I honestly don't know a whole lot about Richard Carranza. I see good and bad things. On the plus side, he's a former English Language Learner, or ELL. This gives me hope that he might see through the miserable Part 154 that robs ELLs of both direct English instruction and also core content instruction. In 2017, we ought to offer our most needy kids something better than sink or swim.

Also, he seems to be an advocate for public schools. The last guy the mayor picked, Tom Carvel or somebody, looked like an advocate for school choice in the Jeb Bush mode. Florida's not where I would go to model public schools, though the weather seems pretty nice. Alas, Carvel not only failed to bring the weather over, but also failed to show himself.

On the other hand, there are the stories about Carranza, largely in the Daily News, from his failure to perform miracles, to creepy treatment of female subordinates, resulting in a 75K payoff. I'm not personally too put off by the miracle thing, because miracle stories, like accomplishments of Texas and Michelle Rhee, usually turn out to be outright fabrications. Carranza seems to have a thing for TFA, while I think he'd be better off finding local talent. In fact, I wonder why the mayor couldn't find anyone in NY. The mayor said mayoral control was all about him doing what he wanted to do, but that's not really true.

When de Blasio was elected, he not only stated opposition to charters, but also blocked a Moskowitz Academy or two. Cuomo and his Heavy Hearted Assembly rapidly passed a law that NYC would have to pay rent for charters of which it didn't approve. This said to me that mayoral control was valid only if the mayor was a reformy. They never passed laws against Bloomberg. Evidently, de Blasio hasn't put that together just yet.

Carranza says there's no daylight between his vision and that of the mayor, but I have no idea what the mayor's vision is anymore. When he first ran, he seemed great. He opposed charters and reforminess. He was the anti-Bloomberg. I supported him even as the UFT was pushing that guy, what's his name, who told the Daily News that teachers didn't deserve the raise cops and firefighters got.

These days I have no idea what the mayor stands for. He left a whole bunch of Bloomberg's people in place, so we still lose at step two hearings even when we're 100% correct. He left a bunch of scumbag lawyers in "legal" who believe in doing whatever the hell they feel like and think screwing UFT members is the national pastime. He picks an outright reformy to be chancellor and then immediate turns around and picks a guy who appears to support public schools. Though the NY Post thinks de Blasio's Che Guevara, he negotiated the lowest pattern bargain in my living memory for city workers.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a music teacher I respect a lot who said the new chancellor was a great singer. I later found a video over at Leonie Haimson's site, which I've posted below. He is a very good singer, and he also plays the violin. You have to respect that. Maybe I'm culturally biased or something, but his choice of song is pretty unusual as far as I'm concerned. It's called El Rey, or the king, and it seems like a tribute to machismo or something:

After a bruising loss in a presidential campaign, United Federation of Teachers leadership has redoubled its quest to learn nothing whatsoever. It wasn't enough that we went all out for a presidential candidate who stood up for half-hearted, warmed-up pablum rather than real solutions for America. We needed to continue our march toward mediocrity because that's our prime directive.

As such, even after a loathsome reptile manipulated his way into the Presidency of the United States, even after he swore to cripple our power via the Supreme Court, even after he enabled and emboldened vile bigotry, racism and homophobia all around the country, we remained too timid to even utter his name.

Leadership knows best, after all. They understand about manipulated elections and suppression of democracy because that is their stock in trade. When high school teachers get uppity and elect officers of whom they disapprove, they change the rules so they can't do that anymore. When chapter leaders dare to elect the District Reps they wish to support them from opposition, they simply change the rules and hand pick them. That's how you maintain power by any means necessary without regard for democracy.

And now there are stirrings in NYSUT. After UFT and NY State Unity leadership led a coup to overthrow a sitting President who objected to financial support of Andrew Cuomo, there are still hundreds of locals who feel disenfranchised. There is a lot of anger, rightfully so, that NYSUT has now become just another arm of the UFT, and doesn't even bother to pretend otherwise. Thus, there is for the first time ever, an opposition caucus in NYSUT called Stronger Together. Stronger Together is largely the brainchild of firebrand Beth Dimino, the outspoken President of the Port Jefferson Station Teacher Union. Alas, Dimino is stepping down and while there are some very capable people remaining, it's an open question whether there is anyone remaining who can rival her vision and passion.

There is, of course, a potential NYSUT solution for all those pissed off locals. They could run a few members of the opposition on the Unity ticket. This would not only preclude a contentious campaign, but also perhaps mute the vocal opposition. It might even give NYSUT locals the impression that it is no longer being run by the machine that shoved Hillary Clinton down the throats of rank and file with little to no member input. The new members could voice opposition within NYSUT, and perhaps the machine would be forced to pay lip service to member concerns. But it's hard to believe that they will accomplish anything substantive. In fact, it's hard to believe the machine would do even that, obsessed as it is with perpetuating itself via absolute control.

Remember this? This is the campaign pamphlet that Revive NYSUT passed out at the convention in which they overthrew mean old Dick Iannuzzi, who'd finally objected to Pallotta buying tables at Cuomo fund raisers. Despite ostensible opposition, President Karen Magee pretty much said it was Common Core or anarchy. NYSUT never opposed Cuomo, and never opposed APPR. In fact, the only legislative accomplishment they can boast of is making sure that leadership got double pensions.

There really are good people, smart people, in Stronger Together. I'd feel better with them in leadership than the current UFT pawns. But the fact is, even if they make any such deal, I'm absolutely certain it would be contingent on said pawns staying in place. When one of them is replaced, it will be by a sitting UFT official. That deal is already in place and UFT leadership can't even be bothered keeping it secret.

As bad as UFT leadership is, a strong bastion of principled resistance to the counter-productive and anti-democratic machinations of the dual Unity Caucuses is still right here in Fun City. I am very proud to be part of it. It's nice that Revive NYSUT can campaign on transparency, but the heart of NYSUT still lies at 52 Broadway, and they are nothing if not secretive and manipulative. We're still waiting, for example, to learn when it will be okay to mention Donald Trump's name, as opposed to disingenuously attributing the explosion in racism and bigotry to "The Presidential Election."

I certainly hope that Stronger Together succeeds in reforming the union. The rationale is that we are facing a really tough time, and that the only way we can face it is by presenting a united front. Here in NYC, we've heard that song before, specifically from the New Action Caucus. New Action made a deal with UFT Unity in the Bloomberg era, citing the threat that Bloomberg faced to our very existence. But New Action learned that didn't really work for them. Last year they decided to join the MORE Caucus and we took the important first step of winning the high school seats on the UFT Executive Board. Though we are massively outvoted by the Unity machine at Executive Board, we've shown that leadership is unwilling to take firm stands against things like class size violations and abusive administrators. When members see proof of what leadership does and does not stand for, high schools will no longer be alone in opposing ridiculous "seat at the table" politics.

MORE is affiliated with Stronger Together, and has been for a few years now. We ran in opposition to the machine, and I was proud to run a David and Goliath campaign against Executive VP Andrew Pallotta. I don't speak for MORE and I don't make decisions for it. But as a New York City high school teacher, I certainly pay dues to NYSUT, and I can't help but notice that there are exactly zero people elected by UFT high school teachers who have a voice in its decisions.

You could argue that NYSUT has UFT representation, and that's certainly true. But the fact is, in the last UFT election high school teachers decided to go another way. And before you dismiss us as a bunch of cranks, the fact is we have more members than the Philadelphia Teacher Union, not to mention the overwhelming number of NYSUT locals. In fact, my school alone has more members than some NYSUT locals.

Again, I'm not speaking for MORE, or ICE, or any UFT-affiliated caucus or teacher organization. But I can't and won't support any movement that doesn't provide a voice and vote for the high schools I represent. I'd be very surprised if MORE took a position contrary to that. If Stronger Together chooses to go ahead and ignore or even tacitly endorse our disenfranchisement, it's no better than the machine it purports to oppose.

And if UFT, or AFT, or NYSUT thinks that backroom deals will protect it from Friedrichs Mach 2, it's laboring under a serious misconception. We need representation, not rationalization. We've had the latter for decades, and it's gotten us precisely where we are today. 

There's an interesting point of view in the Daily News. Apparently, the issue with the "Renewal" schools in New York City is that they have an inordinate percentage of "lower quality" teachers. This assumption, of course, is based on the research of reformy Chalkbeat NY, nee Gotham Schools, which finds it noteworthy when E4E can muster 100 signatures on a petition demanding more work for less pay, but can't be bothered to cover a massive demonstration against Cuomo's policies.

First, let's look at the definition of a "lower quality" teachers. This particular person is someone who scores developing or ineffective on a rating system even Andrew Cuomo labels "baloney" (notwithstanding his enthusiastic support for it at its inception).  Unlike Cuomo, those of us who actually believe in science and research called it junk science from the start. That includes people like Diane Ravitch. In fact, even Randi Weingarten, who ran around the country helping to negotiate crap evaluation systems eventually admitted "VAM is a sham."

These systems are all a result of the Gates MET study, a convoluted piece of crap that set out to prove yet another theory emanating from Mr. Gates' fruitful hind quarters--that we need to replicate whatever teachers do in classrooms in which students receive high test grades. This, of course, is the central theory behind reforminess. Public schools, Gates theorizes, are no good because kids don't score well enough on standardized tests.

The fact is, though, that every so-called failing school contains high concentrations of high-needs students. There are kids who live in poverty, kids who have special needs and kids who don't speak English. And please, before some preachy moron gets the notion I'm giving up on those kids, the fact is I spend every day of my working life trying to help those kids. And what my kids need is help learning English, not help passing a test.

I spent a few years teaching ELLs how to pass a test. Some genius in Albany declared that it didn't matter whether or not kids knew English, and in order to graduate high school they needed to pass the English Regents exam anyway. I was drafted. I made kids pass and didn't teach them fundamentals of English language because it wasn't necessary for the test. Kids who passed may have assumed it meant they knew English, but I can assure you they did not. It meant they knew a highly formulaic four paragraph essay good for nothing but that version of the test, and it meant they knew how to look for correct A, B, C, D answers in Regents texts. It meant absolutely nothing more.

I was happy for kids who passed, but I did not fool myself for a moment that it was because I was a great teacher. It was because I made them write until their hands fell off. It was because I made them rewrite everything, no matter how tedious, and it was because I read and critiqued every word they wrote. It was no fun, neither the kids nor I liked it, but they tended to pass the stupid test in higher numbers than they would have without it. Of course their actual writing was no better than before, and they surely failed college writing tests in droves.

Here's the thing--if you are the principal, charged with running a so-called failing school, are you gonna say yes, the school is failing, and all the teachers are excellent. It is therefore an anomaly, a veritable miracle of nature. Are you gonna say the students are no good? Are you gonna tell the truth, that you in fact have high concentrations of high needs kids and there is really nothing you can do about it? Is that gonna get you that desk job at Tweed that will afford you the much-needed time to work on your oragami? Those paper airplanes are not gonna fold themselves, after all.

Of course not. You're gonna observe the teachers and blame them. It's remarkable, in fact, that the negative observations are a mere 20%. Now, you can accept the observation system as the Ten Commandments and assume principals in troubled schools have no self-interest whatsoever.

Or, you can face the actual issue of rampant poverty in NYC and the United States. You can face the fact that non-English speakers tend to settle in cities, where there is work. You can face the fact that most of them cannot, in fact, afford to live in Scarsdale. You can face the fact that the necessity of working 200 hours a week to support one's self and family is not conducive to thoughtful and thorough parenting.

Or, you can accept Bill Gates' formulaic solutions, which are to education as my ELLs' four paragraph compositions are to writing. That is what much of the public does, and that is what many editorials, up to and including those of the NY Times, encourage.

It's on us to get the truth out, and we have our work cut out for us.