That's what the survey says this year. Given that, are the editorial pages going to be full of praise for the work we do? Shouldn't the News, the Post, and the Times be doing cartwheels and telling the mayor to give us a substantial raise for our great work under often harrowing circumstances? Will they finally say, hey, let's revise the evaluation system so that it's something to support good teaching, as opposed to sneak attacks by Boy Wonder supervisors who couldn't teach their way out of paper bags?

Personally, I won't be holding my breath to read that. I know, though, that 55% of teachers approving of Carmen Fariña is extraordinarily high. You know what that says to me? It says that we are far more generous of spirit and understanding than those who make careers out of judging us. Sadly, I can't include myself among all those high-minded educators. I thought Fariña did an awful job, I said so on the survey, and it's nowhere more evident than in her declaration a raging blizzard was a beautiful day because Macy's was open.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of parents are satisfied with city schools. What can we conclude from that? For me, it's obvious. If parents are satisfied with public schools, it's time to celebrate and embrace them. It's also time to stop frittering away precious resources on reformy nonsense.

Exhibit A is Moskowitz and her plainly failed mission. The overwhelming majority of those who start with her finish with us. That's because we simply take everyone. We don't make ridiculous demands of children and their parents. We don't make parents come and work in our schools because we know they have to work elsewhere to make ends meet. We don't make children do test prep until they pee their pants, and we don't ridicule them if they need more time. We don't make "got to go" lists and we don't humiliate students by hanging up their names for progress or lack thereof. In fact, we don't even take our students on buses to Albany on school days to lobby for our self-serving interests.

And then we come to bullying. I haven't got a simple solution to that. Kids can be cruel. I will say, though, that charter schools ought not to practice bullying.  It certainly appears Moskowitz Academies do. Charter schools ought to follow chancellor's regulations. Not allowing a child to visit a bathroom ought to be considered abuse. We need not encourage that, even in the name of "no excuses."

In fact, charter schools ought not to exist at all. New Yorkers voted in Bill de Blasio overwhelmingly, and he ran on a platform of opposition to charters. Governor Andrew Cuomo, after having taken who knows how many suitcases full of cash from Eva's hedge fund BFFs, decided that was unacceptable. Cuomo hated Bloomberg for being the reformiest guy in the state, and here was his chance to claim the mantle, along with whatever financial rewards it brought. So Cuomo and the Heavy Hearted Assembly passed a bill that NYC would have to pay rent for charters it disapproved.

This week, however, Cuomo is posing as Bernie Sanders Lite. He's now the bestest friend labor unions ever had. Given that, maybe it's time for him to renounce Moskowitz and her rich pals. After all, it's becoming pretty trendy to reject tainted money. Zephyr Teachout may well take the Attorney General nomination, solely with contributions from people like you and me. Who knows? Maybe Cuomo's finger, perpetually up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, will direct him to represent, you know, people instead of money.

It's pretty clear, though, that if 95% of parents are happy with their schools, it's time to stop bashing working teachers. We must be doing something right. Maybe it's time for the editorial pages to slow down all that bluster about how incompetent we are and how much we suck. Maybe it's time to allow educators to make decisions about education. Maybe it's time to step back and trust us a little bit.

That is, unless editorial writers have some interest in an agenda that does not actually reflect the beliefs and interests of the public. That couldn't be, could it?

Time will tell.

I've got mixed feelings about actress Cynthia Nixon and her foray into politics. On the one hand, I'm really excited to see a true progressive looking at the governorship of my state. I have to say, though, that I was not happy with some of her remarks about unions.

“With the deals that [unions] have now, you can’t hope to make improvements to the trains in a fiscally responsible way,” Nixon told amNY, not specifying the unions to which she was referring. “Everybody’s got to pull together, and everybody’s got to make sacrifices.”

I don't know what deals the unions have now, so I can't comment on that. I was sorely disappointed, though, to hear a nominal progressive criticize union. It reminded me of no one more than Andrew Cuomo himself, whose first campaign platform entailed going after unions. This opened my eyes a lot, and made Cuomo the first Democrat for whom I declined to vote. I voted for Green Howie Hawkins for Governor these last two rounds.

Nixon, though, is very good on education. Unlike Cuomo, who takes suitcases full of cash from charter folk, she won't be doing that. She has an entirely different POV.

Too many corporate Democrats like Andrew Cuomo are taking charter school hedge fund money.

We have to stop diverting education funding into privately run charter schools, and put the focus back where it should be: on strengthening our public schools and keeping them public.

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) April 13, 2018

Now here's the thing about Andrew Cuomo--he's making an effort to look good to us, and has been doing so over the last year or so. Cuomo observed the 2016 election, and read the tea leaves. They told him that America wants a government that fulfills its needs. Some of those needs are universal healthcare, affordable college, and a living wage. I repeat that often. Another, of course, is a decent  K-12 education for all of our children.

Cuomo has indeed made concessions. He's moderated his tone over firing all of us because of highly flawed test scores. He's created a program that will make it easier for some New Yorkers to go to college. He's stepped back on the IDC, which kept the Senate in GOP hands even though Democrats held the ostensible majority. Even though that thwarted a whole lot of improvements for New Yorkers, Cuomo can now say he's stopped it so as to disassociate himself from them.

The problem with Andrew Cuomo, of course, is that he has no moral center. He sways whichever way the political wind blows. He is for sale to the highest bidder, so long as whatever the bidder is buying will aid him toward reaching his Prime Directive--the advancement of Andrew Cuomo.

And that's when we come to our own union leadership, clearly poised to endorse Cuomo this time around.  A NY Times headline declares key unions are leaving the Working Families Party, which has now endorsed Cynthia Nixon for governor. You have to scroll down quite a bit for specifics, but when you do, you see this quote from UFT President Michael Mulgrew:

“My only concern is some reckless behavior that will have an unintended consequence of us ending up with a Republican governor,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “When these elections are over, we will judge any decision we have to make off your behavior if you caused bad things to happen — even though it was not your intent you are responsible for them.”

Let's focus a little on reckless behavior. Our parent union, the AFT, endorsed Hillary Clinton well before we saw any teacher voice at the polls. There was a kabuki dance of deciding the endorsement, but we ultimately got behind a candidate who did not support universal health care, a living wage, or affordable college. We got behind a candidate who mustered the audacity to lecture AFT about what we could learn from "public charter schools," whatever the hell they may be.

And just in case you hadn't noticed, Hillary Clinton lost that election. So by Mulgrew's logic, even though it was not our intent, we are responsible for Donald Trump. That's quite an albatross to hang around our own necks. You'd think we'd learn something from that, but you'd be wrong.

Rather than embrace a progressive candidate who holds causes dear to our hearts, we condemn her for one thoughtless comment. We might try to talk with her, negotiate with her, but instead we dismiss her out of hand, back a man with no integrity whatsoever, and hope the progressive wind that's blowing him this week will not change direction any time soon. We ignore mountains of evidence that Cuomo will do whatever is expedient for Cuomo, and brush away Nixon just as we brushed away Bernie Sanders.

This is an egregious error. I'm sure that UFT leadership will disagree, since they know better than me, they know better than you, and making a potentially fatal error in the 2016 Presidential campaign has done nothing to persuade them they are fallible in any way, ever. But it's not a huge leap of logic to say that Cynthia Nixon's philosophy more closely resembles that of working teachers, just as Bernie Sanders' did.

The blanket condemnation of Nixon is precisely the same as that of Sanders. The blind support of sure thing corporate Democrat Cuomo is precisely the same as that of sure thing corporate Democrat Clinton. Now I'm reading that union leadership may set up their own ballot line to make sure Cuomo wins and the progressive gets no traction whatsoever.

What has leadership learned from the debacle that was the 2016 election?

Nothing I can determine.

In an effort to reframe his image, Andy Cuomo is backing single payer health care. During the last year or two, Governor Andy has been edging back from the corporate scumbag persona he's been cultivating ever since he first ran for Governor. You'll recall that he ran on a platform of going after unions. It was a priority of his to make sure that working people didn't end up making too much money. You can take stands like that when you're running against a frothing at the mouth lunatic like Carl Paladino.

Andy's father Mario was famous for taking a principled stand against the death penalty. New Yorkers got tired of that and swept him out of office in favor of George Pataki. Andy took a different tack when he came in and took a principled stand against a millionaire's tax. After all, someone has to stand up for all those poor millionaires who don't feel like contributing to the public good. Of course, as Andy put his finger up to the wind to see which way it's blowing, his opinion has shifted. Because what are principles if you can't adjust them to suit the situation?

As for education, Andy Cuomo always knew what side his bread was buttered on. When the suitcases of cash came in from the various astroturf groups, Andy took his cue and stood with Moskowitz at some rally or other. After all, with all that money, they must be doing something right. And everyone knows it's expensive to buy yourself another term as governor. So you do what you have to do.

Another thing readers of this blog will remember Cuomo for is the evaluation system we all endure. Now there are two versions of this system. The first, of course, was the one Cuomo brought forth when Bloomberg was pushing a bill to kill teacher seniority in NYC. This was sponsored by our much-beloved Senator Flanagan, who felt it was important to stop this scourge. Not in his district, of course, because he needs votes out there. Cuomo came riding to our rescue, with the promise that this system would fire a whole bunch of teachers anyway.

Of course that didn't work out the way Andy had hoped. Not enough teachers got fired, and it's well-known that the only way to improve the world is to fire a bunch of teachers. I mean, who the hell do they think they are going out day after day and trying to help children? In America, we have no respect for people who not only do that, but also have the audacity to want to be paid for it. For goodness sake, they're the reason those millionaires have to pay taxes, and it's an outrage to take money from them. After all, they're very sensitive, and if you touch them they might break.

So Andy called it "baloney" and sought a more vindictive approach. Because he was a "student lobbyist" and what student doesn't want to see teachers fired? But much to the disappointment of the New York Post editorial staff, the wind shifted and Cuomo stopped trashing teachers as much. UFT leadership, for my money, was too cozy with him the last time he ran. We declined to support Zephyr Teachout in her twin attempts to oppose him.

More recently, Cuomo has backed off from reforminess. The wind shifted, and it's likely UFT and NYSUT will support his next bid. With Cuomo's limited free college program, and with his support for universal health care, he's positioning himself for a 2020 presidential bid. UFT leadership doesn't ask for my advice, but here it is nonethless--Cuomo has no moral center. He'll take any position that's convenient.

I'm glad he's pulled back from overt hostility, but I know he sways any way the wind blows. Counting on Cuomo is folly. He'll smile to our faces and stab us in the back in a New York minute. Trust him as far as you can throw him, or face the consequences.

Every week or so I get an email from a UFT rep whose job is organizing. I guess that's why his newsletter is called The Organizer. I'm urged to share it with my staff, but I prefer to write my own. It has a lot of recurring features, so it tends to be repetitive. I usually don't find anything worth sharing.

This week, though, it had something that opened my eyes just a little. That was a fairly impressive feat since I opened my laptop at around six AM. I expected to just scroll down and close the thing. But there it was, and it had me up and blogging almost involuntarily.

I was pretty surprised to see this piece from a NYSUT email included in The Organizer:

It goes on, but you get the gist. Of course I don't disagree about APPR. I signed the linked petition and I recommend you do too. I'm just surprised at the UFT's willingness to take absolutely any position at any time, with no regard whatsoever for past positions. Am I the only one who remembers what a proud deed it was when we got our first junk science system, and how Mulgrew himself had helped write the law? Am I the only one who remembers hearing how smart it was to get the whole thing enshrined in law?

Of course, that argument was no longer so popular when Andrew Cuomo and the Heavy Hearted Assembly redid the whole thing a year later. Cuomo said his own brainchild was "baloney" because not enough teachers got bad ratings. We needed to rate more teachers badly. That was Cuomo's rationale for pushing the new system.

So they changed it. The UFT argument then became the matrix. The matrix is gonna make everything better because it's gonna make it tough to get an ineffective rating, unless of course you do get an ineffective rating. Then we'll all try to look the other way and pretend it didn't happen, I suppose.

In any case, I've opposed APPR since its inception. I'm in good company, including Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson, and the American Statistical Association, just to mention a few. Yet when I objected to it at chapter leader meetings, I was criticized and ridiculed. I was overreacting. I was Chicken Little. I'm trying to recall how many times I've heard about how few people got bad ratings, and how the system was therefore an improvement. I've heard it from UFT leadership and school leadership.

Of course, very shortly thereafter I'd get to hear face to face from the people who got bad ratings. You won't be surprised to hear that they failed to see the wonder and beauty of this system. Now there is a new wrinkle that I've heard Mulgrew speak of. It's not value-added, but rather showing student progress. We'll work out ways to do this, via portfolios or something.

It won't surprise you to hear that I've asked people who study these things, and they've told me there is no research whatsoever to support these ideas for rating teachers. In fact, I know of no studies whatsoever saying anything about it at all. Yet I'm regularly told at the DA and elsewhere that it's a big improvement. I've also heard, from Mulgrew on down, that anyone who opposes APPR supports total control for the principal.

That's what you call a black and white fallacy--it suggests there is only one alternative to this proposal. Beyond that, it fails to acknowledge the pernicious nature of this system, to wit, allowing the burden of proof to be on the teacher at the 3020a hearing. That's one more feature of the system UFT leadership has been pushing as the best thing since sliced bread--not the feature, of course. They generally fail to acknowledge it, although one UFT Unity member on Twitter insisted that gave members more control. This is the same guy who got up and insisted he spoke to two random ATRs  in one day who loved the new incentive.

There has been a little space between NYSUT and UFT on this issue. For example, when the Mulgrew-endorsed toppling of Richard Iannuzzi as NYSUT President happened, Andrew Pallotta's Revive NYSUT claimed to oppose APPR. They blamed Iannuzzi for it. Though he did it together with Mulgrew, they never, ever criticized Mulgrew, nor did they vocally oppose it at inception. The hypocrisy was palpable.

Now I'm curious about this thing we're gonna do next year, if there is ever an agreement. Will there be portfolios and who knows what else in the future of NYC schools? To me, it seems like a whole lot of extra paperwork for already overburdened teachers. This would not be my preferred course of action with Janus hanging over our heads.

The APPR system has left teacher morale lower than its been at any point since I began over thirty years ago. Thus far, every so-called improvement has failed to improve anything. I'm not sure that the NYSUT position precisely mirrors that of UFT leadership.

Nonetheless, it takes a whole lot of chutzpah to simply take something you've consistently supported and rationalized, then call it useless. It's particularly egregious when you offer absolutely no explanation as to why you've changed your mind.

How are you supposed to trust people who do things like that?

There is a fascinating piece in Politico today. Evidently, we're somehow making some progress against reforminess. This goes hand in hand with a statement from Eduwonk, AKA Andy Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners, referring to teacher unions:

In fact, these groups thwarted key parts of the Obama education agenda. 

Rotherham does not give any more detail, and with 12 years of blogging I still can't read his mind.  I'll therefore focus on the Politico piece, which is a little more explicit. Politico states that NY is no longer the ed reform capital, and as a New Yorker, that sounds like good news. Reformies are stalled in their tracks, evidently.

Yet here on the ground, I have never seen teachers so demoralized and worn down. Some of the most positive individuals I've ever met have left the profession. Some of them left from my school, a relatively good place. Why would that be, if we were so successful at turning the reformy tide?

One reason is that Politico looks at "reform" in a curious fashion. The word, to me, entails change, and hopefully for the better. That's why I question reformies, because what is their motivation to change? I mean, Betsy DeVos is as reformy as they come, and for all I can see, she's on a mission to destroy public education so her BFFs can profit from it.

You know, the wall idea is a good one. Why don't we just build walls around all public schools and privatize everything?

— Fake Betsy DeVos (@FakeBetsyDeVos) July 22, 2017

The march toward privatization notwithstanding, a great deal of the Politico article focuses on teacher tenure. Here's a blatant falsehood:

At Cuomo’s urging, the Legislature pushed through some reforms in 2015, tying tenure to teacher performance instead of time in the classroom...

In fact, I have firsthand experience with tenure being withheld for classroom performance before this "reform" was passed. Tenure could be delayed or denied for almost any reason before 2015. The city used this much more frequently after Bloomberg came in, but always had the option to do so. But why should education reporters bother knowing anything about history? (In fairness, Politico opts for the Chalkbeat model of not talking to working teachers, speaking with Gates-funded E4E reformies instead.)

A stronger focus of "reform," as per Politico, is the failure of New York to utterly eradicate due process, popularly known as "tenure." It seemed the prime directive of self-proclaimed education expert Campbell Brown to allow administrators to fire anyone they felt like, anytime they felt like it. To enable this, they went full-court press after what they called bad teachers--generally people who were accused of things but not found guilty. Brown went to the tabloids and blew up a few cases to stoke outrage, but it appears her efforts have stalled.

In fact, I knew the circumstances only one of the cases that Brown tossed about, and I knew it to be nonsense. I therefore doubted the rest of her allegations. I was very happy to write about the flip side of the coin, and how all teachers deserve due process. Hey, if I stink at my job, if I'm abusive to children, fine. Come after me. But if you're mad at me for standing up for the children I serve and making your job inconvenient, screw you. If you're mad at me for standing up for the rights of my colleagues, again, screw you.

Reforminess is something Trump is strong on, because he doesn't believe in protecting the rights of working people. With him, it's all about profit, hence Betsy DeVos, who's pretty much decimated public education in Michigan. They can wrap themselves in the flag all they want, and claim to care about the children. Those of us who wake up every morning to serve those children know better.

And then there is Andrew Cuomo, who first ran on a platform of going after unions, who appeared at Moskowitz rallies and frothed at the mouth over the possibility of firing as many teachers as possible. Cuomo could not possibly anticipate that parents would become informed and fight back against the nonsense that is Common Core. He could not anticipate that parents would boycott his tests in droves.

What reformies failed to count on was the opportunism of Andrew Cuomo. As a man with no moral center whatsoever, he is driven by rampant ambition. This year, he watched Donald Trump win the presidency against neoliberal Hillary Clinton. Cuomo decided to position himself as Bernie Sanders Lite and pushed a program to give free college tuition to New Yorkers (albeit with a whole lot of restrictions).

Cuomo is now best buds with UFT, judging from what I hear at Delegate Assemblies. While I don't personally trust the man as far as I can throw him, I'm happy if that works to help working teachers and other working people. So what is education "reform," exactly?

As far as I can tell, it's piling on, How miserable can we make working teachers? How can we arbitrarily and capriciously fire them? How can we give them as few options as possible, and as little voice as possible?

It's ironic. The MORE motto is, "Our teaching conditions are students' learning conditions." I agree with that. Take it a step further, and our teaching conditions are our students' future working conditions. When we fight for improvement of our working conditions, we are fighting for the future of our students as well.

Two of my former students teach in my school. They are the first of their families to be college educated, and the first of their families to get middle class jobs. I will fight for them, and for my other students to have even more opportunity. Betsy DeVos and the reformies, on the other hand, can fight to maximize profits for fraudulent cyber-charter owners and all the other opportunist sleazebags they represent so well.

The Post pointed out that our good buddy Andrew Cuomo is taking a ton of cash from charters, and that's public record. Of course that's not the image Cuomo has been pushing lately. He's our good buddy, I hear at the DA. He's making nice.

Now it would be nice if we could take credit for that and say that Public School Proud caused a complete turnaround. I have to say, though, that opt-out, which we've failed to support, is a big factor. Parent activists kept their kids home from Cuomo's stupid tests in droves. They forced him to put off counting the tests for their kids. In fact, some of them didn't even count against teachers in Cuomo's junk-science based evaluation system. But not all of them, as all high school teachers know.

Not only that, but he just came up with a program under which NY residents can go to college tuition-free, under certain circumstances. You have to live here for a while, and you have to make it through on time, and a whole lot of people don't do that, but there you are. It's a whole lot better than nothing, which was the previous plan.

He's also standing up on health care. He's very much against the GOP plan to dump Obamacare, give a tax break to the uber-rich, and screw tens of millions of Americans, New Yorkers included. Oddly, like UFT leadership, he doesn't mention Trump by name. This is in stark contrast to Bill de Blasio, who seems to be running a winning campaign against Donald Trump. No one even seems to know who his opponents are.

After Hillary managed to lose the Presidential election to the least popular politician in human history, Governor Andy had to rethink his image. After all, he started out by saying he would go after unions. Now, as we face Janus and some serious survival issues, he's moving to make union dues completely tax-deductible.

Governor Andy has presided over two education laws that affect us all. Every teacher in New York City is dancing around the Danielson Rubric and trying to be highly effective. With the first law, Cuomo actually stood up for us as our good pal Senator Flanagan, the one to whom we actually donate money, tried to reverse seniority rights for NYC teachers only. (Evidently the teachers in his district don't like that sort of thing.) Cuomo opposed it because his new law was going to fire teachers. When it didn't fire enough of them, he called it "baloney" and worked on a new law.

Make no mistake, these laws are designed to fire teachers. That was Cuomo's explicit demand. UFT leadership can dance around that as much as they wish. They can cite stats of how few teachers are rated ineffective. They can ridicule those of us, like Carol Burris, Diane Ravitch, and the American Statistical Association who say these things are nonsense. But if you're a poorly rated teacher, that's cold comfort. In fact, the pressure is palpable on those of us out there doing the job, no matter how we're rated. Morale is at an all-time low and this Janus nonsense could not come at a worse moment.

In case it isn't clear, here's the thing about Andrew Cuomo--he's an opportunist who will say absolutely anything to advance himself. Cuomo supports the millionaire's tax these days but opposed it before. But perish forbid you should raise it, says Cuomo, because they'll leave New York. Snowflakes. Let them move to Utah and watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir instead of the opera.

When Cuomo said he would go after unions, I decided not to vote for him. Of course I didn't vote for his opponent, frothing-at-the-mouth Carl Paladino. And last time I didn't vote for that creep who supported opt-out but opposed the Triborough Amendment. Both times I voted for Green Howie Hawkins. And last time in particular, I wondered how things may have been different if we'd supported brilliant, pro-teacher Zephyr Teachout in either the Working Families or Democratic primaries. We'll never know.

I think that UFT and NYSUT will endorse Cuomo next year. I think they will do that largely to come to some agreement on Janus, if such a thing is possible. But Andrew Cuomo is a despicable worm. I don't know about you, but it would take something very close to a miracle for me to support him.

That's what's happening in Fun City today. Even as the Daily News complains payroll is up by $159 million, we might not be seeing a concurrent improvement in services. Actually, even the article admits that's a 1.57% increase, so I'm not sure why it merits attention. Teachers just got a raise, a good portion of which we earned a decade ago, but it's so recent it's probably not reflected in even this modest increase.

The fact is that this money pays for fewer classroom teachers. Back when Emperor Bloomberg ruled New York City, he decided to stop frittering away money on classroom teachers. At first he huffed and puffed and tried to blow up seniority rights. He threatened to fire a whole lot of teachers. After Bloomberg failed to remove them, he was faced with firing new teachers, you know, the ones who aren't evil like those of us with experience. UFT made a deal to forestall firings, and Bloomberg simply didn't bother replacing teachers who left.

This might seem like a win-win, but it depends where you look and who you ask. For example, if you asked the folks at Tweed, the ones who place Children First, Always, they'll tell you this is the best of all possible worlds, we live in the best of all possible times, and our kids are in the best of all possible classrooms. I guess if you ignore Brexit, Trump, kids learning in closets, bathrooms, trailers, hallways and elsewhere, you might be in agreement.

But there's something that teachers on the ground see that the idealists haven't picked up on. The UFT Contract has not substantially changed on class size. In fact, it hasn't evolved in over half a century. But as far as I can see, maximum class size has pretty much become the norm. I have spent an awful lot of time with our 50-plus page master schedule this year. Classes are 34, 34, 34 and 34. Of course there are exceptions, particularly in gym and music, where they are 50, 50, and 50. And there are exceptions. You'll see 33, 32, 49 and 48. But they're now the exceptions.

Is it any wonder that we have thousands of oversized classes? I've spent all year fighting oversized classes in my school, and mine is far from the worst. Despite an arbitrator's ruling that all class sizes be fixed, when that proved to be too much trouble, we had a "compliance call." This resulted in extra teachers licensed in the subject area being assigned to assist. It's not ideal, but better than nothing. Yet still now, with only a handful of days left, not all classes are in compliance with even that modest demand.

At the UFT Executive Board, Unity members are outright indignant at any suggestion that our class size regs need improvement. They formed a committee, they say, they're discussing it, and that ought to be good enough for anyone. We gave up money for these class size regulations, they say, even though virtually no one in the room was teaching at the time these regulations were established.

Actually, the amount of money the Daily News bemoans is a relative drop in the bucket. If we're really gonna focus on what the public wants, we need look no further than the parent surveys, consistently ignored by the DOE. When offered the option, what public school parents want is lower class sizes. As a teacher, I couldn't agree more.

But what we end up getting from the people who muster the audacity to claim they put "Children First, Always," is education on the cheap. Pack 'em in, hope for the best, and blame the teachers if they fail. We have a cookie-cutter rubric to rate teachers and class size plays no part in it whatsoever.

Do you want to know who really places children first? First there are the parents. Those of us who actually send our kids to public schools care a lot about what goes on. Secondly, there are the teachers. Of course we care about learning conditions, if for no other reason than learning conditions are our teaching conditions. We get up every morning to serve these children, and for that we are treated like criminals by administrators and periodicals right up to the New York Times and our pussy-grabbing President.

If NYC wants value for its dollar, it will demand that newly-progressive Governor Cuomo cough up the money for class size reduction mandated by the CFE lawsuit, Otherwise, putting children first is nothing but more lip service.

It's good that NY will help students pay for school. It's certainly an improvement over students not being able to afford school. Personally, though, I don't trust Andrew Cuomo as far as I can throw him. I understand that he's not being openly hostile to teachers at the moment. Despite that, this is a man without convictions, a man with no moral center, a man who puts his finger up to the wind and goes whichever way blows toward the Presidency.

Andrew Cuomo, having watched the results of the 2016 Presidential election, has decided the way to go is becoming Bernie Sanders Lite. And lite he is, given that he ran for the Governorship on a platform of going after unions. He's taken all sorts of money from charter school enthusiasts, and had no problem speaking at one of the Moskowitz Academy rallies. He's imposed junk science ratings on every teacher in New York. He's introduced Tier 6 to government employees. He's imposed a tax cap that means municipalities can't raise their school budgets by more than 2% without a super majority, and bribes residents with a tax refund for failing to invest in their schools. He's also failed to comply with the CFE ruling to give sufficient funds to city schools.

Nonetheless, that's not what he wishes to be known for. Right now, he wants to make tuition free for a lot of students, and I believe he actually stood with Sanders somewhere. Of course, it's not precisely a free ride. You have to be in school full time and complete it within a prescribed time frame. And you have to live in New York for as long as you receive the scholarship. Cuomo has now relaxed those rules a little. If you're in the military, or if you face extreme hardship, you get a break. Of course, if you do have to pay the money back, it's interest free. That's a better deal than I got.

All in all it's a definite improvement. It will help a lot of kids who I serve. So you take this, along with the "moratorium" that Cuomo's imposed on certain 4-8 state tests, and you could conclude that he's a new man. Of course, you'd need to disregard Tier 6, APPR, CFE, the budgets, and the state reg that NYC has to pay rent for charters whether or not it approves them. You'd have to assume he isn't still bought and paid for by "Families for Excellent Schools" and all the various astroturf orgs that hate us and everything we stand for.

I'm afraid I can't make that assumption. What really bothers me is that UFT and NYSUT leadership will perhaps make it anyway and endorse him next election cycle. I think that would be a mistake. Just because a self-important, self-serving, disingenuous, morally bankrupt politician makes a few moves toward evident lucidity doesn't mean that he's changed.

Even before Cuomo started pretending not to hate us, we kind of gave in to him. Who can forget our failure to support Zephyr Teachout in the Working Families Primary? Who can forget our failure to support her in the Democratic Primary? And who can forget our failure to oppose Cuomo in the general? I was not a fan of his GOP opponent, who had pretty words for us but opposed the Triborough Amendment that kept our contracts in force after they expired. I did, however, vote for Green Howie Hawkins both times Cuomo ran.

All in all, the man is a loathsome reptile. He will turn on us at any moment he deems convenient. It would be an enormous mistake for us to ignore that. 

 I was pretty shocked that UFT leadership declined to join a pro-education march because they were trying to maintain a good relationship with Andrew Cuomo. To me, it feels a lot like cozying up with a scorpion. I mean, maybe it seems like a good idea at the time, but after a while you're gonna get stung.

Andrew Cuomo was the very first Democrat for whom I declined to vote. I had never heard of a Democrat whose platform entailed going after unions before. It didn't seem like a good idea to me so I voted for Green candidate Howie Hawkins. Cuomo was lucky to be running against frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic Carl Paladino that year, and seemed invulnerable for some time thereafter. His sheen is looking a little tarnished lately, but I don't buy it.

It appears, though, that UFT leadership does. After all, he's withdrawn his "principled" opposition to the millionaire's tax, and with the advent of Trump,  is trying to remake himself as Bernie Sanders Lite.

I got a recent email from a friend who pointed out several things with which our newly-minted progressive governor is still not precisely supporting us:

Elimination of foundation formula that drives more funding to NYC and other high needs districts--That doesn't sound so good, does it? I'm writing this from my chronically overcrowded building, where you're lucky to make it up the stairs in time for class. We're facing massive potential federal cuts, what with Betsy and her tax credits, and I'm not at all certain how we could endure cuts from one source, let alone two.

Raising of charter cap in NYC--Haven't we got enough buildings that have dumped libraries so as to accommodate Moskowitz-branded test-prep factories? Don't enough kids pee their pants while "slamming the test," or whatever the hell it is they do in those places? Haven't we already done enough to accommodate a two-tier system where Moskowitz does whatever the hell she pleases, refuses to agree to conditions everyone else takes for granted, and then trashes us for the crime of taking and keeping every NYC kid no matter what?

More funding for charter schools statewide per student--I don't know if you've thought about where the money for that will come from, but I have no doubt it will come from us. We'll be told to do more with less. Sadly, we're already doing that. There comes a point when you end up doing less with less, and if we haven't reached it yet, it's a miracle. If Andy's our friend, and this is how our friends treat us, who needs enemies?

More funding that we have to pay for their space in NYC if DOE does not co-locate them in our public school buildings--I don't suppose I have to tell you where that money is coming from. It's preposterous and outlandish that Bill de Blasio, even with so-called mayoral control, is compelled to support charters he, and we the people who elected him, do not even want. This rule came along three years ago, and a highly-placed source in NYSUT told me that Michael Mulgrew supported it. While I haven't got the proper equipment to read Mulgrew's mind or search his soul, I can say that UFT leadership did not raise a peep in protest when this happened.

All of which would be terrible for our schools--That's true and I don't personally trust Andrew Cuomo any farther than I can throw him. It's nice that he placed his finger up to the wind and determined that people in NY are very anti-Donald Trump. But it's not hard to determine that Andrew Cuomo is a self-important, self-serving, morally bankrupt windbag who does whatever suits his relentless ambition.

Andrew Cuomo is already running for President in 2020 and will say and do anything he deems necessary to suit that goal. Nonetheless, he's still the same scorpion he was when he first ran for governor, stated he would go after unions, and pretended to be a Democrat.

There were a few striking things that occurred on Monday night. The first was Howard Schoor’s joke about how popular the questions period is. This was at least the second time he made that crack. This is significant for a few reasons. One, of course, is that we high school reps are seen as a pain in the ass rather than contributing members. Contributing members are expected to sit quietly and never contribute anything. That was pretty clear later in the evening, after Jonathan Halabi asked a question, Schoor asked whether he had answered it, and a woman nearby remarked loudly, “YES, he DID!”

Questions, for Unity Caucus, are a nuisance to be avoided. This is very odd for me because I’m a teacher and questions are pretty much my stock in trade. Can you imagine a teacher in a classroom making jokes about questions? In any case, since the overwhelming majority of this board sits quietly, never asks questions, and never rises to say anything whatsoever, I can only assume that the meetings were quite peaceful before we arrived. Also I hear the food was much better. Monday at 3:30 I went to a ramen joint on Broadway so I wouldn’t have to eat the crappy sandwiches, but they tell me when the board was all Unity they had food that people actually wanted to eat.

Of course there are exceptions to the sit down and shut up rule. When someone on the dais puts out the bat signal, the Unity loyalists all rise to argue against things like effectively enforcing the class size provisions of the contract. The system works great, they say. They fixed it in my school, once, and therefore there is no problem systemwide. We suffered and gave up pay for the existing provision, 50 years ago when most of use were not even alive. We should drop this resolution, form a committee, invite no one from the high school Executive Board, and work out this issue.

So basically, we have dozens of people pissed off about the downgrade in catering, people who’d have been perfectly content to sit and do nothing. And that, I have to assume, is mostly what they did before we came around to ruin everything.

I asked about the resolution that would bring Regents grading back into schools. This resolution has been on the DA agenda twice and has not come up for a vote. It’s not a priority for leadership. More important, evidently, is to show a clip from SNL with Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer. It was pretty funny, but it was also on network TV as well as all over Facebook. Of course Mulgrew isn’t on Facebook, so maybe he assumes no one else is either. Who knows? Maybe they think it's a good idea to laugh at Trump, whose name Mulgrew wouldn't utter, as he does everything in his power to cripple American union.

The worst thing, though, was the response about whether or not UFT would support the pro-education March this Saturday. Mulgrew deigned to grace us with nine minutes of his precious time, and stressed over and over we have to focus on supporting education. Yet we are not officially supporting a pro-education march this Saturday in Manhattan. This is because AQE, the organization that sponsors it, ran an anti-Cuomo ad. The ad states, correctly, that Cuomo is very much in sync with Betsy DeVos. He has attacked the public education “monopoly,” as he calls it. He has also supported tax credits for private schools, back door vouchers, just like DeVos.

These are simple facts, demonstrated on the ad in Cuomo’s own words.



But we want to get our “seat at the table” and therefore we must not antagonize him. For some reason, UFT leadership believes Cuomo is our friend this week, and also seems to believe that he would not stab us in the back in a New York minute given half a chance.

It must be liberating to ignore history and hope for the best. From my vantage point as a working teacher it’s very tough to do that. I don’t believe a Cuomo changes his spots. I believe AQE is right on target, and I’ve seen Cuomo pimping for charters very recently. I don’t doubt for a moment he’d stand with Moskowitz again on request.

I’m willing and ready to listen, and I’m not afraid of questions. I’m afraid I don’t see those qualities in leadership, and I’m literally afraid that UFT will continue to not only make the same egregious errors that left us adrift in Trumplandia, but also double down on them and ensure, at the very least, that it takes us longer to crawl our way out.

We now have another evaluation system, the third or fourth in as many years. Who can even keep track? There's a handy-dandy UFT explanation, with which lowly teachers like me are supposed to discern what the hell is actually going on. In many ways, it raises more questions than it answers, but you have to expect as much from a system that's been essentially made up of whole cloth, that's never been researched or tested anywhere.

The Good--Test scores reflect little more than zip code and percentage of special needs. Therefore, when we forcefully inject test scores into teacher evaluation, we condemn those with large numbers of ELLs, IEPs, and various issues to bad ratings. The option of portfolios, or project-based learning or whatever, while it has its flaws, may prove beneficial.  This may work better for teachers I know who got acceptable ratings by supervisors but were dragged down via test scores. Mulgrew can stand on his pedestal and preach of how rarely this happens, but if you're the one to whom it happens, that's cold comfort indeed. As someone who represents them, I can tell you that statistics mean little or nothing to people whose careers are under attack for no good reason. The fewer people caught in this miserable trap, the better.

The Bad--Again, this system has never been tested anywhere. There is no research whatsoever, anywhere, to suggest there is any validity to it. We have no idea what will happen to teachers like those I mentioned above (or whether it will adversely effect those who previously did well). I  certainly hope fewer of them are caught in the junk science web. But even if that happens, it doesn't argue to the validity of this system. It only means it sucks a little less than the other one.

UFT failed utterly to address a major issue with teachers I speak to on a regular basis, to wit, the number of observations.  Even in my school, one in which most administrators are not insane, teachers live in dread of the random drive-by. For those with administrators who are out of their frigging minds, it's a nightmare. Who knows what they see, since objective reality plays no part in it? When 12 hands go up, why do they see only two? Will they now act because you objected to the counseling memo placed in your file for no good reason? Who knows? It's the same crapshoot it was under the old S/ U system, Danielson means nothing, and even if you have incontrovertible video evidence you can't effectively object to the fictional aspect until and unless you're up for 3020a.

Fewer observations would not only relieve some of the terror of UFT members, but would also give administrators some incentive not to be assholes. If you observed two classes and found them to be OK, you'd be finished. If you wanted to be an asshole and ruin someone's life for no reason, a better system would require you to do more observations and more work. It would require you to do more writing. In my experience, supervisors who are incompetent at writing often need to assert themselves via bad observations. A system that required more work to screw people might dissuade that.

The Ugly--I call it the "UFT Leadership's" system because working teachers had no say in it. That's a disgrace. It behooves a union, particularly one whose dues will soon be optional, to consider member voices.

I have no idea who conceived of this system. I don't believe it was Michael Mulgrew because he cannot even sit through an Executive Board meeting, let alone hear new ideas or freely discuss them with elected high school Executive Board members. What I do know is that neither the Executive Board nor the Delegate Assembly, let alone rank and file, got to vote on these matters. I also know that no one who hasn't signed a loyalty oath had any part in crafting this plan. We can therefore never know whether anything but self-interest had any part in the decision to accept it.

We also now know the utterly predictable reaction to evaluation systems from our enemies. They wasted no time in getting their message out. From the Daily News:

"This is a scheme to rate every teacher effective, cooked up by Mayor de Blasio's biggest donors and it's a major setback for students," said StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis.

Of course, like everything that comes out of her well-compensated mouth, this is utter nonsense. But it's important because when StudentsFirstNY, and DFER, and Moskowitz agent Families for Excellent Schools, and all the other crabgrass orgs move suitcases full of cash into the campaign coffers of tinhorn politicians like Governor Andrew Cuomo, they move him to once again pretend he cares about public education. This, in fact, is why he called the first evaluation system "baloney" and pushed a new one down the throats of our spineless Heavy Hearted Assembly. The only reason we may get away without the idiotic "outside observers" is because of the determination and persistence of the opt-out movement (which earns no respect at all from UFT leadership).

So the risk, if this helps teachers at all, is that yet another system comes down the pike to rate teachers poorly. This appears to have played no part whatsoever in UFT Unity's game, which never considers the long-term.

I guess they're happy high up on the 14th floor of 52 Broadway, doing whatever it is they do up there. But I have no idea how they're planning to pay the rent if they don't start considering those of us who do the actual work day after day.

I've been paying into COPE for a number of years now, at five bucks a paycheck. For a while, the UFT was hanging tough against the evaluation system. I was pretty happy they were finally showing a little backbone, so I invited a COPE rep to our school. He showed up over an hour late, leaving me to pretty much improvise our meeting. While he only managed to sign me and one of my delegates, he did field a few questions. One was when the hell are we gonna get a raise?

He said that Michael Mulgrew was very smart, and not to worry. He said that we would get our raise, because without it Bloomberg could not get an evaluation system. This statement hung with my members, and as you may recall, Mulgrew dumped the evaluation system into the hands of John King some time before we got a contract.  Members still come up to me asking to bring that guy back so they can throw stuff at him. I have thus far declined to do so.

But there is a vote on a Constitutional Convention coming up next year, and I think it's important we oppose that. I have searched for an organization that opposes it and found none. So the only game in town is COPE. I had been inclined to do a drive in my school at the end of January but my reservations get stronger each and every week.

Of course there are always the good folks who run NYSUT, who buy tables at Cuomo fundraisers, who give to Flanagan and his GOP buds. You know, the ones who said they opposed Common Core when they ran, but then said it was this or anarchy, the folks who said they opposed Cuomo but failed utterly to do so, the folks who said they opposed APPR but failed to do that too. In fact, the only legislative victory they can claim is the one that ensures them double pensions so they don't screw themselves the way they screwed Lee Cutler.

That was kind of a constant. And then, of course, there is their odd vision of strategic planning, which included pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton when she was running against Bernie Sanders. A lot of us wondered why we were endorsing someone who had the temerity to lecture us about "public charter schools," among other things. There is the massive and chronic failures to endorse a winning mayoral candidate.

I have a lot of friends around the state who swear they'll never put another dime into COPE. They're horrified by the unresponsiveness of NYSUT leadership, among other things. As a New York City high school teacher, I find it even more objectionable because I have no vote or voice in NYSUT. Why should my money go to fund them, and how can I ask my members to invest their hard-earned pay into an organization that doesn't even pretend to represent them?

The turning point, for me, was when I brought a class size resolution to the UFT and they essentially told me, my school,  tens of thousands of my colleagues, and 1.1 million students to go screw ourselves. I mean, if their objection was to the clause about the arbitrator, as they said, they could have moved to strike it. Clearly they objected to the entire thing, and nothing reinforced that to me more than their repetition of class size matters, but. Once someone says but you can safely disregard  everything and anything that precedes it.

Bottom line is I absolutely agree that we ought to stop the constitutional convention. But if anyone can screw up a campaign to stop it, it's the leadership of NYSUT and the United Federation of Teachers. Still, it's the only game in town as far as financing the anti-Constitutional Convention campaign.

So I'm on the fence, and man it can be painful sitting on a fence. What would you do if you were me?

Given the volume of outlandish and contradictory statements from the Unity loyalty oath signers, it was very hard to take notes quietly at the DA the other day. Mulgrew opened with sexist statements about Betsy DeVos, calling her, "our own beauty," before launching into ridicule of her name. This mirrored the UFT Unity Twitter feed, which took down a tweet or two after being called on them right here on this blog. You can still see what they said, though. (In fairness, there was later a PowerPoint with actual information.)

Mulgrew then drew us into his dream world, effusively praising the new evaluation system which, alas, has not only never been tested, but also does not yet even exist.  Mulgrew, who has never taught a single class under any evaluation system he negotiated, spoke with complete confidence about "authentic" measures that would be used to evaluate our teaching. He is no longer using the phrase "growth model," but continues to contend that growth can be measured via portfolios or project-based learning.

Remember that this is the same Mulgrew who boasted of taking part in writing the law that brought all this nonsense upon us in the first place. This is the same Mulgrew that called the system wonderful when Reformy John King created it, with his blessing, the same Mulgrew who ridiculed those of us, including Diane Ravitch and the American Statistical Association, who labeled it junk science. This is the same Mulgrew who boasted of getting every aspect of Danielson in as opposed to the seven or eight Bloomberg wanted, and the same Mulgrew who later boasted of getting it reduced to seven or eight, like Bloomberg wanted, after he was gone. This is the same Mulgrew who boasted of getting artifacts in, and then of getting them out.

Mulgrew is now saying, even though he deemed test-score ratings wonderful when they came out, that we will not use tests to rate teachers. He has finally concluded, as many of us did long ago, that this would result in teaching to the test. He says, though, that some teachers love being rated on tests. It's really remarkable that we're basically advocating a crap shoot because it's that risky to have administrators evaluate us. With such an absolute lack of faith in the ability of administrators, you'd think they'd want to do something about that, but they refuse to move on our resolution addressing it. Somehow it's OK to shout to the skies about how unfair they are, but wildly undiplomatic to take general action on it. 

Again, there is no research or practice to support anything Mulgrew says. I have no idea whatsoever how projects or portfolios will be rated or who will rate them. Mulgrew spoke derisively of those who ridicule us that we will actually grade the work ourselves. On the other hand, unlike Mulgrew, I'm a teacher and I actually spend hours grading things. I wonder, if we are not grading the work, who is? Is it the supervisors, the ones who he wants to make sure don't rate us? Is it the geniuses up in Albany? People from other schools? Space aliens? Who knows? Mulgrew, right on the heels of the most catastrophic failure in our union's history, continues to speak with total confidence, and we are expected to trust him absolutely and hope for the best.

Despite the punitive evaluation system pushed by Governor Cuomo, Mulgrew says he continues to support us. It's obvious to me, at least, that Cuomo is a creature of convenience who will do or say anything at any moment to advance his own personal ambition. Mulgrew mentioned in passing extending the moratorium he claims we are responsible for, but which actually was put in place to try to appease the statewide opt-out movement. Though Mulgrew claims to be meeting with parents, and I hear he is, he then said that it was dangerous for more than 5% of New Yorkers to refuse the test. This is no different from what he has been saying since opt-out appeared.

We then came to the discussion of the Resolution for Respect for All People. The history of this resolution is pretty interesting, to me at least. I wanted to jointly initiate such a resolution with Unity, so rather than write it, I proposed it to leadership. They said they'd get back to me. Days later, at an Executive Board meeting, where I rose to promote this idea, they had the resolution already written, with no input from us. (So much for trying to cooperate with Unity.)

This notwithstanding, the resolution was very good. With a few adjustments from Ashraya Gupta of MORE, all of the high school reps supported it enthusiastically. The next day, though, instead of crediting Donald Trump with his racism, bigotry, and misogyny, it was edited to attribute this to "the Presidential Election" instead. This was, of course, absurd (and still is).

Peter Lamphere of MORE rose at the DA to restore Trump's name. Mulgrew, ever the student of Robert's Rules, called on several Unity Caucus members to speak against it and never once asked for a voice of support, and it wasn't as though there weren't any. I saw several close to me with hands raised, ready to speak. One Unity member said it was obvious this was about Trump, so there was no need to add his name. LeRoy Barr, though, said we couldn't place his name because we were trying to get everyone on board, including Trump supporters.

I have to say Barr is a gifted speaker, passionate and persuasive. I saw him speak in Minnesota at the AFT Convention and he was great. Here, he spoke off the cuff and was just as effective. Yet he contradicted the other loyalty oath signers by saying we didn't want to alienate the Trump supporters. So which is it? Is it so obvious that we're talking about Trump that we need not name him, or is it important that we refrain from speaking his name so that the Trump voters continue paying dues once He Who Shall Not Be Named makes the United States a "Right to Work" nation? There is, of course, a third possibility--that UFT leadership thinks Trump voters are too stupid to attribute the racism to Trump. Maybe Unity assumes they will think it was Hillary or Bernie Sanders who advocated grabbing women "by the pussy." Who knows what goes on in those top-secret Unity meetings?

All I know is that they rise to support whatever they're told to. I was pretty surprised when Barr touted debate at the Executive Board as a reason to stifle it at the DA. While I did appreciate his willingness to enable it, and while that certainly sets him apart from Mulgrew, who can't even be bothered to sit through his own Executive Board meetings, the fact is the result of any Executive Board debate is a foregone conclusion. There are seven of us elected by UFT high schools against the will of leadership, and 95 loyalty oath signers who must vote and speak as told.

There is no logical reason to withhold criticism of the execrable and anti-democratic Donald Trump. However, anti-democracy is a quality that Trump and UFT Unity share. This, sadly, is just one of the qualities very likely to result in our losing on the NY Constitutional Convention, and maybe the pensions for which we've worked our entire careers. Another is our dogged insistence on falling down well before anyone has even pushed us.

The very worst quality of UFT Unity leadership, though, is that they just bet the farm on a candidate who stood for nothing, lost the farm, and still can't bring themselves to take clear and principled stands on issues that, debate notwithstanding, aren't even debatable. 

I may be cheap, but I am for sale. That's what I learned after unfolding one of those check mailers the other day. My village, Freeport, respected Governor Cuomo's tax cap. We raised the school budget by two percent, or whatever the limit is. Therefore, I supposed, every home owner in my town got a similar check.

I guess we could all jump up and conclude, "Wow, that Andrew Cuomo is one heckuva guy. He just gave me money, and I like money." And yet he's the first guy who got me to stop voting blindly for Democrats, as he ran for the first time on a platform of going after unions. I actually think, if he'd been fairer with unions, that I'd have more than just 240 bucks, so I'm not all that happy.

So what to do? Do I sent the 240 bucks back? I don't think that would be an effective form of protest. For one thing, it would just seep back into his Evil Empire. He'd probably find a way to funnel it to Eva Moskowitz, and she'd use it to bus hapless children to Albany. That's not gonna work.

Should I go all consumer and put it back into the economy? Shop local? Maybe I could get all my shoes fixed at the shoe repair shop that's miraculously survived. But my shoes aren't broken, so what's the point in that?

What I really wonder is whether these checks will help soften the loathing and disgust with which people view Andrew Cuomo. He's already being touted as a 2020 Presidential candidate. Personally, I'd hope the Democrats would go with someone who actually favors working people, as opposed to a union-basher. Isn't that the Republicans' job? Shouldn't they sue him for pretending to be a Republican? Should we sue him for pretending to be a Democrat?

Actually, Cuomo is neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Like Michael Bloomberg before him, he's a raving opportunist, doing and saying absolutely anything he thinks will promote his endless and bottomless ambition. That doesn't sound like a winning formula, but given Donald Trump is President-elect, it might just be the ticket.

With the "ethics-shmethics" philosophy of the incoming Trump administration, I see it as unlikely they will do a big push to end corruption. Of course, the Donald could view Cuomo as a rival and therefore go after him to preclude competition, but somehow I'm pessimistic over the possibility of his sharing that cell with his buddies Skelos and Silver.

What do you think the appropriate disposition of 240 Cuomo bucks would be?

I was a little upset at the AFT's early endorsement of Hillary. I had one or two issues with candidate Clinton. But they did a "scientific survey" that asked who knows whom who knows what, and that was it.

Of course no one asked me or anyone I know, but I don't travel in the circles Randi or Mike do. I'm just a lowly teacher who talks to other lowly teachers, you know, the kind who get rated by Danielson and live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Michael Mulgrew, like every UFT officer, has never experienced that, so why should he worry?

Anyway, we all know how the Hillary Project came out. We now face a GOP President, Congress, Senate, and any moment now, Supreme Court. This last detail has not escaped the attention of UFT leadership. It appears that, while Friedrichs did not prevail, some copycat will. This will make the United States of America effectively a "right to work" state.

Now "right to work" is a misnomer. Everyone has the right to work. It's just that, in a union shop, you may be required to actually pay into the group that negotiates for you. What "right to work"  really means is "right to not pay dues." It's a right to weaken union, and a right to weaken collective bargaining. In Wisconsin, it's crippled union, as was its intention.

NY State is a bastion of liberalism, more or less, and it is possible that legislation could circumvent it. Of course it's questionable whether our esteemed governor, who ran on a platform of going after unions, would support it. But it's possible with the urging of UFT and NYSUT (among others), NY State could pass legislation that says everyone must pay union dues.

The thing is, there's a bit of a timing issue here. Next year a Constitutional Convention will appear on the NY ballot, and it's imperative we defeat that. Otherwise, folks like our buddy Andrew Cuomo could open up our pensions and make us all explore cat food diets into our golden years. It would be really unfortunate if the two things were to overlap and our enemies could twist our support for union into a campaign against our pensions. Of course that may not be a problem if the Friedrichs copycat doesn't rear its head in the next 12 months.

But there's another problem, and it's more fundamental. That problem is the insidious nature of the loyalty oath powered United Federation of Teachers. We are not an activist-driven union, and in fact we are the polar opposite. A full three fourths of our membership deem it a waste of time to even vote in union elections. Most think about union only when it's time to get a pair of glasses every other year. UFT hasn't done a boots on the ground activity in over a year, and even those are mostly populated by loyalty oath signers shoring up patronage points toward keeping their trips or jobs.

So now leadership has concrete concerns about what to do if they lose the dues checkoff. Predictably, their instincts are completely off-base, trying not to alienate Donald Trump supporters in the ranks. The thinking appears to be, if we're nice to them, maybe they'll volunteer to pay dues when the time comes. That is, of course, ridiculous. It's yet another step in the direction of not taking chances, the same direction that brought us the spectacular and devastating loss of the Presidential election.

Hillary did not stand for universal health care. She did not stand for a living wage for all Americans. She did not stand for free college tuition, and even advanced the preposterous argument that such a move would subsidize the children of Donald Trump (as though they'd even consider state schools). The AFT supported these positions, and no less than President Randi Weingarten ridiculed Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros" in tweets that stereotyped us as thugs. How primitive of us to want better lives for Americans, to want our brothers and sisters to enjoy the same rights as citizens of most non third-world countries.

UFT is but one local, but it's 28% of NYSUT and controls 33% of NYSUT votes. NYSUT is but one state, but it's the largest delegation in AFT. So make no mistake, we are the tail that wags the AFT dog. Our unwillingness to take stands, to take risks, to mobilize our ranks is deliberate. It concentrates power in the hands of the very few, and they are not gonna relinquish it any time soon. NYPD and FDNY may find the overwhelming majority of their members voluntarily pay dues, but that won't happen with us. The people who sit on the 14th floor at 52 Broadway aren't judged by Danielson and have little empathy for those of us who are.

The fact that they are too cowardly to even utter the name of Donald Trump in a resolution condemning the bigotry he's engendered just underlines how utterly out of touch they are. This bodes ill for our survival as a union. We have a President who urges us to get on social media, but can't be bothered with it himself. We have a President who doesn't bother to answer email from chapter leaders. We have a President who can't even be bothered to sit through his own Executive Board meetings. He walks in whenever he feels like it if he shows up at all. Then gives a little talk, and leaves without even listening to anyone else. How much more out of touch can you get?

If there is any chance of our surviving in a Right to Work United States of America, it's time for a sea change in our sleepy and complacent leadership. Otherwise, it's clear the only thing they value are those cushy offices on the 14th floor. I wonder if they'll be able to pay for them with a 70% drop in dues revenue.

 I go to a lot of meetings. I go to them in my school all the time. I'm on committees. If anyone in my school is in trouble, so am I. And of course I go to regular school meetings. I am a real meeting guy, I guess, for better or worse, and I go to a lot of meetings outside my building too.

So anyway, last night  I was at a meeting.  The topic was COPE  (the optional fund through which members can voluntarily contribute to UFT and NYSUT political action).  A woman got up and started comparing COPE to medical insurance. Now I'm gonna let you in on a secret. I often hear things I've heard before, and I don't always pay close attention at meetings unless I'm taking notes. But my ears really perked up at that. She follows up by saying if you don’t pay into COPE you might not have medical insurance. I’m only slowly processing this line of thought when the woman opens her mouth again.

Now she says she knows how hard it is to get people to give money. She says boy, if I knew how to get money out of people I could've made a lot more than I did back when I was a teacher. Now she's got my full attention. I'm thinking gee, it's great that you no longer have to get by on some crappy teacher salary, like all the tens of thousands of teachers (among others) who pay to have you do whatever it is we pay you to do. Doubless it can really pay off to sign a loyalty oath and become a UFT employee. Gee, I wonder why you aren't good at getting people to give you money.

Then she goes on, talking about the people who only give 25 cents per paycheck. 25 cents was a lot back in 1980, she says, although I question whether she was even alive in 1980. (I was, and it doesn't sound like that much to me.) Now I'm wondering where she was in 2014, when she was certainly alive, and all of us lowly teachers were being told to wait until 2020 for money we earned in 2010. I thought that money had really decreased in value, particularly since I was not able to use the $40,000 NYC owed me to buy the car I got in 2014. But enough of my troubles. After all, I live on that measly teacher salary that the young woman had so handily surpassed.

It's ironic, because I'd been actually thinking about collecting for COPE. My friends tell me I shouldn't, you know, because Andy Pallotta uses it to buy tables at Cuomo fund raisers, because when Dick Iannuzzi curtailed such usage both UFT and NYSUT Unity rose up to toss him and his loyal friends out of office. Because COPE supported Serphin Maltese, who had a hand in breaking not one but two Catholic school unions. Because we supported Governor Pataki, who thanked us by vetoing improvements to the Taylor Law. Because we gave money to Flanagan, who sponsored a bill to remove LIFO from NYC teachers only. You know, stuff like that.

I give to COPE. I started when the UFT seemed to be holding tough on APPR. In fact, I invited someone from UFT to my school to speak to a meeting. He showed up an hour late and managed to sign up only me and one of our delegates. But he told us that Michael Mulgrew was very smart, and that we would get our raise and contract. Why? Because otherwise Bloomberg couldn't have his APPR.

When we got the APPR without the contract or the raise, many members approached me and asked me to bring the guy back. They wanted to shout him down. They wanted to beat him up. They made suggestions unfit for a family blog. Anyway, from that day on, I've given five bucks from each paycheck to COPE. Sometimes I question what it's used for, but I figure as a chapter leader, and as a blogger with the odd disparaging word here and there, I need to keep up my street cred. (Or something.)

Now, though, I'm thinking about the 2017 NY State Constitutional Convention, you know, the one where they can rewrite all the rules and stop paying our pensions and make us all eat cat food and stuff. I'm thinking maybe COPE may be a good way to fight that. I had been thinking about having a drive and asking for support from my members. Then this woman comes along and makes a quite unintentional statement about union values.

Anyway, the woman finishes her speech, and there we are. Five dollar COPE cards for everyone, someone declares, and they are passed out near and far. I go back to text a friend about what I've just seen. I am reprimanded for not filling out the card. I already give, I protest, but evidently it's some kind of activity to create enthusiasm and everyone is supposed to fill out the card whether they give or not. Screw that, I decide, and go back to texting.

The next topic on the agenda is repetitive paperwork. The people who just demanded I fill in a card for no reason whatsoever are lecturing me on how principals make people do redundant paperwork, and how it's totally and utterly unacceptable.

In fairness, there was also a very good speaker on special education who spoke and answered questions very well. You know where I would rather have been for the rest of the meeting? Home playing with my dog.

Chalkbeat writes about the "authentic" learning standards pushed by UFT President Michael Mulgrew. I am not at all sure there's any validity to judging teachers by student work, be it tests, portfolios, projects, or whatever, and I've seen no evidence supporting this presumption. In fact, there's a lot of evidence pointing otherwise, including that of the American Statistical Association, which suggests that teachers affect student work by a factor somewhere between 1 to 14%.

When the junk science rating law was passed, Mulgrew boasted of having a hand in writing it. The official position was that we were very smart to place this in law, as it would now be firmly in place (proven wrong when Cuomo and the Heavy Hearts made it worse). It was supposedly a good thing, a counter against crazy supervisors. I know multiple teachers whose ratings have been dragged down by this junk science, some all the way down to ineffective. (In fact, I know one who got crappy ratings from a UFT rat squad person, and much better ones from a working supervisor. That's ironic, because the rat squad was supposed to be a check against crazy supervisors.)

What makes someone want to be a supervisor? Well, there are those who want to help. Maybe some principal respects a certain teacher and asks that this person get trained and contribute. Maybe some people fall into supervisory positions and catch up to keep the jobs. Of course, some people were recruited by Joel Klein's Leadership Academy and were trained to actively go after working teachers. You read a lot about these supervisors in the NY Post, about how they're removed from one position after another, and are given new positions either in schools or shuffling papers at Tweed.

Then there are those who want to "get out of the classroom." In my humble opinion, anyone who wants to do that is unfit to lead. The classroom is the center of school activity. It is where the most important work takes place. Anyone who can't or doesn't want to do that ought not to be rating teachers. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people like that opt to take supervisory courses and are now running around with iPads passing judgment on those of us who actually do the work. I have seen incontrovertible video evidence of supervisors saying any damn thing they like, whether or not it actually took place in the classroom.

On the other hand, supervisors who are not insane can be supportive and reasonable in a system that is (or is not) supportive and reasonable. I'd like to see a focus on hiring and retaining such people, as I think that would lead to retention of teachers and more effective education of students. When I read Carol Burris I know she's smart and capable. She was a teacher, she was a principal, and now she's a writer and movement leader. You will not see that from any supervisor who checks off boxes and settles personal vendettas via teacher ratings.

Mulgrew's intentions notwithstanding, the issue is not which variety of junk science we use to rate teachers. We can jiggle forms of junk science but it won't fundamentally improve the morale of rank and file. No matter which form of junk science we use, crazy incompetent supervisors can jettison anyone they choose. I've seen brilliant, inspired teachers walk because they simply could not take the pressure of working for people who were nuts.

If UFT leadership wishes to really support us, they need to take a bold stand against unproven nonsense of any stripe. You can't just jiggle around nonsense and hope that today's nonsense is better than yesterday's. At the UFT Executive Board, MORE/ New Action proposed moving to get rid of incompetent supervisors. Leroy Barr likened our proposal to a scatter gun, which I assume to mean would attack supervisors indiscriminately.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. If our proposal was not specific enough, let's adjust and tailor it. We could start with little things. Barr mentioned PINI, principals in need of improvement. Let's restore and expand that. Let's re-open the Apples and Worms section in NY teacher and tell members who is and is not doing a good job.

Let's insist that supervisors be not insane. Let's stand together and show working teachers we have their backs. Alternatively, we can continue painting and repainting the lipstick on the pig that is APPR.

If UFT Unity doesn't like our proposal, it behooves them to work with us to find a workable alternative. If not, we'll know that crazy vindictive supervision is not a priority for them.