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's an interesting piece in Newsweek today. It's written by Alexandar Nazaryan, and ostensibly about NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Full disclosure--I have a little experience with Mr. Nazaryan. He edited an op-ed I placed in the Daily News when he worked there, and it was a bit contentious. I can be picky about my writing, as anyone with whom I've worked will attest. Nonetheless, we treated one another respectfully. There was no personal animosity when we finished working together, at least none on my part or that I'd heard about.

That's why I was pretty surprised when, on Twitter, for no reason I could determine, Nazaryan accused me of being a UFT mouthpiece:

@TeacherArthurG @KatieOsgood_ @leoniehaimson @DianeRavitch Last I remember, Arthur, you were shilling shamelessly for UFT. That still so?

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

That's ironic, because I'm wholly confident UFT President Michael Mulgrew, among many others, would spring to my defense and tell the world I have been doing no such thing. As if that weren't enough, after my response to that absurd statement, Nazraryan saw fit to attack me personally:

@TeacherArthurG People like you are the reason teaching isn't respected more.

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) May 3, 2014

Now that's not simply a personal attack. It also utilizes what you call a stereotype. You see, whatever I do, or have done, or whatever Nazraryan perceives me to have done, is then attributed to all teachers. We are, therefore, in his view, disrespected. This is the same sort of thinking bigots of all stripes use to insult people of a given religion, race, nationality, or ethnicity. So yes, I absolutely believe the writer is prejudiced against us, and we therefore need to question his assumptions very carefully.

De Blasio, after all, is a self-styled progressive who promised “transcendent” change, surrounding himself with youthful advisers minted in the Barack Obama mold. Fariña, meanwhile, was coaxed out of retirement.

Now it's entirely possible that Nazaryan simply forgot, while writing that particular sentence, that Fariña had worked for Bloomberg. And it's entirely possible that Nazaryan doesn't know that a whole lot of Bloomberg people are still sitting at the DOE.  But being that he's writing a piece about the chancellor, it kind of behooves him to know that, doesn't it? I mean, here I am, a lowly UFT shill, disrespected by all for reasons known only to Nazaryan, and even I know it. Here's how Fariña is seen, according to Nazaryan:

Some see her as a defender of teachers, others as the pawn of teachers unions. 

That's not much of a choice, is it? I see her as neither, and I'd argue that this is a black and white fallacy. Lots of teachers do not feel the love for Fariña, and don't see her jumping to our defense. She let Jamaica High School wither and die, she is not shy about removing and/ or firing teachers, and is much ballyhooed for having done so in her career as principal.

Nazaryan devotes a good deal of time to speaking about himself and his brief teaching career. Perhaps he feels that gives him some cred while writing about this. Who knows? What I do know is he has no idea how working teachers think or feel. Even in the piece, Nazaryan outs himself as a supporter of right to work with no respect whatsoever for our union:

I was once a member of a teachers union and have long lamented its moribund conception of the teaching profession. (I was not a fan of the mandatory membership fees extracted from my paycheck either.)

I actually wonder how on earth Newsweek can present this as a portrait of the chancellor, or why their editors, if indeed they have any, deem Nazaryan's feelings about labor unions germane to what is, supposedly, a piece about the chancellor. Nazaryan is also clueless about the recent teacher contract:

Fariña said sensible things—that she wanted to bring joy back to the classroom and earn the teachers’ trust (a generous new contract with the United Federation of Teachers has helped). 

In fact, the contract gives us the 8% over two years that FDNY and NYPD got, but we don't actually receive it until 2020, a full decade after they got it. It then goes on to give us 10% over seven years, the lowest pattern in my living memory, and for all I know, in the history of the City of New York.

Nazaryan is also less than opaque about his own feelings on charter schools.

Her “old-school” tendencies are also responsible, I suspect, for an outsized antipathy to charter schools, which she shares with the mayor. Charters are public schools, and Fariña could have embraced them as a small but critical component of the education system, one that does an admirable job of educating poor kids of color.

For Nazaryan, there's no question that charters do an admirable job, but there's also no awareness of the fact that they shed students at an alarming rate, dumping them back into public schools, not replacing them, and thereby increasing their test scores. There's no awareness that they rarely if ever take students like I teach, or those with severe learning disabilities. As far as I can tell, there's not even awareness that the state pretty much decreed NYC would have to pay rent on charters of which it didn't approve. There are also a whole lot of us who dispute the characterization of charters as public schools.

There are rambling paragraphs about Moskowitz, Rhee, and all the reformy things they've done, and or tried to do. Then there's this, the conclusion:

This state of affairs is unfortunate but not surprising. We are not a small, monocultural nation like South Korea, or an autocracy like Russia where a history textbook might fall victim to Kremlin diktat. In America, school reform will always be a Hegelian contest between clashing visions, frequently maddening, infrequently productive. It is the only way we know.

There are always clashing visions, but reforminess has thus far reflected mostly one, and that has been pretty much whatever Bill Gates placed his many dollars behind. Small schools, charters, VAM, Common Core, and other such things proliferate. Despite Nazaryan's conversations with Diane Ravitch and Patrick Sullivan, and despite his limited experience as a teacher, he has no idea what goes on in city schools.

From what I can glean here, Nazaryan has little interest in finding out.

Leonie Haimson is one of the smartest people I know, and I did myself a disservice by failing to pay close enough attention to her comment:

How dare MORE fight for professional autonomy and against a corporate driven agenda! Who do you think you are?

I'd been looking at the relative truthiness of the ridiculous Unity leaflet and didn't immediately recognize the precise words Leonie was referencing:

MORE urged students to opt out of the state tests as a means of protecting the professional autonomy of educators and fighting against a corporate driven education system. 

Now think about that. That is meant as a criticism. Sure, it leads to their nonsensical and misleading assertions about a reward program. But take it on its face, and think about what it implies--precisely what Leonie said it did. Why on earth would any reasonably informed teacher not wish to fight a corporate driven education system? Anyone who's read Diane Ravitch's books knows how destructive and counter-productive such a system is. 

So you have to ask yourself--has UFT Unity leadership bothered to read Ravitch? If so, why would they criticize us? Actually there's a whole lot of evidence that UFT Unity actively supports a corporate driven education system. Do you remember when Mulgrew told the DA that it was necessary for us to participate in the Gates MET system, the one that judged "good" teaching by test scores? 

Does anyone remember the Bill Gates sponsored MET program being a precursor to Race to the Top, which mandated junk science ratings for teachers? Do we remember Michael Mulgrew going to Albany, then coming back and boasting of having helped write the APPR law that made junk science part of our ratings? Do we remember his telling the DA last Wednesday that the "matrix" would take authority away from principals? Doesn't that just mean the junk science is a higher percentage of our rating? Why not just make teacher ratings 100% based on crapshoots? After all, recent research suggests that VAM is never accurate, reliable or valid. So, while it's fairly amazing to see the President of the United Federation of Teachers boasting that we're increasing its value, it certainly helps explain UFT Unity's disgust with those of us who fight against a corporate driven education system. 

Ravitch suggests in Death and Life of the Great American School System that mayoral control is a corporate tool to bypass and subvert democracy. Yet UFT leadership has endorsed it twice, and under uber-reformy Michael Bloomberg to boot. The second time, after it had proven virtually toxic to working teachers and community schools, UFT leadership demanded a few changes, failed to get them, and went ahead and supported it anyway. Now Mulgrew says he supports it, but not as is. Nonetheless mayoral control bypasses community. Those of us who oppose a corporate driven education system oppose it completely. 

The icing on the top of the cake, of course, was when AFT invited Bill Gates to be the keynote at its convention. I've given a lot of thought to what Gates represents, and it certainly isn't working public school teachers or the kids we serve. In fact, shortly after visiting AFT, Gates criticized teacher pensions, calling them a free lunch. I don't know about you, but I've been working for 32 years, and I've earned each and every penny of that pension. Now, with our legislature working on ways to take it away, I'm not seeing the wisdom of cozying up to those who hate us and everything we stand for. Every time we give them something, they want more. We support Gates and he comes for our pensions. We support charters and they come for our tenure. Appeasement didn't work for Chamberlain then and doesn't work for Mulgrew now. 

As for professional autonomy, that's tough to achieve when you're judged by a checklist. Naturally that checklist is endorsed by UFT Unity, because they love them some Danielson. And yet Danielson herself is backing away on it. UFT Unity, whose leaders have never been judged by Danielson, can happily pretend that a rubric makes everything fair, or that all administrators make low inference notes rather than obeying the voices in their heads. But those of us on the ground know better.

Interestingly, when my friend Julie Cavanagh opposed the 2014 contract, UFT Unity's Leo Casey accused her of being against teacher empowerment. This was because the contract contained the PROSE initiative, so Leo made a handy strawman which ignored Julie's real objections and substituted words she'd never uttered. You know, Julie couldn't possibly be talking about the fact that the contract enabled two-tier due process, got us paid a decade after everyone else, or dumped the worst pattern I've ever seen on our brother and sister unionists (considerably worse than those for which we'd criticized DC37 in the past). No, she must have been criticizing PROSE, which was absolutely perfect even though it had never been tested, let alone utilized.

UFT Unity needs to fight dirty because it has no argument. I guess when everyone around you has signed a loyalty oath, you don't expect to ever need one. The only thing UFT Unity knows is that everything it does is right. When Bloomberg wants to use eight components of Danielson, it's an outrage. Unity fights for 22, which is ideal. When Unity pares it down to seven, it's a great victory. No more 22, which is awful. When we get artifacts added, it's a great victory. When we get them removed, it's also a great victory. And what they complain about is pretty much the only thing that's drawn Cuomo, at least ostensibly, out of his relentless assault on teachers.

The weird attribution of Opt Out to the MORE caucus by Unity. Insult to the parents' movement by @TeacherArthurG https://t.co/U4qtNuoXNO

— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 17, 2016

Unity's arguments stem not from reason or practice, but rather from the outlandish assumption that everything it does is right. Therefore everything its opponents do must be wrong. The relative value or lack thereof of Unity positions means nothing. Their arguments come from backing themselves up no matter what, rather than from any basic value or standard. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to swap out positions as often as you or I change our socks. 

Now they've taken a stand against basic values set out by visionary education expert Diane Ravitch. I don't know about you, but I'm proud to stand with Ravitch, with activist parents, and with communities. Unity can continue to alienate all of us and paint itself into corners by making outlandish assertions simply to insult the most vibrant and thoughtful activist group in the UFT. 

But MORE/ New Action is just getting started. We will continue to speak the truth and Unity can squirm and spout its convoluted logic all it likes.

Or they can simply join us to improve our working conditions, which are precisely student learning conditions. Because whatever they choose, we aren't backing down and we aren't going away.   

I actually blogged something very close to this a few days ago, but after hearing Mulgrew harp on it at the DA, after hearing it was mentioned before I showed up at a CL meeting, and after seeing tweets like the one below, I'm gonna address it directly.

.@morecaucusNYC You want principals to have total control over eval? We disagree. ref="https://twitter.com/Unity_Today">@Unity_Today

— UFT Unity (@UFTUnity) March 24, 2016

First of all, this is a strawman, a logical fallacy. I have never, ever heard anyone from MORE say they want principals to have total control over evaluation. What MORE says is precisely what Diane Ravitch does, to wit, that teachers ought not to be rated by junk science. And that, frankly, is the only thing there is other than principal evaluations.

The other Unity talking point, one some Unity person threw at me on Twitter earlier today, is that there are only 700 double I rated teachers, down from 2,000 U rated teachers. I suppose that is from the last year they have records, but who really knows where they get that stuff from? Anyway, let's suppose they are correct. There is still a problem here.

Back in the bad old days when the principal had total control over evaluation, when that nasty principal sought to remove you via 3020a he had to prove you were incompetent. He had to make a case and demonstrate before an arbitrator that the stuff he wrote had validity. And that was a tough mountain to climb. That was why those mean old principals were so rarely successful.

Under the plan that Unity wants us to fall in love with, a double I-rated teacher has to prove he is not incompetent. That's a tough mountain to climb too, except it will be you climbing it instead of the principal. Now sure, there is the UFT Rat Squad, and if they say you're doing a swell job, the burden of proof will revert back to the principal. In fact, Unity will proudly declare they do just that 30% of the time. So what does that mean?

That means that 70% of the time, UFT teachers have the burden of proof on them. Compare that to the S-U system, when that happened precisely zero percent of the time.  And if that isn't enough, under the new Cuomo education law, the one the UFT declined to oppose, the one Mulgrew thanked the legislature for passing, we may not even get the dubious benefit of the UFT Rat Squad. Mulgrew says he's working on it, but as his caucus misrepresents MORE's position, it also condemns "small locals." That's code for Stronger Together, the new caucus in NYSUT that opposes the reformy nonsense Mulgrew and his BFFs have enabled for us.

And again, that non-principal evaluation stuff that Unity seems so proud of? It's VAM junk science. The American Statistical Association has determined that teachers move test scores by a factor of 1-14%. Yet in our evaluations, it counts 40%, and next year could count 50. And who knows? Maybe they help you out. In my high-performing school, I have seen members brought up from developing to effective, particularly the first year. It appears to me the supervisors wised up somewhat the second year, though, and started giving lower ratings to that lucky few. I could be wrong. But what difference does it make whether I am or not when our ratings are largely based on a crapshoot?

I know a person from another school who got an ineffective rating due solely to test scores. She was not precisely doing a jig over the new system. I'm sure she's not the only one. But if she is, she is one too many.

I am personally flabbergasted that this is the best talking point the highly compensated minds at Unity could muster. Back to the drawing board, fellas.

Hillary Clinton opened her mouth the other day, and said she wouldn't keep open any school that wasn't better than average. She later clarified to say she meant good, rather than better than average. To me, that was not much of a distinction. I work in a good school, even by reformy standards, but I don't delude myself that it's because we are all super teachers. I'd say it's because we have super kids, and that any school with such kids can do well. Just ask Geoffrey Canada, who had to dismiss entire cohorts to make himself look good. Ask Eva Moskowitz, with her "got to go" list.

For anyone who hasn't noticed, there is a direct correlation between high poverty, high needs, and low test scores. Kids like the ones I serve are a drag on any school, because it turns out people who don't know English tend to score poorly on standardized tests in English. Perhaps one day someone will do a study and prove it, and we'll all be amazed. Until then, schools dominated by ELLs will be targeted. For example there was the one in Rhode Island, where they wanted to fire all the teachers. Obama and Duncan thought that was fantastic. (If I recall correctly, the teachers were ultimately kept on, but under diminished working conditions. Another victory for the reformies.)

Despite this explanation in Diane Ravitch's blog, and the convoluted story to which it links, I cannot rationalize this as Hillary having misspoken. While the feds don't directly close schools, they've had massive influence in school closings anyway. For Hillary to even utter such a sentence indicates to me that she has drunk deeply of the reformy Kool-Aid that says teachers and schools are to blame. She does  not seem to have read Ravitch or considered what this reformy movement is all about. It also kind of dashes my hopes that she will advocate for a rational teacher evaluation system. The fact that Eli Broad contributes to her gives me even more pause.

Every day I talk to great teachers whose morale is in the toilet, who casually mention what else they can do for a living, and others who drop hints that they will dump this gig and go work in Macy's or wherever the first moment they can afford it, or the day they're vested. This will have little effect on Hillary or her rich friends, who sidestep the nonsense they impose on public schools by paying to send their kids elsewhere. But you're not gonna see kids I teach at Dalton anytime soon.

I'm also troubled by the viciousness of her supporters. On Facebook I've seen people suggest that those of us reluctant to support her are massive idiots. When the first story about her quote surfaced it was on the Weekly Standard, and there were outraged ad hominem attacks even though the story simply offered the quote. Later there was video, and multiple sources, and crickets from those who attacked the conservative publication.

The irony here is that my vote, beyond the primary, is ultimately of very little importance. If Hillary grabs the nomination and has trouble in New York, she's a dead duck. Personally, I'm not at all keen on voting for candidates of any party who don't support public education. When Andrew Cuomo campaigned the first time for governor, he ran on a platform of going after unions. I voted Green both times Andy ran. And while Obama fooled me once, after he gave GW a third term in education I voted for Dr. Jill Stein, Green candidate, for President. I am not greatly swayed by arguments that Hillary sucks less than any GOP candidate, even though she may. She's still a horrorshow.

It would take a lot to get me to pull the lever for anyone who talks like that. Frankly, with Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?

Like everyone who pays attention, I was pretty amazed to read in the NY Times that Governor Andrew Cuomo is looking to tamp down his teacher evaluation mandate. After all, hadn't he said that the new system, the one he backed and pushed, was "baloney?" He was clearly upset that not enough public school teachers had been badly rated and fired. After all, the developmentally inappropriate tests he had mandated, with no preparation whatsoever, had managed to fail a large number of New York's children. Surely he could blame the public schools and turn them over to his wealthy BFFs. There were billions to be made.

But alas, there was pushback. The moms whose kids Arne Duncan insulted were not ready to throw in the towel. They were not prepared to label their children as dummies and turn over their schools to Cuomo's campaign contributors. Opt-out fever hit NY State widely, and grew in leaps and bounds. Cuomo, seen as invincible after his first run against some Buffalo lunatic, began to show chinks in his armor. And on education, his popularity fell into the toilet. Ever reformy MaryEllen Elia suggested that junk science should count for 20, rather than 50% of teacher ratings.

Diane Ravitch pointed to this piece as significant, but urged caution.

This may be a hoax, a temporary moratorium intended to deflate the Opt Out Movement and cause it to disappear. Do not rest until the law is changed to delink testing and teacher-principal evaluations. The new federal law-not yet enacted-eliminates the federal mandate that Duncan imposed without authorization by Congress. New York may now permanently eliminate this punitive, anti-educational requirement.

New York parents: As Ronald Reagan said,  “Trust, but verify.” I suggest turning that saying around: “Verify, then trust.” Meanwhile, to quote an even older saying, keep your troops together and “keep your powder dry.”

Of course I agree. Trusting Andrew Cuomo is an egregious error. Punchy Mike Mulgrew trusted him when he opposed Bloomberg's LIFO-killing bill, but it was pretty clear Governor Andy thought his new junk-science APPR bill was gonna serve to fire those inconvenient unionized teachers. Punchy Mike trusted him so much he didn't bother to oppose Cuomo in primaries, let alone the general election. Cuomo thanked him by enacting the not only the most punitive and draconian teacher rating system I've ever seen, but also receivership that made collective bargaining agreements moot  (a system for which Punchy Mike thanked the Heavy Hearts Legislature).

Why would Governor Andy even pay lip service to reversing his reforminess? I have a theory. Perhaps he expects Friedrichs to win. Were that to happen, the inconvenient New York teacher unions would crumble in influence. After all, even now they spend all their time looking for a "seat at the table" and don't accomplish a whole lot beyond buttressing the pensions of Mulgrew's pals in Revive NYSUT.

Were NYSUT and UFT to be effectively defunded, that might mean opposing public education would be even easier than it is now. After all, UFT already supports charters, and does nothing when Governor Andy forces NYC to pay rent for them even if the city doesn't want them. What's gonna happen if dues become optional?

UFT has not been gung-ho unionist in decades. Many members don't even know what union entails. How else can you explain an overwhelming vote for what is essentially two-tier due process? How else can you explain leadership even proposing such an abomination?

Maybe the reformies, after watching us invite Gates to keynote the AFT convention, not only don't fear us, but no longer even think we bear consideration. Maybe they know that removing the gravy train from our non-teaching leaders will render us even less of a factor.

Cuomo has no moral center and does nothing without a viable self-serving reason. While I shudder to contemplate the diabolical workings of whatever remains of his soul, he always has an ulterior motive.

Related: On Facebook, Kevin Glynn comments: With the receivership law in place, you no longer need teacher Evals. Jamie Mc Nair comments: If the Lederman case goes her way, the continued use of test scores to evaluate teachers will be politically next to impossible (or potentially illegal?). Perhaps Andy knows more than we do and just wants to look like he was on the side of the winner before the victor is announced.

Teachers all over the city, all over the state, and all over the country are stressed out almost as a matter of course. This is because everyone wonders about the ratings, the ones on which their jobs depend. Sheri Lederman's lawsuit brings this some attention, but not nearly what it merits. As Governor Cuomo and the editorial pages blather on about getting tough with teachers, it seems like nothing more than a diversion so no one looks too closely about the hedge funders and billionaires who've bought them off.

UFT leadership sold us this bill of goods. I don't know how many meetings I've been to in which I've heard that this was an improvement. Before, I'd hear, the principal could just say you suck and you'd get a U rating. That wasn't as big a deal, I'd argue, and everyone would scoff. But it wasn't, because burden of proof was still on the DOE to establish you were incompetent, or unfit, or whatever. Now, if the UFT rat squad determines you suck, the burden of proof is on you, the teacher. And it doesn't get any better under the Heavy Hearts plan.

At one meeting, a District Rep. whose name I do not recall got very testy with me when I referred to VAM as junk science, a concept accepted by both Diane Ravitch and the American Statistical Asssociation. He said he'd be happy if his principal's negative determination were contradicted by the junk science. What he didn't say, what with the test score rating being essentially a crap shoot, was that the teacher well-rated by a principal and dragged down by junk science was also a possibility. Essentially, this UFT employee was endorsing tying our jobs to a crap shoot.

Unfortunately, the case of Shari Lederman shows that to be true. This is a woman whose principal very much liked and supported her, but because of low VAM scores got rated ineffective. Lest anyone think this is an extreme and unusual case, just this week I met two teachers in the same situation. One was a chapter leader from a small school who got an excellent rating from her principal. Another was a young teacher who got a good rating, but whose MOSL numbers were abysmal. If I happen to meet two such people in one week, how many are in the state? I'd argue that one is already too many.

In our high-performing school, our MOSL committee decided to share the joy rather than have individual teachers rise and fall on the basis of junk science. As our grades are generally OK this seemed to work. Almost everyone in our building got scores of 16 on both state and local measures. I got a 15 on state measures, though, and I hear some people did marginally better or worse. I have no idea whatsoever why that is.

What sort of system is it in which virtually no one understands how scores are calculated? What sort of system is it in which scores are meaningless but a person's job could hang in the balance?

And here's the thing--in a building like mine, in which junk science scores are almost uniform, people can still get bad ratings. Are they merited? I can't really say, not having seen the lessons and not having total confidence in the magical Danielson Framework. I don't believe rubrics translate to fairness. I don't believe personal prejudices are overcome by a system that assigns a 1-4 rating for various aspects, and I don't believe a computer calculation takes ratings out of the hands of anyone.

If you have a supervisor who really doesn't like you, threes become twos, twos become ones, you become developing or ineffective, and your morale is in the toilet. Is the UFT rat squad a check against this? If you're rated developing, it's not a factor. If you're rated ineffective, you have to depend on the kindness of rat squads, not a prospect I'd much relish. And as far as I can tell, the Heavy Hearts plan won't even afford you that option. Burden of proof will be on you, and there won't be any rat squad to turn a thumb up and declare otherwise.

This is not an effort to identify good and bad teachers. It's a witch hunt to divert attention from why kids really have issues in schools. For one, think poverty, which Gates won't address, and bought-and-paid-for politicians do virtually nothing to mitigate.

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From time to time in this space, you may note a disparaging word or two about UFT leadership. There are several reasons for this. One is that leadership has supported a host of counter-intutitive measures that hurt working teachers in its perpetual bid for a "seat at the table." Mayoral control is a biggie. We supported it when it came out, and then, after it was proven an unmitigated disaster, we demanded a few changes. When we failed to get them, we supported it anyway.

There is our support for APPR, which forces teachers to be judged on test scores largely beyond their control. There is our support for charter schools, which operate on a completely different playing field and yet are used by politicians and journalists to undermine those of us who teach all of NYC's children. There is our support for and participation in charter colocation, which reminds me of nothing more than a cancer to public schools. There's our abject failure to support opt-out, and our misguided trust in the Heavy Heart Assembly, Cuomo, Gates, John King, Mary Ellen Elia and the like.

And then there is a rigged election that deprives high school teachers the right to choose its own VP, not to mention the UFT choosing district reps who chapter leaders used to elect. Democracy finds it hard to breathe, let alone prosper, under loyalty-oath driven representation, as the UFT ensures those of us who follow the philosophy of Diane Ravitch get no voice whatsoever in NYSUT or AFT.  

But as we face a real threat in Friedrichs. The fact is, if dues retrieval becomes voluntary, the massive apathy engendered over decades by union leadership will cause massive losses in revenue, and will render collection the number one, if not the only priority, of the leadership that's failed to represent the feelings and struggles of working teachers for decades. Will it become the lot of chapter leaders to skulk around begging people for $1200 a year so Michael Mulgrew can negotiate sub-standard contracts, two-tier due process, and punch us in the face if we don't support Common Core? That's gonna be a tough sell.

On the other hand, it's not a whole lot of fun being in a so-called Right to Work State. Take a look at North Carolina, where teachers can't even make ends meet. The environment is not a whole lot different from that here, in that teachers and public schools are routinely blamed for all the ills of humanity. But the funding has been rolled back to the point where public schools can barely function, and the teachers are on long-term exodus from the state. Make no mistake, that's the agenda of the reformies, and Cuomo would do it in a New York minute of the parents and citizenry were less aware.

Union is our bulwark against this, and we must work to make UFT an organization responsive to those of us who see what's coming. Flawed though our union is, we must work to improve it rather than lie down and watch it be destroyed. As bad as things are, they could be much worse. A lot of us are working to make things better, and I expect to give more detail on that in this space in the coming weeks and months.

Friedrichs can hang over our heads like the Sword of Damocles, but we cannot give up. We cannot become North Carolina. If you think it can't happen here, take a look at Michigan and Wisconsin. No one thought it would happen there either. Because even if we win Friedrichs, that's just cutting one head off the monster. Surely another will grow in its place.

We need to be smarter and quicker than the reformies. Our current leadership has not proven up to the task. One way or another, we are going to help them, whether they like it or not.

One of the great things about being a teacher union leader is you always win. You win when there are 22 components in Danielson and you fight back Bloomberg's call for only seven. You win again when there are 22 and you negotiate it down to 8 (almost exactly what Bloomberg wanted).

You win when there's a transfer plan that allows teachers to go where they wish. You also win when you give up that plan and teachers can go nowhere without the OK of a principal. You not only win when you get a junk science evaluation system, but you also get to dump the sitting President of NYSUT because he helped you win that.

This year Governor Cuomo, whose popularity is at an all-time low, pushed through a revision of the APPR, expressly designed because too few teachers were getting low ratings. UFT President Michael Mulgrew sent an email thanking the Assembly for that. Why? Because, of course, it was a victory. Everything is a victory. We always win. Those who criticize junk science, like me, like Carol Burris and a large percentage of NY principals, like Diane Ravitch, are cranks, Chicken Little, shouting the sky is falling. Why?

Because this year fewer people were rated poorly than under the old system. Of course, under the old system, you were not necessarily bound for 3020a after two years of crap ratings. Furthermore, under the old system, it was on the DOE to prove you were unfit. Under the new system, if a member of the UFT rat squad says so, the burden of proof is on you, the teacher.

Now that UFT has dumped the former President of NYSUT, the new one has adopted the UFT good news policy. Here's an excerpt from a Karen Magee email:

We beat back the education tax credit that would have been a giveaway to rich supporters of private schools, stopped the push to make the tax cap permanent, and made progress on testing and transparency.

Now this isn't the first time we "beat back" the tax credit. It likely will not be the last time it rears its ugly head, and it's far from time to rest on our laurels. And Ms. Magee omits the fact that we're sending private schools 250 million bucks. And while the tax cap isn't permanent, it isn't gone either.

Note that this is not about what we achieved. It's about what we didn't lose yet. It's like when your friend tells you about all the things he's done for you. Remember when you were walking down the stairs and I didn't push you? Remember when we went out for coffee and I didn't put poison in your latte? Remember when we were walking by that semi-frozen lake and I didn't toss you in?

Just forget about all the broken promises in the leaflet above. So what if they utterly failed to oppose Cuomo when he was actually running for election? Who cares if Karen Magee and her Unity BFFs have not only failed to oppose Common Core, but spoken forcefully for it at AFT?  What does it matter if they not only failed to do anything against APPR, but also labeled its new steroid-laced draconian iteration a legislative victory? They still haven't joined that Fort Orange Club. Maybe next week they won't join it again. 

It will be another grand victory.

Related: A local union leader stands up to the nonsense. 

The DA last week was fairly unremarkable. One thing I found unusual was that I voted with Unity, I think, every time. All of the resolutions were fairly Mom and Apple Pie, both of which I support. Nonetheless, some things are notable.

Both Lauren Cohen and Megan Moskop of MORE were treated civilly, and managed to pass their motion and amendment. This is a great improvement over last year, when the Unity faithful shouted Lauren down for daring to mention their loyalty oath in public.

It's a great idea to let schools hire ATR teachers regardless of salaries, but if I'm not mistaken, Unity didn't do squat to oppose student funding a few years back. Anyone who pointed out the danger of that was a crank, a lunatic, and had failed to sign the aforementioned loyalty oath that proved you were reasonable. Thus, you were subject to abuse, personal insults, or being cut off by impartial Chair of the DA, Punchy Mike Mulgrew. I once watched him tell a chapter leader who questioned the endorsement of Bill Thompson that he didn't believe in democracy.

Punchy Mike was notably toned down this month. Perhaps someone spoke to him, or perhaps his shortened report didn't give him enough time. He didn't outright insult anyone, and he didn't appear as dripping with sarcasm as he often is. The Mulgrew I saw last week was somewhat of an improvement. Of course, he couldn't help himself from repeating his ridicule of critics of the APPR system. Those critics include Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris, yours truly, and virtually every working teacher with whom I speak. Mulgrew characterized us as saying every teacher was going to get fired.

Of course not every teacher is going to get fired. But some are, and I assure you they are not particularly thankful about it. It's outrageous that Mulgrew can cite fewer negative ratings while ignoring the high stakes attached to them.

Mulgrew now suggests the coming matrix is an improvement on this system, which he touted as wonderful when it came out. But once again, the optimal measure of junk science in teacher evaluation is precisely zero percent, whether you label it VAM, growth model, or John King's Awesome Adventure. I'm chapter leader of the largest school in Queens and Mulgrew doesn't answer my email. Given that, I'm fairly certain he hasn't got time to spend with some inconsequential teacher being fired because of The Bestest Rating System Since Sliced Bread.

I'm also a little put off that Mulgrew needs to repeat how smart the UFT is so frequently. Last month, he labeled himself a "ferocious" reader, though I'm pretty sure he was reaching for "voracious." Of course, maybe he is ferocious, and for all I know he throws books in the air and punches them, pretending they are Common Core opponents. Regardless, I'm put off by people who call themselves smart. It's really more impressive to me when others say people are smart. I tend to judge intelligence by what people do, and if I'm not mistaken, Mike Mulgrew, our leader, just thanked the Heavy Hearts for passing the most anti-teacher bill I've seen in this state.

Mulgrew also cited the social media campaign that resulted in that anti-teacher bill as a success. If we have many more victories like that we'll all be working at Walmart. And again, while Mulgrew urges us all to be on social media, he is not there himself. In what universe is that considered leadership?

There was also a discussion provoked by Mary Ahern's question, why would UFT want independent evaluators to count for 25% when NYSUT wanted it maxed out at 5%? Mulgrew gave a long, rambling response. When on topic, he suggested it was smart to have a wider range, as that gave us more freedom to negotiate. Of course, the optimal rating percentage of rank strangers who know nothing about you or your students, who may or may not be teachers, is zero. I'd argue the NYSUT number is much closer to zero and therefore preferable. But I'm not "smart," like whoever is making decisions for us, so what do I know?

Merryl Tisch believes that testing has all the validity and importance of yearly physical exams.  In her brief MSNBC debate with Dr. Ravitch a couple of weeks back, she argued that high-stakes tests provide necessary snapshots to keep students academically healthy.  She drew analogies with immunizations.  People must not opt out for their own sake and that of the larger population.

Bud I'd say she'd better check her thermometer, scale or stethoscope.  She'd better sterilize her equipment. Tests are false measures, causing panic and illness in some small children.  For others, who are told they are failures, there is demoralization with potentially long-term effects.  Only time will tell how the symptoms now will play out later.

Tisch overlooks the fact that teaching is increasingly becoming test prep.  These tests yield no useful diagnostic information to either teacher, student or parent.  Instead, cut scores are set with political objectives in mind.  The tests are used to punish teachers and close public schools.  The tests will increasingly drive teachers from the profession.  The students who need the most help will have a harder time finding good teachers.  Just watch teacher flight take off!  And will that be healthy for the students who struggle the most?  Will a new teacher, more focused on test prep than students' social and emotional health as they teach their academics, be a cure?

Imagine if annual physical exams actually made patients ill.  Imagine if they failed to give adequate "snapshots" of a person's health.  Imagine if 65%-70% or so of patients were told they failed their medical exams.  Imagine if they were all told they're dying.  Imagine if their physical trainers were then blamed or their loving parents who fed them so many meals.  Imagine if their gyms were closed and their entire staffs fired.  Worse yet, imagine if child services came to take us all away from our families and our communities.  And then ran a bulldozer over whatever was left!  Imagine if the cure was far worse than the ill, itself.  Imagine if no one would reach out to help the neediest persons anymore for fear of being identified as the cause of the problem!

Imagine if the immunizations given to people had no proven scientific effectiveness.  Imagine if the vaccines actually infected people.  Imagine if our children were the modern-day guinea pigs in a highly expensive, highly secretive and highly questionable policy of vaccination.  Imagine all the while the very people who spend millions lobbying for this screwy and potentially lethal system profit enormously.  Could you imagine parents not opting out their children?  It would be a crime to opt in.  Perhaps Merryl Tisch is the one who should be checked out!

Watch out teachers, it's me again, "Punchy" Mike Mulgrew, and I'm swingin' wild! You'll take my Common Core out of my cold dead arms, baby! But I'm not here today to punch your face out. I'm here to explain the new legislation, and why we told legislators it was okay if they voted for it.

First of all, there's been a lot of bitching about the expedited 3020a process. Why should there be only one arbitrator instead of three? The fact is it's been that way in New York City for a while, so why shouldn't the rest of the state have that too? You see, this way, while other people may have lost something, we haven't lost anything. So that's a win for us. Well, anyway, it's not a loss for us. Why should we worry about everyone else? Not our job, man.

And fer cryin' out loud, while there may be one or two items that suck in the budget, we got more money, and more money is always a good thing. Sure, you won't get any of it, and your class sizes won't be reduced, but you don't think outside evaluators grow on trees, do you? Someone has to pay for supervisors to drive back and forth to schools and observe classes about which they know nothing whatsoever. It's always good to get a fresh perspective on why you suck how you can better deliver instruction.

And hey, we have a very friendly chancellor. Sure she talks about getting rid of teachers, but I'm sure she doesn't have you in mind when she says stuff like that. She's talking about those other teachers, you know, the ones who are not you, so you don't have to worry.  A lot of people don't understand the importance of union. Union means we stand together and do whatever I tell you to do. That's why we have a loyalty oath, and that's why every single person who represents you in NYSUT and AFT votes any damn way I tell them. That's democracy. Let me tell you, it isn't easy to get an organization this large to not oppose the likes of Andrew Cuomo when he runs for re-election.

We also trust that our friendly chancellor will make fair deals with us on receivership, so that if your school gets taken over and you have to reapply for your job it won't be so bad. We've got a great record with school closings. Just ask any ATR how they like traveling school to school week to week, fighting for bathroom keys. And make no mistake, we support your right to have a bathroom key. 

And don't worry if you get an ineffective rating or two. Sure they can end your career and all, but we've arranged it so that 13% of you can actually get a fair hearing. In fact we've already won one of those hearings, and what's better than that? You only have to worry if you're one of the 87% who faces a kangaroo court and doesn't get a fair hearing, so chin up and all that. Remember, in union we stand together, and we the leadership will decide which 13% of you get a fair hearing. What could be better than that? You trust us, don't you?

Please don't go reading stuff like this that says the mayor did indeed get his 50%. I mean, that's just simple math. I'm just a regular guy, an ex-carpenter. It's all I can do to not spout a stream of obscenities right now for no reason. And don't get all in a lather over Merryl Tisch talking about exempting high performing districts. There's no way New York will be included, and a fundamental facet of unionism is that we care only about ourselves.

In fact, it's a good thing if Tisch is trying to shut up those yammering Long Island parents always going on about opting out. Maybe if their districts aren't affected they will stop screaming. After all, the highest body in the UFT, the delegate assembly, just killed two opt-out resolutions, and failed even to bring up our own watered down and meaningless resolution, the one that reaffirmed our faith in teachers being evaluated with junk science. As a UFT member, you should be happy that there's a possibility these folks will stop making me look bad.

So, in summary, trust us, don't read the blogs, don't listen to Carol Burris or Diane Ravitch or any of those other loudmouths out there, a thousand points of light, and ask yourself this--under my leadership, are you better off than you were a year ago? If the answer is no, ask yourself this--under my leadership, is Mike Mulgrew any better than he was a year ago?

Whatever the answers are, remember, as a unionist, it's your duty to sit down, shut up, and do whatever I say. And if I say things don't suck, that should be good enough for anyone.

When I first started this blog in 05, I started to learn a lot about my union. I started it with the intent of offsetting the insane nonsense I regularly read about public schools. While I thought the 02 contract was poorly conceived, giving time for money when we could later get zeros that would make us end up working for free, I didn't have much idea about UFT history or leadership.

Then the 05 contract hit, and I could not believe how absolutely awful it was. Along with others, like Chaz, Paul Rubin, and James Eterno, I went to war in the comments section of Edwize, the now moribund UFT blog. It was ironic because I had just negotiated the notion of writing on Edwize and had thought of scrapping this blog in favor of writing for UFT. I had been published a few times in NY Teacher and it seemed like a good idea.

I found I was the enemy, to be welcomed with some of the most inane ad hominem nonsense I'd ever seen. I was pretty shocked that the great minds of my union couldn't muster real arguments.

I became pretty nasty too, and for years said the most awful things about then-UFT President Randi Weingarten and her staunch defender Leo Casey. I'm not quite as nasty as I used to be, and I try not to get so personal as I used to. Still, I'm amazed at the absolute audacity of this political machine, and I now know it entails not only UFT, but also NYSUT and AFT. They are either wholly subsidiaries of UFT, or perhaps of Randi herself. I can't tell. Maybe someone out there can.

So there is a machine, and it does something, but I'm not entirely sure what. Diane Ravitch posted that Randi was not voting for Cuomo, but later had to modify the headline. Randi said something like she was voting all WFP, but that she was not beginning with the top of the ticket. A clever commenter suggested perhaps she was beginning at the bottom, and in fact nowhere did she explicitly say she was not voting for the alleged Democrat who just called public schools a monopoly.

It's pretty clear to me that Randi's a polished politician and I'm not. I mean, I can't understand why we supported mayoral control the first time, let alone after it proved an unmitigated disaster and we failed to amend it. I don't know why we support charter schools or Common Core. It's a mystery to me why we partnered with Steve Barr and brought Green Dot to NY, particularly when he thanked us by working for parent trigger. I don't know why Bill Gates was keynote at AFT, particularly when he thanked us by trashing our pensions as soon as he walked out. Though Randi now opposes VAM, she's supported multiple agreements to use it, including ours.

Mostly, I have no idea why we scuttled Zephyr Teachout's bid to take the WFP nomination. We managed to deprive New Yorkers of a great choice for a truly progressive candidate, we managed to show that Revive NYSUT's claims of opposing Cuomo were ridiculous nonsense, and we managed to place WFP below the truly progressive Green Party, if not off the ballot altogether.

So Randi clearly takes much more nuanced positions than I do, and spends a great deal of time thinking about them, pondering the possibilities, considering all sides, and perhaps even more sides than all sides. I look at things that hurt working teachers, and say, "Who needs that?" I can't look at them and say, "Well, maybe it's not that bad. Let's try it." Of course, not being a mind reader, I have no idea whether or not Randi thinks that either.

But I'd love to know why on earth she couldn't just say outright, "Andrew Cuomo is a despicable, unprincipled, disingenuous opportunistic thug and I won't vote for him."

If anyone knows, please clue me in. I'm all ears.

Related: Perdido Street weighs in.

In Spanish, they say, “Common sense is the least common of all the senses.” Nowhere is that argument clearer than in the arguments against teacher tenure, most recently played out on the cover of Time, the paragon of publishing that matched Michelle Rhee with her broom and declared Hitler "Man of the Year."

There are all these arguments about bad vs. good apples, but they ultimately seem absurd to me. Basically, the argument is tenure protects bad teachers, and it therefore should not exist. Self-appointed education expert Campbell Brown repeatedly dredges up a few cases and pastes them all over Twitter and any paper that will print her.

What shall we do, then? Shall we eliminate tenure so as to make it easier to fire the so-called bad apples? Or should we simply take tenure away from them and leave it with the better apples? And if we do that, who gets to decide who deserves it and who doesn't?

In fact, UFT leadership moved, again, to weaken tenure in the last contract. There is an unfounded but popular prejudice against ATR teachers, and leadership reinforced it by adding a second-tier due process for them and making them easier to fire. Endorsing insane notions like this one gives reformy demagogues like Campbell Brown fodder to plod ahead with their absurd arguments. After all, if punchy Mike Mulgrew thinks ATR teachers deserve fewer rights than others, there must be something wrong with them. And therefore the reformy hordes can ask for fewer rights for other questionable apples.

But that’s not, in fact, the argument they’re using this year. The argument is that no teacher should have tenure. Instead, we should trust in the good graces of those people who failed to identify and/ or fire the alleged bad apples before giving them tenure. After all, since accountability applies only to unionized teachers, no administrator can possibly have made the remotest mistake, ever.

So with that assumption in mind, they plod ahead. It makes no difference if kids live in poverty, don’t speak English, or have severe learning disabilities. The only reason they fail standardized tests is that their teachers suck. Therefore, we must remove all job protections for teachers and fire at will.

Aside from the preposterous assumptions implicit in this argument, there’s something quite reminiscent of bigotry here, that the bad ones spoil it for the good ones, and therefore none of them should have rights. In fact, were you to take this argument and apply it to the country at large, it would suggest once the police picked you up for something, you were guilty. Certainly some people rob banks, commit atrocities, and do various other things that fail to merit the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, and you could reason that stripping everyone of basic due process would make it harder for the bad apples to get away with such things.

Then there’s the argument that other Americans don’t have tenure and can be fired for a bad haircut. Diane Ravitch tells the story of two farmers. One says, “My neighbor has a cow and I don’t. I want his cow to die.” That’s the sort of thinking that goes behind attacks on tenure, and also attacks on health benefits. Somehow, we’ve managed to become one of the only non-third world countries that doesn’t offer health care as a basic right. We’ve also managed to pretty well decimate union nationally, and corporate frauds like Fox News can sell Americans on the concept that this is somehow a good thing.

This blog may or may not be meaningful to you, but without tenure you would not be reading it or others like it. And it’s important for teachers to speak out. Take a historical look at societies that have attacked teachers and you may not find we’re in such good company.

Make no mistake, the reformy zillionaires don’t give a damn about you, your kids, or your students. If they did, they’d be protesting low tax rates that starve school districts, rather than giving cash to demagogues like Cuomo or Astorino. They’d be using their money to fight poverty rather than the teaching profession.

The proposition that working teachers need fewer protections or benefits is an attack on what remains of the American middle class. The sooner we wake up, realize that, and put a stop to it the better off we’ll be.

It's important to Wayne Barrett that you know he is progressive.

I am a progressive, 

How can you argue with that? After all, that's clear. You are, therefore, supposed to take his argument against union that much more seriously. But that's not all:

...have been one since the 1960s, when I became a New York City public school teacher for a few years and learned that my union, the United Federation of Teachers, was much better at representing my interests than those of the kids I taught. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise.

Wait a minute. Is Barrett stating that the United Federation of Teachers represents the interests of (gasp!) teachers? Now I'm shocked too! But what Barrett also does here is advance the meme that the interests of teachers are counter to those of students. Why aren't we out rallying for more work for less pay? After all, isn't that what the children of America need?

Despite Barrett's boast of how amazingly progressive he is, teacher v. student is precisely the argument you'll hear from Michelle Rhee, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, Chris Christie, and virtually all other supporters of corporate reform. Are we to determine, then, that there is no possibility they could be wrong? That appears to be the conclusion. Were Barrett to oppose abortion, gay rights, or a woman's right to choose, I can only suppose there'd be universal opposition to those issues as well. Barrett continues:

Seen through a progressive lens, all that should matter in these school skirmishes is whether a charter, a contract or an employment rule benefits students. Whenever progressive Democrats instead choose teacher power over the futures of minority kids, they are putting a big bucks lobby ahead of a core but comparatively powerless constituency.

It's pretty remarkable that Barrett forgets all the money billionaires Gates, Broad, and the Walmart family have invested in charters. Does he seriously expect us to entertain the outlandish notion that they are powerless? Does he expect us not to realize all the power and money they put behind charters? Does Barrett expect us to ignore the fact that their money dwarfs that of unions, or that Gates' has basically imposed his agenda on the nation, with the full cooperation of President Barack Obama?

Does he expect we don't know the attrition rates of charters? For example, the fabled Eva Moskowitz Academy just graduated its first class. Over half of its students not only disappeared, but were not even replaced. Are we to ignore that, as uber-progressive Barrett did?

You may, for example, have gotten the impression, when the WFP appeared poised last month to nominate charter foe Diane Ravitch to oppose Gov. Cuomo, a charter champion, in his reelection bid, that these nonprofit-run public schools are a Republican hedge-fund conspiracy. That's what the WFP, a sometimes-blunt instrument exploited by the interests that bankroll it, and 75-year-old Ravitch, the adopted guru of the UFT and de Blasio administration, would have us believe.

I wonder why Ravitch's age is of any relevance to Barrett's argument. Nonetheless, it's one of the most preposterous arguments I've ever seen, particularly if Barrett is as progressive as he claims. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ravitch was poised to win the nomination, and if that's not clear to you, you can ask Zephyr Teachout. Teachout lost the nomination, and it's pretty clear the teacher union did not support her.

As if that's not enough, the fact is the UFT, far from labeling them a "Republican hedge-fund conspiracy" not only supports charter schools, but has opened and co-sponsored them. AFT made Bill Gates the keynote at its convention. UFT and Ravitch differ on not only issues like charters, but also mayoral control, Common Core, and VAM ratings, all of which UFT has supported and Ravitch has opposed.

It's remarkable that someone as "progressive" as Barrett fails to comprehend the corporate influence on the modern Democratic party.

Even Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham professor who ran unsuccessfully against Cuomo for the WFP designation after Ravitch dropped out and now plans to challenge him in a Democratic primary partly because of his "support of corporate school reform," is the protégé of new charter school backer Howard Dean.

This is classic guilt by association. Barrett, despite acknowledging her opposition to Cuomo's corporate reform, sees fit to extrapolate Teachout's positions from those with whom she's acquainted rather than her actual words criticizing Cuomo's education positions or the obvious act of her opposing him.

Aside from the pyrotechnics involved in constructing Barrett's arguments, it's pretty disappointing that the self-styled progressive appears to oppose higher wages for those of us who, unlike him, have chosen to continue to educate all of New York's children, whether or not they meet the selective standards of Eva Moskowitz. I'd say one bottom line for anyone progressive is supporting working people. And lest Barrett shed further crocodile tears for the children he sees as well-served by charters, they will grow up and need jobs too.

It's my hope that we can offer our children something better than what Walmart has spent millions and millions creating for them. And like many of my colleagues, I'm poised to support real progressives to counter the Walmart message.

It's time we got together and discussed precisely what was going on in hedge funds. Now I don't personally know what a hedge fund is, or what it does, but I know that a lot of hedge-funders have become deeply involved in education. Therefore, I think it's only reasonable that I chair a national movement to discuss hedge funds.

We will convene next month. I've compiled a list of panel members. I will chair, as I have, if you don't mind my tooting my own horn, trimmed a hedge or two in my time. When I was a child, I lived in a home with a pretty substantial row of hedges in front. Naturally, our panel will be fair and balanced.

We will feature Reality-based educator, who will, as he's anonymous, be appearing with the traditional bag over his head.  RBE is well-known for his political commentary, and may actually have some idea what a hedge-fund is or does. Being broad minded, we won't hold that against him.

Also on the panel is Norm Scott, well-known educational gadfly, who will give us chapter and verse on his feelings about hedge funds. While I doubt he actually has any, I'm sure he'll find something to talk about.

I've also invited Michael Cleveland, who I think is the best fiddle player in the country. He has been playing fiddle since he was four years old, and plays with precision and fluid imagination second to no one. I realize a lot of people may not be interested in fiddle, but I am, so I don't care.

Naturally, a panel of this sort would not be complete without Fred Klonsky, with whom I had a beer in DC once. He's also a gifted artist, delivering some of the coolest drawings I've ever seen on his blog, and a noted authority on Chicago cuisine, including but not limited to deep dish pizza, beer-steamed brats, and those hot dogs with the stuff all over them.

Another great addition is the woman who works at my local pizzeria. I don't remember her name, but this place serves the very best pizza in my town. I'm particularly fond of the white spinach slices.

Next is one of the security guards at my daughter's school. He's really a pretty cool guy, and knows some jokes I've never heard before. As this will be televised, I will ask him to refrain from telling any.

I will, of course, be inviting Chaz, who's currently working as an ATR teacher. He is not sure about all this social justice stuff, but that's OK because we're talking hedge funds.

Finally, I will be inviting noted education scholar Diane Ravitch. I'm pretty sure she doesn't know anything about hedge funds either, but since she didn't get an invitation to NBC's Education Nation, featuring renowned educational experts like Goldie Hawn, this is the least I can do to make up for it.

According to Jim Hightower, yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you'll find in the middle of the road. And yet Jessica Levin, happily bad-mouthing Diane Ravitch over at Huffington Post, paints corporate reformers as occupying some middle ground. Levin, ruminating on Ravitch's book while showing little to no evidence she understands it, actually cites Michelle Rhee as one of these moderate voices. I'm reminded of another quote:

I've been teaching for almost thirty years, and I don't know precisely when my colleagues and I became public enemy number one. But after reading Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch I'm getting a pretty good handle on why.

Corporate reformers like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family seem to believe teachers have done a disservice to kindergarteners by allowing them to blow bubbles in their milk and push trucks around on the floor. Why weren't we training them to take valuable multiple-choice exams? Why did an entire generation of Americans, including public school teachers, misdirect its energies by trying to eradicate poverty? Couldn't we just fervently ignore it, as corporate reformers have done so successfully?

In Reign of Error, Ravitch demonstrates how, by ignoring poverty, America has managed to shift blame to public schools for its consequences. That's clear when the Governor of New York declares schools with poor test scores deserve the "death penalty," and the mayor of Chicago closes 50 schools in one fell swoop.  The fact that all so-called failing schools have high percentages of high-needs kids is either attributed to coincidence or ignored  completely. Standard practice is to replace them with privately run schools that generally perform either no better or much worse. Still, no one can argue they don't place more tax money into the pockets of investors.

Reign of Error  shows us corporate reform is largely about where the money goes. Americans are led to believe teachers earn too much, and entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch and the Walmart family earn too little. To correct this inequity, corporate reformers work to erase collective bargaining, unionism, teacher tenure, and other outrages that have left middle-class people able to make a living. This, of course, is all done in the name of helping children.

The most trendy way to redirect public money into private hands is via charter schools. If charters don't have unions, they don't have to worry about collective bargaining. If they largely exclude learning disabled and ESL students, they not only improve their test scores, but also save a ton of money on mandated services. Charter trailblazer Geoffrey Canada, who pays himself a half-million per year, turned away an entire student cohort rather than deal with their impending scores.

Ravitch points out in detail the excellent investment opportunities charters can provide. People who have enough money to really appreciate it can get more of it before it's frittered away on the education of impoverished children. They save even more money for needy rich people by hiring less-qualified instructors, thereby cutting teacher salaries. And wealthy foreigners have literally bought green cards via investing in charters

Charters are all about choice. They therefore choose whether they're public or private depending on the circumstances. Their reps go to court to prevent audits, because in those cases they're private schools. But they happily accept government support because in those cases they're public schools. And even if they fail on test scores, the sole criterion by which corporate reformers judge schools, it makes no difference. They're still, evidently, providing the all-important choice of where our still-needy children will fail these tests.

Reign of Error shines a bright light on cyber charters, which save quite a bit of cash for eager investors. Unlike brick and mortar charters, cybers cannot jack up rents 900% for profit. But they make up for it in other ways. Cyber charters divert many millions that might otherwise be wasted on live teachers and human interaction with children. While graduation rates are abysmal, and a CREDO study found 100% of them perform worse than public schools, there is no denying their immense profitability.

On every page of Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch paints a portrait that's conspicuously absent from mainstream media. She shows us a tangled web, and paints every thread with an arrow pointing to where our tax dollars are really headed. Anyone who's interested in the true meaning of corporate reform needs to read this book. If you're already focused on what moves and motivates our educational system, it will surely sharpen that focus. If not, it will be an eye-opener.

And for the naysayers, Ravitch goes into detail about what America would do if it really wanted to help children, rather than simply test them and redirect public money. Here's hoping that school boards and mayors everywhere read this book.