It looks like Governor Cuomo's plan of painting targets on the backs of all teachers has not worked out as well as planned in NY State. Evidently there is a shortage, and to ease it, the geniuses in Albany are relaxing standards. Their thinking, evidently, is people from other states will be anxious for the chance to judged by Governor Cuomo's matrix, and potentially be guilty until proven innocent. After all, there aren't many opportunities like that in the United States.

Another point of view, of course, is that Governor Cuomo is bought and paid for by Eva Moskowitz's BFFs at Families for Excellent Schools, and that he pretty much jumps at their beck and call. Maybe that's why he was so happy to appear at Ms. Moskowitz's field trip, you know, the one where she boarded all her students on buses and dragged them to Albany to lobby for her own political cause. If you or I did that, we'd be fired. But of course we didn't, so that's not why there's a teacher shortage.

There's a teacher shortage because we're tired of being used as punching bags. We're tired of being vilified in the press, and by every tinhorn politician that takes suitcases of cash from DFER and FES. We're tired of hearing people like Cuomo enact rating plans to fire teachers, call them "baloney" when they fail to fire enough teachers, and revise them for the express purpose of firing more. We're tired of being judged by test scores which the American Statistical Association correctly asserts have little or no validity.

We're tired of being told the only way to teach is like this, like that, or like whatever Bill Gates wakes up and decides children other than his own must be taught. We're tired of endless testing and being forced to teach nonsense that does not help our children. We're tired of underlying assumptions by people with no credentials or credibility that the children we serve lack "grit" and must be treated with "rigor."

I'm particularly tired of so-called leaders who create problems and then try to solve them in ways that don't address the problems at all. When I started teaching, pay was particularly low. The city didn't bother addressing the huge disparity in pay between the city and surrounding suburbs. Instead, there were ads in the subways and on buses to try to attract teachers. There were intergalactic recruiting campaigns. It turned out, though, that people from other countries and universes just couldn't afford to live in NYC.

And then, of course, there is the issue of quality. I was one of the people who saw a subway ad and took a teaching gig. I had no idea what I was doing. On my ninth day of teaching, my supervisor wrote me up and said I had no idea what I was doing. But I had told her I had no idea what I was doing when she hired me. To this day I wonder why she expected more. She wrote that I should try to be more "heuristic" when I taught. Naturally that cleared up everything for me. Doubtless with excellent advice like that every teacher will become instantly excellent, no matter how much they raise or lower the standards.

Cuomo is an empty suit, with loyalty to no one but Cuomo. He just said he won't support his party in its effort to retake the State Senate. This is they guy Hillary's people have representing the DNC for New York. He has no moral center whatsoever, does whatever the people who pay him say, and happily supports whatever the privatizers tell him to. And, oh, if the people rise up and say screw your ridiculous tests, he can always make some empty gesture, like a partial moratorium, and say, "See? I care what you think, sort of."

This is step one in addressing a teacher shortage created by Albany. There will be more. But until they start listening to teachers and learning why people no longer pursue this job, they will be empty gesture after empty gesture, likely helping no one but those who see education as an opportunity for profit.

Sean Crowley, my brother blogger from Buffalo, has a great column about how educational leaders are popped into place with no public input. A secondary point he makes is about accountability. This is the word we invariably hear when insane systems are initiated. Why should teachers be judged by test scores? Accountability. Why must every kid, no matter where he or she comes from, get the same test? Accountability. Why is our tenure and union under frontal assault? Accountability.

Reformy politicians love accountability. If you didn't know better, you'd think it warmed the remote nether regions of their ice-cold hearts. You'd think they care about the progress of our poor underprivileged impoverished children. You'd think that because that, in fact, is what they say when they pimp common core, value-added ratings, and firing as many teachers as possible.

But here's the thing--accountability does not, in fact, mean taking responsibility for real problems. It simply means passing the buck. If the problem in the United States is that children are not getting high enough scores on standardized tests (and it isn't, by the way), you can say, "See? Those lazy teachers aren't doing their jobs! They're sitting around and reading the newspaper while our children are suffering and failing!" That's what a whole lot of editorial and op-ed writers would have you believe.

The problem, though, is not in our stars, nor in ourselves. The problem is in our communities. Despite Governor Cuomo's valuable lip service that some workers in NY State will receive $15 an hour in a few years, a whole lot of people are just not making in in this country. When two parents work 200 hours a week each and still can't make ends meet, they don't have a whole lot of time for parenting. Unfortunately, the people who fund reformies like Andrew Cuomo are profiting enormously from low wage workers. Uber-reformy Whitney Tilson of DFER has no problems hyping and profiting from the likes of Walmart and McDonalds.

But the race to the bottom in American employment is in fact a huge factor in why kids don't do well on tests. Parents who haven't got a minute to read with their kids, who haven't got a minute to read themselves, who haven't got a minute to visit schools or teachers have serious problems. And the very reformies who vilify teachers not only contribute to this problem, but also directly profit from it. And as if that weren't enough, they've now got their fat grubby paws in charters, cyber charters, and various other schemes to divert even more money from those of us unimaginative enough to have to work for a living.

In America, we don't need circuses, because they're everywhere. Over a dozen GOP candidates debate and not one addresses minimum wage. They stand there arguing over how to defund Planned Parenthood and feign outrage when Donald Trump makes some juvenile crack about one of Fox's bleached blond talking heads. They present us corporate funded union-busters and rail about President Obama's program to bring health care to more people. You might leave one of those debates outraged over Obamacare rather than the fact that every other industrialized country offers its citizens health care as a matter of course.

Reformies love accountability only because they can dump it on us. By blaming unionized teachers for all the world's woes, they are held totally blameless for their miserable and perpetual failure to help working Americans. And for all the crocodile tears they shed for our children, they will soon grow up to be working Americans, and thus shunned and ignored by those who claim now to be their advocates.

And who is it who actually spends time and energy on these children?

That would be us, the educators. The tinhorn politicians and tone-deaf op-ed writers who vilify and libel us for a living profit off of the misery of those we serve every day. We can't afford to let them make us miserable too. It's our job to tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts Frank Bruni, Andy Cuomo, Arne Duncan, or any of the other demagogues who infect our media.

When any one of them or their ilk wishes to actually be accountable rather than toss the word around, it will be a miracle akin to the one pictured above. 

That was the term then-President Nixon used to describe his supporters. They weren't all those dirty hippies protesting the Vietnam War. They were the good, solid Americans who never spoke out and put up with whatever nonsense the President saw fit. And it was indeed a few years before they rose up and tossed him out on his presidential keester.

For teachers and unionists facing uncertainty, there's another question. What will it take for us to rise up in significant enough numbers to have an impact? Union has been on the wane since Saint Reagan busted the air traffic controllers, the only union with the peculiar lack of foresight to have supported him. The trend has been exacerbated as we've elected demagogues even in states noted for union support.

Here in NY, for some reason, we elected Andrew Cuomo, a man who clearly has no principled interest beyond the advancement of Andrew Cuomo. I don't know a single person who was enthusiastic about him, but people who bother to actually speak politics with me are not necessarily members of the silent majority. The silent majority sits quietly as our rights are eviscerated.

Andrew Cuomo shocked me four years ago by running on a platform of going after unions. As a lifelong Democrat, I labored under the misconception that we supported union and Republicans opposed. The new paradigm, I guess, is for absolutely everyone to oppose those of us who actually work for a living. I was amazed, yesterday, to see a television commercial boasting new business in NY pays no property, corporate or sales tax. No wonder there's no money left for working people.

So the question, again--how bad must things become before the silent majority speaks out? In our own union, the ATR teachers have finally begun to organize, against the wishes of the leadership that very publicly approved not only their second tier due-process, but also denied them a functional chapter. Leadership doesn't want this chapter--clearly their votes will be less reliable of those of retirees. No one's sending Mike Mulgrew thank you cards for second-tier due process rights, and his punchiness over Common Core does nothing to help ATRs leadership has sold out when other unions had no givebacks.

The best model for organization is Chicago, but there are factors there that really differ from those in NYC. For one thing, their equivalent of ATR teachers are eventually subject to being fired. Though ours are placed in a rough position, UFT has managed to hold the fort on at least that aspect. I doubt many non-ATR teachers realize how demoralizing being an ATR can be, and the fact that they're kept on payroll may make people think it's not such a threat. But we are all ATRs, and it's sad leadership doesn't know that, and sadder we don't realize it.

Another significant factor that differentiates Chicago from NYC is that retirees in Chicago do not vote. Here in fun city, people unaffected by new contracts form the majority of those deciding who negotiates them. I believe retirees should have input on retiree issues and working teachers should have input on working teacher issues. It's nice that UFT has a Florida HQ, but it's ridiculous that more than half of UFT vote comes from retirees.

On bigger picture issues, we have a governor who's publicly threatened to break what he calls the public school monopoly. It's amazing we have an ostensible Democrat governor and he uses such extremist terms. Of course he sends his own kids to private school and happily takes money from DFER, so privatizing public schools means little to him. Is that enough to wake up the over 80% of teachers who can't be bothered even to select their own leadership?

How bad will things have to get before we wake up? Only time will tell.

I don't think I've made it a great secret that, along with Diane Ravitch and others, I support Howie Hawkins for Governor. Cuomo is an ogre, an abomination, a bizarro version of his dad. He's said public schools are a monopoly that needs to be broken. He's taken money from DFER, from charters, and shows no evidence that he's actually thought about anything except which side would give him the most cash.

His Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, opposes the Triborough Amendment that kept our contract in place even as Bloomberg stubbornly refused to grant us the compensation increases he'd granted virtually everyone else. He supports vouchers, and has criticized Cuomo for not passing tax credits for those who attend private schools. Despite his lip service to being a public education supporter, no one could support public education and have such policies.

Howie Hawkins is a working person, and not only supports working people, but also speaks in favor of working teachers. In fact, his running mate is a former teacher. I realize he's not likely to win, but we'll be strengthening the Green Party and giving it better ballot placement by giving it as many votes as possible. Given the Working Families Party has sold out working families by suppporting corporate Cuomo instead of brilliant Zephyr Teachout, the Green Party is the only option for those of us who really believe that working people deserve a fair shake.

I will never, ever vote for another anti-public education candidate again. The first time Barack Obama ran, I voted for him despite reservations. He proved my reservations were not only well-founded, but not nearly strong enough. He took the odious education policies of GW Bush and pushed them into overdrive. The second time he ran, I voted Green. It was not enough, as people argued, that Obama was less odious than Romney. I can't support people anymore simply because they make me vomit less copiously than their opponents. I have no idea why Americans, the majority of whom don't vote at all, accept such miserable choices.

The first time Cuomo ran, he ran on a platform of going after unions. As a lifelong Democrat, I find it amazing that Democrats can run on such platforms. You're left wondering who hates you less, candidate A or candidate B. That's not enough of a choice.

But whatever you think, and whatever you choose, you need to make your voice heard. You may listen to me or not, but you need to get off your ass and vote tomorrow. We are role models and it's unacceptable for us to tell our kids we don't give a damn who controls their schools or makes decisions about their lives.

I always leave a few minutes early and vote before I go to work. Please take the time and do it too. Don't tell folks like Andrew Cuomo know you are nobody and will tolerate anything, because that's precisely what he'd like to hear, and precisely the message you give when you fail to vote.

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken at least 800K from BFFs of Eva Moskowitz, and at least 65K from the so-called Democrats for Education Reform. And thus, he's bought and paid for. Cuomo had no reservations about pushing a budget that essentially precluded the campaign promises that gained Bill de Blasio a landslide victory over his esteemed GOP opponent, what's-his-name. You know, that guy who marched over the bridge with Moskowitz and was defeated conclusively.

So we know that Governor Andy doesn't really care what voters think. If they get between him and hefty campaign contributions, they can go straight to hell as far as he's concerned. That's pretty much what he told New York City when he gave Eva Moskowitz the green light to start charter schools our duly-elected mayor rejected. Not only that, but they can expand like a cancer if they so desire, and if de Blasio can't give them public school space, the city will have to pick up the tab for their rent.

Thus spake the "student lobbyist." And yet this particular student lobbyist represents only the interests of those students backed up by hedge fund bucks. The other 97% of our students can go straight to hell along with their parents, the voters.

But in Governor Andy's New York, teachers are even more special than parents and children. Not only can they go straight to hell, but they can't come to his upstate charter party. Now it's no surprise nowadays when teachers aren't invited to education events. After all, why ask people who've devoted their lives to teaching children what they think about the best ways to do it? Are they gonna hand you a million dollars in on the books contributions and then provide you with suitcases of cash for those unpredictable exigencies? Of course not.

So what you do is charge a thousand bucks for a weekend. That ought to keep those teachers out. The only people expert enough to discuss education are those who can drop a grand for a weekend in Lake Placid.

But what do you know? Several teacher types came up with the money. The only solution, of course, was to return their money and not allow them in anyway. After all, teachers are special interests. You can't trust them to help you when your goal is eliminating public schools so hedge fund types can profit. So there you have it. Governor Cuomo and his charter school buds have not only kept teachers out, but also turned them down when they offered to pay to get in.

Because that's the sort of democracy you buy when you buy Andrew Cuomo for Governor of NY State.  And the reformy corporatist privatizers who've bought him are getting every penny's worth, while you and I, again, can go straight to hell along with our children.

We're in the odd position of having a governor who simultaneously calls himself a student advocate while also maintaining he has no say over what goes on in education. It's certainly nice to be able to take whatever position is expedient at the moment with no regard to the actual facts. If we could all do that, maybe the world would be a simpler place.

Nonetheless, Governor Andy is about to do a series of TV commercials in which he pushes Common Core, while acknowledging a few hiccups along the way. It's odd that the guy who said we can absolutely make no movement on teacher evaluations based on flawed tests for which we're all unprepared would now make such a statement. But you have to remember that Andrew Cuomo does what's good for Andrew Cuomo, and thus far he's been able to make a fairly good career of it. Andy's not having the best week, as the assembly is poised to push back on his position that teachers should be judged on tests for which no one is prepared, and which 70% of our students fail.

In this astral plane, our self-proclaimed student lobbyist takes actions that, while perhaps hobbling public schools, enable huge donations from the likes of DFER and Eva Moskowitz. For example, we now have a tax cap. If costs go up 4% in your district, you can only raise the budget by 2% unless you get a super-majority of 60% approval. It's remarkable that someone who claims to support students can also support a bill that says people who say no to kids get more of a vote than those who say yes. Isn't one vote per person a basic tenet of democracy? Are there a lot of Democrats who don't actually support democracy?

Not only that, but Governor Cuomo supports a program that gives less state aid to our kids. In my district, we get almost 7 million dollars less as a result. That's about a thousand dollars lost to my kid alone. I'm not precisely sure we need a student lobbyist who actively seeks to give less to our children.

But that's what we have in Andrew Cuomo.

It's time for our unions to step up and help inform parents of Andrew Cuomo's rampant hypocrisy. If he supports public schools he needs to put his money where his mouth is. However, it's far more likely his mouth is really where he is.

In which case it's time for us to stop buying seats at his table. We need to set our own table, invite public school parents, and give Governor Andy no choice but to crawl and beg for a seat at ours. When we stand as one, even Moskowitz millions will pale in comparison. 

Look at the news today and you see this, a story about how NY State is looking at back-door vouchers. You see, rather than give you money back for tuition, you'll simply get a tax-credit for donations to the school of your choice.

This will cost the state 300 million dollars, and half of it will be earmarked for private school scholarships. Make no mistake, this is yet another attack on the institution of public school.

Don't think your local religious school is going to embrace students like mine, who know little English, or students with other special needs, or the alternate assessment students not on track to graduate. My school takes all comers, and that's why the state ought to support us, as opposed to Andy Cuomo's deep-pocketed BFFs.

There are powerful supporters behind the legislation, and they're directing hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers who sign on. 

That's what it's all about in Andy Cuomo's New York, unfortunately. And that's why it's a bad idea for NYSUT to be purchasing $10,000 tables at Cuomo's birthday bash. We can't compete with the money DFER and their hedgefund buds can dish out. We ought not to have to. We represent the children of this state, not just the ones private schools and charters think can boost their stats, but all of them, no matter what.

And while Cuomo, King and Tisch blather on about the importance of Common Core and judging teachers by junk science, the state is getting ready to pump huge money into schools required to do none of the above. If it's so vital that Cuomo cannot contemplate a delay, how on earth can he support legislation to promote schools not required to follow rules?

Cuomo came into office vowing to go after unions, and our legislature appears to be supporting that goal even as we speak. Call your state senator and assemblyperson and ask them to vote against this. Money talks to Governor Cuomo even as he pays lip service to the multitudes who spoke out against Common Core.

We can't show the governor the sort of numbers DFER can. But we showed up in huge numbers for the traveling King-Tisch vaudeville show, and that can't be the last time we do it.

It's all over whatever it is that used to be Gotham Schools. Eva and her buds are upset. Apparently, when de Blasio said charters might have to pay rent, he was referring to none other than charters that have a lot of money. You know, the ones that are so flush with cash they can lay out a half a mil a year for someone like Eva.

That's why they've given almost a million bucks to our good pal Andy Cuomo. You know, the self-proclaimed student lobbyist. Only it turns out our student lobbyist has no power over education, and every screw-up is the fault of the Regents, over which he has no control whatsoever. Unless, of course, they mess with the APPR system that judges gym teachers on math tests, and all teachers on Common Core tests. That's sacrosanct, and though student lobbyist Cuomo has no say over eduction, he will not bend on New York's precious junk science.

Also, student lobbyist Cuomo is lobbying for merit pay. Just because it's been around for a hundred years and has never worked anywhere is no reason to give up on it. Who knows how many teachers are holding back the good stuff until they can make an extra few thousand dollars a year? Those are the kind of teachers Governor Andy wants to encourage, because there's no better motivation to help children than money.

Governor Andy knows a lot about the motivating power of money. That's why Eva and her hedge fund pals are rushing to him. After all, every dime that they pay in rent will be a dime's less profit, or possibly even a dime out of the pocket of Eva herself. This, of course, is unacceptable. Perhaps Eva and Andy, being motivated by money, cannot conceive of why anyone would be otherwise.

I like money. I haven't had a raise in over five years, and I could use a little more. I have a kid I need to put through college. Of course if I had a salary like Eva's I could send her to Harvard. Nonetheless, I'm not holding back anything from my students.

But now that Eva has lost her hotline to Tweed, who has she got? Apparently, she's got Governor Cuomo, the Democrat who goes after unions, the one who never met a reform he didn't like. Proof-shmoof. If DFER thinks it's a good idea, if they send him yet another ten thousand bucks, and if they want it, that's good enough for him.

It's almost like having Mike Bloomberg up in Albany. Now that Cuomo's ego doesn't need to compete with Bloomberg's, now that the man at Gracie Mansion is not a fanatical ideologue, just about anything reformy looks good to Andy Cuomo.

Shockingly, NY State is encountering problems with its new evaluation system. According to Newsday, teachers can rate effective in test passing percentages, yet rate developing overall. Alas, such are the exigencies of a system that is created based on wishful thinking and a desire to fire teachers for no particular reason.

Actually, what is shocking about this story is not that there are problems with APPR, but rather that the state admitted it. It's been pretty much standard fare for Reformy John King and Silent Merryl Tisch to nod their wooden heads, offer minor and insubstantial tweaks, and then go on their merry way. Governor Andrew Cuomo has staked his educational reputation on junk science, and believes in it deeply. Teachers must be rated by untested Common Core tests and judged by junk science, or he will have forsaken his self-appointed post as student lobbyist.

After all, Cuomo is doing his part to make sure we don't raise taxes on the rich or fritter away money paying teachers, and he'd rather assign the death penalty to schools with low test scores than fund them adequately. It makes for good sound bites on the news, and it makes Governor Andy popular with deep-pocketed folks like DFER, but it doesn't help our kids.

Sadly, demagogues like Andy Cuomo earn support not only from astroturfers and would-be robber barons, but also top faux-Democrats like Barack Obama, who happily allow their subordinates to cheer baseless school closings and ignore blatant misdeeds on Wall Street. This is the new Democratic Party, the one that leaves working people bleeding on the street while ensuring rich people don't pay another cent. With Democrats like Cuomo and Obama, I sometimes wonder why we need Republicans.

Of course, in NY State, it's tough to imagine a GOP candidate unseating Cuomo. Not only that, but it's also tough to imagine a GOP candidate that would favor working people any more than Cuomo. So it appears we haven't got a whole lot of choice here in NY State.

This notwithstanding, the fact is New Yorkers have had enough of Common Core nonsense, and all over the state parents and teachers told King and Tisch the same story (with the exception of one NYC session taken over by astroturf Students First NY). It's unfortunate that it's taken developmentally inappropriate instruction based on nothing to wake up our residents, but the fact is we know it's NOT true that 70% of our kids are failing to learn.

What will it take before pols like Cuomo listen to the will of the people rather than that of the hedge-fund dabblers in public education?

NYC has woken up and come to its senses. After 20 years of GOP mayors who hated us and everything we stood for, the city has elected a progressive-minded mayor, a mayor who seems to value not only working people, but also the people who professionally serve the city. I went to see him speak in Brooklyn during the campaign, heard him say so, and have no reason to doubt his word.

We have a new chancellor, Carmen Fariña, who not only taught, but taught for decades. There will be no more talk about how tenure and seniority promote mediocrity, and no more fanatical ideologues in Tweed preaching privatization. Of course, no one is perfect, and Fariña has not yet come to her senses about Common Core. But she recognizes its miserable implementation, as does everyone on earth save those who actually implemented it, Reformy John King, Merryl Tisch, and their army of private interns who do not answer to we, the people.

The New York Post is horrified. De Blasio isn't opening any more charters! De Blasio may charge Eva Moskowitz rent! Gazillionaires may have to pay more taxes to support pre-K for the children of the bootless and unhorsed! I smile at every one of Murdoch's perceived outrages. It's about time we had a mayor who was concerned with helping our children rather than comforting the comfortable. Finally the UFT President has come around to support our new mayor's pre-K plan. AFT President Randi Weingarten, who once ridiculed the program, appears to have come to her senses as well.

Now Mayor de Blasio's prime obstacle is Governor Andrew Cuomo, self-described student lobbyist, who's helped our kids tremendously by funding most schools at a lower rate than six years ago. Cuomo's vision of saving the millionaires appears woefully inadequate. When you want to actually improve things, rather than simply give the appearance of doing so, you need to find a way to pay for said improvements. It appears the mayor, unlike the governor, has actually thought this through.

So we are at an impasse. We can follow the mayor and support his vision, or we can listen to our governor, the one who was elected based on promises of going after unions, and hope for the best. It's sad that a Democrat can run on a plank like this, but Andrew Cuomo is not fundamentally a Democrat. Like Michael Bloomberg, who overturned the twice-voiced will of the people to buy himself a third term, Cuomo is a relentless and unapologetic opportunist. His goal is to be President of the United States, and if that entails taking money from DFER and their sleazy corporate allies, so be it.

I'm glad UFT leadership has come to its senses and supported the mayor, albeit a little late. It now behooves us to stand up for what's best for the kids we serve. Unfortunately, "student lobbyist" Cuomo is not responsive to the public. For example, the public now opposes Common Core by a wide margin. Rather than stand up and risk the wrath of his corporate supporters, Cuomo has created yet another panel to study what we already know. Cuomo has seen fit to include not only a member of E4E, which in no way represents teachers, but also to have an IBM executive as chair.

It's pretty clear how much Governor Cuomo values teacher voice. When Reformy John King publicly declares public school parents and teachers to be "special interests," he offers not a whisper of rebuke.

But here's the thing--John King was right. We are most certainly special interests, and our special interest is the public school children of New York. It's an abject disgrace that neither John King nor Andrew Cuomo shares that special interest. But we will not waver in advocating for better education, reasonable standards, and developmentally appropriate treatment of our children.

If Cuomo and King do not share our vision, that's a shame. But it's not their job to agree with us. It's their job to help and serve us. And it's our job to make sure they do their job.

Last month at the Delegate Assembly, Jamaica HS chapter leader James Eterno introduced a resolution to withhold support from NY Governor Andrew Cuomo in his bid for a second term. This makes a lot of sense to me. After all, Governor Cuomo ran for his first term on a platform of taking on the unions. I'm a lifelong Democrat, and he was the first Democrat for whom I declined to vote. With Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?

Since then, Governor Andy has supported and implemented a 2% tax cap for school budgets. While this does not affect NYC, it affects almost every other district in the state. When I visited my kid's guidance counselor last school year, she couldn't promise that the courses my daughter wanted would even exist come September. Yet Governor Andy not only opposes a millionaire tax that might supplement lost revenue, but also finds the audacity to compare said opposition to his father's stand against the death penalty. Do we really need a governor who passionately defends the bank accounts of the uber-wealthy against the education of our children?

As if that were not enough, Governor Andy continues to defend the junk-science based APPR system, sitting mute against John King's insistence that Buffalo use it to fire teachers even if it's untested and unreliable. In fact, as King and Tisch wandered the state in their fake listening tour, as parents overwhelmingly condemned their implementation of Common Core, we've heard very little from our esteemed governor on what action he'll take. He'll appoint a panel to study it. Weren't the voices of outraged parents and teachers all over the state evidence enough? Or do we need to make sure the conclusions are OK with DFER, Students First, Moskowitz backers, and whoever else wields the suitcases full of cash that lubricate our political process?

It's certainly true that Cuomo took a stand against the odious LIFO legislation that would have affected only NYC teachers. But he didn't really say he supported an objective form of layoffs, rather expressing support for the end of LIFO, and suggesting it wasn't practical to pass such legislation at that time. Rather, he supported the junk-science evaluation system, a system by which he still stands, despite no evidence whatsoever that it is effective in proving anything.

As for evidence, that's something our governor has little use for when dealing with education. His most recent stroke of brilliance is a merit-pay scheme, despite the fact it's an old idea that's never worked anywhere.

It's disappointing that the Delegate Assembly, overwhelmingly dominated by chapter leaders who signed a loyalty oath to act in the interests of union leaders rather than members, wants to leave the door open to endorsing an anti-union opportunist who cares not at all about us or our children.

This week, UFT chapter leaders and delegates received an extraordinary invite:

Vice President Joe Biden invites you and your colleagues in education to join him for a conference call on Monday, Sept. 12 to discuss the administration’s commitment to preventing teacher layoffs.

Wow. A chance to discuss what this administration has done to prevent teacher layoffs. A chance to ask why they would praise a school for firing the entire staff. A chance to ask why on earth they would pick an Education Secretary with  failed local program and replicate it for the entire country. A chance to ask why they would bypass Linda Darling-Hammond for for Arne Duncan simply because an anti-labor, anti-teacher group asked them to.

But then there's this:

This will be a listen-in-only call for UFT members.

You know, it's kind of frustrating when we see a spectacle like NBC's Education Nation largely exclude the likes of Diane Ravitch from what's purported to be a discussion. It's even more frustrating to be invited to a discussion in which you cannot participate. Frankly, if VP Biden wishes to "discuss the administration’s commitment to preventing teacher layoffs" with union members, why the hell won't he entertain their questions?

This administration has sold out to DFER and the "reformers." Admirable though it may be that they're trying to save teacher jobs now that election time is rolling around, their motives are nothing if not transparent (and cynical). While I certainly won't be voting for Michelle Bachman or Rick Perry, Barack Obama fooled me once and, absent some spectacular sea change,  I won't be voting for him again either.

Time for more than desperate last-minute gestures and one-way discussions, Mr. Biden. The very least you can do if you want our support is listen to us.