Separated at Birth: Leo Casey, UFT - Steve Barr, Greendot Charter School Slug

Note: online learning will replace teachers. Another example of the UFT being a partner in crime.

Leonie Haimson wrote:

On Inside City Hall last night, Steve Barr was selling the expansion of his "Green dot" charters in NYC, where he said he will focus on online learning, bring his "model" inside DOE, and he bragged about how he's working closely w/ the UFT,  including Leo Casey and Michael Mulgrew. 

He says "parents are owners" but so far neither the DOE, Barr, nor apparently the UFT have told anyone what schools  in the Bronx he intends to "turn around."

"If you can find that mutual co-option {between union and charter school operators], we can get beyond 3% [of students at ] charters, the great works happening at of charters should be scaled up as quickly as possible, we don't have time to play these adult games."'

NY1.com: http://bit.ly/eAgKym

Union Role is Mediator, Not Advocate

Even Penn and Teller can't make an entire school building disappear from public into private hands in an instant. But watch the UFT and Green Dot make magic.

We've been saying this for years. That the UFT plays the role of mediator between the rank and file members and the people managing the school system. What the members need is a strong advocate, a role that is increasingly being played by people like Diane Ravitch and NYC parent activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and a new national group, Parents Across America (PAA).

I wrote a piece on Feb. 13 titled: Why Won't Mulgrew Defend LIFO?  I know the answer but don't want to scare you so early in this article.

Remember: 110 schools have been closed under the stewardship of the UFT leadership. Schools have become test prep factories (Ed Notes sponsored resolutions at DA's on the evils of standardized testing as far back as the late 90's were ignored). And charters are running rampant inside public schools but the UFT can't say a word because it has its own two charters running rampant inside two public schools. Where's the advocacy on the part of the UFT other than selective words at selective times? Show some results. The scary thing was yesterday's missive to send Governor Cuomo a "thank you" message. Lucky I ate a few hours before.

A new crop of young teachers who have come out of the woodwork recently and become active in groups like Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), NY Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE) and Teachers Unite (TU). These voices have become important to counteract the message of the anti-union Bill Gates/DFER funded group Educators for Excellence (E4E which ICE's Jeff Kaufman renamed "ME4ME. I just call them ME$ME.) GEM's Julie Cavanagh debated a ME$ME on NY1 the same night Ravitch appeared on Jon Stewart's show. [Diane Ravitch and Julie Cavanagh Kick Butt].
A principal, Brian De Vale, did as good a job as could be done defending seniority face to face with Cathie Black at a District 14 CEC meeting last week. [Brooklyn Principal Challenges Cath...]

I was at the viewing party with Ravitch (Eadie Shanker was there too) sponsored by Leonie and PAA and we also watched Julie eloquently defend LIFO, seniority and tenure in a way that I haven't heard anyone from the UFT or AFT do. Julie tied her advocacy for her students (her school has been invaded by a charter controlled by a billionaire) to the protections she has from tenure. Ravitch was so so impressed she commented, "Julie, you were spectacular, also beautiful!"

Another thing we have been saying is that the UFT for years obfuscated - acting like Joel Klein was the bad guy and Bloomberg was the good guy. Funny how an article in The Observer claims that relations have deteriorated because Randi and Joel have left the room, while also talking about how Klein and Bloomberg played "bad cop, good cop." We maintained that the UFT was trying to fool the membership into believing this was about personalities, not a national attack on teachers, their unions and the entire public school system. EdNotes has been saying that since around 2001.

But I guess Mulgrew hasn't been reading Ed Notes. For in the Observer piece he says:

"I thought it was because of Joel Klein," Mr. Mulgrew said. "I honestly did. But that's not the case anymore. It's just [Mr. Bloomberg] there and it's become worse. ... He has a whole new team around him. ... Everything is carpet bomb and toxicity.

He has to be kidding. Randi fooled him too? We're in more to trouble than I thought. Then Mulgrew comes up with this goody:

"Since I know Deputy Mayor Wolfson's strategy is this when he runs a campaign, I'm assuming it's his influence on [the mayor]," said Mr. Mulgrew. Mr. Wolfson is of course the mayor's hard-driving senior adviser, who notably fought against Barack Obama's campaign long after Mr. Wolfson's candidate, Hillary Clinton, seemed to abandon the 2008 Democratic primary.

Mulgrew and the Observer declined to mention that Howard Wolfson was (and still may be for all we know) on the UFT payroll for years. (Just check the LM-2 reports of past years.)

And then we come to the NY Times piece today (New Strategy Weighed for Failing Schools) about the cozy relationship between the UFT and Green Dot charter maven/scoundrel Steve Barr who will partner together in shutting down a public school but making it look like something else. You see, you can believe in magic. Even Penn and Teller can't make an entire school building disappear from public into private hands in an instant. But watch the UFT and Green Dot make magic.

The plan would also involve forcing all teachers to reapply for their jobs and using a committee of teachers, school administrators and parents to pick who got to stay. The teachers’ contract would give them some measure of job protection, but it would be easier to fire them. The teachers also would work under more flexible rules, including longer hours in exchange for higher pay. “It’s about, what do we need to get this staff in order for them to meet the needs of the children and stop with this one-size-fits-all stuff?” said Michael Mulgrew...

Right Mike! One size fits all. If I were teaching in one of these schools,  I would be scared, very scared.

Let me tell you a few things about Steve Barr:

You know that the school in LA - Locke HS mentioned in the Times article?

Results on the standardized tests were lackluster, but the school gets high marks in other indicators of progress.The state test results released Tuesday for Locke High School weren't the sort of thing its new operator, Green Dot Public Schools, is accustomed to seeing: Not a single student scored as proficient in geometry, for example, and only a few percent tested at the next level down, basic.

How interesting what the Times leaves out. GEM/ICE's Lisa North commented:
BUT this is how NYC schools are closed...based on test scores....but I guess a charter school can be judged by "other" means.

Oakland teacher Jack Gerson wrote in Substance:

Two years ago, Steve Barr and his Green Dot charter schools group engineered a hostile takeover of Locke High School, a large public high school in Los Angeles. Despite the opposition of United Teachers of Los Angeles and the LA Unified School District, Barr was able to convince a bare majority of Locke's permanent faculty (37 of 73) to opt for Green Dot." Barr promptly dismissed the entire staff, forcing them to reapply for their jobs. Over 70 percent were not rehired.

And then there is this side of Barr: According to the Green Dot website, he is no longer on staff either.

Barr stepped aside this fall as board chairman of Green Dot but remains on the board and on staff. The expense problem had nothing to do with Barr's change of role, said Shane Martin, who replaced Barr as chairman.

Green Dot charter schools founder repays group $50,866
The nonprofit's tax return shows that Steve Barr repaid the organization after an internal review found that expenses he had charged were undocumented or unjustified.

Lie down with privatization dogs and you get fleeced. Can't wait to hear the spin at the DA today.
----------------
Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Gates, et al Funding Union Insurgency in UFT? ME4ME Workshop Today to Focus on School Organizing

NOTE: Must Read: Jeff Kaufman's take down of  E4E lies, distortions and outright manipulation and dishonesty at the ICE blog (and reproduced below the fold). Jeff, who works in a school full of them, termed them ME4ME - which I am changing to the more appropriate ME$ME. 

If you have an ME$ME person in your school, copy and print Jeff's statement for them because most of them know not what they do. OF course, instead of exposing them like Jeff does, Mulgrew chooses to meet with them.

Insiders in the UFT are buzzing about the upcoming challenge being presented by E4E - Educators for Excellence. This will be the first time in history that Unity will face an opponent fueled by billionaires who will pay for a high end ad and PR campaign and other goodies - there are already 4 organizers, with more to come. (They seem to be doing something similar in Los Angeles.)

As we reported (Don't Miss Educators4Excellence Party - Thurs, Feb. 24 at "The American Conference Center," 177 Prince St. on the 2nd floor), today ME4ME is holding an organizing training workshop that they are billing as:

Come join E4E to learn how to become a better advocate for kids.  E4E is hosting a two hour grassroots training event to help give you the advocacy tools you need to maximize your impact for kids.

Of course this has nothing to do with kids but is all about the adults who are funded by Gates and DFER. What they are advocating for "kids' is an end to LIFO, which will keep the adult ME$ME members in a job.

Our sources are telling us today's grassroots training is about chapter organizing with a plan to prepare for chapter leader positions in the spring 2012 elections in preparation for a challenge to Unity in 2013. The platform will be a very simple one issue campaign: getting rid of LIFO.

Now keeping LIFO alive as a hot issue is dependent on layoffs or the threat of layoffs. With Bloomberg's threat this year, ME$ME is out of synch in terms of election seasons. In my conspiracy tinged world, if Bloomberg doesn't get LIFO ended by this summer, the layoff threat will disappear until next year.

And when a ME$ME member runs for chapter leader, expect the word from the DOE to go out to the principals to grease the skids for them. Of course as a one issue group they will not be interested in protecting the rights of the members in their schools and will be suck-ups to the principals.

So how could they win a chapter leader position? Easy. Many principals run their own candidates who get elected because the chapter is afraid to elect a person who will stand up (believe me, I went through this in my school where the principal had a core of 5th columnists nipping at me for being an aggressive CL.) But in this case, they will have protection from the very top of the DOE.

And watch when they run in 2013 - bet their literature gets some "help" getting into most of the schools. Unity will no longer have a lock on the mail boxes. If ME4ME wasn't such a slime ball operation, it might bring a smile to my face.

ME$ME will attack Unity on their vulnerability when it comes to democracy, even using some of the points made by the opposition for years. Unity will use this as an opportunity to vilify other opposition groups if they run on a platform criticizing Unity as helping ME4ME. Except for New Action, of course. They have no purpose other than to be a stalking horse for Unity in exchange for 8 Executive Board seats. The issue will be whether Unity thinks it is an advantage for them to have New Action on the ballot.

What of the other opposition groups - ICE and TJC? They will be placed in an interesting position. With a lack of resources they would have to in essence battle ME$ME and Unity (and New Action). Is it worth it in an election they cannot win or even make much headway? It will be interesting to see where this goes.

What about a new group like GEM? I know that Unity sees GEM as a possible opposition group but so far GEM has focused on the bigger issues of fighting the ed deformers in the battle to save public education - one of the mantras of GEMers is that they have to do it since the UFT is not. But is that a platform for an election? My guess is that at this point GEM is sticking to the ed deform struggle. Another point is that GEM has been working with parents groups and some of those alliances do not always dovetail with an inside UFT strategy.

Since GEM has been organizing young teachers who are of the same constituency as ME$ME, GEM might take on the battle with them since they squarely fit into the ed deform category.

One thing is sure, ed notes will be there to report on these fascinating developments.

Add On
Accountable Talk has done some great work on ME$ME:  An Asshat By Any Other Name


Jeff Kaufman made some important comments on that post in defending his school:

I agree that the e4e (me4me) crowd are self-absorbed anti-union types but the name calling and divisiveness must end. What turns a me4me into a all4all are experiences where they must call upon their colleagues, Chapter Leaders or Union for help. Our "f" rated school was not based on teaching...it was based on graduation rates in a second chance high school. Costa will learn that the DOE in concocting this measure did nothing but assure that our school will close despite our teaching. The struggle must be against all misdirected and irrelevant measures included me4me's "taking ability into account for layoff purposes."

Here is his ICE Post, which by the way is another link missed by Gotham Schools (What Makes Gotham Schools (and What Does Not). Gotham posts a link when Evan or Sidney fart.

“White Paper” on a Roll: How Ed Deformers Distort the Record on Seniority Layoffs

by Jeff Kaufman

On February 14, 2011 Educators 4 Excellence, a mouthpiece for the current movement attempting to reverse the current law on seniority based layoffs issued a press release announcing what they termed a "first research-based proposal" contained in a "white paper" entitled, "Keeping Our Best Teachers: An Alternative to Seniority-Based Layoffs."

As our Union remains conspicuously silent on this issue, preferring to argue against the need for layoffs rather than the method, it is time to take this piece of alleged research apart to see what supports their recommendations and whether these recommendations truly support their main thesis; that seniority-based layoffs hurt students and cause some of the "best teachers" to be terminated.

MORE


The format of the "white paper" is fairly straight-forward containing an introduction, an explanation of the current system and recommendations.

The Law

The law on seniority-based layoffs requires all layoff decisions to be based on total seniority including substitute and paraprofessional service within license. The literature dealing with layoff scenarios misses this point. Not surprisingly so does the "white paper"." When a layoff decision is made the DOE can layoff certain licensed teachers and hold back on other licenses. Thus hard to staff licenses like special ed or ESL might be totally spared layoff or high school teachers might be laid off before junior high or elementary school teachers. Education Law Section 2588 already gives the DOE the discretion to choose which license and how many teachers to lay off.

The impact of this discretion is nowhere assessed or even discussed. Yet the "white paper" concludes in its introduction that the impact of a layoff would be greatest felt in schools with a large percentage of newly hired teachers which they conclude are more often concentrated in the lowest income communities.

The "white paper's" Introduction

In order to save our schools from being torn apart (their words, not mine) the E4E deformers recommend that layoffs be based on Chronic Teacher Absentees, Principal Evaluations and being assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool.

"These categories are clear indicators of teacher performance and student achievement," the paper claims. Yet the next paragraph cautions, "In the absence of a more comprehensive system, our framework is a better way to conduct layoffs because it protects great teachers."

This tautological expression undergirds the thesis of the paper. We can't really know who the best teachers are but somehow by laying off by measuring teacher absence, principal evaluations and the fact that you are an ATR will avoid terminating "great teachers."

The introduction continues by asserting that based on a study done last year by the Calder Urban Institute demonstrates that "most of the teachers who would be laid off in a seniority-based system would be substantially more effective than even the best teacher laid off using a value-added system, or a system that includes teacher effectiveness." Does this mean that value-added systems don't measure teacher effectiveness?

Despite the inartful wording of the "white paper's" introduction the Calder Urban Institute (a collaboration of mostly southern university ed researchers who defend Waiting for Superman and most of the ed deformer agenda) claims, as the E4E paper does that seniority-based layoffs will cause effective teachers to be laid off. But how did they determine effectiveness?

The Calder study used 4^th and 5^th graders from New York City and the "value-added" model that has been demonstrated to be inaccurate and misleading to determine teacher effectiveness. A bit more academically responsible than the E4E crowd Calder states its assumption right up front, "assuming readily available measures of teacher effectiveness actually measure true teacher effectiveness, an assumption to which we return below, the differences between seniority and effectiveness based layoffs are larger and more persistent than we anticipated."

The distortions and inaccuracies continue as the "white paper" claims that the diversity of the teacher ranks would be adversely affected by seniority-based layoffs. The paper claims, without support, that "over the last decade, New York has hired many more African-American and Latino teachers to better reflect the population of city students." Seniority-based layoffs will, they claim, cause these newer, minority teachers to be laid off disproportionally. The fact is that minority hiring has dwindled in New York City and other areas served by programs such as Teach for America. No analysis is offered to support this proposition.

What is cited is the recent Los Angeles school system case as evidence of adverse racial impact. Again inaccurate and misleading. The case has been settled in which racial impact, by law, is permissible to be taken into account in protecting certain parts of the school district from layoff. The settlement is a creature of a completely incomparable set of circumstances. The types of abuses cited by the plaintiffs have not been documented in New York City.

The Recommendations

The first recommendation is based on teacher attendance. The "white paper" suggests that absent teachers be divided into 3 tiers in which teachers absent 15 percent or higher (as measured over the previous and current school year) would be in the first round of layoffs. Tier 2 would be at 10 percent and Tier 3 at 8 percent. They exclude absences with doctor's notes and calculate that at Tier 1 for the last 15 months year you would have to absent 41 days to meet the threshold. At an average of 3 days per month it is unimaginable that a teacher, without a doctor's note, would not have been brought up on charges, placed on disciplinary probation under our new time and attendance contract provisions or otherwise separated from employment.

The "white paper" again confuses teacher effectiveness and student affect by citing a New Teacher Project paper that supports their thesis. (The New Teacher Project was founded by ed deformer poster child Michelle Rhee who recently was caught in her own teacher effectiveness misrepresentation when she admitted that her resume could have been written clearer when it suggested she magically caused her own students to increase their test performance from the 13^th percentile to the 90^th percentile).

The study cited as well as this "white paper" mysteriously neglect to mention a New York City Department of Education study, written just prior to Bloom/Klein in which absenteeism did not correlate with student performance. Other studies have demonstrated that there are more effective ways of dealing with teacher absenteeism including disincentives (termination, fine and other discipline) and incentives (buying back unused sick time).

The next recommendation involves using U ratings in layoff decisions. They support this proposed layoff criteria on the broken U rating system claiming that only 2% of the teachers get U ratings. While 2% is still 1600 there is reason to believe that this number is understated. However sine UFT and DOE statistics don't include terminated employees (both tenured and probationer) and teachers who voluntary resigned with U ratings the number is probably much greater.

The broken U rating system, however, in impeccable logic, supports the decision to layoff because, according to the "white paper," when principals give U ratings they must really mean it since they give it so infrequently. Then they take the next illogical step; if they really mean it then the teachers must really be bad. This is absurd and the very reason that seniority-based layoffs were codified into law.

U ratings are given for a variety of reasons many of which do not involve teacher quality. Political, economic, personality differences and age discrimination reasons are just a few.

U ratings rarely lead to teacher termination for tenured teachers due to the subjective nature of the teacher assessment by the principal and the incompetence of DOE administrators and attorneys. Just like students poor teachers can be taught and with the right mentoring an incompetent teacher can be taught to be competent. A U rating has nothing to do with teacher competence. Seniority based layoffs ensure that illegal and inappropriate discriminatory practices are not perpetrated in a layoff situation.

The last recommendation and my personal favorite is the layoff of ATRs who have not found a permanent job in 6 months. The chauvinism and condescension toward ATRs is evidence of the "white paper's" true mission; the destruction of the collective bargaining system as we know it.

While the ICE/TJC members of the Executive Board when the 2005 contract came up for a vote were the only ones to vote against the contract on the Board and tried to warn the membership of the dangers of this provision (just skim this blog's early entries) the fact is the membership approved of the contract after listening to the lies of union officials who promises this would do away with bumping and the open market was a much fairer way than seniority in determining teacher placement.

In the aftermath of the creation of the ATR pool we have seen overt age discrimination in the attempt to cause more experienced teachers to quit or retire. ATRs fill full teacher programs and are not hired due to the heavier financial burden they place on shrunken school budgets.

When a contract creates an economic disincentive to hire a teacher it is outrageous to insinuate that the teacher's failure to obtain a permanent position is due to incompetence. As schools close ATRs are created. While there was an agreement at one point that recognized the economic disincentive to hire experienced teachers this agreement was never fully funded and totally expired last December.

Additionally the ATR system was established as a result of collective bargaining, where teachers and the DOE traded economic and non-economic demands. What did we give up for the ATR system? Should we permit the DOE to circumvent the collective bargaining process by an end run through the legislature?
And who says ATRs are incompetent?

The "white paper" is replete with inaccuracies and misstatements. It is sad that a group of teachers, who they themselves might, in the future, be U rated, excessed or be absent buy into the ed deformer argument that old is bad, young is good.

Why Won't Mulgrew Defend LIFO?

I just want to open with a cat report since our Unity/union official friend seems so anxious to get an update: no doody, no vomit. Now you can relax for the day.

I just watched Mulgrew on Diana Williams on ABC and wasn't surprised he wouldn't defend LIFO. He didn't at the DA last Wednesday and he didn't went he went to speak to E4E (I have to comment later on the E4E correct point about retirees voting in UFT elections). Instead he shifts the debate to not having layoffs at all or talks about class size. Not a bad strategy but ducking the LIFO issue when he has a platform to make a rational case does everyone a disservice. Why not bring up the Peter Lamphere case in a vast public forum? Does the fact that Peter is a long-time member of the opposition have anything to do with it? At the very least he should bring up Iris Blige.

Arthur Goldstein did a piece on LIFO at HufPo: merits of LIFO  and Peter did his own piece at Gotham: “Merit”? My Experience With Arbitrary U Ratings

Making the connection between political use of U ratings and LIFO should be at the top of Mulgrew's agenda. But it isn't and that avoidence is what puts him on the Randi Weingarten camp (see part 2 of our GEM TFA blogger's reactions to Randi's appearance yesterday for a sample of Randi doublespeak -Live Blogging from Teach for America 20th Anniversary Summit, Part 2 - Randi Weingarten).

I know people think Mulgrew is different - and later I may do a piece on my reaction to him at the DA where I also saw some differences - but more in style than substance.

Mulgrew also missed a chance to explain and defend the ATRs - which he did at the DA to the members - but doesn't really do when he talks to the public - I mean give the full case with facts and figures how these people are often covering real programs.

I left this comment at Gotham, a comment that is waiting moderation, so I'll reprint it here:

Is a democratic system of government always fair? There are all sorts if distortions. But can anyone point to an alternative. The same with LIFO. Not always fair to all but in fact is the only system that works over the long term. It is a system put in place well over a hundred years ago way before there were teacher unions  because of the corruption and patronage that went on.

Why would that change now? Just read Peter Lamphere's story in the Community section - he would be out of a job if LIFO ends. Then there's Iris Blige. But we can talk about hundreds of principals who would not make a fair and rational judgement.

Other principals I know absolutely support LIFO in spite of what it costs them.

By that I mean the fair funding formula which was designed to force principals to get rid of the highest paid teachers. I have a simple way to eliminate that as a factor - go back the old system of not charging a school for the costs of teacher salaries. There can be no LIFO modifications until that ends. But you will never see that happen because that is the very reason for the Fair funding formula in the first place and it reveals the entire intention behind the move to end LIFO.

I was at a school the other day as a speaker and a 4th year teacher told me she supported the idea of LIFO but also doesn't think it fair for her to lose her job while she can point to people in the school who don't pull their weight. A fair point.

But let's drill a bit. First, she has no guarantee that the principal sees it the way she does. I had a principal who favored people who sucked up to her - to her that was pulling the weight.

Secondly, as a 4th year teacher she already had a buffer over teachers with less seniority than she has. If she is laid off LIFO seniority rules should protect her when people are called back - though I don't know how this would work in reality. In 1975 when there were massive layoffs, most people were called back within a year or two - and in the order in which they were laid off and at the salary that were making.  Teaching at that point became a tough job to get.

In fact, you will never find everyone working to the same capacity in any job - I know young lawyers at big firms who chafe over the seniority that goes on - there are forms of LIFO in almost every profession. My wife was at a hospital and even among doctors, the longer you are there the more perks you get. There are also all sorts of politics that keep certain people around while more competent people can't get ahead. What do you think goes on the police dept - and these guys have guns - no one seems upset that a young cop might be cut to keep a vet who may not have the ability to chase someone down in the street anymore. To make teachers the focal point is just part of the general assault on public education - to ruin teaching as  career and replace them with a cheap, transient force. As Ravitch points out, there are 4 million teachers in this nation - do they think they can work on the Peace Corps idea? 

Has the uft has made any of these points amongst all the other defense of lifo arguments so many bloggers are making?

Leo Casey: If you like to sing and dance, and would be interested in some flash mob actions around the closing schools, let me know

Last Update: Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011, 9am

How much fun is this email from Leo Casey - the UFT is so devoid of ideas they are stealing from GEM, which has been flashmobbing and singing at PEP meetings and at the Waiting for Superman premiere. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. I'm greasing my voice and practicing my dance steps.

The UFT is worried (for good reason) that if they try to get teachers out to PEPs, they will discover that "real reformers" are doing THEIR job! I think it is a good bet to say they have been embarrassed to act!

See below the fold for more. Note how Leo urges the high school committee meeting to go to the PEP - but the UFT is in not organiizng the kind of massive response they did at last January's historic 8 hour PEP meeting.

From: "Leo Casey" <lcasey@uft.org>

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:01:42 -0500

To: #UFT High School Staff<#UFTHighSchoolStaff@uft.org>; Robert Zuckerberg<rzuckerberg@uft.org>; Mary Wade<MWade@uft.org>; Ira Munet<IMunet@uft.org>; Richard Mantell<RMantell@uft.org>; Thomas Bennett<TBennett@uft.org>; Alfred Gonzales<AGonzales@uft.org>; Servia Silva<ssilva@uft.org>; Michael McCourt<MMccourt@uft.org>; Dwayne Clark<dclark@uft.org>; Donna Manganello<dmanganello@uft.org>; Mayra Cruz<MCruz@uft.org>; Pat Filomena<pfilomena@uft.org>; Carmen Z. Quinones<cquinones@uft.org>; Carol Harrison<CHarrison@uft.org>; Steven Goldberg<SGoldberg@uft.org>; Alice Cooper-Jackson<AJackson@uft.org>; Maritza Perez<MPerez@uft.org>; Rick King<RKing@uft.org>

Subject: JANUARY DELEGATE ASSEMBLY AND HIGH SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

As it now stands, the January Delegate Assembly has been moved to this Wednesday, January 12^th. As I am sure you are all aware, there are weather forecasts of a serious snowstorm starting Tuesday evening which may preempt that meeting. We will make a decision on the Delegate Assembly tomorrow (Tuesday), and send it out via e-mail and robo-calls.

The original date of the January High School Committee was this coming Wednesday. Before we heard of the possible snowstorm, we had moved the High School Committee meeting to Wednesday January 19^th to accommodate the new Delegate Assembly date. January 19^th is the date of a Panel for Educational Policy meeting which will begin a series of meetings on school closing with consideration of school co-locations, and our plan was to have the High School Committee meeting at the Brooklyn UFT and then go over to the PEP meeting at Brooklyn Tech. Should the Delegate Assembly be held this Wednesday, we will continue with these plans and hold the meeting on the 19^th. If, however, the Delegate Assembly is postponed until January 19^th, we will just cancel the January High School Committee meeting. As soon as we know how this will all play out, I will be back in touch with you. But if you can possibly do so, please make plans to attend the January 19^th PEP meeting.

If you like to sing and dance, and would be interested in some flash mob actions around the closing schools, please let me know by responding to this email.

Leo Casey

Vice President, Academic High Schools

United  Federation  of  Teachers

52  Broadway,  14th  Floor

New  York,  New  York

10004

212-598-6869

UFT Structure

Someone asked me to send this for a workshop on the UFT. A little crowded but has most of the info embedded. Groups like NYCORE and Teachers Unite have been reaching out to the newer crop of teachers and are offering them insights into the union since so many arrive with a negative attitude towards the union. Now, if you only make a judgement based on the actions of the leadership you night not blame them. But the union structure, in the hands of a democratic oriented leadership with a progressive agenda could be a massive force in opposing ed deform. From what I've been hearing, the interest level has been rising. If I goofed anywhere let me know. Click (and weep! )

Some Parents (and a few teachers) Debate UFT - Do They "Get" What NYC Teachers Don't?

"This is what teachers pay the UFT good money in union dues for.  Given the size of the opposition to the UFT's current leadership, it would appear that they find this situation satisfactory.  The UFT has been complicit from Day One in terms of everything Bloomberg/Klein have pulled off to date and as the teachers' collective bargaining agent, remains fully culpable."
- Dee Alpert, A parent on the NYCEdNews listserve

A few weeks ago a parent leader approached me and asked almost pleadingly, "Norm, why can't you come up with a candidate in the UFT that would actually represent the interests of teachers?" The parent was disgusted at the UFT's inadequate response to the Cathie Black appointment, amongst other issues. "I meet so many teachers who are unhappy at the UFT," he said. "Where are they," I asked? "It does them no good to gripe. They need to get active in the UFT and with organized groups to make a difference." He had no answer. And neither do I.

I won't get into my attempt to explain the Unity Caucus machine in 30 seconds.

Here are excerpts from a debate that took place on the UFT within a mostly parent listserve.

The debate began over a CEC 6 (upper Manhattan) reso (see below the fold) supporting the ed deformers and calling an end to LIFO (last in first out) if the expected layoffs come, an effective end to tenure. Legendary master teacher Deb Meier - who goes one on one with Diane Ravitch on their Building Bridges blog - is someone whose career I have admired and followed since my early years of teaching. The lead in quote was in response to this comment from Deb.

Fired tenured teachers can, but if there is no "tenure".  no grounds for dismissal required etc....then what?  In fact, it's wisest for principals to say very little if they don't want to keep an untenured teacher, to avoid any possibility of appeal on the basis of race, gender, union activity etc.    Tenure requires that there must be a fair process for dismissal.  The teachers in the so-called "rubber room" were there because while a principal can remove a teacher from the classroom arbitrarily, they must bring charges then  to kick in an appeals process.  The union provides a lawyer--so-to speak--to represent them in such a hearing/trial.   Generally there is an equally arbitrary deadline for such charges to be made, and the defendant then has x number of days to respond, etc.  But if no charge are ever made, and no evidence ever collected?   Then perhaps "they" hope the defendant will resign, disappear, etc.  The primary basis for being able to remove a teacher (or, incidentally any school employee including a principal) before charges and evidence are presented is given an accusation, claim, complaint that their continued presence in a class would endanger children or the school.  Is there a better way?  Of course, and the union might be to blame for the fact that it has allowed such an indefensible process to continue year after year.  The union has been insufficiently careful in guarding the human rights of its member, not too zealous!

Having had friends and colleagues who have been victims of this system and, as a result, so have their students and their families, I hope that better means are found.   Fortunately some have had sufficient clout to get heard and whose appeals have reversed charges that were frivolous or invented by an angry colleague, student, parent, or principal.  Unfortunately some have had their lives and services destroyed without any evidence of having done anything wrong.

Deb

Well said, Dee; I couldn't agree more.

At this point, I find it extremely difficult to muster any sympathy (and even less respect) for the UFT's past and current leadership.

As a teacher, I was never much of a union person, but I respected their (idealized) role in the overall city/school relationship. Now I find myself only feeling actively pro-union when a situation appears harmful to the children and their educations, but not for the sake of the union itself. Whatever they suffer now, they have no business complaining. They made their own bed; now they can lay in it. I do feel sorry for the teachers and other members who have fought unsuccessfully against the Weingarten/Mulgrew regimes, though.

Steve Koss

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How can 80,000 teachers just go along with bad policy?

How can so many paid professionals just allow their principals and union to profit from these reforms that harm kids, communities and ultimately the teaching profession?

Is it because, like parents, teachers are generally overburdened with work/family/economic strain and can only afford to fight the fight when it is personal, and pragmatic to fight back-- attacks on their school, their ratings, their jobs, their kids, etc?

How many teachers are engaged in NYCORE/GEM/CPE/Teachers Unite/ and other organizing efforts?

Where are the tens of thousands of teachers who fight these battles every day in their classrooms and schools?

Without an organized push back from labor how can we hope that sanity and good pedagogy will prevail?

Lisa Donlan
____

Lisa is right. I am not one to go hard at Mulgrew and the uft, but in this case I believe it is important. Lisa asks, "how can 80000 teachers go along w bad policy." The answer is our union lies to them, misleads them, and does not fully educate them. Our union right now should be educating, organizing and mobilizing, but instead they hold half-hearted, unpublicized rallies for school closures for which they have no cohesive message except that they will hold the DOE to the legal process. NYCORE, GEM, and other groups do not have the reach into schools that the uft has- it is immoral that Mulgrew and the uft are not doing more; they should be offering a vision and a clear message that our schools and our children are not for sale, that we should be fixing schools- not closing them, and that teacher rights, good working conditions, and teacher voice help and benefit our children. Sadly, we are left to fight on our own. Hopefully some of you can join us at cuny tomorrow @ 5 for an ad hoc committee meeting to plan the fight backs that must happen in the coming months... In the absence of true leadership from the uft, educators and parents must stand up, on our own, and hope that Mulgrew et al will follow.

Julie Cavanagh (teacher)
_______
When we spend less time attacking our imperfect potential allies we might find more--but we see to find satisfaction in "I was proved right",, rather than thinking about how else they might respond? Are you for a strike? Let's discuss the details not just pound away at the enemies of our enemies.

But that doesn't mean that I don't find the activism of the folks on this list-serve courageous and important, but I also suspect we are not always representative of those we "represent".... Political education is not so different than school education---people learn best when they feel comfortable exposing their ideas, don[t feel put in a corner as the "enemy" quickly, and are assumed to be well-meaning eve f mistaken. This may sound preachy and I often break my own rules! But let's try.

Deb
_______

The UFT has been something other than an "imperfect ally" in the class size and testing issue in NYC (and NYS). It has been complicit from Day One with the folks making these decisions to start with. I would ROTFL if someone told me that the UFT only realized this year that there was something wrong with NYSED's tests and be most surprised to find documentation regarding its exposure of this pervasive scam prior to this year.

In the women's movement in the '70's, before it allowed itself to become co-opted, the principle "only join one-issue, short-term coalitions" ruled. This was extremely effective ... but nobody made the mistake of assuming that any group with which we coalesced on a single issue was actually our friend. That's self-delusion.

Dee Alpert

__________
Dee: I agree w/ Debbie that this shrill one note, repeated criticisms are not helpful, especially when they are not accompanied by any information or facts.

The UFT is far from perfect, but the current leadership has been dealt an extremely bad hand and has been critical in terms of launching lawsuits against the DOE on class size, school closings and a bunch of other issues, when the city refuses to obey the law.

Leonie Haimson

________
Can we say the UFT was dealt a bad hand when they were asked to cut the deck before the cards were dealt, accepted the offer and stepped on everyone in the union who tried to object?

Norm
_______

I don't think it's helpful to maintain illusions about who one is dealing with and why they're there. UFT pretty much does what other unions do. Sometimes that's good for kids, sometimes it's not. Unions, typically, do what's going to make their more senior members happy and will let those with least seniority be laid off ... the latter being the folks who vote less often in union elections. But in terms of its members, one can't begin to count the individual cases in which teachers have been screwed by their school administration and their building UFT leaders have done squat about it. I've just met too many of them. There's the neighbor upstairs. And the other neighbor further upstairs. And ... I'm certainly not confining my views re UFT to the "current leadership."

For how many years did the UFT fail to push class size grievances fully, aggressively and completely ... all the way up? If the UFT had wanted to enforce that part of its contract vigorously, it could have. Didn't. And while Bloomberg's announced massive teacher layoffs, when has the UFT publicly done a snit about the NYCDOE hiring all these sub-qualified IT people and other "staff" (rather than "line") ultimately non-productive but well paid staff, vastly increasing administrative overhead ... and leaving so many line teachers vulnerable to being pushed out the schoolhouse door?

Dee
_______

A slavish adherence to “process” just gets you to a bad result more slowly.

The law is bad and it is difficult to believe the UFT just couldn't have foreseen the consequences when they acquiesced to this version of mayoral control. All you have to do is read the law without rose-colored glasses.

PdK
_________

Here is the original post from Leonie that initiated the discussion:

Sad to see this document/resolution come from the place where CFE started.  In all the rhetoric about the need for “great teachers” and incentive pay, there is no mention of the problems of overcrowding and  class size – the focus of the CFE case and still a huge problem in D6 and citywide.

I looked up where they got the info  that “about that 1 in 2500 tenured teachers lose their jobs because of performance compared to 1 in 57 doctors and 1 in 97 lawyers;”   

It turns out that this claim, repeated in Waiting for Superman, refers specifically to the state of Illinois,  and was contained in a 2005 series called “The Hidden Cost of Tenure” from the Small Newspaper Group in that state.

http://thehiddencostsoftenure.com/

http://hiddenviolations.com/stories/?prcss=display&id=358596

Not sure if it was even true in Illinois; the figures for doctors and lawyers sound very high to me.

Education “manifesto” alarms parents, teachers in Washington Heights and Inwood

http://www.manhattantimesnews.com/2010/education-manifesto-alarms-parents-teachers-in-washington-heights-and-inwood.html

Diane Ravitch responded:
The 1 in 2500 number is bogus in that it doesn't not account for the 50% of teachers who leave within five years of starting.

Caroline Grannan from SF
The other response about the teachers who "lose their jobs" is that this doesn't count the many teachers who CHOOSE to leave their jobs. Many teachers choose to leave their jobs for other reasons, but some choose to leave them because they know they're not coping well and have chosen the wrong field (a teacher friend of mine described this happening at her school -- midlife career-changing new teacher turned out to be a disaster, finished out two years and left the field voluntarily); some after some kind of coaching/counseling process, etc. That statistic is for teachers who do not leave for any of those reasons and are actively fired, which would likely be a fairly small percentage of the less successful teachers who leave the field due to being less successful teachers.

Deb Meier
What does it mean that a lawyer "loses his job"???  Or a doctor?

Didn't find much current info on the Health Department web site.  It appears that 200-300 physicians licenses are either suspended, revoked, or surrendered every rear.

I submitted a FOIL request for the actual current numbers, and the total number of licensed physicians.

Eugene Falik

 

I suspect also that doctors and lawyers resort to appeals processes!

Deb

Unity Caucus Insights/How Unity Caucus Prepares for Delegate Assemblies

Updated: Sat, Dec. 11, 8AM
Here are some interesting insights by 2 former Unity Caucus members. Signs of cracks in the machine? I'm not betting on that yet.

The Unity Leadership put out a message regarding school closings that says we are watching closely. We will go to court. We will help schools that want help. Holy Crud. Of course that is all you can do . You don't have a clear and concise blueprint of how our schools should operate. You supported and helped shape Mayoral Control and now are invested in making sure the law is followed. They can close down every school, pump up the ATR pool until it reaches heaven and create an untenable situation down the road where you will have to sell out the ATRS, and you sit with your hands tied because you are following the very law you helped to create. Great job. 
 --- Posted on ICE mail by John Powers, a former Unity Caucus member

Hi,
Just catching up on my email and I read the piece about the two Michael's*.  Do you know about the Speaker's Bureau?  They hold a meeting usually the day before the DA to go over questions for the President and any resolutions.  The president has a map of where people will sit to call on.  They do it for everything.  They used to meet at a junior high on 21st or the china chalet but last year they were starting to have conference calls. - Another former Unity Caucus member

*A Tale of Two Michaels: UFT and Mayor Bloomberg - Who is more undemocratic?

was written by Seung Ok - We are waging a two front battle against major powers - the millions of our own union leadership and the billionaire mayor.  


_____________

Below is the full piece by Brooklyn Chapter Leader John Powers, a former member of Unity Caucus. Powers joined Unity in the summer of 2009 with the intention of trying to create debate on crucial issues within the caucus but when the union supported teacher evaluation measures he withdrew as a delegate to the AFT convention in Seattle (I'm sorry he did as we could have used some more people on the inside - who secretly were slipping me info) in June 2010, effectively ending his association with Unity.

The number one concern that the Unity leadership has is not Cathie Black (and the ATR, seniority situation), but Andrew Cuomo and his desire to hold a NY State Constitutional Convention. The language in our NYS Constitution protects city/state pensions from being changed or "diminished" in any way.

This is the great sleeping giant that will activate workers across the state. What is Unity's plan? Labor's plan? Will they lack the courage and leadership to mount a fight against this great austerity measure? Do they have the imagination, creativity and talent to create a united front that puts forth a clear and concise message that will resonate with citizens across the state? Will they engage in the necessary planning and training of its members to mobilize in ways that might "paralyze" the state? Or will they rely strictly on massaging politicians who may ultimately turn their backs on us. Abandon us? 

I am so worried about how Labor will respond, especially Unity. Our leadership has failed over the last fifteen years I have been teaching to put forth a serious educational worker campaign with a clear message that states what we stand for and what we believe K-12 education should encompass in all of its complexities. The Unity leadership is all over the place constantly defending itself from attacks, making compromises and appeasing individuals, agencies and organizations who hold our work in little regard and seek to pulverize us. 

Remember that absurd cartoon commercial last year about high stakes tests and ed jargon. Wow. That really hit it out of the park. One million bucks on a cartoon that apparently "tested well" with some audiences. What about us? The DOE runs multi-colored propaganda ads on subway cars and shoots "missiles" at us daily via corporate controlled newspapers and magazines. And what does the Unity leadership do: creates a "fluffy" one million dollar cartoon. Who signed off on that one? 

We are such a talented, dynamic force of 80,000 teachers. So many untapped resources and the Unity leadership still operates under a perverted form of "democratic centralism" that insulates them from engaging in dialogs and debates with their own party members as well as the masses of rank and filers who could help them. Their hubris and lack of imagination and openness is a threat to the long-term viability of the UFT as a union.

One way the leadership seeks to divide and conquer their party members and other rank and filers is through "red fear." They paint dissenters or critics as being extreme leftists whose ideas will destroy the union. Here is where it gets tricky. Even if one were to agree that some dissenters / critics appear to hold more "extreme" views than others (funny aren't the ed deformers the real extremists?), this practice makes Unity members docile and hostile to even entertaining relatively traditional modes of unionism that includes various types of mobilizations. 

For instance, we have principals and schools that operate under a climate of fear and intimidation. Why doesn't the Unity leadership help these schools hold small demos that focus on embarrassing the principal and educating the parents of school children who attend? You don't need lawyers and courts for this type of action. You don't even need large numbers of people. Hell, bring in the retirees. Have them stand hand in hand with teachers at affected schools, especially the younger teachers (BTW: Wait until the retirees figure out what's going on with Cuomo and our pensions. The pension "language" I referred to before would not only affect present employees but all retirees too. Are there any retirees out there who are reading this? Create a flier regarding our pensions and Cuomo and pay a visit to the next UFT Retiree Chapter meeting. I'd go but I believe they are held during work hours. Now there is a target group. Boy oh boy, our retirees are an untapped resource. Who is reaching out to them? Who is asking them to come speak at meetings, especially meetings with young teachers. Any CLs out there? Bring a retiree in to talk to young teachers about the importance of unionism, benefits, pensions, seniority, and providing for your family. Ask retirees to canvas schools who need our support. Have them distribute literature that explains the state of our union. Our pensions. ATR's. Seniority. Collect signatures. Put email addresses of names collected on ice-mail and other list serves (with their permission).

Heck, hit the colleges too. Hit all the CUNY ed departments. Private universities. We need the newbies and the newbies need us.   

There is so much to be upset about regarding the "deformers" and the Unity leadership, but I'm hopeful that we are reaching a point where we will have to be heard.

And Unity Leadership: Stop Trying to Dumb Us Down. Stop Trying to Divide and Conquer UFTers. Get a Plan. Create a Strong Positive Message and Get It Out There.

Little Surprise: The Unity Leadership today put out a message regarding school closings that says we are watching closely. We will go to court. We will help schools that want help. Holy Crud. Of course that is all you can do . You don't have a clear and concise blueprint of how our schools should operate. You supported and helped shape Mayoral Control and now are invested in making sure the law is followed. They can close down every school, pump up the ATR pool until it reaches heaven and create an untenable situation down the road where you will have to sell out the ATRS, and you sit with your hands tied because you are following the very law you helped to create. Great job. 

That's one heck of a job. 

In Solidarity,

John Powers

P.S. Has anyone seen the potential new NYS performance standards for students? After reading them, you will probably need a toilet quickly. If I can get an electronic copy I will send it out. It represents the final nail in the coffin of absolute and total regimentation of teaching and learning. It is spreadsheet fascism at its worst. But more importantly, look for the Unity leadership to highlight these performance standards and talk about how disgusting they are while focusing almost exclusively on how our work day does not permit time to do the activities indicated in the performance standards. Although this is true, it is also true that this will leave the door open for a compromise/appeasement agreement where the Unity leadership will approve some or all of the inanities as long as we are compensated for it and given time to do it. What they should do is???????? You guessed it, advocate for what real teaching and learning encompasses. Wait until you read this draft of performance standards.

-----

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/
Here is an article related to the NEA and AFT cooperation in the onslaught on teachers:

Report: Many officials willing to replace half of staff to turn around schools

Schools in Trouble Starved While UFT Fiddles

Someone must ask the leadership of the UFT, with all its resources, why Leonie Haimson, a one woman wrecking crew when it comes to Tweed chicanery, has to be the one to put a report like the one below together that exposes how Beach Channel HS (the local school in my neighborhood) had rising class sizes while targeted by the DOE for closure. Remember how the UFT law suit kept BCHS open for an extra year but then the UFT made a deal with the DOE that allowed them to insert a new school in the building in an effort to starve the incoming freshman class - with the other high school (Far Rockaway) having been closed already the kids who aren't accepted to any Rockaway schools must head to places like John Adams in Ozone Park, the next target in the domino chain.

So Seung Ok is right on when he says in this piece we posted A Tale of Two Michaels: UFT and Mayor Bloomberg - Who is more undemocratic?:

No wonder teachers are losing the battle for public opinion. We are waging a two front battle against major powers - the millions of our own union leadership and the billionaire mayor. 

Parent activist Paola da Kock commented on the NYCEdNews Listserve:

Six of these schools opened under Bloomberg.  As might be expected, “the city said it was holding newer schools just as accountable as older ones” instead of acknowledging its reform strategy is a failure.  But where’s the UFT, the organization best placed to stop the madness?  It’s “nothing more than a joke,” quips Mulgrew, “the tea cup ride at Disney.”  Does Mulgrew have a plan besides laughing at this “joke”?  As Norm reported, he does: “If we find any substantial violations of the statute that covers school closings, the DOE can expect to see us in court.”  Look what that did for Beach Channel High School, one of the 19 schools “saved” by the UFT lawsuit last February, which will now be closed.

Paola de Kock

Queens HS parent leader Monica Ayuso said:

There is something more sinister going on a Beach Channel. The building was under major construction work. Therefore, closing the school was always the plan.

Lisa Donlan, followed by Dee Alpert chipped in:

What does the CFE organization say about this? Can the IBO or Comptroller tell us where that money went if it wasn't used to reduce class size? Isn't this the equivalent to the misuse of funds? Don't folks do hard time for less? - Lisa

What is needed is a series of good forensic audits to see how funds were actually expended - as opposed to how they were reported as having been expended.  IBO doesn't do this kind of audit work.  CFE could probably try to get some forensic audits as part of its status in the litigation, but ... .  Ditto for the UFT, which is actually litigating how the NYCDOE actually spent class size reduction funds at this time.

The UFT's new papers in its suit to stop release of teachers' value added reports are interesting in terms of looking at the class size reduction money issue.  It would appear that information principals report to Tweed re a bunch of relevant things - including who is teaching which class - is wildly inaccurate and, of course, unaudited and unverified.  It's hard to see how other teacher assignment/class size data they report would be any more reliable.  It is, of course, interesting that the NYCDOE did not require that principals have teachers check data submitted about them for accuracy.  Principals are, in the wonderful world of Tweed, not only captains of their ships, but also sole creators (or concoctors) of virtually all information regarding their ships' staffs and passengers.  - Dee

The reason that principals are so all-powerful is that the UFT was a co-conspirator with the DOE leaving the union at the school level on a respirator.

The response of the UFT to the closing of schools, if any, is beyond in adequate as they trumpet their phony "victory" last year - which helped Mulgrew gain his 91% victory in the union elections.

As Leonie points out below, the extra help and support has nothing to do with the classroom. Send in another coordinator or teacher trainer - I'd like to see these expert try to teach the large classes for a few weeks and check the results.

Leonie on the NYC Public School Parent blog:

The DOE set the closing schools up for failure

Today, in justifying the eleven school closings, with more to come, Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg made the following statement: “Year after year, even as we provided extra help and support, these schools simply have not gotten the job done for children."

Did they ever try systematically reducing class size? No.

Most of these students at these schools continue to suffer from overly large classes that far exceed the state average of twenty students per class, as well as the goals in the city’s mandated class size reduction plan. In fact, class sizes have risen sharply in most of the schools slated for closure.

For example, check out the increases in class size at Beach Channel High school, one of the schools on today’s list of closures, which have occurred despite a promise from the DOE to make specific reductions at this school in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in Contract For Excellence funds.

As Sternberg said, “…we cannot afford to let schools continue to fail students when we know we can do better.”

Most parents and teachers would agree. The Department of Education’s stubborn refusal to follow the law and to allow the students at these schools to have their best chance to succeed is unconscionable, and set up these schools for failure.

Parsing Mulgrew on tenure, teacher effectiveness, teacher evaluation, value-added: What he should be saying, but won't

Just heard Mulgrew on Brian Lehrer in relation to Cathie Black's positions opposing tenure and last in first out (LIFO) for layoffs. Talk of teacher effectiveness and cost effectiveness.

Not the latter is a newer wrinkle of the ed deformers - the argument that given 2 roughly equal teachers it is more cost effective to get rid of the one who makes more money. They can even argue that if a teacher who makes 100G is superb, it is still more cost effectie to keep two 3rd year teachers making 60G.

Now if you are running a business that idea looks good. But is it really cost effective over the long term when you are dealing with an entire profession that would react poorly - even the younger teachers who hope to put in a long career and one day get paid accordingly? Other than real newbies who have no plans to stay - think Teach for America - the shock troops of the ed deform movement - the degrading aspect of this attack undermines the profession and weakens teacher effectiveness over the long run. I would bet most teachers from 3rd year on would be absolutely opposed to weakening of tenure and the end of seniority for layoffs - which are a pretty rare affair. Many teachers I know starting around 1969-70 were excessed at least once - and in '75 we had massive layoffs by seniority and call-backs by the same means - an orderly system instead of the chaos the ed deformers are calling for.

Of course we heard none of this argument by Mulgrew who instead talked about the fact that tenure is due process not life-time jobs and that if there are ineffective teachers the principals should have gotten rid of them before it was time for layoffs. Good points for him - he even talked about how tenure is not a contract provision but state law long superceding the lifetime of the union. (By the way - tenure as people talk about it as a lifetime job is more aligned with college teaching though even that is based on some due process system). He also talked about the fair funding formula - the tactic tha charges principals for the costs of the teachers instead of lumping all salaries into a central fund - and how it encourages principals to get rid of of more expensive teachers. So not terrible even though he could have been much stronger - but as we know- the UFT is partway on the ed deform bandwagon - or wants it to appear that way.

When Brian brought up the release of individual teacher evaluations, Mulgrew was weak I thought in not arguing how they should never be released for all sorts of reasons that have been argued. Instead he attacked the accuracy of the value-added results at this point and seemed to argue that when they were accurate it would be OK to release them.

I think there have been enough arguments about VA and the narrow tests they are based on. We think there is a lot more to a teacher than can be expressed in a number. The union should be making that case instead of bragging how they are willing to cooperate in their own members' demise.

For the kind of defense we would like to hear from out union - but never will read this at Modern School:

Value Added & Performance Pay Scams Weaken Teacher Pay and Autonomy

Stephen Krashen, from Schools Matter, has an excellent posting on the idiocy of Value Added teacher assessments and performance pay: Seniority and Teacher Layoffs: A Red Herring

Like so much of Ed Deform: It's all about money. Senior teachers are higher on the pay scale and cost districts more money than younger inexperienced teachers. Krashen argues that this is the only rational argument for dumping experience over youth since veteran teachers generally do a better job. They have more years of on the job practice. They have more experience from workshops, professional development, and collaboration with peers.

However, there is one more reason to dump older teachers: Control

Experienced teachers are less likely to go along with every hare-brained ed deform plan concocted by their administrators. This is one reason why charter schools like KIPP are able to get their teachers to work weekends and summers and be on call well into the night. 

Retired UFT Bronx HS District Rep Lynne Winderbaum on the NYCEDNews Listserve said:

Of all the words used to describe Cathie Black, "parrot" may be a new one. But it seems that after her listening tour of Tweed, she has now come out repeating the tired old propaganda that has been adopted by the Department of Education for the last nine years.

This morning at 6:15 AM on NPR Cathie Black announced that she "has a problem with the practice of granting 25-year-olds tenure, insuring them a job for the rest of their lives for just showing up to work everyday".   Also, she "has a problem with laying off the 'last in' first".  She stated that she could never run a company successfully if these practices existed and that these practices would never be accepted in business.

Frightening to see that her ignorance regarding these issues had been replaced by the misrepresentations she is being taught. First of all, there is no practice of granting 25-year olds tenure. Anyone of that age who does achieve tenure has already served three years in a classroom and has been trained during that probationary period to work on techniques and strategies to improve their pedagogy. At any time during the three year period, if the teacher does not show improvement or an aptitude for the job, he or she can be summarily fired--no questions asked. It is called a "discontinuance of probation" and it is used frequently. After three years, if the teacher has been satisfactory rated, only then is tenure granted. And if an administrator has any doubts about granting tenure, there is the option to extend probation for an additional year...no questions asked. 

Cathie Black is also showing her ignorance of the fact that tenure is not a "job for the rest of their lives for just showing up to work everyday." Tenured teachers can be fired under the terms of state education law Section 3020a. That's all tenure gets them: a due process proceeding. It does not mean a job for life. It is just a guarantee of a fair hearing, with evidence presented and with representation. Private sector workers would love to have such security, but apparently a successful business cannot incorporate fairness according to Black. A tenured teacher cannot be summarily fired for any reason as a probationary teacher can. That's all tenure means. And if Cathie Black is unquestioningly passing along the false myths that we expect of a person who simply repeats what she hears without any independent research, we should fear what lies ahead in her decision making process.

May I add that without tenure, teachers risk discrimination, being punished for their political leanings, and they will rightly fear exposing wrongdoing or questioning violations such as failure to follow special ed or ELL laws, for example. It is just protection Cathie, not a lifetime guarantee. Get out of your cocoon.

"Last in, first out" was never a policy that was debated until the wholesale closing of schools left many veteran teachers without jobs. Before that, the only teachers in excess were those with one or two years experience. Suddenly there were hundreds of employees who had given their lives to the children of New York City, twenty or thirty years in many cases, who had no place to work, through no fault of their own. They were also the most highly paid. So, despite the fact that many are fine teachers, Tweed looked for a way to paint them all with a negative brush and build a pr position around firing them. Black says the practice would never be accepted in business where the model is to have the power to hire and fire at will. But first she must make a convincing argument that the basis of retaining teachers will never be favoritism or silence about problems at schools. Seniority is a fair way to fight favoritism and nepotism. Do away with seniority and tenure and watch what is unleashed in our workforce. After her week of listening to folks downtown, the breadth of her understanding of the issues may be a mile wide but it is a quarter inch thick.

That does not bode well for anyone in the school system.

UFT Failed Policy on School Closings: Ignores School Closings Based on Political and Ideological Grounds

Gotham schools Reports Backroom Dealings Between DOE and UFT on School Closings
Longtime Outcomes: DOE: 90-120+, UFT: 0

This story is so typical - if true, which I believe it is - of how the UFT has dealt with school closings.
It should be pointed out that the DOE has closed over 90 schools with barely a whimper from the UFT. But the announcement last December that they would close 19 schools, just as Mulgrew's first UFT election campaign was getting started forced the UFT to act - bringing out people to the Jan. 26 PEP meeting and filing a law suit - not a law suit based on the premises I will lay out in the following paragraphs that closings are based on ideology and politics, not educational grounds, but on procedural grounds, something the DOE is correcting this year. So the schools were kept open another year and despite the fact that the DOE did everything it could to keep students from going there the UFT made a deal to allow them to insert new schools to further undermine them. This year they are again a target.

UFT Wiki-leaks
So this item in the Gotham piece caused me to take notice:

“I think they’re making a real attempt to avoid what led us to win that suit against them,” said the [UFT] official. “I don’t think it’s any glasnost, there’s no kumbaya here. But they’re making an effort to avoid getting sued.”

So the UFT is leaking that the DOE is afraid of another law suit - over what - procedures that they are following to the T? This leak is for the members who are agitating within their schools and communities - "SHHHH! We may be able to make a deal for you if you are quiet." And desperate schools may just do it. I was at the Dewey rally on Friday and saw some signs (which I may be misinterpreting) that there might be a behind the scene buzz emanating from the union that a deal could be made by the UFT and DOE to save the school - for now. I bet they are telling that to all the schools. Just like they probably told to the staffs of the now closed over 90 schools.

One GEMer said:

That is why I think having Fight Back rallies and Demo's might actually make a difference.  If the DOE sees that a school community is going to fight, they might think twice about closing it or even using the turn-around model.  My understanding is that the Federal government only allows a certain percent of schools to be transformed.  I believe that is 17 out of the 55/60. Interesting that they do not seem to be using the "conversion to charter" model.  It is one of the 4 choices.  Perhaps this is because "charter" school operators do not want to take on such a "hard" job as "fixing" a struggling high school.  Remember Jeffrey Canada's Harlem Children Zone Charter School "fired" a whole 9th grade class instead of having them move on to high school. Have any of the schools on the list been contacted by the UFT to have input into the negotiations?

Note that Randi Weingarten and the AFT have not made a peep against the federal turn around mandates that forces locals to do their bidding. Well, you know, they wouldn't want to be branded by the ed deformers as a union unwilling to go along.

I have been a critic of the UFT/AFT policy on school closings since BloomKlein took over, claiming much of the policy is based on politics and ideology rather than on educational grounds. And on the use of numbers, at times cooked (see Jamaica HS) rather than looking at the real situation within the school. The idea is that the only way to get around seniority and tenure rules is to use these closings or turn around models to dump out the teachers and start new schools with many newbies who cost less and are often more compliant.

By that I mean they can wring more "productivity" out of newbies who won't complain if prep periods or lunch periods go missing or people have to stay in school until 6PM to get their work done. I mean, why pay people per session for extra work if you can get it for free? We hear that charter school teachers work 30% more. That is the ed deform model.

And let's not forget that these teachers get so much lower pay as newbies they can hire more of them.

[As a sidelight - note the latest ed deform attack is on the salary structure itself that is based on number of years and qualifications. Their ideal: all teachers start out with the same base salary no matter how many years and get bonuses each year based on the kids' performance on standardized tests. How about a gym or art or music teacher you ask? Get your kids to run a 4-minute mile, produce a Picasso or write a symphony and you'll be rich.]

The ed deformers have come up with this policy nationally to enforce their ideology, part of which holds that small schools only are the way and that large comprehensive high schools must go. That these large schools are often bastions of strong union support is a factor.

Tweed has used various techiniques to make large schools disappear. Using a geographical method, first in the Bronx, then in Brooklyn and now in Queens, the DOE has created a domino effect by keeping the most at risk kids out of their cherished small schools and forcing crowds of them into the next school down the line. Examples: Far Rockaway/Beach Channel - and next John Adams. Lane/Jefferson/Canarsie/South Shore - next Sheepshead Bay. Lafayette - John Dewey. I don't know the Bronx geography well enough to map it but I hear Lehman HS is a big target now.

But the UFT refuses to act as if this is true. They refuse to try to organize the threatened schools as a united force, giving behind the scenes advice to each school individually. The outcomes have been disaster for the schools.

This comment came in from another GEMer:

Has there been any rank-and-file involvement as our leadership helps decide which schools stay and which get thrown on the trash heap? Note also the new emphasis on the more draconian "turnaround" rather than just "transformation."  Funny that the CSA is publicly protesting that this would be extracontractual, but no peep from the UFT about all their members in a school being forced to reapply for their jobs (and only half being able to be rehired).

Yes, pretty funny that the union for supervisors comes off as being more supportive of their members than the UFT is.

Full Gotham story below the fold



http://gothamschools.org/2010/12/03/city-and-union-officials-are-in-talks-over-school-closures/

City officials have been holding on-again-off-again meetings with the
teachers union to discuss the fate of the nearly 60 schools that could
be closed or have their principals removed this year.

A source familiar with the meetings said they’ve been going on
throughout the fall and have been spearheaded, on the DOE’s side, by
Deputy Chancellor John White. A union official said part of the reason
for the talks is that the city is eager to avoid another lawsuit like
the one last year that barred the planned closure of 19 schools.

“I think they’re making a real attempt to avoid what led us to win
that suit against them,” said the official. “I don’t think it’s any
glasnost, there’s no kumbaya here. But they’re making an effort to
avoid getting sued.”

City and union officials would not comment on the substance of the
discussions. As early as next week, city officials will begin
announcing which schools they plan to keep open, which will close, and
which will undergo one of several “turnaround” models mandated by the
federal government.

City officials are also trying to iron out an agreement with the
principal’s union that will let them use the turnaround method in some
schools, according to the Council for School Supervisors and
Administrators spokeswoman Chiara Coletti.

One of the four school improvement strategies being offered by the
federal government, the turnaround method, calls for a school’s
principal to be replaced and its teachers and administrators to
reapply for their jobs. Only 50 percent can be rehired.

Coletti said the union’s contract doesn’t allow the city to dismiss
principals and other administrators without a hearing.

“We have a contract that doesn’t allow for the wholesale removal of
administrative staff, so that’s obviously under discussion,” she said.

Earlier this year, the union reached an agreement with the city that
allowed for the principals of several transformation schools to be
replaced while others got a new title of “transformation mentor
principals.”

“As we’ve said, we are talking to stakeholders about struggling
schools, and getting input from parents, teacher, school leaders and
communities,” said DOE spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld. “We’ll consider
their input, and the data, as we make the best decisions for kids.”

The Teaching Profession: Out With the Old, In With the New

The Sunday Times book review section review "Shock of Gray" a book about the aging world population, posing the issue of older people vs. younger people for jobs in addition to the fact that as birth rates drop there are fewer workers to support the elderly. What is of interest to us is when the author, Ted C. Fishman, refers to "age arbitrage" where companies trade in their older employees for a younger, cheaper work force elsewhere - outsourcing - attributing this to globalization.

This got me to thinking about what we've seen here in NYC within the teaching ranks and the growing assaults on senior, higher paid teachers. First we saw Joel Klein claim early in his tenure that seniority was harming poor kids because the most experienced teachers could transfer out to better neighborhoods while at the same time attacking senior teachers by claiming the very same seniority transfers were foisting incompetent teachers on principals. He also attacked the "bumping" rules where senior teachers had the right to bump junior teachers within the same license area. The 2005v contract killed these seniority rules and created a pool of ATRs, the use of these senior teachers as short term of long term subs.

Then Klein implemented what he called fair school funding, where for the first time a school was charged for the costs of the teaching staff. Thus, a school with a lot of teachers with over 22 years making a hundred thousand a year (by the way, giving big raises at the top was part of the long-term plan- call it an investment - to create such a gap in salary between new and senior teachers as to start the pressure cooker boiling) could afford less teachers, thus giving principals an incentive to go after the higher salaried teachers.

The next level of attack is coming from the likes of the Bill Gates foundation and Arne Duncan who want to totally revamp salary structure to be based on the scores of each individual teacher using value-added. Part of this attack is to degrade teacher experience. As Susan Ohanian wrote which we quoted Gates' spokesperson Vickie Bernstein in our post ( Calls to action for teachers -) the other day:

Lest you doubt the triage metaphor, consider Vicki Phillips' recent remarks to the National PTA. Phillips is the Education Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

So we know master's degrees have almost no value.
We know certifications don't make a difference.
We know that after three years, seniority doesn’t really matter . . . After year three, teachers usually don't get significantly better or worse. 

So you see where this is going. Degrade the profession, use more TFA temps, etc. By increasing non-unionized charters - pay the salaries to make them competitive with the public schools but demand 30% more work, no pensions and possibly lousier health plans - they ultimately will be able to drive down every one's salary so one day we are back to the 50's, with a basic non-unionized work force making peanuts and with lousy working conditions.

The next step will be to demand that when layoffs come, seniority be thrown out - this will be a focus for Cathie Black. Part of their game plan it so appeal to the newer, younger teachers who will demand they be kept on while older higher salaried teachers are let go. Watch the value-added scores be released just in time - can't you see a list in the NY Post of every teacher making a high salary and their value-added score compared to lower salaried teachers in their school? That's coming folks, to a school near you.

Should see this picture for teachers within the context of Fishman's book, as part of a worldwide trend? Or is this a unique case?

AFTERBURN
For those of you who thought of Joel Klein as incompetent - with his multiple reorganizations and all the other hazarai, I disagree. His job was not to improve education or even about education. It was about ideology and to do what I described above. In the latter he was brilliant - a master, especially with a cooperative UFT - non incompetent either by the way, as solidfying and holding on to power is the prime directive and they have done that as well as Klein has done his work.