulp by a judge’s gavel with the warning:  “Rotten Apples: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires may have found a way to change all of that.”

Evidently, the article is not as terrible as the visual, though the writer couldn’t be bothered to find a single working teacher to talk to as part of her reporting.  But we all know that thousands of grocery shoppers and patients in doctor’s offices very often see only a magazine cover and magazine editors know that.  Score another for the “education reformers” in their campaign to demolish the integrity and hard work that almost every teacher I have ever known brings to his or her job every day.

The other day, the New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, recently its restaurant critic, wrote a “thought piece” called “Towards Better Teachers.”  I know that the pressure of writing two eight hundred word columns a week can bring any author to his knees so Mr. Bruni decided to offer his readers a book report instead of his usual opinion piece.  Bruni sat down with former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to puff his new book Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools.  During the interview, er, transcription, of Mr. Klein’s words, Bruni offered "But they [teachers] owe us a discussion about education that fully acknowledges the existence of too many underperformers in their ranks. Klein and others who bring that up aren’t trying to insult or demonize them. They’re trying to team up with them on a project that matters more than any other: a better future for kids."

 Joel Klein has never, ever, not once during or since his Chancellorship "tried to team up with teachers to build a better future for our kids."

This is stenography. This is not reporting.  Joel Klein spoke. Bruni wrote.
Bruni feels sorry that we teachers had our feelings hurt by the recent Time article
My feelings aren't hurt that the man who was the Times restaurant critic until two years ago now takes dictation while Joel Klein pontificates about teachers. I am simply angry. I am simply tired that restaurant critics, technology entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers now make policy for public schools and for public school teachers.

But that's OK. Andrew Cuomo, our governor and likely to be our governor for the next eight years, declared early this week to the NY Daily News editorial board that public schools are "one of our only remaining public monopolies" and that he feels obligated to break that monopoly by going to war with public teacher unions in order to increase the number of almost entirely unregulated and unsupervised charter schools in the state.

Mr. Bruni opines, with help from his keepers.  Mr. Cuomo rules, with no apparent help from anyone. And though Mr. Cuomo is a fearful man there are brave teachers and parents and students who will resist his determination to turn public schools over to private oligarchs, restaurant critics and former Michael Bloomberg autocrats.

Many of you may believe that public schools need to do better and are angry that teachers have pensions and tenure. Yes, public schools need to do a better job but public schools have always played an important role in forming citizens who function in a democratic society and teachers struggle every day to teach children who speak dozens of languages, have special needs, come from dispossessed communities with limited resources and require extraordinary and skillful work to make them proficient in language and math and history and science. Taking away tenure will solve none of these problems and Joel Klein and Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee and David Boies and John King, all of whom send their children to private schools, have never once extended a hand in partnership to teachers to work together to improve public schools. They just want teachers to be humiliated and frightened enough so that they will not fight for public schools or for the preservation of their unions and well-earned but not profligate salaries and pensions.

Mr. Bruni, I hear there's a really good salad being served at Per Se and a wonderful Chateaubriand available at Eleven Madison Park. May I reserve a table for you so that you and a few of your closest hedge fund manager and Silicon Valley friends can think of a few new ways to save black and brown kids in Brownsville and Corona Park from the hands of yet another grasping dolt of a teacher?  After all, my friends who’ve been doing this work for more than twenty years “don’ know nothin’ about teachin’” public school students and eagerly await your latest prescriptions for forcing them do their jobs better by taking away their basic work-rights and job protections and destroying their union. That will, I’m sure, spur them onto great and glorious feats of teacherdom not possible without the new paradigm of private management of public schools promised by our Silicon Valley experts, restaurant critics and education-warrior of a governor.

Cuomo's Betrayal--The Fruit of Appeasement

We in UFT/ NYSUT/ AFT are always on the cutting edge. When people say Bill Gates is trying to destroy American education, we open our arms, show them how open-minded we are, and invite him to be keynote at AFT convention. Of course I wasn't there, you weren't there, and anyone there who may have opposed Bill Gates had signed a loyalty oath agreeing not to do so in public. Nonetheless, our loyalty-oath signing "representatives" showed how reformy the UFT was.

When mayoral control came to NYC with Mike Bloomberg at the helm, we supported it. When it proved to be an abject disaster, with dozens of awful school closures that sent our brothers and sisters into the ATR, we asked for a few piddling improvements, failed to get them and supported it again. When Bill de Blasio kept a campaign promise to block charters, Cuomo and the legislature passed a law favoring Eva Moskowitz, and we did not even lift a finger to stop it. A very highly placed source in NYSUT told me my UFT President supported it.

When it's time for passionate defense, though, we're right there. Mike Mulgrew brought 800 loyalty-oath-bound "representatives" to Los Angeles last summer and swore anyone who took his Common Core away from him would be punched in the face and pushed in the dirt. Any day now I expect to be crawling around in the mud recuperating with Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, Leonie Haimson and all the other dangerous figures my President needs to beat the crap out of.

When Zephyr Teachout, who actually supports and respects teachers, reached for the Working Families Party nomination, our union made it known that it would not support the party if it embraced Zephyr. And we blocked the only viable chance of making Andy Cuomo, with his booming warchest, break a sweat. When Zephyr boldly challenged him in the primary, the President of the AFT was busy making calls for arch-conservative Kathy Hochul, lest Tim Wu should win and a true progressive should even help govern NY State.

And God forbid NYSUT or UFT should endorse Howie Hawkins, the last and only candidate standing who is not insane. That would be radical and scary. What would people think? Instead, we'll sit it out and pretend we aren't tacitly endorsing Governor Andrew Cuomo. After all, he is a Democrat, when he isn't making glitzy commercials pretending to support women, or students, or anyone other than the only person he cares about--himself.

You'd think Cuomo would be grateful. You'd be wrong, of course. The error our union leadership makes, over and over, is thinking because we let the reformies stab us in the arm, in front of God and everybody, that they won't follow up by stabbing us in the back. But they always do and we never learn.

Cuomo got in front of the Daily News editorial board and used the boilerplate term favored by fanatical ideologue teacher bashers everywhere--the public school "monopoly." Likely he forgot about the police monopoly, the fire department monopoly, and the government monopoly. Certainly he forgot how many Americans and New Yorkers would benefit if we enacted single payer, gave everyone health care, and had a monopoly rather than people going bankrupt over medical bills. Certainly the fact that charter schools have failed to improve education hasn't factored into his thinking. The fact that the best education systems in the world are public and unionized didn't seem all that important either.

 For our restraint, for our diplomacy, for our covert support, he has declared war against us. Once again, Mike Mulgrew, Karen Magee, and Randi Weingarten have screwed up by failing to take be proactive, by choosing fear over inspiration, by moving backward rather than forward.

Cuomo pretty much announced he hates us and everything we stand for.  What do we do? Boycott Time magazine, a magazine that has hated us for years, a magazine it's unlikely any of us read anyway?

When are we going to wake up and insist on real union and real leaders? I, for one, am getting a little tired of waiting. How about you?

Related: Perdido Street School on NYSUT's pathetic response.

Fear Is a Luxury We Cannot Afford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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