NYC Deputy Chancellor Cerf "Chided" About Soliciting Donation

Chided? That's it?
Would you buy a used car from Christopher Cerf?
A teacher would be hung.
Remember the librarian at Brooklyn Tech who was hounded for promoting his daughter's book?
Don't they have rubber rooms for deputy chancellors?
Five years ago I spoke at a PEP meeting and said one day the entire gang would be taken out of Tweed with their coats over their heads.

Mr. Cerf’s relationship with the company, now called EdisonLearning, first made headlines in February 2007, when he assured a citywide parents’ group that he had “zero” financial interest in Edison. He later acknowledged that he had relinquished his equity stake in the company only the day before.

“Raising money for a not for profit, tell me, what’s wrong with that?” he added.

Graphic by David

Interesting how the DOE imposes all kinds of crap on schools and teachers attempting to raise money.

The NY Times had to get the Condon report using Freedom of Information. Good for them.

NYC DOE Monitors Blogs in Search for 'Truth'

Before we start, note that the UFT also has a similar "unofficial" squad - oppressive agencies with things to hide do this sort of thing.

"We try to keep track of what people are saying about us, and we respond periodically," a deputy schools chancellor, Christopher Cerf, who came up with the Truth Squad concept, said. "Because we believe in the truth."

Cerf must think he's going to replace George Carlin with this line.

The first time I met DEO press chief David Cantor occurred when I attended a Klein press conference at Tweed. Before being admitted, he took me aside and said, "What exactly is the story? I hear you have a blog." Meaning: how can you be an objective reporter?

What? People at this level are aware of a fairly minor blog like mine? I could see the Unity/UFT yokels being interested since the main object of ed notes is to reach rank & file teachers. But the DOE?

I responded that for the Wave I was both a reporter and a columnist and I was there in that capacity. And so what if I have a blog? I was admitted and since then Cantor has never been less than accomodating.

Leonie Haimson and the NYC Public School Parent listserve and blog appear to be a major target because of her dead-on analysis (did they follow her to Monday's Ed Notes gathering in Rockaway?) Ed Notes is probably not high enough on the list of the elite 24 blogs and listserves being monitored by the DOE press office but they do have one person monitoring Alexander Russo's This Week in Education which often links to Ed Notes. Russo has a fun post on the story today. As does Eduwonette.

Is this what Joel Klein meant when he said his people work 14 hour days?

Elizabeth Green in today's NY Sun:

Employees at the city Department of Education's press office have a new assignment: They are to scour a group of 24 education Web logs, e-mail Listservs, and Web sites in a hunt for factual errors and misinformation. Department officials are calling the unit the Truth Squad.

The squad's latest triumph should appear today on a Listserv operated by the parent organizer Leonie Haimson — in the form of an e-mail message arguing that Ms. Haimson's characterization of summer school programs as underfunded was incorrect.

Press officers have also posted responses in the form of comments to the blogs they read.

Link to the Sun article.

TAG NYC Crew Rock at the PEP...

....and Patrick Sullivan was pretty fine too with a resolution on military recruitment plus lots of good questions and comments for the Tweedles:

"Mr. Cerf. I'm from the corporate world, not education. But our human resources people take a good hard look at retention rates as a measure of effectiveness."

And I got it all on tape. Details later.