Building blocks

From the pen of Angel Gonzalez, one of the powerhouses behind the ATR protest Weingarten did her best to sabotage on the 24th but which took on a life of its own:

"The lack of information, transparency and open debate in our union denies member input into critical issues about pedagogy and historic union rights. An uninformed membership gives even a well-intentioned leadership free rein to function as it pleases. As the economy worsens, we need to take a strong stand in defense of the rights of teachers and communities, rather than to facilitate the erosion of all that has been built over the years."

You can read Gonzalez's whole column over at Ednotes, which Norm posted this afternoon just as I was writing up another example of how Unity keeps gaming the word democracy. It centers around Leo Casey's post over at Edwize on the ATR settlement, and before I get into that, let me just say that anyone can tell from the title where Unity's affections lie: "UFT, DoE Agreement Addresses ATR Educator Issue, Saves Money for Schools." They'll support the DoE's need to save money for schools all right, and throw career security for all union members out the bloody window. That stinks, and Norm is so right when he says "their idea is to give the union leaders a seat at the table while the rank and file gain little."

Weingarten's lost her way. She's been weakening the whole structure of the union for more than a decade, disinforming the membership, letting the abusive, misguided DoE degrade our profession and turn us into facilitators, and collaborating on simply horrible goals for the children entrusted to our care.

I don't like the new ATR agreement, and have already said so in my own column. It lays the groundwork for making tiers for tenured educators, and we don't need no tiers at this point. No one's tenure should be better than or different from anyone else's, but that's what they've agreed to. What we need is solidarity, and that message is not getting out to the rank and file. That's because Weingarten's not sending it.

In fact, none of the oppositional voices in the union like this agreement or the false notion of democracy Unity keeps hiding behind. And these people make up a substantial part of the fully credentialed membership. (We can discount the untenured thousands, since they're mostly too afraid to get involved with union at all at this stage in their careers and are in general too busy with grad school anyway.)

TJC thinks the agreement paves the way for firing ATRs and the membership needs to get educated. ICE member James Eterno put it through a strainer last Sunday on the ICE blog (a must-read), and various bloggers have been posting a fair amount all along on Unity's unrecognizable democracy. Examples can be seen in Ednotes ("That is why unless power within the union is shifted from the top, teachers will be given the illusion they are professionals but treated as drones"), on the ICE blog (pseudo-democracy), in NYC Educator (when only a quarter of the members vote, there's no check on Unity's tactics), and a couple of times already on this blog (here for how distribution and costs makes it difficult to get our message out and here for democracy or demogoguery).

It's funny how it's coming from all sides. In Weingarten's vision of labor unionism, totalitarianism is in and democracy is most definitely out.


Getting back to Leo's blog, here's the comment I tried to post:

Any union leader who backs this agreement should resign.

You people have created 4 kinds of tenure, which paves the way for throwing some of us under the bus in the next contract. That’s cause for concern or condemnation, but not for surprise: it’s the way you always negotiate our givebacks — incrementally, hoping we don’t notice.

This agreement only creates incentives to re-hire SOME of the ATRs back, the centrally funded ones, and Weingarten was very clever in her press release to avoid mentioning there’s more than one kind. She says there more than once that the DoE can hire “from the ATR pool,” avoiding any mention of the fact that there is no incentive whatsoever to hire back ATRs whose positions have been cut and who remain on the school’s budget.

So, here are the 4 kinds of tenure, though I’m sure you’re not losing any sleep over what you’ve done:

1. Tenured educators in real positions, paid out of the school’s budget.

2. Tenured educators in real positions, paid in part by central for eight years; principals get extra money the first year to sweeten the deal.

3. Tenured educators in provisional positions one year at a time, paid in part by central. Principals will get that extra cash only if they keep them on permanently. It’s like an auditioning for your job. Disgraceful that you allowed this.

4. Tenured educators who will remain ATRs, paid for by central or by the school. Obviously, the least privileged category: the teacher’s qualifications and years of service make absolutely no difference to anyone. In fact, the vets are worse off, because two-for-the-price-one hiring still flourishes citywide.

Comment by woodlass — November 29, 2008 @ 12:26 pm

When I checked it today, not being logged on, it seemed to have been removed: there were 6 comments, but not mine. Then I logged in and tried again. Oddly enough, it showed up just the way I wrote it, time-stamped and all. What's going on? Either it wasn't deleted properly by the site administrator, or they've devised a way to make you believe your comment is viewable (i.e., if you're logged in, you'll see it), but it really isn't. That would be a whole other level of deception I don't care to think about. I prefer to think it's just a technical glitch, and they meant to take it out entirely.


I want to take this opportunity to re-visit Edwize's General Rules for commenters. Keep in mind when you read these rules that Unity keeps proclaiming far and wide how democratic our union is. No. 8 below specifically says so, and nos. 4 and 10 imply the same. Then keep in mind how much money is going directly out of our salaries into theirs.

1. You should treat this form of discussion just as you would a face-to-face conversation. There will be no tolerance for foul language, abusive attacks or threatening of members or moderators, or any other form of harassment. If this rule is broken, you will be immediately removed from this blog. Proper etiquette and charity must be observed at ALL times by ALL users. Others here may be as adamant in their opinions and ideas as you are.
[While I did say that anyone who backs this agreement "should resign," it's only an opinion. I didn't use any foul language, and I would certainly be comfortable telling Casey face-to-face that I think he should resign. Even if I had said something a little more threatening, like: "Let's get these bums out of office!" it'd be like throwing a pebble at the Hoover Dam, a threat to nobody, and they'd all probably have a good laugh. That's actually the problem with the totalitarian structure they've built. They've made themselves impervious.]

2. If in the judgment of the moderators we believe that comments are frivolous and non-constructive, we will delete them.
[My comment was hardly frivolous or non-constructive. I think it is totally in the members' interest to know when tenure has been diluted, because the next step is tenure eliminated.]

3. If a moderator has declined your post, please drop that thread. Advice from the moderators that your post is inappropriate should be taken seriously. Your participation is desired, but a person’s right and desire to participate ends where it begins to violate the right and desire of others to participate and harms Edwize’s capacity to maintain a welcoming forum for all. If you disagree with the host or moderator you may appeal in the proper place at http://edwize.org/contact/.
[A forum for "all"? I object to this boldface lie. No need to check the dictionary definition of the word "all," we know exactly who "all" means to the Unity moderators, and it doesn't include the oppositional voices.]

4. All points of view are welcome on EdWize, with the following exceptions: EdWize will limit commenters to one comment a day if, in its sole discretion, the commenter is “trolling“: (We’re not trying to insult anyone it’s an actual term to describe an activity on blogs.)
["All points of view are welcome" — another boldface lie. And I certainly wasn't trolling. The whole agreement is pertinent to my career, having been an unplaced ATR — or a displaced teacher, if you like — for more than a year.]

a. Posts numerous times a day with the intent of dominating, re-directing or hijacking the thread.
[Not guilty.]; or

b. Posts numerous times a day and insults or calls other commenters names or repeatedly makes the same point with the effect of annoying other commenters.
[Not guilty.]

c. Cross Posting articles from other sites, from copyrighted sources or posting the same message to multiple threads is considered spamming.
[Not guilty.]

5. Obscene, slanderous, abusive, attacks, expressions of prejudice and bigotry, or use of profanity by any commenter will not be tolerated and will result in the deletion of the comment and the banning of the commenter.
[Not guilty, but I wonder if they notify you that you've been banned. I didn't get notified yet. It must be something like Guantanamo, where they accuse you and diminish your rights in secret. I'm going to post a favorable comment and see if I've been banned outright.]

6. Comments will remain editable for 20 minutes to allow the commenter to correct grammatical errors.

7. The first comment from new users automatically goes into the moderation queue.

8. The UFT is a democratic organization. However, since the Landrum-Griffin Act prohibits the use of union dues for internal election activity and since the union’s political caucuses run candidates for elective offices within the leadership, comments that argue for or against one political caucus or another will be removed.
[Not guilty on the 2nd sentence. As for being democratic, when does misrepresentation become fraud?]

9. Please use upper and lower case letters, as appropriate, for better legibility.

10. EdWize was built as an advocacy vehicle for labor and education issues, if you are a member of the UFT and need help in any way feel free to contact your borough office, or program directly, or send an email to blog@uft.org.
[Might do.]

Whether this particular comment of mine has been deleted or not, we all know Edwize for what it is: a Unity armband. But, does everyone?

Our first job will always be towards our students, but in this degraded union, we need to be talking to our newest colleagues as well, and to everyone else who's bought the Unity line.

After all, that's what education's all about.

A media of our own

If New York City teachers have something to say, some of them at least will say it. And they’ll get the approval of the silent majority, who either don’t trust themselves in print or fear for their jobs. That’s the climate in the BloomKlein culture, and we shouldn’t forget that it hasn’t always been that way.

It's not that there hasn't always been edopinion and edcommentary in this city, but it’s been limited. Sure, the caucuses have flooded the delegate assemblies with handouts and stuffed position papers into mailboxes at election time, and serious chapter leaders have put out newsletters in their own schools. These publications have run the gamut of content, from info-documents to political statements, sometimes both and sometimes indistinguishable.

It got a lot more interesting about a decade ago, when Norm Scott started publishing Education Notes, a satirical and super-informative publication that morphed its way into our hearts and minds in various forms. It started out as a newsletter for his school, but I’ll bet that even in those early years, it was way more “out there” and sharp-shooting than what most of us have dared to circulate in our schools. He treats Brooklyn readers to doses of the same kind of stinging analyses in his bi-weekly column in the Wave. Too bad that’s not syndicated yet: it needs to be.

But what has always hampered individuals or oppositional groups from producing hard-copy publications in any great numbers has been the cost of these things and the impossibility of distributing them. Unity caucus, omnipotent as it is, only gives lip service to what doesn’t exist in our union at all: democracy. You can't use their copiers to produce your publications, you can't run oppositional meetings in UFT buildings, there’s censorship of critical comments on their website, and chapter leader training sessions don’t exactly advertise that there might be differences of opinion within the union.

Of course, the NY press (Post, Daily News, etc.) has also played a part in this milieu where teacher voices are not much heard. They’ve run rough-shod over the profession for years, and there’s not been much of a chance to fight back except for the occasional letter to the editor that some editorial board has gone out on a limb to actually publish.

In short: the prohibitive cost and enormous distribution problem meant that you could always speak up on ed issues if you wanted to, but getting your message heard was a whole other thing.

Enter Blogging, where at no cost whatsoever you can write under a pen name if you like, revise what you’ve written at any time, link to other people’s blogs, comment under a dozen other names (or anonymously), and even have conversations with yourself. A new era, a new world.

NYC Educator started blogging in May 2005 with a piece on “Bloomberg and Klein on Teacher Quality”. You can see from the first post, prescient and spot on as it was, the kind of quality we were going to get from this blog in the coming years:

But when push came to shove, Bloomy sent Klein to Albany to beg for the right to hire and retain those who failed the test! Underqualified teachers are paid less than NYS certified teachers.

Now many will say that certification alone does not ensure a good teacher, and I couldn't agree more. But failing that LAST test virtually guarantees a bad one. Why, then does Bloomy do this? He does for about 3,000 bucks per teacher.

I don’t know when Reality-Based Educator joined the effort over there, but what great stuff they’ve been putting out.

The Norm Scott phenomenon mentioned above turned itself into a blog in August 2006 with a statement typical of its tireless progenitor: “Coming soon (if I get out of the hammock)..." and a satiric picture-post of 3 engrossed cats called “An attentive class size of three.” (PS: he's just put up another cat on his blog a few minutes ago. That's weird.) We knew very well what we could continue to expect from this guy. Scott’s brain overflowed into other sites of his own imagination, Norm’s Notes and just today: EdnotesHumor. It’s about time someone thought of putting that stuff up.

The caucuses jumped in: ICE put up a blog in August 2005, its second post already stabbing at both the DOE and the UFT (the one for their incompetence, the other for their lack of foresight ... or incompetence):

As a side note the paras were rehired that September in one of the DOE's stunning display of disregard of its employees and managerial incompetence.

It is doubtful that you will hear anything about this case from official UFT sources even though it affected many members.

We must also remember that the “layoff” was only made possible when, in our previous contract, we gave up our no layoff clause. At the time our leadership argued that this was not a “giveback” since the possibility of layoffs was unimaginable.

Unity seems to have started blogging at the same time (you can find a link to their website on your own), TJC started theirs (I think) in Dec 2006. Other blogs followed, and more recently: loads of them. NYC Educator’s bloglist in the right margin is getting longer all the time. I myself began last September, battle-scarred as a chapter leader and having posted a comment or two for a couple of years on other websites. And when you’ve explored all these links, don’t forget the local Yahoo groups and websites, the national groups, and the fabulous Carnival of Education, which posts a new selection of current essays each week by teachers across the country. Neat-o.

I am proud to be part of this community of people who are willing to speak up.

I am proud that these sites are read by the press, government officials and ed administrators.

I am proud that we have created a new media.

Because we owe it to the kids we teach, to their parents, and to our own colleagues to present the insider’s, professional knowledge of what’s going on in our schools.

And because if we don’t do it, no one else is gonna.

Democracy or demogoguery, that is the question

There’s a disclaimer on one of the local education blogs that recently caught me up short:

[This blog is] a place where members, public education advocates and others can express opinions in an effort to establish an agora of informed commentary on public education and labor issues. The views expressed here are not necessarily the official views of the UFT .....

If you haven't identified the source, it’s posted on Edwize.org, the official blog of Unity cau—, oops, the United Federation of Teachers.

I’m not really sorry for confusing the two, because they want you to confuse the two.

It’s an interesting word they’ve used in the first sentence of this disclaimer: “agora,” which of course means marketplace. So, I guess in one sense the blog is being fairly honest about what it’s setting out to do, which is to “sell” the Unity line. That makes it a lot easier for the leadership to go about selling off pieces of the contract.

While some of those “others” they talk about will indeed be allowed to express their opinions, a whole bunch of other “others” might just as well go out bowling, at least when they try to post a comment about Unity’s role in the demise of the profession.


A couple of us in the cyberworld have already noted that our more critical comments to various Edwize posts have been taken down pretty quickly. In fact, I suspect the whole purpose of the column on the right, the one that gives snippets of the most recent comments, is to make excision even more efficient. It only takes a nanosecond to spot a comment critical of Weingarten, Leo Casey, Zahler, et al., and a few seconds more to remove it, and I mean entirely, because unlike a lot of monitored blogs that actually tell you when something’s been removed, in Edwize it’s just gone. Poof! Didn’t happen. No one disagreed with us. Yeah, democracy!

Maybe I'm wrong. After all, here's Leo Casey in August 05:

Our friends at EDUWONK express some astonishment that the UFT would produce a blog with a comments sections, allowing readers to express disagreement, as well as agreement, with the UFT and its policies. They chuckle that we will regret such a choice. Maybe that’s because they still haven’t figured out that teacher unions are democratic institutions, and that we consider dissent a necessary component of democratic conversation. There are no guarantees, of course, that a particular dissenting voice will be thoughtful or constructive, but space for the expression of dissent is necessary so that those voices which fit this description can be heard. . .

Our advice to EDUWONK: Democracy — Try It. You might like it.

Democracy or demagogery, that is the question.


If the leadership cared enough about BOE discrimination against members belonging to employee organizations to protect them contractually (Article 2, Fair Practices), why should we get something less from the union itself?

I realize there are two different kinds of discrimination here, one relating to an adversarial relationship between boss/employee and the other to treatment at the hands of supposed ally whom we are paying with our dues.

But, that’s just the point. The UFT is not much of an ally anymore. They’ve gone down too many wrong paths with their compounded givebacks, charter schools, merit bonus schemes, etc., and their mistakes actually hurt us and decimate the ranks. When we post harsh criticisms of their positions, they remove them and pretend nobody really feels this way.

One could make a case that Edwize is accessible to the blogosphere and members shouldn't be airing their differences in public. (Keep up a strong front, that sort of thing.) But, one could also take the position that people outside the union don’t have to be given access to the site at all, so that we could confront the leadership on political, tactical, controversial and strategic issues in private. Unity obviously doesn't want that, it’s not really in their interest, to which I’d have to respond: then call it a Unity blog and stop with all this democracy blather.

As for the column of links on the left of Edwize, glaringly missing are the sites and blogs of non-Unity caucuses (like ICE, ICEblog, ICE listserv, TJC), as well as the ones of individuals associated with them (like EdnotesOnline, Norm’s Notes, this one), teacher advocacy groups (like TAG and NYCoRE's listserv), and critical individuals (like Round Deux). That list should be pretty comprehensive, if this were a democratic union. That it is not speaks volumes.

Unity feeds on our willingness to tolerate its unilateral presence, and the censoring of critical remarks on Edwize reinforces that imagery. But no matter how many times Weingarten brandishes the mantra “Because we are a democratic union” (how that woman doesn’t choke on her own words is beyond me), it doesn't make it true. Manipulated, outnumbered, cowed, kept in the dark on a regular basis, and virtually powerless, yes, but not democratic.


N E W ! E X P A N D . Y O U R . K N O W L E D G E
on all things Leo and censorship.

See great posts on same at LeoGate (EdnotesOnline), which includes an analysis of what passes for Unity elections and also refers you over to another Leo story at NYCEducator (where censorship is mentioned in the comments section).

Picture: www.wickedsunshine.com