That's basically the argument for replacing NCLB with a new annual testing mandate. You no longer have to use Common Core. You aren't required to judge teachers via junk science. Of course, a whole lot of states, including ours, already do both. And there's nothing in the bill that says we can't continue to do it.

In fact, despite Governor Andy's recent lip service questioning the junk science he championed and enabled, state law would have to be changed in order to sidestep teachers not only being rated at 50% by junk science, but also being observed by complete strangers who may or may not have agendas.

Then you read things like this, which seem to demand prospective teachers meet junk science requirements before becoming certified. The fact that they are not, in fact, teachers of record is neither here nor there. Aside from that, it seems like a bonanza for private academies that want to churn out teachers with less training, fewer qualifications and less education. Surely there must be some way to juke the stats and make a few bucks. It's troubling that such concerns, rather than the education of our children, make their way into bills that merit serious consideration. Perhaps more troubling is that such things seem to merit union support.

Personally, I'm wary of anything that merits the support of so-called Educators for Excellence. This is a group founded by two former teachers who claim to represent current teachers, but take tons of money from the reformies to do so. Their main aims seem to be more work for less pay, having teachers judged on junk science, and making us as close to at-will employees as possible. They sneak into schools with the blessing of ignorant principals and claim anyone who goes to one of their events as a supporter. Why would a group like that support anything that would help us or the kids we serve?

Naturally, faux-teacher group E4E supports the movement toward taking action against the bottom 5% of schools, which has included things like closure, receivership, and placing teachers in the ATR or unemployment line. I see nothing about addressing root causes of student underachievement, which entail neither teacher nor school quality. I'm tired of seeing teachers and schools blamed for our abject failure to address poverty.

Then there's the shirking of responsibility for students with disabilities.  While teachers are regularly told the reason kids fail is our failure to differentiate, it's really tough to do so when all kids face the same assessment no matter what. In fact UFT President Michael Mulgrew told the Delegate Assembly that chronological age ought not to be the sole factor in how students are assessed. Yet in their zeal to avoid root causes by heaping blame on teachers and schools, the writers of this bill appear to have done just that.

Aligning standards for special needs kids with state academic content is tricky. I've watched this unfold with the students I teach, who do not speak English. I went to a curriculum-writing session in which I pointed out to the resident expert that there was no provision for me to teach basic grammar or usage to newcomers. She told me I should use first grade standards for my teenage students. This explicitly indicated the writers of the standards had not considered my kids at all.

The icing on the top of the ESEA cake is the limitation of 1% for alternate assessment. This arbitrary limit might be acceptable if there were no more than 1% of students with disabilities, lack of formal education, or lack of English ability. Sadly that's far from the case, so districts with higher percentages of such students will continue to suffer, and will continue to be scapegoated for the myopia and willful ignorance of this law. Charters will continue to counsel out and toss out such kids as pariahs. They will continue to take no responsibility whatsoever for the huge numbers of students on which their alleged magic fails. Public schools will continue to be scapegoats, and will continue to suffer. In New York, collective bargaining agreement will continue to be abrogated as we blame schools and teachers for government's failures.

Sadly, it looks like allegedly progressive mayor Bill de Blasio will cave to the demands of reformy Merryl Tisch and start closing schools again next year. We need education priorities in these United States that entail helping kids where they are, not one that makes the idiotic presumption that 99% of them are in the same place.

And we need an argument more persuasive than "now with less crap." We are educators and we need to demand rationality.

Or is that to much to ask?

In New York, children from other countries are supposed to learn English via magic. That's about all I can conclude from the mandates that have been issued by Merryl Tisch and her gang of geniuses up there. Since I started teaching ESL, beginning students have been entitled to three periods a day of instruction in English language. Because Merryl knows better, now they only need one period per day.

The other two periods can be math, social studies, chemistry, or pretty much whatever. The teacher of those classes will pick up the magical 12 credits of ESL cheap via NYSUT or UFT, and then magically teach not only chemistry, but also English! And this magic teacher will do both those things in the same time it takes all the other teachers to teach the American kids! Because it doesn't matter whether the kids know a lick of English, whether we teach them a lick of English, or even whether they want to learn English. Once that magic teacher gets those 12 magic credits, all those problems will simply disappear.

And even better news--once the kids become high beginners, they only need to study English half of the time. And once they hit intermediate, they don't need to study English anymore at all! Do you see the beauty of that? The magic teachers, with no extra time, will teach them not only how to pass that troublesome Global Regents exam, but also basic conversation, listening skills, and reading and writing. And they will do this while covering the same textbook and giving them the same assessments that kids who've lived here all their lives take.

Not only that, but in New York, we've overcome a basic tenet of language acquisition, i.e., the older you are the harder it is to acquire a language. In fact, after puberty, the ability to acquire language drops precipitously. But that doesn't matter in New York, because anyone with the magic twelve credits can squeeze English out of the most reluctant individuals. It won't matter if they've been dragged here from China kicking and screaming. It won't matter if they've left their families and friends behind. It won't matter if they've missed years of formal education. It will make no difference if they are illiterate in their first languages.

Once people take those magic twelve credits, they will overcome these and all other obstacles via sheer grit. They will impose rigor on these kids, and with rigor and grit the English language will be no obstacle whatsoever. Sure, when they go to college and know little or nothing about English structure or usage they will have to take costly remedial courses to learn what they could have learned in high school. Sure, they will be unable to actually pass tests that are wildly inappropriate. Sure, they will spend extra years trying to graduate, and schools will be penalized, closed, put into receivership, and whatever.

But the important thing is we'll have all those magic teachers, and all those magic credits, and New York will be a magical place to learn English. Because if you can't learn English via magic, you just haven't got any grit. Just ask Merryl Tisch. She's just full of grit.

Or something like that. 

Merryl Tisch is concerned about how things are going, or at least how things appear to be going. To remedy this, Tisch has decided not to change how things are going, but rather how things appear. For one thing, she wants to change the name of Common Core. This is part and parcel of the canard that there's nothing wrong with Common Core, but rather the way in which it was rolled out. This, evidently has given the whole Common Core thing a bad name.

So we can call it the Empire State standards, or the NY State Standards, or Merryl's Perils, or whatever. Then everyone will forget that their kids are spending 12 hours a night studying for developmentally inappropriate tests. The rising tide of opt-out will stop dead in its tracks, because well-informed parents will fail to notice it's the same nonsense with a shiny new bow on top. No one will notice that their kids are spending hours, days and weeks preparing for tests even the governor admits are meaningless (except for rating those darn teachers). Bill Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on these standards, and we can't just leave them lying around on some railroad track.

The other big idea is to allow teachers to appeal their junk science ratings. This way, you see, it will be tougher for teachers to take their cases to court and claim the entire system is nonsensical and incomprehensible. That the entire system happens to be nonsensical and incomprehensible is of no consequence. What's important is, with this regulation, some teachers may have their ratings reversed. NYSUT and UFT leadership have praised this, but as usual they've started the celebration prematurely. However they spin it, all the ratings are baseless. How can Karen Magee or Michael Mulgrew get up and claim victory because every now and then logic may trump junk science? The optimal percentage of junk science in teacher ratings is, and has always benn, precisely zero.

No matter how many times you paint over that garbage can, its contents remain the same. It's really unbelievable how many people are paid to run around and rationalize this nonsense. Maybe they should start a cult or something. They could all gather around a Bill Gates statue and pay tribute.

Maybe they could call it a religion. It kind of fits that an organization dedicated to the privatization of a public good would pay no taxes. Perhaps they're rich enough to pay no taxes already, but why not double down?

It's a WIN-WIN!

Thank goodness we have a visionary leader like Merryl Tisch in charge of our Regents. After all, if she weren't highly qualified, why would she have all that money? And then, of course there are her brilliant tactical moves to attack the corruption that pervaded our lowly and unexamined profession.

First, she determined that no teacher was trustworthy enough to grade her precious tests, because God forbid some corrupted pedagogue should change some kid's grade from 64 to 65. It would surely be the end of Western Civilization. After all, those tests are so precisely engineered that there is no room for error.

My kids, of course, shouldn't even be taking a test like the English Regents exam, because, well, they don't actually speak English yet, but why fritter away our time dwelling on technicalities? The point is, the decision has been made, and the tests must go on. As long as I'm grading total strangers in whom I have no interest, everything should be fine.

And what's more, I can get paid for it. I got multiple invites to do so. Every time I deleted one message, another appeared. YOU MUST ANSWER BY THIS DATE OR YOU"RE SCREWED FOR ALL ETERNITY! Wow. That's a little harsh. But then, a reprieve. WE'VE EXTENDED THE DATE, LUCKY YOU! PLEASE PLEASE SIGN UP TO DO THIS THING!!!

I didn't, of course. I have no interest in grading tests of strangers, for love or money. But holy crap, it must cost a lot of money to pay all these teachers to grade these tests. But it's money well-spent. After all, there was that time where they put all the tests on a truck to Connecticut or someplace where they were gonna do this super-duper scanning to make everything fair, but a bunch of tests fell off the truck.

How many dollars are they now spending to get teachers to do what they used to do for free? Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is people like me no longer get to grade their own students. What a disaster that is. Of course I do it every day, all year, but on this particular day the only thing I care about is that they pass, for any reason, no reason, and by any means possible. Because the only way I can validate my worth as a teacher is to make my kids get a good grade on a test that measures nothing whatsoever that I actually teach.

And to prove to Merryl Tisch that my kids can pass a test that measures nothing I teach, I will cheat. I will change grades. I will ignore errors. Hell, I'll sit in the classroom and write 30 papers myself and grade them all. Because that is the sort of corruption that pervades my profession. Not like the upstanding paradigms in Albany, where only two of the three prime powerbrokers have been indicted, to date.

Thank goodness Merryl Tisch has caused NYC to spend tens, hundreds of thousands, who knows how many dollars to pay teachers to do something that used to be part of their jobs. The only thing that will top that is when she shuffles around thousands of administrators to evaluate teachers they neither know nor care about, so as to make sure that home administrators don't give their teachers good ratings.

Maybe, since no one will be around to actually administrate schools, things will run better. Or maybe they can just pay more people to do that stuff. After all, there's nothing more efficient than spending taxpayer money for no good reason. She may not know doodly-squat about public education, but Merryl Tisch is an unparalleled expert in spending our money.

Since I've been teaching, we've provided English Language Learners with extensive instruction. After all, how the hell are you supposed to pass all-important standardized tests if you don't even understand the language? For the last few years, I've been teaching beginners. The first time I taught ESL I taught beginners. I've found many of my colleagues avoid this. I don't know why, because I love it. They make rapid progress. You can see it before your eyes, like when children are growing up.

Beginners, since I started in the eighties, have gotten three periods a day of instruction. Intermediate students got two, as did advanced. Proficient students, those who tested out, usually got one period but sometimes got another to help them along. Because placement tests are usually total crap, because they gave the same one for decades, and because some kids guess well for no reason, I've often seen kids at high levels come back for help.

NYSED knows everything, though, and has determined we have to stop coddling these kids. So now, for one period a day previously devoted to English, all ESL students in NY will take a subject class. They can either take this class with a dually licensed teacher, for example a math teacher with an ESL extension, or it can be co-taught by two teachers--one ESL and one subject teacher.

This is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard in my life, but it will save money that can be devoted to tax breaks for billionaires. Therefore Merryl Tisch and Andrew Cuomo can have a laugh over a Grey Goose martini at the next gala affair in which their paths cross. So it's all good for them.

In my school, we will have classes of social studies/ ESL. This is as good an idea as any, since social studies entails a lot of reading and writing, as does English. But it's still awful. Let's say, for example, that your history class entails, A, B, C and D. Let's further say that A, B, C and D are required for the Regents exam, without which you can't graduate. So you now need to cover A, B, C, D, and English as well. Who knows whether the English levels in the room will be the same? Shall we differentiate by teaching multiple levels of English as we teach history? How the hell do you do that without losing C, D, or some part thereof? And how do you incorporate beginning English into World War II? Present progressive?

Look. The Reich is bombing London.
There's the Gestapo, rounding up people for the concentration camp.

Certainly more colorful than, "I'm studying English." But aren't you supposed to be studying English?  Not really. Not anymore. It's Core, Core, Core, and no more of that touchy-feely crap. Renowned Common Core genius David Coleman says no one gives a crap how you feel or what you think, and if he says it, that ought to be good enough for anyone. If his life is one of tedium, drudgery, and humiliation, why shouldn't yours be too? In his defense, however, I actually don't give a crap how he feels or what he thinks.

And why should I? He knows nothing about language acquisition. Nor does NYSED. What do they care that it takes three years to learn a language conversationally, that if varies greatly by individual, or that it take 5-7 years to learn academic English? NYSED says screw, "My name is _____," and let them all study the holocaust.

Maybe they don't need to know, "My name is ____" because if these kids get the jobs in which the reformy Walmart family wishes to dump them, they'll wear name tags anyway. But while tags tell people what their names are, it's still unlikely anyone will question them about the holocaust while seeking out that 9-gallon jar of Vlasic pickles. By degrading jobs that require actual introspection, like teaching, while offering bargain basement standardized nonsense like this, we actively degrade our children and their future.

It's unconscionable that the demagogues in charge of education would take one moment away from our English Language Learners. Whoever thought of this belongs in prison with Silver, Skelos, and Cuomo,  And Tisch too.

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!

I'm hearing that it's highly unlikely the Cuomo/ Heavy Hearts plan could be in effect 2015/ 2016, for a number of reasons. One is that the deadline for agreements, even without a delay, is late November. There will have to be systems in place before that, and they will likely be whatever districts have now. So prepare for another year of MOSL and MOTP.

If there are "hardship" delays, and both Tisch and Cuomo now appear on board, said delays could possibly put off this nonsense for yet another year. Of course all this is contingent upon whatever NYSED and the Regents do, but Carmen Fariña does not appear to be in favor of all this nonsense, and supports the delay. Will the state allow hardships all over? That's a more difficult question.

But a crap system will indeed be a hardship on any and all systems that enact it.

It appears likely that the new system in NYC, with its unfunded mandates,  would entail having supervisors wander the city observing teachers in other schools. They would be the outside observers, working under the assumption they would be objective and everyone else was crooked. Would outside supervisors contact the supervisors in the schools they were visiting? Would they be influenced by what said supervisors say?

Of course they wouldn't, because the new system assumes them to be corrupt only within their own schools. They would never call another school to hear that teacher A is wonderful and teacher B sucks, and they would never act on such info. After all, who wants to please people in other schools so those same people deliver desired results in their own schools? And how would supervisors ever conceive of such a thing?

My students and I have lost four days of instruction due to cumbersome and poorly written state tests, and next week we will lose three more. In our case these tests serve not only to decide how quickly your humble correspondent is fired, but also the levels at which students are placed next year. The fabulous system for doing that entails teachers in my school scoring the actual test, because of course we have nothing else to do. However, though the tests are scored, we cannot actually use them for placement, because then follows the rigging of the scores by NY State.

Although we have little time to grade, the geniuses in Albany will need months to actually get back to us on what the scores mean. Therefore, my school, like all the schools in NY, will program kids for next year and need to alter said programs based on whatever NYS tells us the scores mean.

We're lucky to have a visionary like Andrew Cuomo to let us know that however badly the system sucks now, he has a way to make it worse.

No, not on her mansion. Merry Tisch doesn't want to put Governor Cuomo's draconian evaluation system into effect next November, and prefers to wait until September 2016.  While Cuomo's minions are spitting out objections, the delay could be a great thing. For one thing, there will be yet another budget vote, and Cuomo could conceivably be even more unpopular then than he is now.

Personally, I don't think Merryl Tisch gives a golly gosh darn about the quality of education, or whether or not teachers are fired for no reason. Otherwise, she would lean toward positions that weren't insane. This not being the case, it begs the question--why is Merryl asking for more time? Could it be, as she says, that she needs more time to develop a system that works? Well, if she really wanted a system that worked, why would she have hitched her string of pearls to a junk science plan at all?

One of Merryl's most recent inanities entailed exempting high performing districts from the junk science plan. This may have worked to her benefit, as some of the largest opt-out voices come from such districts. Perhaps Merryl wanted to shut down some of these voices. This idea was not well-received, what with it being blatantly discriminatory and all, and inconvenient for Governor Andy to explain.

But think about what will happen in Scarsdale when Ms. Friendly, the best teacher on God's green earth, is fired because her 98% students slipped down to 97, and she therefore displayed negative value. What if not only that happened, but the independent evaluator took exception to the cut of her jib, and jabbed her jib with an ineffective rating? What happens when the beloved special education teacher is fired because his students have learning disabilities that impeded their tests? Was it his fault the independent evaluator doesn't know a special ed. class from a very special episode of Punky Brewster?

Some people might object when Governor Andy starts firing teachers for no reason. It could get even more inconvenient than those darn opt-outs. After all, programs like this one have failed spectacularly all over the country, and some are rolling back the misplaced reforminess. New York is swimming against the tide full speed ahead, and it could be a bumpy ride. It's one thing if someone like me gets fired for the offense of repeatedly teaching kids who don't speak English. It's another when people start not only noticing the blithering incompetence and ignorance of Merryl and her gang of corporate test enthusiasts, but also rising up in great numbers against them. And then there's her impending re-election, or not, come next April.

With the huge increases in opt-out, it's pretty clear NY State is waking up. I certainly hope this hurtful and destructive program is put off. That would give us a chance to actively lobby for something that makes sense, or at least more sense than the current fire union teachers program.

I don't care if Merryl is motivated by the right reasons, the wrong reasons, no reason at all, or the voices in her head. Delay is the next best thing to killing this awful bill, and I for one am willing to give the sleazeballs of the Heavy Hearts Club and opportunity to redeem their vile and worthless souls.

Merryl Tisch, who maybe taught in a religious school sometime, or something, is more or less in charge of education for our state. This is particularly true since Reformy John King got promoted and is now spreading reforminess for the whole country. Ms. Tisch supports Common Core wholeheartedly, and toured the state with Reformy John to pretend to listen to public school parents and teachers. Of course, she didn't, because they are special interests.

Tisch opposes opt-out, because tests are part of life. It doesn't matter whether the tests cover what kids learned, and it doesn't matter if neither teachers nor students know what's on the tests. It doesn't matter that teachers are sworn to secrecy about the contents of the tests and risk their jobs if they breathe a word to anyone. It doesn't matter that the tests are never returned to the students and they never find out what they get wrong or learn how they can get it right. It doesn't matter that they set cut scores after the tests are returned to produce whatever results they damn please.

However, when the feds talk about taking money away from NY State, Tisch gets serious.

“I would say to everyone who wants to punish the school districts: hold them to standards, set high expectations, hold them accountable, but punishing them? Really, are you kidding me?” said Board of Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch.

How dare the feds threaten to deny us money? It's one thing to fire teachers, one thing to test kids to death, but money is money.
— Fake Merryl Tisch (@FakeMerrylTisch) April 22, 2015

While Tisch may know little or nothing about public education, she certainly knows about money. For one thing, she's got a whole lot of it. She's been around money all her life. When there's no money to hire help for the Regents, she hired some, and as they aren't state employees they aren't subject to all those nasty regulations about ethics and stuff. And why should they be? They're only making decisions for millions of public school children, and Tisch wouldn't place her own kids in a public school on a bet. Just not done in her circles. Our circles are the ones on standardized tests for our kids, not hers or Andrew Cuomo's or John King's.

Of course, Merryl Tisch may appear to be standing up for our kids in defending funds. That is likely her motivation for opposing financial disincentives. Tisch has seen the passion that fuels public school parents who stand up for their children, and may well be wary of further invoking or intensifying their already considerable wrath. If she is behind blocking funding to our kids, there are likely torches and pitchforks headed for her castle. If, on the other hand, she makes Arne Duncan the villain, she can not only pass the buck but also feign outrage. It's a reformy win-win.

It's unfortunate that our ostensible representative, the one none of us got to vote for or against, values appearances so much and public education so little. How did we get into a situation where people who know little or nothing about what we do have so much influence? How is it that we don't voice opposition to elected officials until after they're elected? How is it that we don't oppose anti-teacher, anti-public education bills until after we thank people for passing them?

Sometimes I think Merryl Tisch is exactly what we deserve. Please tell me I'm wrong.

Sure, she's arrogant, and sure, she walks around spouting inanities. Sure she makes empty threats of the sort every teacher would avoid. She doesn't like it when her BFFs are dismissed as Regents, and now wishes to bring them back as consultants. This reality thing is not for her, though she wants to impose harsh and unreasonable testing on us and our children. Of course, she's utterly unqualified for her job, and has not the slightest idea what ours entails.

Sure, she has no curiosity, and accepts boilerplate reforminess without question. She has no hesitation in making pronouncements about how standardized testing is necessary for high-needs kids, and she isn't bothered by the utter lack of evidence in that assertion. She babbles about how national testing will be necessary if too many kids opt out. She offers to exempt wealthy districts from the state's odious programs because they already get high test scores.

So it's tempting to dismiss Merryl Tisch as the preposterous figure she clearly is, and a number of my friends and acquaintances are already doing so. But we ought to take her seriously. After all, despite no evidence that any of her preferred programs would work, she's got them enshrined into law, with the help of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who shoved them through the Heavy Hearted Assembly without a whole lot of resistance. Note he did this despite his personal popularity being in the toilet.

So, OK, we can say how ridiculous she is, but the public message ought to be more on the lines of why her policies are hurtful. After all, we have all witnessed the results of NYSUT's juvenile "clueless Cuomo" campaign, and we will all have to live with the aftermath for at least one miserable year.  Apparently the whole name-calling thing did not resonate with anyone but already pissed off teachers. And we know well that Cuomo is not clueless, but rather cunning, unscrupulous, self-serving, self-important, and self-promoting.

We can't say whether Tisch is clueless. Certainly what she says is idiotic. But the important thing for us is to fight her policies and educate the public. I've seen some great commercials coming from New Jersey, commercials that reach out to parents and show the damage of test now, test tomorrow, and test all the time policies. Maybe we should reach out and send messages like those rather than the "It's just not fair" messages I've seen from UFT.

Maybe we should be telling parents about the consequences of a rating system that pretty much rules out evaluating anything but high stakes crap produced by incompetent and secretive Pearson. The whole "more than a score" theme rings really true now that we know a child's teacher cannot get a good rating if the test scores indicate otherwise. Will this lead to massive test prep in lieu of actual education? Will it lead to outrageous cheating? Will we see teachers frogmarched to prison as we just did in Atlanta?

Does anyone besides me wonder how Wall St. profiteers who tanked the economy are still walking around while a few Atlanta teachers are about to spend decades in prison? Does anyone wonder why not even the people who placed massive pressure on the teachers, the sort of pressure we'll soon be feeling in NY, have never been inside a courtroom? How is it, for example, that Michelle Rhee is selling fertilizer instead of making license plates?

We can joke amongst ourselves. But we need a serious and coherent message for the public. Too bad our union leadership is stuck in an echo chamber hearing some endless loop on solutions-based unionism. Because as far as I can tell, this policy provides neither solutions nor unionism.

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.

Looks like the geniuses at NYSED have done it again. Even after they field test the questions, they still don't work, so they get to erase them. These, of course, are the tests written by Pearson, which are much better than tests you or I could write. After all, the folks at Pearson have never met any of your students, don't know them from a hole in the wall, and are therefore the only people on earth who are qualified to judge them, or you, or whether your schools stay open.

One of the coolest things about the state tests is that they set the cut scores after they grade them. So if John King says 70% of our kids are gonna fail, well, that's just the way it is. If they say you need to answer 50 questions to pass, and too many kids do it, they can say they need 55. Or if not enough kids pass, they can say they need 45, and so on. Nice work if you can get it, and when you can toss out any questions that skew your results the wrong way, your success is fairly assured.

Here's the thing--that's exactly why head ed. Merryl Tisch decided we couldn't grade our students' Regents exams. Some teachers, horror of horrors, were finding kids who scored 64, and finding ways to bump the scores up to 65. What an awful thing to do, when the kid who scored 64 could simply spend another year studying whatever it was he or she missed by one point. Spending an entire year agonizing over one stinking point builds grit, or rigor, or whatever the hell it is that we're supposed to want for our kids.

Now NY State doesn't go scrimping around for one stinking point. NY State determines what results it wants, and manipulates the scores so they prove whatever. Want all the kids to pass so you look like geniuses? Want all the kids to fail so you can give more schools to Moskowitz? Want to have a sudden improvement? Want a crisis? You can get anything you want in Merryl Tisch's restaurant.

Now, since NYSED blatantly twists the scores to do whatever, they kind of assume we will too. I mean, have you known people who lie and cheat and say any damn thing to suit their purposes? In my experience, people like that tend to suspect the worst of others. They're very free with accusations, usually angry ones, that other people behave as they do. So don't take it personally if NYSED doesn't trust you.

They don't trust anyone, since they can't trust themselves. Because they are a bunch of lying manipulative weasels, they assume we are too. The only bad thing is how many people believe it.

We're gonna have to do something about that.

Mulgrew preached gloom and doom to the faithful on Wednesday night. Cuomo, having taken millions from reformy types, appears to wish to eviscerate union. While this is really nothing new, Mulgrew has decided it's time to take action. To wit, he asks us to:

a. Sign up for a UFT action alert campaign, entailing joining Twitter and using a few pre-approved hashtags,
b. Like UFT on Facebook, and
c. Follow UFT on Twitter.

This, in the view of the President of the United Federation of Teachers, will somehow help to halt Andrew Cuomo's attempt to circumvent tenure and collective bargaining by placing troubled schools into receivership. This will help stop him from eliminating the charter cap. This will further, hopefully, prevent merit pay, pension deterioration, and five year renewable so-called tenure. None of that old-fashioned mobilization nonsense for us, particularly since over 80% of us can't even be bothered voting for leadership.

Mulgrew pointed to the odd NY State legislative laws, and said that if the budget is rejected Cuomo would have enormous power to enact changes via executive order. He pointed to Cuomo's planned tax refunds, which will lock in a whole lot of suburban legislators. Everyone loves getting money in the mail, and Governor Cuomo has no issue buying off whoever needs buying off.

Mulgrew says we will not fight over evaluation, because then Cuomo will contend we didn't want it. This is an odd position, in my view, because there's now a movement, supported by our insane governor and private-schooled Merryl Tisch, to make state measures 40%, and to rate any teacher ineffective who doesn't meet the junk science standard. A large tenet of the Revive NYSUT campaign to overthrow leadership was that Iannuzzi had initiated the APPR law. They always seemed to forget that he did so with the express cooperation of Mike Mulgrew. The problem, of course, is that teachers really don't want a junk science evaluation system. Evidently, what teachers want is not a factor we consider during a substantive battle.

Another big idea from UFT leadership is to improve the perception of struggling schools. Such schools have large populations of ESL and special needs students. Mulgrew says if we do that, something that's never been done, we will immensely enhance our credibility. I did not hear arguments about addressing, for example, poverty. Nonetheless, given that we heard very similar arguments about UFT charter schools, and given they have not proven to be the magic promised, I'm not sure precisely what fuels the President's rampant optimism.

Mulgrew says Cuomo does not wish to fight over school funding and exploding class sizes, and that this will therefore be a more promising area in which to fight. This is curious to me, since we've done absolutely nothing to improve class sizes in my entire 30-year teaching career. Every chapter leader knows the only instrument that really regulates class size is the UFT Contract. Mulgrew himself just negotiated his first contract, and while we were successful in getting us the raise most city employees got ten years late with no interest, we did absolutely nothing to improve class sizes. I'm not sure how credible we are making class size demands.

Mulgrew referred to a pretty well-bandied about fact--Cuomo is angry about his pathetic margin of victory, and vindictive that we and NYSUT failed to support him. He clearly failed to appreciate our bizarre tactic of failing to oppose him. The largest threat to Andrew Cuomo would have been a serious opponent on the left, to with, Zephyr Teachout on the Working Families Party. Unions, including UFT, were adament that WFP support Cuomo, threatening to withhold support of the party altogether if it didn't.

And, of course, when Teachout redirected her energies to opposing Cuomo in the Democratic primary, AFT President Randi Weingarten made robocalls for Cuomo's running mate, Kathy Hochul, after the NY Times endorsed Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu. Oh, the ingratitude of Andrew Cuomo. He even vetoed his own initiative for a temporary safety net for teachers against the results of the Common Core tests that fail 70% of our students.

So was it a bad idea for us to usher in mayoral control that closed almost every comprehensive high school in the city? Should we not have supported the failed quasi-merit pay program, charter schools, Common Core, colocations, and the ATR? Will a bunch of UFT-endorsed tweets stop Cuomo from bribing the taxpayers and appeasing his multi-million dollar contributors?

If we hadn't done all that, would it now be as easy for Cuomo to push his odious corporate agenda on a misinformed public? Tough to say for sure, but I've seen no evidence our go-along-with-whatever policy has helped anyone but the reformies who bought and paid for Andrew Cuomo.

There aren't many UFT Unity bloggers. I know of only one chapter leader who bothered with a blog, and he was quietly instructed by his overlords to take it down. Of course he did, and now he's got a really cool gig at a UFT borough office. He also goes to conventions and votes however the hell Leroy Barr tells him to. In UFT Unity World, that's what's known as representing the membership. Being a chapter leader/ activist for UFT Unity entails doing as you're told. It's all neatly laid out in the oath.

The closest thing there is in UFT Unity World to a blogger is retired teacher/Unity bigshot Peter Goodman. Goodman tows the UFT Unity line very closely and clearly telegraphs the positions of leadership for them. While UFT President Michael Mulgrew makes it a point to tell the DA he doesn't read the blogs, because why the hell does he need to know what thinking teachers are actually thinking, I can only suppose Goodman is the exception to his rule that bloggers are purveyors of myth (read "liars").

The other day Goodman put up something I found fascinating, and you should too. Governor Cuomo and Merryl Tisch are raising a whole lot of Sturm und Drang about their APPR system. In their eyes, it's flawed because not enough teachers are getting adverse ratings. It's fairly simple in their eyes. Since they've set up a system in which 70% of our children are failing, shouldn't an equal number of teachers fail as well? I suspect they'd settle for 5 or 10% of teachers being arbitrarily dismissed to show how reasonable and flexible they are, but Tisch clearly wants anyone rated ineffective on junk science to be ineffective overall.

Here's what UFT Unity guru Peter Goodman has to say about that:

In my view, the major issues for NYSUT are not charter schools and the teacher evaluation law; the major issues are the 2% property tax cap and the Gap Elimination Adjustment.

That's an odd view for a UFT mouthpiece. Since these issues afflict our brother and sister NYSUT members more directly than us, we've heard little from UFT leadership about them. Basically Cuomo, who fancies himself a student lobbyist, continues to make draconian cuts in state aid while making it almost impossible for municipalities to make up the cuts in local budgets. It took 53% of the vote for Cuomo to win reelection, but it takes 60 if you want to raise your budget any more than 2% or rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

What this signals to bloggers like me and Perdido Street School is that leadership is likely to take a dive on APPR and charter schools. There's history supporting that--while Cuomo did his grand giveaway of mayoral control to Eva Moskowitz last year, Mulgrew didn't lift a finger to stop it. What will leadership do when Tisch and Cuomo pimp legislation to have an arbitrary percentage of teachers fired so as to appease Andy's wealthy contributor base? Tough to say.

Goodman offers us some other insights as well:

I mentioned to a teacher activist to expect “consequences” if the local endorsed Teachout. He thought Cuomo “would understand.”

Politics is a blood sport. When your guy/gal wins you expect them to support your issues and when your guy/gal loses you can expect the winner to seek retribution. A deeply embedded political aphorism: screw with me and I screw with you.

Maybe you didn’t learn this in your civics class and maybe you’re willing to take the heat and continue to battle and maybe you’re simply an idealist.

I have no idea which teacher activists Goodman speaks to, if indeed there are any.  Of course Revive NYSUT leadership endorsed no one at all, despite its explicit promise when running to oppose Cuomo (to which Goodman raised no objection whatsoever). I suppose we're now supposed to believe that it isn't Revive's fault the governor reneged on his promise to pass a bill exempting teachers from adverse Common Core-based ratings. This was touted as a great victory by our prescient leadership, but actually was not all that significant--it would clearly have affected a very small number of teachers, and it was temporary in any case.

What Goodman is trying to do here is blame those localities who failed to tow the Unity line and endorsed pro-teacher Zephyr Teachout or Howie Hawkins. If only they had sat down and shut up, the preferred mode of UFT Unity activism, everything would have been fine. We'd have our seat at the table and Andrew Cuomo would not have shown himself to be the lying weasel that he is.

You see, it's through quiet and highly diplomatic negotiations that UFT Unity has managed to usher in charter schools, mayoral control, school closings, junk science teacher ratings, two-tier due process, getting paid a full decade after everyone else, and the lowest pattern anyone has bargained in my living memory. Victories like that are a model for the entire state, and surely Revive NYSUT was propped up by UFT leadership so that this vision could be realized.

If Tisch and Cuomo manage to enact a toxic statewide APPR, every teacher in the state will feel the consequences of UFT Unity's unique negotiating tactics.

Thank goodness we have great thinkers like Merryl Tisch working for us. If it weren't for her, teachers would still be grading Regents exams of their own students. Back in the bad old days, that would translate into rampant corruption. Sometimes, in fact, a bunch of evil teachers would look at a grade of 64 and try to find ways to make it a 65.

Obviously that's unacceptable. It's vital that any kid with a grade of 64 be forced to go to summer school, or take another year of that course, or whatever it takes to learn that this is a rigorous world. Because this world is not about curiosity or joy, but rather rigor and grit (unless your father is Andrew Cuomo, Bill Gates, Barack Obama or John King, but that's another story). In public schools, we let kids know life is filled with tedium and unnecessary nonsense. Otherwise, how will we persuade people to make careers at Walmart?

Since Merryl Tisch has determined that public school teachers are a bunch of lowlife animals, unworthy of the public trust, we can't allow their favoritism to sully our practice of giving kids grades of 64. We've placed incredible pressure on teachers to have their kids pass tests, and it's important that we preclude their giving any comfort or aid to the kids they work with. Again, it's kibbles and bits. Or rigor and grit. Or something we need to teach the kids who don't go to Montessori schools, like John King's kids.

In NYC, we've taken this thinking to a whole new level. One year, we took all the papers to Connecticut or someplace, and teachers couldn't even touch the physical papers. Unfortunately, some of them fell off the truck or something before we could scan them. I guess that meant more rigor and bits for the kids who just had to take the test again.

Now it's different. Before, city teachers would sit and grade papers. Now, they travel to other schools and do it. But for some reason, it just doesn't get done on school time. Therefore we now pay teachers to grade the papers of kids from other schools. How much? Who knows? But friends tell me they're offered all sorts of extra hours to do what used to get done on school time.

I get emails from the DOE offering me hours if I'll go grade English Regents exams. I don't do it because I'm not at all interested in reading papers of strangers. But a lot of people need the money and they have no problem getting enough people to do it. Is that a good use of taxpayer money?

I'm a taxpayer, and I don't think so. Why should we pay extra just to make sure more kids fail?

I'm really curious why not one education writer has even noticed this. It would make a great story if some enterprising writer could find out how much extra money the city pays in per-session in order to maintain this idiotic policy.

But I guess with Campbell Brown out attacking tenure as the civil rights issue of our time, there just isn't enough space.

-->

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?

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.

Because teachers cannot be trusted to grade the papers of their students, in NY State they're prohibited by law from doing so. Thanks Merryl. Teachers might be prejudiced in favor of the kids, and pass them. How unforgivable. They might even find ways of taking 64 papers and finding another point, and that would be a disaster. It's far better to make kids sit in classes for half a year, a whole year, or the entire summer because that's how you really make them love a subject with which they're struggling.

A 64 paper is far different from a 65 paper. A kid who scores 65 knows the subject adequately, while one who scores 64 is an abject failure and must suffer for sins against humanity. That's a given, and we can all be thankful that Merryl Tisch and John King and their gaggle of privately-funded interns protect us against such outrages.

But Michael Bloomberg took this brilliant law and brought it to the next level. Not only do city teachers not mark the papers of their students, but they also are not permitted to mark the papers of anyone in their school. You see how that works? Teachers are so thoroughly corrupt that they may not only support their students, but also support their schools. Therefore, it's far better to send their papers to people who don't know them at all, who don't give a crap how they do, and who won't bother looking twice for any merit they may have missed. Because it's a tough world out there, and kids may as well begin now to face the fact they can expect kindness from absolutely no one.

Today a bunch of English teachers went to a Queens high school to anonymously mark papers. To welcome the teachers on this sub-freezing day, the great minds who run that building decided they would check driver licenses. Naturally, they had them wait on line, and if the line had them standing out in the freezing cold, well, too bad for them. This was the way the kids were treated, so why shouldn't the teachers be treated that way too?

Why the hell should this school accept DOE ID from these teachers? That could be dangerous, and it's a well-known made up fact that people counterfeit school ID left and right, because who doesn't want the privilege attendant to being a high school teacher? The half-price donuts, the women throwing themselves at you, the money pouring in from virtually everywhere.

I understand this beautiful scene was sullied when the chapter leader went out screaming for reasonable treatment of these people, but the sensible minds over there prevailed and would not give in.

Thank goodness we have such a great system.

Read the two passages and show a controlling idea about insights.

That's what today's Regents exam asked my kids to do. The thing is, most of them have only been in the country a few years. And there are likely plenty of American-born kids who don't know what an insight is. Certainly insight is lacking on the part of the test designers, unless their goal is to fail as many New York students as possible. That's certainly what my buddy Reality-Based Educator thinks.

But I watched a bunch of kids struggle. One claimed the word was not in his dictionary. ESL students get to use bilingual dictionaries for these tests, and they also hear the listening passage an additional time and get 50% more time. But you don't have to be a tarot card reader to know that anyone who doesn't know what an insight is will have a tough time writing about it. Here's what the dictionary says it is:

in·sight  (ĭn′sīt′)