The Age of Enlightenment is on its way out

Scott Stringer is sinking us.

I wrote him this morning out of disgust, particularly after taking a look at his website and learning he no longer needed the services of the clearest thinking man on Klein's PEP, Patrick Sullivan.

In my letter, I basically asked him what about mayoral control so pleased him these past 7 years.

As far as I could tell, it's been:

• chaotic (three reorganizations of the heirarchy in 7 years, busing fiasco,etc.),

• faked (manipulated test scores, an inscrutable school grading system, etc.).

• non-transparent (no-bid contracts, hidden liaisons with corporations, etc.),

• dictatorial (shutting parents and educators out of decision-making, the firings at the PEP meeting a couple of years ago over the tests, etc.), and at times

• irregular or unlawful (appointed an uncertified and non-educator chancellor who needed a waiver, broke up the districts into regions without court approval, etc.).

The borough president is not elected to do a mayor's bidding, which is what checks and balances are all about, and since we haven't had any checks and balances for the past seven years on mayoral dictates, Manhattan expects Stringer to start showing some muscle.

A full-out rejection of this mayor's irregularities, arrogance and downright incompetence running our schools would be a good start. Insisting that long-term educators get to make the important decisions should be another priority. At least they know in their bones that parent input counts.

What Stringer thinks about education can be read on his website. In light of his decision to continue backing mayoral control (a position he's taken all along, according to Lisa Donlon), I am concerned that he's become deaf to his own words:

However, there is widespread discontent with the councils and, in 2006, the Borough President released a report [Parents Dismissed] showing that the CECs have not received the support and training the DOE is supposed to provide in order to allow them to be effective.

He's also taken away our best shot for keeping the DoE clean. Failing to re-instate a real advocate for public education on the newly constituted board, we now get his general counsel (Jimmy Yan). What did tossing Sullivan get him? The public really wants to know.

Here's the part of Stringer's position paper that shows how well Bloomberg's PR machine achieved its primary goal, getting elected officials to believe the fabrications and not bother themselves with with due diligence.

New York City’s public school system has seen some improvement in recent years: in certain grades student achievement on standardized reading and math tests has posted notable gains; a modest gain in the high school graduation rate has been achieved; there is an ambitious capital plan that seeks to address overcrowding and facility deterioration; the number of gifted and talented and bilingual programs has increased; and additional accountability measures have been put in place.

Despite this progress . . .

. . . The chancellor has called tackling this achievement gap the major impetus behind new accountability and assessment measures and the most recent re-organization of the system.

In fact, the test score gains and graduation rates have all been debunked, overcrowding is worse than ever (they're still using trailers for classrooms), and there's no sign of a single instrument of accountability or assessment that doesn't leak like a sieve.

If as Stringer says "far too many students lack the most basic skills in reading and math" and "70,000 students each year do not graduate on time," keeping the BloomKlein edifice in place makes no sense. Unless you've sold out for something bigger.

It remains to be seen whether these changes in structure and funding will help close student achievement gaps. Likewise, it remains to be seen if the City’s new pilot program to pay parents and students for improved standardized test scores and good attendance will improve student performance.

If Stringer needs more time to see that this mayoral control thing isn't working, then Manhattan will definitely need to cut him loose.

The Age of Enlightenment on its way out

There’s not a lot of agreement on what it means to be “enlightened,” but for starters we could look at back to the middle of the 18th century.

That would be a couple of decades before a handful of truly enlightened souls cobbled together a declaration of independence, and about 150 years before these united states committed to an education system funded by the public purse (1870).

Voltaire, according to some, thought the appeal of the new way of thinking boiled down to seven social and intellectual phenomena:

— the autonomy of reason
— perfectibility and progress
— confidence in the ability to discover causality
— principles governing nature, man and society
— assault on authority
— cosmopolitan solidarity of enlightened intellectuals, and
— a disgust with nationalism.

(Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College)

I could argue that the corporatist siege squeezing the moral life out of this country, perpetrated by heavily lobbied facilitators at every level of government, has maneuvered us in totally the opposite direction. We’ve abandoned all of Voltaire’s phenomena.


The Age of Enlightenment is well on its way out, and the ignorance, social chaos and repression of the Middle Ages are making a big comeback.

The campaign against Reason is spearheaded here in New York City by the mayor and his five-star general Joel Klein. They command a whole army of hastily trained-up staff sergeants from the Leadership Academy and a slew of corporate players bidding for pieces of the education pie.

BloomKlein campaigns best when the rest of us are overworked, apathetic or comatose. Shuffling things around under the guise of reform, they’ve come up with ill-conceived reorganizations, a perverted school grading system, falsified testing analyses, and some very strange notions of quality education.

These are the fabrications of an unenlightened oligarchy.

They don’t seek to understand or fix the underlying problems of the system — like overstuffed classrooms, too few experienced certified teachers, not enough school buildings, arts and phys ed programs, or services for special needs. They don’t listen to educators or parents, they intentionally place blame where it doesn’t belong, and they show little respect laws that get in their way.

Thumped for half a generation at least, we’ve learned how to keep taking it on the chin. We're becoming un-enlightened.

Across the country, being educated, articulate, and rational in thought has somehow become a bad thing. We’re still reeling from a federal administration that put nationalism at an all-time high and the ability to reason at an all-time low.


Nevertheless, the reasoning people among us are forever confident in the ability to discover causality, so we should be able to think this one through:

Oligarchs grab power when society allows them to. Enlightened people need to get out in the streets and stop them.

That’s what they did two hundred years ago, and that’s what they need to do now.



Just like what they've already been doing:

at P.S. 57 in Manhattan . . .
at P.S. 160 in the Bronx . . .
at IS 218 in East New York . . .
at IS 278 in Brooklyn . . .
At Bethel Church in Harlem . . .

The inimitable

If you liked Norm Scott does Les Mis, you'll love this one.


It's a video clip of Norm doing his thing outside yesterday's Delegate Assembly, I'd say about an hour before Weingarten resigned.




SCOTT on WEINGARTEN'S AFT SELL-OUT TOUR

Crime down, PR up

Over at GEM this week it was predicted that Bloomberg would quickly try to burnish his image once a report called The New Marketplace got published on Wednesday. The New School study showed that the larger high schools have not fared well during Tweed’s slash-and-burn strategy to create more and more small schools.

As it turns out, Bloomberg obliged and did mount a press conference at one of the big high schools: Truman — way up in the north Bronx. Accompanied by some very high-profile people, including Commissioner Kelly, the chancellor, UFT prez Randi Weingarten and her heir-apparent Michael Mulgrew, the mayor felt a strong urge to talk about the drop of crime in the city’s public schools.

I guess he chose Truman because it was one of the two large HSS cited favorably in the report under the heading “Leadership and Stability Matter”:

Some other large high schools managed to handle the side effects of school closings and growing numbers of new students without severe disruptions. Those with strong, stable leadership and a solid core of high-achieving students have been especially successful in coping with sharply higher enrollments. . . And when enrollment boomed at Harry S. Truman High School, there was initially a steep decline in attendance and graduation rates, but the school managed to rebound.

At some point during the conference, Bloomberg referred to a number of handouts graphing the decline in "major" crimes (burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto) and "violent" crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, felony assault, misdemeanor assault, and sex offenses) in schools.

When a reporter asked why anyone should believe the numbers, Bloomberg apparently shot back something like: “Are you saying I’m lying?”

To which I'd have responded: “Duh!”


First, everyone knows there’s underreporting of incidents, by teachers and administrators. In the “gotcha” climate wrought by Tweed, no one likes to report incidents unless you have to — for insurance purposes. Sometimes it’s a matter of sullying the school’s image or your own. After all, if an incident happened while you were around to see it, maybe you weren't doing something right. I don’t know whether principal’s bonuses are affected by the number of incidents they report, but they may be. There’s also a question of being afraid to make a false statement (Did I really see that?), and in some cases fear, retaliation, and/or blowback.

Let it be known that both the UFT and the DoE use the word “incident” for a broad range of negative behaviors. Included in the union’s list are: “assaults, classroom disruptions, threats, and violent or dangerous behavior.” The official DoE Incident Report gives the following definitions on page 2:

In both lists, classroom disruption and misbehaving are as much “incidents” as assaults and violent behavior, and that’s weird. Remind me to file an incident report next time Johnny tells me to f... off when I tell him to stop pawing a girl and get to class.

It’s actually a little confusing to match Bloomberg's graphs with the comment made by Criminal Justice Coordinator Feinblatt in the press release:

Thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Education and the police, we have reduced the behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways and prevent our students from concentrating and learning.

Someone really has to explain what the "behaviors that disrupt our classrooms and hallways” have to do with homicide, rape and other violent crimes — or, in fact, with the NYPD at all?

Behavior is controlled by good security leadership (which Truman has, I understand), adequate space to place kids while they calm down or serve suspensions, and most importantly, enough staff — aides, agents, and teachers on patrol — to do the job, inside the classroom and out in the common areas. Not all schools have all three, and they may very well suffer for it. For Bloomberg to leave teachers out of the security equation is strange. The press conference was by invitation only and it was reported only two teachers were in the room. That’s interesting, and distressing.


Getting back to the reporter’s question on the credibility of Bloomberg’s numbers, there’s this:

Massaging data to support a favorable school governance record has been a trademark of Klein’s chancellorship. In fact, it’s what the Tweed PR team actually do best.

Look how they've already manipulated test scores, school grading, and graduation rates — statistics that congressmen and city council members seem to accept without question regardless how frequently their conclusions have been shot down by ed analysts like Jennifer Jennings (aka Eduwonkette) and Fred Smith, historians like Ravitch and Meier , and brainy activist parents like Leonie Haimson (Class Size Matters).

Thank you, Mr. or Ms Reporter, for asking Bloomberg that question about believing his numbers. Maybe it made them think twice about broadcasting the conference all over the news.

And maybe the press is just not buying this stuff anymore. Fingers crossed.


Which brings me to Randi Weingarten, who once again greeted the mayor with a kiss.


Does that mean the new contract’s already in the bag?

Woof, woof!

A parent recently contacted a couple of us to express a serious concern — one that I remember having when my own kids were attending public schools, here in NYC and in the suburbs.

She wrote:

I support your goals of supporting neighborhood schools, smaller class sizes and reducing high stakes testing.

Unfortunately, I disagree with you about teacher seniority. Our Principal is unable to replace a teacher who is ineffective simply because this teacher has seniority. This is not good for our schools or our children.

Here is how I answered this sticky question — given the circumstances teachers we're in dealing with this mayor, his thug of a chancellor, and our let's-play-dead union prez.

Dear Mrs. Parent,

I write to you as a long-time teacher in the school system.

In any profession, there are workers who are less "good" at their job than others, and in the private sector they can be fired at will.

But, in teaching and other civil service jobs, there are two ways already in place for terminating someone. There's a probationary period, 3 years for teachers, during which time administrators evaluate whether tenure should be granted. The teacher can be easily terminated once a principal decides he or she has little chance of success at the job.

If over time a teacher develops a questionable performance record, an principal can file 3020-a charges and the case goes up for review. Educators can also be hauled off to jail when the situation requires it, hopefully in the rarest of cases.

In a climate of union-bashing and corporate models of public school management, which we have here in New York for a decade, administrators are disregarding their contractual responsibilities and using instead some rather harsh techniques to remove not individual teachers, but categories of them from their budgets. These include:

— teachers who are competent in many or even all ways but who disagree with them,

— senior teachers, who cost way more then newer teachers. The situation is made worse for veterans because of the chancellor's decision to give principals more control over their budgets. Expensive teachers take a bigger chunk out of the budget, so principals think twice how many of them they want to keep around.

— unionists and activists, and

— whistleblowers.

When I say harsh, I refer to the so-called rubber rooms, where not only supposedly poorly performing teachers are sent for months or years until their cases are heard, but many others as well, of the kinds mentioned above. Regardless of the charge, putting a person in a rubber room to wait for a verdict is tantamount to deciding someone is guilty until he or she is proven innocent.

In the old days, if a teacher's judgment were called into question, he or she might be summoned to the principal's office for a "chat." Klein's corporate methodologies place no value on informal chats whatsoever. He has instead given administrators a neat set of tools to demolish the careers of people they don't want to deal with — even before a case is decided in favor or against.

We are finding out that most of the people sent to rubber rooms are at the end of their ordeal returned to a classroom. That is because "competency" is not a finite term, and in the cases mentioned above, it actually had never really been an issue in the first place. Some teachers are asked to pay a fine, which is frequently just a whimsical pay-to-play scheme.

If teachers sent to the rubber room choose to tolerate this "prison" environment from 9 to 3 every day, they'll continue to draw a salary. To some that is a fair exchange. Others resign. But, whatever they choose to do while they wait for their hearing, they endure this situation without actually being proven guilty of the charge against them. Even probable criminals are out on bail and free to continue working.

Some very strong, committed educators, union activists, and civil servants now have their careers in ruins because of Klein's methodologies.

We are not against decertifying people who clearly cannot teach. We seek, however, to establish some safeguards for people who are improperly marginalized by a non-educator chancellor and a union president who is very much a collaborator in the demise of public education, and who makes it clear she is not so willing to defend the contract that she herself negotiated.

For these reasons, we have become activists — not to defend poor quality, but to make sure there are watchdogs in a system that has been so thoroughly contaminated.

Sincerely,

The NY Teacher and agita

What a self-congratulatory, biased, obsfuscatory, and exclusionary rag the NY Teacher is.

In a post I wrote last September, I said I thought it had morphed into some kind of arm of the DoE, with all its Tweed friendly, Tweed collaborative, Tweed duped, and Much Ado About Nothing articles.

I don’t know whether to laugh at some of the things in there or cry.

For example, it’s really funny where Weingarten is talking about getting the cuts reduced and she says “Let’s take a moment to appreciate what we've accomplished so far.” In the very next sentence she says what really “saved the day” was the federal stimulus package. By her own admission, she accomplished little or nothing. It was Washington that came through with some cash.

I love it when she suggests that if adding some non-mayoral appointees to the central board “fails to make it into law” — as surely it will — there would be other ways to curtail Bloomberg’s "dominance." I’m taking this as a joke, and I’m pretty sure she is, too. I mean, she has to say something if she’s going to defend her indefensible position on continuing mayoral control.

What does Weingarten suggest to rein in this mayor? Three things. Give the board members fixed terms — that’s so they can say “Yes, sir! Of course, sir!” for a finite number of months before a new group of flunkies is rotated in. Increase the number of DoE actions that require board approval — as if Joel Klein ever wanted, thought he needed, or asked for approval for the nefarious, sometimes illegal schemes he’s gotten away with. And end “the chancellor’s voting status and automatic chairmanship of the board” — like fish Klein would give that one up. Isn’t she a card?

I also love it when she crows over the test scores:

Almost any way you look at the data, there was good news in the June 1 release of the 2009 statewide math test scores.

Puh-lease. Don’t tell us about test scores being better this year without getting an impartial evaluator to determine whether the newer tests were dumbed down last time round. Absent that teeny-weeny bit of information, what does anyone gain by calling the higher scores “good news” except to score a political point dealing with BloomKlein or give a very transparent tap on the back to math teachers, who might really have had nothing to do with this year’s “improvement” at all.

By the way, you have to wade through to the last paragraph to see the demurral: “Overall, gains in scale scores were much more modest than gains in proficiency.” I guess that’s why Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and State Ed Commissioner Richard Mills “recommended looking at the finer detail of scale scores (students are graded on a scale of 400 to the upper 700s) rather than the simplified level scores (in which students are graded on Levels 1 to 4, and small gains can bump into the next level) for a truer picture.” Not to mention that there are times when Weingarten finds it convenient to downplay test scores, like when she's selling her new ACES network.


I’m not laughing anymore and start flicking through the thing a lot faster, until a “Schedule of Program and Operating Expenses” for the year ending last July 31 catches my eye on page 32.

Payroll last year (and probably every year) was the biggest expense. Between the Borough office and Central, the union spent a cool $29,971,086 on staff salaries, plus an additional $12,648,653 for additional benefits and taxes. Total: $42,619,739.

Way down the list, after the Conventions, Workshops & conferences, Meeting expenses, Travel, Lodging, Negotiations, Legal fees, Consulting fees, Elections & referenda, Chapter Leaders’ stipends, and DoE released time cost, there’s this:

ARBITRATION: $171, 078.

Is that the figure they're saying they spent for a whole year's worth of arbitrations? In this climate of administrator thuggery? The only redress a member has with Step Is and IIs being so reliably unsuccessful is arbitration, and the union paid so little for it? That's weird. If that number included AAA fees for surveys and elections, it would make what they spent on our Step IIIs even less.

With so much union-bashing these days, it’s definitely not funny that Arbitration came to only 0.4% of the UFT staff payroll. That's just not enough money spent on defending members. What’s also not funny is that the amount laid out for Gifts and condolences — $47,396 — is a quarter (27.7%) of the Arbitration amount. What are they buying everyone, mink coats?

There's no clarification of these terms and categories in the chart, so it's obvious no one's really interested in helping us understand what their expenditures really are. For all I know, the amounts listed in Legal fees ($2,712,223) and Consulting fees ($1,131,153) could actually include the costs of defending members. I doubt it, though. I'm told it's the DoE that pays the arbitration costs for 3020-a cases, not the union, and I’ve asked a couple of people what the difference between “Total Expenses” and “Non-Chargeable Expenses” might be, but they don’t know either.

As I said, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read this stuff.

All I can hear in the background is the kerching!, kerching! of our dues money dropping into murky union coffers, and as the Queen of England says: We are not amused.

ACES sounds like ICE

If you had a chance to read Randi Weingarten’s speech at the May 9th UFT Spring Education Conference, you might have thought the union president was preparing to run on the ICE ticket in the next election.

Because it's bits like these that have been central to ICE discussions for years, that problems in the schools have to be addressed within the context of larger social communities and that teachers should never be scapegoats for problems over which they have very little control:

It’s time for a new strategy — one that of course focuses on instruction, but also aims at the root causes of chronic school failure, one that addresses the needs of the community and its families. . . .

What would happen if we not only acknowledged that there are conditions in children’s lives that make it harder for them to learn, but actually did something about it?

And:

The learning process itself depends first and foremost on the smarts and sensitivity of the teacher – the teacher who must discern how each child learns and have at her fingertips a panoply of strategies, materials and resources to provide just the right combination that will get through to each child. . . .

And that’s why, for reforms to be successful, they must be developed with teachers, not imposed on them.

But many influences merge in that moment the teacher reaches into her bag of tricks (actually, her reservoir of accumulated skills and knowledge) and comes up with just the right instructional solution.

Some of these influences are out of the teacher’s control. . . .

Teachers alone cannot cure a child’s asthma or repair a stormy family situation.

In fact, Weingarten's new “comprehensive school turnaround model to serve our neediest children in our most challenging educational settings” — she’s calling it ACES, Active Communities Enabling Success — smacks of the election platform ICE wrote back in 2004.

That document was put together by more than twenty dedicated, politically savvy educators with enormous classroom experience in New York public schools. I’m not going to post the whole thing here because there's a link to it on the ICE website in the left side column.

I don't want this union leader to go one step further casting herself as a visionary of ed reform without making it clear that the essential points of the program she’s introducing originated not in her own Unity caucus, but in the opposition — the same opposition she's taken great pains to marginalize and deride in the past few years. For proof, just look at the way she wrested the HS seats from ICE/TJC in the last election and the way she manipulates procedures at the delegate assemblies to get the votes to go her way.

So when Weingarten says that smaller class size is one of the things “we are still fighting for today," let’s remember it took her many years to make class size a real priority. In 2004, ICE not only pushed smaller classes in its platform, but criticized the Unity strategies that undermined them:

Small classes are the underpinning of an effective classroom, and are especially crucial where children have low performance levels and special needs. . . .

Our union leaders continue to undermine the fight for lower class sizes by:
— Not successfully tying class size to learning conditions.
— Adopting the strategy that a referendum was the only way of lowering class size. . .
— Continuing to support out-of-classroom positions which in fact contribute to large class size because it diverts money for pedagogical personnel away from the classroom. Included in this are the thousands of facilitators, mentors, staff developers, coaches, and teacher center personnel.
— Supporting currently mandated programs and strategies from the DOE, multiple grouping, balanced literacy, and the new math program, which are impossible to implement with class sizes over 18 to 20.

Our union’s position on class size should be:
— Class size limits comparable with other districts in the state and capped by contract
— No half-class size loopholes, and no excuses in overcrowded buildings where classroom teacher-student ratio can still be lowered.

And when Weingarten trumpets the importance of teacher input and skill in statements like these:

The learning process itself depends first and foremost on the smarts and sensitivity of the teacher — the teacher who must discern how each child learns and have at her fingertips a panoply of strategies, materials and resources to provide just the right combination that will get through to each child. . . . And that’s why, for reforms to be successful, they must be developed with teachers, not imposed on them. . . .

Teachers would be allowed to unleash their amazing creativity.

she not only hasn't protected us from the micro-management of our classrooms, but has for the most part condoned it. (Has anyone ever won a grievance under Article 24 for interference in the way we want to teach? That thing has absolutely no teeth in it, and she knows it.) ICE had to remind Weingarten in 2004 that she could be doing a lot more to protect us from zealous administrators trying to make their bonuses:

Basic trust in the professionalism and knowledge of teachers. The current school “reform” is premised on a distrust of teachers (as well as any independent-minded local school leadership) with change to be commanded from the top supervisory levels. Our union leadership is allowing the DOE to violate Article 24 of our contract, which states, “The Board and the Union agree that professional involvement of teachers in educational issues should be encouraged”, and provides procedures to work out differences between teacher and administrative judgment. With the DOE model, decisions about instruction are made prescriptively and through packaged programs, and place enormous restrictions on a teacher’s ability to service the needs of individual students.

— Teachers must have a say in what goes on in the classroom, a contractual right that is presently violated by the DOE.

— Teachers’ own practical knowledge should be the basis for change, rather than one-size-fits-all program.

— Planning for instruction and curriculum reform should be arrived at through respectful relationships among all staff.

On testing, Weingarten says that the ACES network she's proposing

would not shy away from accountability. But it would seek broader metrics than just test scores and graduation rates to measure its success. It would ask such questions as: Is the school safe? Do children come to school every day? Are they healthier, more engaged? Are they critical thinkers and problem solvers? Are they involved in community service? Are their parents active in the school?

Come on. ICE and many others have made this point all along — not to mention the fact that whenever she's given credence to test scores and school grades, she’s buying into the DoE’s corpothink. And she gives credence to these all the time (see here, for example). Here’s ICE in 2004 on testing and long-term education goals:

Ending the misuse of city- and statewide tests, which increasingly distort the curricula and misrepresent true academic performance. Standardized test results can be a tool for evaluating instruction and pointing out where extra resources should be focused. But the current accountability model with its simplified goals and objectives results in students and teachers alike becoming prisoners of the achievement numbers game. This model also ignores any accountability for long-term learning goals or the kinds of learning that might give educators and students cause for satisfaction.

Good teachers develop an awareness of how children actually learn. The premise that children will learn more when they are subjected to weeks of teaching-to-the-test methodologies, that they become more successful students when strict standardized levels are set for them, or that they respond positively to threats and punishment are ideologically driven beliefs, contrary to what we know as experienced educators. An additional consequence of high stakes testing is that those children most in need become a liability to a school which then leads to an attempt to pass them off to another school instead of addressing their needs. . . .

— Teachers must play a primary role in judging student levels and progress from elementary school through high school.

— Students should have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.

Weingarten is now envisioning schools as hubs of community involvement. I guess she was unaware how much ICE has been advocating broader services for kids and fostering strong relationships between schools and the communities they serve:

Our long-term teachers could be a valuable resource in reaching out to the community and together formulating models for success.

And:

Using teachers’ knowledge of their students’ communities as a basis for building successful schools. This includes the culture, history, experience and knowledge which the families and communities bring to this process. Neither the DOE nor our union leadership has an appreciation for how spending years, or even decades, working in the same neighborhood might yield valuable knowledge. Union leaders support the assumption of the school system managers that teachers are replaceable parts and will be fine with that as long as they have transfer rights and the guarantee of a job . . . somewhere.

Remember this was written way before Weingarten negotiated a contract that allowed for the ATR debacle.

Weingarten has always pushed PD, oblivious to how inappropriate so much of it is. In this speech she says teachers “would help shape the professional development they need" and help deliver it.

Sorry, but ICE already called for that years ago:

Meaningful professional development. Presently new and less experienced teachers are not allowed to grow into good teachers. They are not given the opportunity to try strategies and take risks. Ill-prepared and poorly trained administrators, coaches, regional personnel (some still politically appointed), have reduced professional support to a checklist with the intention of instilling fear and intimidation. The UFT has allowed these methods to distort teacher training and leave teachers open to attack.

— The UFT should be demanding school-based professional development determined by teacher need.

Lastly, does Weingarten think she’s saying something new when she concludes that:

As a community, we can let teachers teach and managers manage, but we can also help one another. We can make all our schools work for all our kids by pitching in together, not walking away and leaving the hard work to others.

I hope not. Because ICE laid it all out quite clearly five years ago.

Our union must stand up to the scapegoating of teachers for the problems of our school system. It must work to build coalitions of teachers, parents, active community members at the school and citywide level, and employees of other city agencies so that we can’t be played off against one another by the mayor and Department of Education.

We need a union that will lead and fight for an education system that meets the needs of all the students in our city, an overwhelming number of whom are poor and of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. It would take enormous changes and massive resources to correct the inequities in our society, but well-run schools with well-trained staffs, good programs, supportive services and small classes can bring about improvements for all children. To think that communities with vast economic and social differences can succeed with identical monetary resources is a mistaken notion and a popular political ploy.

The union leadership must be ready to expose such lies and not allow failures in our society to fall squarely on the backs of teachers and our union. Our union must also challenge all the various schemes to destroy public education by diverting money to private schools through vouchers, to DOE-funded charter schools or by hiring private companies to run public schools, which can only further polarize both our educational system and our society.

I challenge anyone to claim that Weingarten is forging new paths with her ACES proposal.

There only two innovative thoughts in this whole speech: that Bloomberg has ever been willing to take responsibility for the troubles in the schools ("In fact, even the UFT admired Mayor Bloomberg’s willingness to take responsibility, and many of us still do") and that this mayor and this chancellor are ever going to enter into any "collaborative, coordinated, comprehensive school turnaround model" with the union, educators and school communities any time soon.

Terms of use, whether you like it or not

SOMETHING I FOUND OUT SINCE I POSTED THIS:

A teacher got a letter-in-the-file for not using our school data management computer enough. Without divulging the name of the system (I don't know how many schools have it), it is accessible from school computers through an https:// address. This is the first time I've heard that someone has been formerly disciplined about the use (in this case, the non-use) of computer data. It doesn't look good.

For the 100th time: WHERE IS THE UNION???

---

A blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my first experience with ARIS — that’s the system the DoE bought when it went on a technological shopping spree with taxpayer money — made me reassess my relationship with school computers.

Don't get me wrong, I like computers. I especially like them when I have a fair degree of control over who gets to know when I’m online, what kind of stuff I’m doing there and whom I’m writing to. ARIS will not give me those pleasures, and I will probably resist using it as long as I can.

Within a week of that post, I was refused access into my school email account and could only get back in by re-registering and accepting the DoE’s “Acceptable Use Policy” (AUP). I don’t remember doing that before, but maybe I did, when I was less burnt by this system. In any case, I hope that their forcing me to re-register was part of a general housekeeping exercise and that they weren't just targeting me. Did everyone’s access to nycboe get cut within the past couple of weeks?

Being wary of anything the DoE does at this point, I decided to actually read the AUP they were telling me to sign off on before I could get back onto the system. If you're interested in the whole text, it's online here.

It’s not that I oppose a system that tells you what you can and cannot do when you're on it. What I thoroughly oppose is that we've been forced into having a DoE email account in the first place and then told all kinds of stuff about how it has to be used.

For one thing, by making us sign the AUP, someone — whether it’s a local administrator or a higher-up at Tweed — is telling us to give up a right to privacy. While it is true that privacy is not an iron-clad Constitutional right, courts over time have sought to give it some definition, as explained in this passage:

The Constitution does not specifically mention a right to privacy. However, Supreme Court decisions over the years have established that the right to privacy is a basic human right, and as such is protected by virtue of the 9th Amendment. The right to privacy has come to the public's attention via several controversial Supreme Court rulings, including several dealing with contraception (the Griswold and Eisenstadt cases), interracial marriage (the Loving case), and abortion (the well-known Roe v Wade case). In addition, it is said that a right to privacy is inherent in many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, such as the 3rd, the 4th's search and seizure limits, and the 5th's self-incrimination limit.

Here's the 9th Amendment, for those who haven't memorized it: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Way down in the AUP's clause on Privacy, there's this startling remark:

e) System users have no privacy expectation in the contents of their personal files and records of their online activity while on the Department system.

Must we agree to this? Backing up a bit, there’s this:

a) The Department reserves the right to use "cookies" on its site. Cookies are computer programs that . . . store information about a user on a computer hard drive or disk. Information stored includes, but may not be limited to, the date and time a user visits the site and information about the user’s activities while online. Any information gathered is obtained solely for the purpose of improving the Department’s services and providing the system with statistical information to assist in improving teaching and learning by teachers and students respectively.

Except as otherwise provided in this Internet Acceptable Use Policy, the Department will not use cookies to gather personal identifying information about any of its users. Personal identifying information includes, but is not limited to, names, home addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.

I’m not so worried about the “personal identifying information” mentioned in the 2nd paragraph above. What I am very worried about is the kind of “statistical information [the DoE will gather] to assist in improving teaching and learning.”

That’s because I don't much trust the DoE’s methods to improve teaching and learning. Just look at its abysmal record on class size reduction, the misrepresentation of test results and graduation records, its campaign against senior teachers and the way it stocks schools with so many uncertified and possibly transient educators, and its fake accountability/grading systems to achieve the data outcomes they desire.

Users should be aware that their personal files may be discoverable in court and administrative proceedings and in accordance with public records laws.

At this point, I’m saying to myself I really don’t want any part of this thing.

And right after that I’m asking: Don’t we have a Union to object to our being forced to sign onto such an invasive system?


It’s worth noting some other things in the AUP, like the section on “Freedom of Expression," which talks solely about the items set forth in the Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities: there's absolutely no mention of free speech for staff.

I’m also not crazy about the clause in “Inappropriate Language,” which tells users not to use “rude, inflammatory . . . abusive or disrespectful language” or engage in “personal attacks,” but I can live with it, since there are so many other places where we can talk about the BloomKlein debacle — and talk about it we really must.

It's rather quaint that we have been given permission to engage in "incidental use" during our duty-free time ("staff may be permitted to use the Internet for purchasing a book for personal use during their lunch hour"), though I don’t know many teachers who have luxury of a duty-free lunch. Maybe that's what goes on at Tweed.

The AUP says that teachers who make their own web pages must “provide a resource for others." They don't mean like this one, of course, though I frequently quote from primary sources. Web pages created on DoE computers must “reflect well upon the Department, district and school,” which is really the kind of thing we used to expect from the Soviets or Chairman Mao.

There's a fair amount of talk about violating these AUP rules: employees breaking the rules "will be handled by appropriate discipline.” It's not that I’m intending in my lifetime to surf salacious sites on school computers or hurl obscenities at anyone in a Outlook Express. But, there’s a good deal of ambiguity here. Just how critical of Joel Klein and Tweedledom can one be on a DoE computer without being disciplined? Have they assigned a team of übersnoops to monitor the internet activity of critics like myself? And what might be that "appropriate" discipline alluded to above that would keep me and others like me in line?

If the truth be known, I saw a ray of hope in this sentence:

The Department may revoke Internet access in its sole discretion.

That would suit me just fine, because then I wouldn’t have to read all that self-serving crap administrators always circulate to staff. And if my principal really wanted to speak to me, she’d have to send me a note in my mailbox or just pick up the phone, without an infinite number of people getting CC or BCC copies.

Talking about e-mails, the AUP not only orders us to use it “frequently," but be sure to do certain things when we’re on it, like delete unwanted messages “promptly.” Fine if the system were optional, but it isn’t. First they force us to have an account, and then they tell us how and how often to use it. It's as if they have boundary issues or something.


Lastly, I would be remiss in not citing these paragraphs on the DoE’s “Acceptable Use Guidelines” for emails.

"Acceptable" e-mail activities are those that conform to the purpose, goals, and mission of the DOE and to each user's job duties and responsibilities . Users shall have no right to privacy while using the DOE's internet or e-mail system . E-mail may not be used for personal purposes during working hours, except that users may engage in minimal e-mail activities for personal purposes, such as family correspondence, if the use does not diminish the employee's productivity, work product, or ability to perform services for the DOE.

"Unacceptable" use is defined generally as activities using DOE hardware, software, or networks at any time that does not conform to the purpose, goals, and mission of the DOE and to each user's job duties and responsibilities . . .

NOTE: Users may be subject to limitations on their use of e-mail as determined by their supervisor. The DOE reserves the right to examine any/all e-mail or Internet correspondence for security and/or network management purposes.

Violation of this e-mail policy may result in disciplinary action.

The underlining is editorial, and on the grounds of these bits alone, we should all consider boycotting the whole system.


Weingarten, you're a lawyer. Doesn't any of this offend you?

"Shut down the mayor, not public schools!"

UPDATE: See the end of this post for an important link.


That was what they chanted at the May 14th rally against School Closings. And they're dead right. No one should be closing schools without fixing them.

I see it as a kind of gerrymandering.

If in politics you manipulate the boundaries of an electoral constituency to get a desired electoral outcome, the mayor and his ed machine at Tweed have built an entire apparatus for shifting tax dollars to private entities.

They've manipulated scores and designed a non-transparent, highly suspect school grading system.

They skipped the next step, which would have been to change what's not working in particular schools. Instead, they just closed them down.

Or broke them up.

They've rabbit-punched the contract, defied laws and mandates that got in their way (e.g, special ed violations, no-bid contracts, state graduation requirements), marginalized the parents and kept them guessing. All in a day's work.

In other words, make failure, declare failure, then throw money at charters, foundations and big business to create a new set of schools with new rules, not all of which are in the public interest.

This mayor is not for New Yorkers. He's from and for a class of people who want to keep another class of people out of power, and that's gerrymandering.

The NYCLU put out a report on May 14th called "Civil Rights, Transparency, Accountability Suffer Under Current Mayoral Control Scheme." Here's what Exec. Director Donna Lieberman said in an email NYCLU members received just today:

The current regime of absolute, unfettered mayoral control is incompatible with a safe, effective educational environment. For our schools and our children to be as successful as they can be, parents must be a part of the educational process and the core democratic principles of transparency, accountability and public participation in government must be respected. The Legislature must close the loopholes that have given Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Education unfettered discretion over education policy.

The report documents the NYCLU's

. . . tremendous difficulty in obtaining basic data and records on these issues from the DOE and NYPD through the Freedom of Information Law. The NYCLU’s experiences are not unique. The DOE routinely withholds from parents, the media and elected officials raw data on student performance, student safety and the education budget. . . .

Under the current mayoral control system, Mayor Bloomberg and the DOE flout state and local statutes intended to assure public oversight of agencies with rulemaking power. For example, new Chancellor’s Regulations – rules that affect the lives and education of New York City’s children – are never subject to the 30-day public notice and comment period required by the City Administrative Procedures Act.

Among the eight changes they're calling for are these: (a) delineate the position of the DOE within the existing structure of city government, (b) increase public oversight, (c) strengthen the parental voice in policymaking, (d) allow for public engagement in the decision-making process, (e) mandate data transparency, and (f) create an Inspector General to protect integrity, conduct independent audits and investigations, etc. These are for starters, to restore the public trust.

Back to that rally . . .


You can read about it on Ednotes (thanks to Norm Scott), watch it on YouTube, join GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) like so many groups have done, and do some homework on the corporate takeover of public education and the people from Obama on down who are guilty of orchestrating the educorp coup.

And most importantly, you can be there for the next round.

---

FOR ANOTHER ALERT ON THE SELF-MADE BLOOMBERG CRISIS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION, see Ednotes. A couple of excerpts:

. . . Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our federal and state governments have checks and balances so no one person has total control, which is a synonym for dictatorship. . . . Under this mayor, charter schools get the best of everything, including small classes and new technology.

. . . We need a chancellor who works for the kids, not the mayor. The chancellor needs to fight for what's best for kids whether or not the mayor agrees. He can't do that if the mayor can fire him for not following his orders.

This mayor boasts about accountability. Teachers are accountable. Principals are accountable, but the only time the mayor is accountable is once every four years. That's not enough, particularly for a man who is prepared to spend $100 million to buy reelection and who scoffed at the voters by changing the term limits law they twice affirmed.

Four more years of this system guarantees the privatization and destruction of public education in New York City. That's a prospect we should all oppose.

[Arthur Goldstein, teacher]

New info on LIFs! Just kidding.

UPDATE!!

After I posted this blog piece last Saturday, ICE's James Eterno provided some more commentary on the same LIF presentation. He was at the May 13th Delegate Assembly where grievance head Howard Solomon unveiled it to all and sundry.

I could not attend, but am thankful to James for taking the time to lay out the history of this ever-deepening giveback and show how UFT management is trying to spin the current contractual wording into gold.

It's another must-read on the ICE-blog. One of many.


Here's something on Letters to the File that union management has just made available to chapter leaders. I tried to access it without a password but couldn't.

I can't figure out why we all weren't allowed to see it. Is this stuff secret or something?

Maybe it's just too stupid. Making it available to everyone might be too embarrassing.

This presentation on LIFs is strategically useless. No fight to remove a letter from your file is going to make a principal click his heels in joy. There was a reason you got a LIF, and it probably has nothing to do with the kind of respect, professionalism, collaboration, improvement, or sound educational environment the contract seems to call for.

Principals are out to intimidate you, one by one and collectively. They've been trained and encouraged to do it, by a chancellor who has recently put out a presentation saying "Principals never lose," or words to that effect. Fight to get that letter out of your file and you'll continue to be on the principal's shitless, maybe even deeper than before.

Union management sold us out on the grievance process. They know it, we know it. The difference is that these bumblers keep getting a nice piece of our salaries and there's no way either to fine them for their crummy negotiations or get them out of office. The system is so rigged they can't be replaced without sinking a huge portion of your personal money into an election run.

So, here's what they've made available to chapter leaders, for what it's worth. (There are a few sample documents I've not included.)

---

Raise your hand if you think that will do any good.

Yes. And exactly how many people get their licenses taken away for such trivial items? In other words, so what. These are just tools to keep the troops in line. No one is going to lose a license over this stuff.

And have fun. You might get that meeting, but you won’t change the LIF.

What decade is union management living in? A response these days not only won't get you anywhere, but could possibly make the principal even more combative. After all, many of these newbie administrators are very inexperienced people. Some are not even educators, and most are not in this game for the kids. If you are a good writer, you can really get under their skin. If you are a poor writer, better not show anything you put on paper to an arbitrator. It will certainly color his opinion of you as an educator.


Why bother, or what’s so good about this? If you are incorrectly reprimanded for attendance, the letter in your file shows the principal, not the teacher, is in violation of the contract: you shouldn’t have gotten an LIF on attendance in the first place. If you’re found guilty of corporal or verbal abuse, the LIF is nothing compared to the charge itself, and if the charges are unsubstantiated, do you think filing a grievance to get your LIF on this removed from the file is going to endear you further to your principal? In most cases it's probably better to just let it rot there (thanks, RW) and take it out of your file when its time is up (3 years).

---

I have an idea.

Let's tell all those union management people — who just loved the idea of PD for all — to go get some PD for themselves. Maybe even an internship for a year in a real school.

We're up against an army of corpocrats and their generals, people who seek power for power's sake. Union management doesn't have a clue about the reality of what we're dealing with. If I'm wrong and they do, their band-aid approach to this abuse is stunningly anemic, or . . . they're collaborating big-time.

---

ADDENDUM:
Pissed On asked what I left out (that's so cute, a guide to how to give up tenure), so here's a sample of one of the last pages:

A taste of ARIS

I got my first ARIS training the other day.

It was a short session, probably the first of many they have in store for us, but I had enough after about 10 minutes.

We were shown how to log on, follow a few links, and see how much information we could access about all our students. Not bad, I thought, but then started calculating how much information the DoE could learn about me while I was logged on.

Let me say first off that I know what I can expect of writing stuff on-line, and I don't like anyone being able to snoop around in my business when I haven't told them they could. (I have enough trouble with the feds doing it behind our backs and without a warrant.) Use ARIS and you're giving the DoE tacit permission to monitor your professional work habits really up close and personal.

---

The first task in our training was to create a "group" out of the student data. By way of example, they showed us how if we twiddled this or that, ARIS could automatically group all the LTAs (Long Term Absences) in our classes into one big list.

Pardon me, but any teacher worth his salt knows exactly who is not coming to class, and no computer is going to make it any clearer. Now, if they invented a way to make phonecalls home to the parents of these kids, and keep making them when the line is busy or track them down when the phone is disconnected or the voicemail is full, then log those calls in automatically and send some documentation over to the principal to show you've done some prodding — then I'd say they've got something really useful. But to tell me what I already know without being able to sort out the truancy issues is simply outrageous.

Let me withdraw that. It's not outrageous, because I forgot ARIS is not actually designed to help teachers. It's designed first to monitor teachers, and then to project an image of a kind of high-tech proficiency — a perfect system, in fact, for the Madison Avenue types of Kleinworld and not for common sense, hands-on educators like ourselves.

The second part of our training just left me flabbergasted. They showed us how within the ARIS system we could — wait for it — communicate with other educators through the internet! I'm talking MySpace, Facebook and Twitter kind of stuff. Private subscriptions, public ones. We could throw some questions out there to see if anyone responds and share our thoughts with other educators.

They didn't mention that Big Brother could be very interested in all that sharing and communicating. Who on earth would believe that anything we do in ARIS would really be private.

Spending $80 million on a blogging system that exists everywhere for free is inane.

Let me withdraw that. It's not inane, because I forgot ARIS is not actually designed to facilitate communication. It's designed first to monitor teachers, and then to pretend it wants to facilitate the sharing of ideas. Puh-lease! When was the last time the DoE ever showed any interest in creative thinking at the teacher level. They've been too busy with one-size-fits-all methodology and teaching to the test for more than a decade.

ARIS is neither helpful or amusing.

It is costly, not particularly innovative, deceptive and invasive. The DoE could service us much better by providing a working computer and printer in every classroom, and sending over a supply of paper and extra ink cartridges. They should design a system so teachers don't have take attendance two or three times a day, generate and disseminate copies of any relevant IEPs to every teacher required by law to get them, and most of all, guarantee we're not being monitored when we communicate and share ideas with teachers down the hall.

Transparency

We all got a letter today from the chancellor, and I'd be putting it here for a some comic relief except no one's laughing.

Not the teachers forced to use methodologies they know don't work.

Nor those who have to teach to the test.

Not the educators in closed or closing schools.

Not the educators who are threatened into doing all kinds of things by principals to push the promotion and graduation rates up.

Or the guidance counsellors and social workers whose caseloads are too huge to handle.

Not the ATRs.

Not the people in the rubber room who haven't done a thing to hurt children.

Certainly not the ones who got fined by arbitrators with questionable motives and directives.

And not any of the members in our union whose rights are being violated by administrators backed by and maybe even encouraged by Tweed.


Did I leave anyone out?

---

Dear Teachers,

Every day of the year, your talent, passion, and dedication open up new worlds of possibility for our children. I can’t thank you enough for what you do. Today, as we celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Day, I would like to recognize the difference you make in the lives of our City’s 1.1 million children.

Day after day, you push your students to gain the academic, social, and emotional skills they need to succeed. You develop innovative ways to help them understand important concepts. You tirelessly work to reach students who need extra support. You go above and beyond, enriching students’ lives by exposing them to the arts, sports, and other forms of culture.

And your work has paid off. More of your students are graduating from high school than ever before. Your efforts have helped more students to meet and exceed State standards in math and reading. Thanks to you, New York City’s children are making real progress.

Your efforts demonstrate the dramatic impact great teachers have on students; teachers have the power to help students overcome extraordinary odds, equipping them with the skills they need to become engaged, productive citizens.

It’s what you do everyday that helps New York City students succeed—but it’s also your creative ideas and innovation that make a difference. Here are just a few examples of special things that our teachers have accomplished this year:

A group of elementary school teachers from Brooklyn spent their mid-winter break in New Orleans building a home for those in need this year, later constructing lessons for their students around the importance of service and social action.

Teachers at a high school in Queens designed a physics lesson—based on Archimedes—incorporating a fun cardboard boat race for students.

Students at a Manhattan school learned the importance of taking action to protect the environment when their teachers helped them launch an advertising campaign encouraging people to use less paper.

I know that your work is not easy—but the results speak for themselves. Your commitment to our children is inspiring. On behalf of all New Yorkers, thank you for all that you do for our children.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein

---

This thing is so transparent you can look right through it. Every last line.

Rubber rooms, in the eyes of the TAG beholders

The Teacher Advocacy Group NYC has put together a flyer about the rubber rooms.

I'm posting it here because you're not going to find it either on the UFT website or Edwize, which claims to be a union blog but is really just a Unity blog.


Quoting from TAG's email:

The Temporary Reassignment Centers have been relegated to the back of the bus in the struggle to preserve public education and the careers of the NYC public school teacher. But we are critical to the plan to dismantle and discredit public education. The TRCs are in the front line "representing" as we do the repository of arbitrary power of principals as memorialized in the 2005 UFT contract; "representing" as we do tangible evidence of the incompetence and moral turpitude of the NYC teacher;"representing" as we do the best PR tool Bloomberg-Klein have to overthrow tenure' 'representing' as we do the face of a union too cowardly to defend its members while they are in the school; representing as we do the means by which Bloomberg-Klein chill all opposition within the schools- chapter chair leaders included. And lastly, providing the back door to the creation of more ATRs — and we know what is going to happen to the ATRs.

Here's the text of the flyer they're getting out to press and public. Kudos to whoever put this together, because they're doing what union management is not doing: defining the stinking mess and getting the word out.

THE RUBBER ROOM: DOE’s DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

What is the ‘rubber room’?

Approximately 800 Department of Education teachers are warehoused in Temporary Reassignment Centers, known as rubber rooms. The DOE considers these individuals too dangerous to be around children, yet most will return to schools after languishing for months or years in off-campus sites.

Teachers receive full pay while waiting for the resolution of their cases. The financial costs are estimated as high as $65 million dollars; the human costs are seldom considered.

Reassignment Centers are called rubber rooms because doing nothing is maddening. Outwardly, teachers play cards, watch DVDs, knit, read books, and sleep. Inwardly, teachers lament the loss of successful careers and worry about uncertain futures. Feelings of fear, doubt and shame never subside.

Why are teachers removed?

Allegations of sexual misconduct, corporal punishment and other misconduct are so disturbing that the DOE banishes teachers to rubber rooms on just the word of a principal, teacher or student.

Certainly some teachers should not be in classrooms, but many charges against teachers are exaggerated or simply not true. For example, reporting unsafe conditions is insubordination; failing to immediately admit a late student to class is corporal punishment.

Principals frequently use false charges to retaliate against whistleblowers and to remove competent teachers who question the policies of the administration.

Reassigned teachers may also be charged with incompetence or be accused of crimes by outside agencies.

Incompetent teachers should be terminated, but many principals and assistant principals are not qualified to judge competence. Principals and assistant principals are required to have only three years of teaching experience. Possession of an administrative license does not guarantee knowledge of pedagogy.

The decision to remove a teacher is often based on personalities; a teacher who caters to the whims of the administration is rarely reassigned and never accused of incompetence.


Why do disciplinary proceedings take so long?

Education Law states that disciplinary proceedings against charged teachers must be completed within five months. The DOE and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) modified the proceedings. These modifications do not provide teachers with increased protection; instead they infringe on the rights of teachers and lengthen the process.

The DOE and the UFT agreed that teachers can be removed before charges are preferred. Teachers are supposed to be charged within 6 months of their removal, yet some teachers remain in the rubber room for years without charges.

The DOE and the UFT also denied teachers the right to choose arbitrators. A fixed number of arbitrators are assigned on a rotating basis, supposedly to accelerate the disciplinary proceedings. However, more arbitrators are needed, timeframes are ignored, and cases can last for years.

The accused teachers are not responsible for the delays and they can expedite cases only by admitting guilt and settling.

Teachers who are charged with crimes by an outside agency face similar obstacles. Prosecuting attorneys continually ask for postponements, claim they are ready to proceed, and then ask for additional postponements. The teachers are again powerless to hasten the process except by admitting guilt.


Is justice served?

Arbitrators are paid approximately $1,700 per day and must be approved by both the DOE and the UFT. Arbitrators have a huge incentive to please both sides.

The UFT is happy if teachers do not lose their jobs; the DOE is happy if the arbitrator renders any finding of guilt. Teachers are rarely terminated or exonerated. The decision of an arbitrator is very predictable: a finding against the teacher, a fine, and reassignment as an Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR).

Teachers who become ATRs are substitute teachers permanently assigned to schools. They do not have programs and have little hope of returning to the classroom in a meaningful capacity. There are approximately 1,400 ATRs in the DOE. Most ATRs are tenured teachers with excellent records who lost jobs after schools were closed


Why does the process continue?

Principals who abuse the disciplinary process are not punished and they achieve their desired results: a troublesome teacher is removed and the remaining teachers are intimidated.

The DOE hopes that public opinion inflamed by the newspapers will result in the termination of ATRs. Mostly tenured teachers will be dismissed, and teachers without tenure are cheaper and easier to control.

The UFT is reluctant to protest the abuse of the disciplinary process. The UFT receives dues from over 2,000 ATRs and rubber room teachers, approximately $2.4 million annually. Positions for these teachers have been given to new hires and changing the system will cost the UFT money.

Teachers and students are hurt by the system, but neither group has a voice.

Parents and the public are kept in the dark and trust that policymakers will make the right decisions. So far they have not.

Here's a UFT link on rubber rooms posted last July, but be prepared. It's as rosy and upbeat as it is ludicrous, and if you need proof, try this sentence in the first paragraph:

In an important victory for members languishing unfairly in Department of Education temporary reassignment centers, the UFT and DOE have reached an agreement that will erase the backlog of teachers sent to a “rubber room” for alleged misconduct.

I especially choked on the words "victory" and "erase the backlog."

Here's an assignment for TAG, or for whoever knows anything about the rubber rooms: Is there anything in that post that's really doing some good for teachers assigned? Or is the whole thing one great big ill-conceived, poorly negotiated, and horrifically monitored screwup.

Reading between her lines

It's getting harder and harder to listen to Weingarten plod through her President's Report at the Delegates Assembly each month just to eat up time.

Because that's what it's all about: eating up time — so she doesn't have to deal with any tiresome member complaints and horror stories coming from the chapters.

Weingarten could say everything she has to say and still have loads of time left if she'd just write it all down for us let us read it. 5 minutes, 10 at most. Not the hour we have to sit listening to her, and listening to all the puppets she puts up to convince us she's doing a great job fighting the fight. Ho very hum.

The only way to get through her reports is to keep track of some of the crazy things she says, which is what I did at yesterday's meeting.

According to Weingarten, the UFT is the "voice for the voiceless." Yes, she says, she's "out to protect our money," but the UFT is also the "safety net for the most vulnerable."

Silly me, I didn't know I was paying dues so that she or the union could be a "voice for the voiceless" or a "safety net" for the most vulnerable. I thought my dues were for some job protections.

[ALERT: There's a new Norm's comment in the comments. He's right, of course.]

Come to think of it, though, if anyone is the most vulnerable at this point, it's the veteran teachers and the probationers, and I can't see how the UFT is being a voice or a safety net for any of these people.

Weingarten also said it's the main job (or most important job) of the union to protect children. If someone wrote down those exact words, I'd love to have them verbatim. It's hard for me to believe she hasn't yet figured out what her main job is as president of a teachers' union.

Weingarten then tried to say that her goal is to be the person whom BloomKlein and the rest of the politicians "can focus their ire on," instead of the members.

Cracky. Ask any ATR, any maligned chapter leader, or any of the many members in the rubber room for no cause if they feel BloomKlein is focusing its ire on Randi Weingarten. Most of us think she's making deals with them all the time. And if you need proof of that, look how many times we hear about something way down the line when it's no turning back and the delegates so-called voice is just a rubber stamp.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Weingarten seemed never to have heard of TAGNYC — the Teachers Advocacy Group NYC — since she referred to it as an "organization called TAGNY," and pronouncing it Tag-nee.

TAGNYC is one of the most articulate teacher activist groups in the union, and for starters, you can read the testimony they put into the record at the recent Mayoral Control hearings. If she meant the TAGNYC I think she meant and mispronounced its name, it speaks volumes about her callousness towards the members.

In response to a complaint that older teachers are being really hurt and marginalized, Weingarten responded professorially: Well, this kind of thing is going on across all professions nationwide.

Trouble is we're not looking for a sociology lesson here. Compassion would be far more appropriate. Steaming mad would be the best — angry enough to really go to the mat for us.

A person behind me rightly remarked at this point that if such a trend for youth existed and that's all Weingarten had to say about it, maybe the president of this union should be replaced by a 25-year-old.

In response to a complaint about not being able to remove Letters in the File by grievance, Weingarten said she couldn't think of a single substantive thing that couldn't be changed with the Todd Friedman arbitration.

Darn it. And I thought she actually knew about the lies being allowed to fester in teachers' files. Surely she knows there's no vehicle to get these malicious letters removed, and surely she knows that once upon a time when we did have the right to grieve these things, principals tended to use their power of the pen a bit more judiciously.

No one's saying the Todd Friedman arbitration hasn't done some good, but it only works when you can attack a contractual violation. Then part of the remedy is to remove the offending LIF. But I'd venture to say most LIFs these days contain a potpourri of misstatements, distortions and downright lies. There's no way we'll be getting these out any time soon.


If anyone has any more of these RW "messages" from yesterday's DA, I'd love to keep a record of what we're dealing with here.

And I'm starting to get why she doesn't ever put her President's Reports in writing. Who'd want this doublespeak out in the public domain.


[For a full report on yesterday's DA, read James Eterno's detailed account on the ICE blog.]

Arne's ball . . . I mean gall

Ednotes, thanks for the Ed Quote of the Year.

"I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education."

That's from Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education and Obama's Basketball-Buddy-in-Chief.

I tell you, my disgust with these jocks is starting to run really deep. In most of the wider senses of the word as well, like "jockey" from the online dictionary:

* cheat: defeat someone through trickery or deceit

* compete (for an advantage or a position) 

[NOTE: as in gaming the system, in this case, public education]

* someone employed to ride horses in horse races

* ride a racehorse as a professional jockey

[NOTE: not the groom and not the trainer (that's us), but the RIDER.]

* an operator of some vehicle or machine or apparatus; "he's a truck jockey"; "a computer jockey"; "a disc jockey"

[NOTE: the word "operator," a facile user of the apparatus]

What's good for the goose, and all that sort of thing.