Edwize Tries Smoke and Mirrors - Update

Edwize commenter JW raises questions about the rush to judgement on the part of the UFT to endorse Hillary. Note the disingenuous answer from Leo Casey.

See Leo run.

See Leo try to convince JW that the UFT couldn't discuss or vote on the primary because the AFT endorsed Clinton. As if the UFT must follow AFT policy, not the other way around. [Check our previous post "The Unity Caucus Tail Wags the AFT Dog".]

See Leo ignore the fact that the Chicago Teachers Union did endorse Obama. Oh, yeah, the UFT has an excuse for that - "we gave them permission" said Randi at a meeting because of Obama's favorite son status. Hillary had plenty of roots in Chicago too.

JW asks for the by-law that proves Casey's contention.

Suddenly, the thread ends.

Was anyone out there polled by the AFT as Leo contends? Gee, it's hard to believe Leo would actually out and out lie, so there must be a poll lurking somewhere. Maybe in a vault. Or in Warsaw.

I never read the Edwize unless someone is inserting burning splinters under my fingernails. In the comments on this post, Unity slugs Bill Stamatis and Casey wax unpoetic in praise of Hillary Clinton on education. I mean, hey, just check out what she says for public consumption on her web site and ignore her entire history of ed "reform" from Arkansas through NCLB and beyond – Lock step with the UFT which has done so well by NYC teachers. Ahh let's forget the days when Hillary defended retesting of veteran teachers or the Clintons laid out the basis of a lot of today's phony ed reform movement.

So, why did the UFT rush to Hillary? Tell me again, I forgot. - JW

Stamatis points to Clinton’s web site - and blah, blah, blah

JW comes back with:
Whether Hillary or Obama had the better ed platform this primary season matters less to me than the UFT making an endorsement without polling the membership. I’ll vote for any Democrat in the general election, of course, and the UFT could have done the same: endorse the Democratic choice, whichever candidate the party would eventually put forward by the end of the primary season. I don’t think they had to endorse one of the two candidates specifically. So, my question still holds. Why did the UFT think it was necessary to jump in on Hillary, especially without asking members which way they were leaning?

Now watch Leo "Obfuscate" Casey in action:
Your information is incorrect. First, in a national election, the endorsement is made by the national union, the AFT. [Like somehow the AFT is not run by the UFT.]

The AFT endorsed Hillary Clinton, and the UFT’s participation in the primary elections was based on that national endorsement. That is how we have always done national endorsements.

Secondly, the AFT commissioned extensive, scientific polling of the membership, and the decision to endorse was taken with the results of those polls in hand. The national membership supported the endorsement of Hillary over Obama by better than 2 to 1 and over Edwards by better than 3 to 1. In New York, those numbers were even more in favor of Hillary.

JW comes back with:
If endorsement by the national union is the way it’s always been done, is this procedure codified in the by-laws that it has to be done that way? If so, I’d like to know where I can see this text. Failing codification, it’s a question of custom, which doesn’t mean it’s actually the right way, or the most democratic way to endorse a candidate, or even that it should be continued to be done this way. As to the “extensive, scientific polling of the membership” done by the AFT : Neither I nor anyone I know in the most recent primary season or in any other primary season as long as I’ve been a teacher has ever been polled by the AFT. How scientific or extensive could it be? And what does that mean anyway? I’ve read that the UFT and AFT had ties with Clintons as far back as the 80s. Obviously, Weingarten had every intention to honor that bond, and maybe even to gain from the endorsement personally. It was not in her interest or anyone else’s at the national level to find out who the members really wanted, whether Obama, Clinton, Edwards or any of the others. The UFT is the largest member of the AFT, and I can’t imagine the AFT acting contrary to the wishes of the UFT. What the UFT says is the way the AFT goes, it seems to me, and not the other way around. The “scientific” polls could well have been manufactured, for all we’ve been told about them. On ed issues, I’m not a rabid Obama fan. I just believe this is all political and who the membership wants to endorse has little do with anything. If you stand by those “scientific” polls, then I’d like to know I can get a hold of the questions, the names of the participating locals, the percentages of members polled, and similar kinds of information.

UFT's City Sue Outs Herself on Edwize

UPDATED

UFT top level blogger City Sue put out a remarkable statement on Edwize "explaining" how and why the UFT knew about the "secret" DOE teacher rating plan focused on test scores. We'll have fun parsing this one later tonight in an update. But here is a first response from a correspondent on ICE-mail:

They are so worried that she had to "out" herself. Her post is truly unbelievable and pathetic -- we could put her own statement out as a leaflet to their own incompetence. They "promised it wasn't going to be used to evaluate teachers" to get the UFT on Board and to keep it secret and then the UFT figured out later on that this really wasn't the truth. Oh my god!

Off to a Joel Klein press briefing for more truly unbelievable stuff.

Update: There's be an update on the press briefing to follow later.

Back to City Sue who reveals she is the UFT's Director of Policy Research. She can no longer try to pose as a teacher/blogger. I think I remember City Sue once saying something about the advantages in being an ATR when she was defending one of the recent contracts.

What exactly does a Director of Policy Research do? Almost sounds like one of the DOE's bullshit positions. The UFT needs a Director of ATR Research.

There's much defensiveness and obfuscation in City Sue's piece:

The UFT had been invited to join the panel only after President Weingarten had angrily refused to endorse the project last summer and had won a concession that results would not be used to evaluate any UFT member.

Translation: Only due to our fearless leader who so intimidated Klein who clearly has proven he will do nothing without the endorsement of the UFT.

At that time, the union’s opposition to the relentless focus on high-stakes tests was the main reason for its objections to the experiment.

Translation: We showed out "opposition" by accepting a merit pay plan based on high stakes testing.

Initially, I was pleased to join the panel. I’d been reading so much about the controversy swirling around the usefulness of value-added (VA) analysis in developing fair and objective ways to evaluate teacher performance. For myself, I can’t remember ever having received an observation report that was truly helpful or thoughtful, and I’d received some that made it clear that the AP was reading his mail throughout my lesson. Maybe, I thought, VA would be an improvement. Hope springs eternal.

Translation: Has City Sue noticed the BloomKlein onslaught, fudging of stats and downright dishonesty in just about everything they've done. Hope springs eternal only if she's been living in a bubble, which is where Directors of Policy Research obviously live.

I am probably on this panel — indeed the panel itself was probably created — for one reason only — so the DOE can say that the UFT “participated” in the project, as they have done for the last couple of days.

Ahhhh! I see. The panel was created to entrap the UFT.

In today's emailbag was this:

I'm just amazed that they're surprised. Can't they predict the behavior of this administration yet? It's so transparent. What are they, a bunch of fucking morons?

The Real Swindle is at Edwize

Look for updates to this post later tonight.

Boo Hoo, they are crying at Edwize over the class size swindle. Notice how the author, a full-time union employee and Unity Caucus member, doesn't dare use that hated word "rally."

Remember all the posts here about how the Manhattan high school chapter leaders call for a rally was turned down by the Unity horde (gee, how do you think the poser on Edwize voted?) with the words from the leadership, "If they don't adhere to the agreement (made in April) to kill the May 9th rally, we can still hold a rally." Really? Think it's time? Our reporting and calls for a rally led to another vicious mad-dog Unity leaflet attack on this blog.

NYC Educator has been on the case so make sure to check out his latest with lots of links.

I posted the following on the nyc education news listserve when there were calls to attend the Robert Jackson press conference at City Hall on Sunday and go to the borough hearings.

"It's fine to go ahead with all these activities. But the single thing that will have the most impact is to hold the massive rally that was originally planned for May 9th. The only reason they agreed to sit down at all was because of that threat. We know that Tweed is not to be trusted. Why fiddle around? Go for the gusto."

I'll be back later tonight with lots more on this issue, including commentary on calls to attend borough hearings run by the Tweedles (you can get your 2 minutes in which Randi did in the Bronx yesterday - bet she didn't mention rally.)