I was pretty surprised last summer when Gotham Schools managed to cover Moskowitz rallies at least three times while ignoring a UFT press conference to stop Bloomberg from imposing his destructive policies on his predecessor. When I confronted them about it, they gave me a line about giving their people days off. Evidently, I, as a union advocate, was being petty about their giving immense coverage to one side of a story and none to the other.

Last year I asked whether getting coverage for 100 signatures on a petition was unique to E4E. I was told in the comments that it wasn't, and that anyone could do it. So I made a petition asking for equal consideration for all ESL students when taking the English Regents. A Gotham reporter called me, asked all about the petition, and then proceeded to do nothing whatsoever about it.

When I emailed someone there about their fawning coverage of E4E, I was asked to write a piece explaining why I felt they did not represent the overwhelming majority of working teachers. Not only did they not run it, but they never even responded to it. So as not to waste my time, I modified it and got it published elsewhere. Two weeks ago I had a piece in the Daily News which they failed to link to. I cannot recall reading a single teacher-bashing editorial in the NY Post that didn't make Rise and Shine, including a remarkably ridiculous piece from their favorite E4E/ failed teacher/ current school administrator.

In any case, here's another story that didn't make Rise and Shine today. Apparently, although Gotham felt it important to tell us how much John King hates Buffalo public schools, it's of no consequence that there is dissent among the state Regents. Why bother telling readers that anyone as important as a NY State Regent has issues with Common Core?

Regent Betty A. Rosa wants people to know that her board of 17 members aren't all in agreement about the public education reform agenda that's currently upsetting many parents, teachers and school administrators statewide.

In fact, she thinks the Common Core program is based on incomplete, manipulated data.
"They are using false information to create a crisis, to take the state test and turn it on its head to make sure the suburbs experience what the urban centers experience: failure," said Rosa, a former teacher, principal and superintendent from the Bronx.

Even more egregious, though, is the remarkably one-sided coverage of the Brooklyn version of the John King traveling medicine show. For example, were you relying on Gotham Schools, you would not know that Students First NY was allowed in 30 minutes before the public was told to come, and neither would you know that they were all issued talking points for their two-minute presentations.

Perhaps there was some reason why that did not bear mention. Perhaps the reporters didn't discover this until after other papers. Nonetheless, it's nothing short of disgraceful that they represent themselves as offering balanced coverage, yet fail to tell their readers about the clearly corporate-stacked deck.

They can change their name to Chalkboard NY, but if we continue to get the same one-sided reporting they may as well merge with Fox News.

Charter school operators, who enroll about 6% of the city's students, are recoiling in shock from Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio's decision to represent the other 94% of city schoolchildren in his transition team. Don't they read Gotham Schools? If they did, they'd know that charters should be covered at least half the time, if not all the time.

What is with this guy, including public school parents like Zakiyah Ansari on his team? Doesn't he know she's an advocate for public school children? Mayor Bloomberg never paid the slightest attention to her. Bloomberg knew that what was important was finding ways to pay charter operators three times what the NYC schools chancellor made, and indeed there are now several charter moguls raking in big bucks as a result.

How are Bloomberg's BFFs going to continue hopping onto the gravy train if this trend continues? Are we going to actually spend city funds on public schoolchildren instead? That would be an outrage. Why would entrepreneurs come to NYC if they can't make money off the sweat of our children? It's bad enough we outlawed child labor. Now, just when we're finally figuring how to make money off the little urchins, along comes liberal de Blasio to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

Naturally charter school advocates are outraged. Eva Moskowitz made her kids, their parents, and her at-will employees march in protest. This drew multiple stories from Gotham Schools, and perhaps de Blasio missed them. Gotham, of course, roundly ignores UFT rallies to stop Mayor Bloomberg from pushing his policies onto the mayor-elect, because such rallies are of no importance whatsoever.

Naturally, charter advocates, like Gates and Walmart, want to get their money's worth. That's why they fund Gotham Schools. But if Bill de Blasio won't take their money, how can he represent them.

After twelve years of a mayor who exclusively represented corporate interests like charter schools, a mayor who did whatever he wished on his fake school board, are we going to have a mayor who actually represents the interests of our children and their parents?

What would that New York look like?

by special guest blogger Reality-Based Educator

Governor Andrew Cuomo was all smiles last week with the news that PEF, the Public Employees Federation union, had agreed to his contract offer that gives employees furlough days, 0% salary increases for most of the contract, and much higher health insurance premiums after he threatened to lay off thousands of them if they didn't take the contract. 

PEF members had rejected the contract the first time, but the PEF leadership, along with Governor Cuomo, redid one or two things in it (not making it any better, IMO), and this time around, the PEF members agreed to it. 

I know one PEF member and she voted for it the second time because she felt she had to or she would see many of her co-workers laid off.  (I would have voted no, btw, but that's me...)

This is the second contract negotiation Cuomo has won by threatening to lay off thousands of state employees if the unions did not agree to huge concessions.

CSEA, the Civil Service Employees Association, also agreed to a contract with huge concessions after Cuomo threatened layoffs

Here is how Governor Cuomo did his victory lap for the PEF vote:

"This shows that collaboration works," Cuomo said at a news conference after the vote. He drew a contrast between New York ‘s labor negotiations and those in other parts of the country that have been more contentious. “This is slowing people down, providing the information, removing the emotion and cooler heads prevailing for a better outcome for all.” 

Oh, yeah - there's nothing "contentious" about threatening to lay off thousands of employees unless they take your garbage contract offer that will cost them thousands of dollars a year in lost pay and extra health care costs.

That sure sounds like "collaboration" to me.

Tell me how "cool" it is to threaten to lay off thousands if they don't agree to concessions?

Cuomo is smarter than some other union-busting governors around the country because he has gotten the shills running the unions to not peg him as the union-busting oligarch that he is. 

But make no mistake, Andrew Cuomo is no different than union-busters like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Ohio Governor John Kasich.

He is defending the 1% of this country on the backs of the 99%.

Cuomo has made ending an income tax on millionaires and billionaires the signature achievement of his administration, he has happily (and greedily) gone after the unions to take huge concessions or face layoffs, he has slashed the state budget for education and health care for senior citizens even as he has opened up the state to polluters in the gas industry who want to hydrofrack.

And if you don't like what he's doing, well, Cuomo doesn't want to hear from you.

Not at all.

A protest group modeled on Occupy Wall Street has sprung up in the state capital.

They call themselves Occupy Albany.

The Occupy Albany group has turned their protest to Governor Cuomo, who they have dubbed Governor 1% for his refusal to keep the millionaires' tax in place even as he slashes the state budget to the bone. 

They call their encampment "Cuomoville."

Cuomo, famously thin-skinned and vindictive beyond belief, wanted the Occupy Albany folks arrested and displaced from their place of protest.

He called on Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings to have the protestors arrested and the protest ended.
The mayor tried to do Cuomo's bidding but was rebuffed by the police chief of the city who said he would not use any police officers to

"monitor, watch, videotape or influence any behavior that is conducted by our citizens peacefully demonstrating."

In addition, the Albany DA said he wouldn't prosecute any protestors arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Cuomo, not used to losing political battles these days and certainly not used to have people under him like an Albany County district attorney or police chief tell him that they're not going to do his dirty work for him, backed down from the confrontation.

In public, Cuomo's people say the story about his demanding Occupy Albany arrests was not true.

I guess they're trying to "save face."

But make no mistake, Governor 1% backed down when students, middle aged parents and senior citizens protesting his policies in Albany didn't run from him, didn't agree to concessions or give him his way.

Here is how the NY Times viewed Cuomo's "defeat" by the Occupy Albany protestors at Camp Cuomo:

"Perhaps, as the governor’s men now say, Mr. Cuomo never sought this conflict and his aides never pressured Mr. Jennings, who they suggest may have suffered a failure of will. Or perhaps a willful governor watched others take a step back, and despite himself acquired a dose of wisdom."

Perhaps.

Or perhaps Governor Cuomo, like all bullies around the world, backed down when somebody stood up to him.

Which is  exactly what PEF and CSEA should have done in their contract negotiations.

EdNotes offers an important idea--that of linking Occupy Wall Street to education. Readers of this blog know well that the billionaires are trying to work their magic on our careers, just as they did to the economy, and that even the supposed Democrat, Barack Obama, firmly supports their baseless hare-brained schemes. Arne Duncan can't wait to do whatever the hell Bill Gates tells him to.

If we can get our message out, that the same people who tossed the economy into the crapper want to do the same to our children, we'll have accomplished something truly worthwhile. This is a long-term project that can't be accomplished overnight. The occupiers of Wall Street had to wait weeks before even being acknowledged by the mainstream media, and we'll likely have to wait even longer, having been tarred and smeared ever since we propelled President Hopey Changey to his current position.

But it appears the public is growing weary of years of nonsense upon nonsense. Who will speak the truth? Teachers, of course. If we can tell kids how things are, why can't we tell adults as well? After all, we have the welfare of their kids in mind. Do we want our students growing up into a world where they have to have both parents working 200 hours a week to pay rent? Do parents want that? I know I don't.

Teaching is a political act. We're making young people smarter, better-informed, and that's a threat to the corporate interests currently running our country and pretending to be Democrats. Doubtless smarter and better-informed adults are even more of a threat--and that's precisely why we need them right now.

...when a man has to make the supreme sacrifice and go to work. For me, that day is today. Now I don't expect much sympathy, because it's likely the same for you.

On the upside, I have the best job there is. That's not because it's easy. It's not because of the summers off, or the incredible salary (that hasn't changed in three years).  It's not because working for Michael Bloomberg is wonderful, or because the press is so kind to us.

It's because I get to meet and influence some of the most interesting people I've ever met. My kids come from all over the world, and I've learned a lot from them, even though what's expected is generally the opposite. But the opposite's true too--they learn English from me, and they get to see what to expect from our culture. Sometimes they come back to me and say, "I never read a book in English until you forced me to do it. I hated you at the time, but now I'm glad." I'm sure teachers of other subjects hear similar things (and if you have, please share them in the comments).

Does the appreciation of students make up for the abuse heaped on us by the media, by Bill Gates, by Barack Obama or his thugs Duncan and Rahm? Not necessarily--they're really not connected. But it's more meaningful because unlike these demagogues, kids actually know what they're talking about.

It makes me very, very sad when I hear teachers urging kids against our profession. I know they have good reason to do so, given the idiotic war against teachers, unions and working people in the US today. It's not easy to urge a young person into what could be an unrewarding and abusive job. But it certainly doesn't have to be one, and it's our job to make sure it doesn't become one.

All the more reason more of us need to stand up and rail against the corporatist bastards who demean and degrade what, maybe with the exception of doctors, is likely the most important job there is.

I went to see Billy Bragg last night at Lincoln Center's Big Busk.

The show, courtesy of corporate sponsors Bloomberg and Pepsico, was quite good, with lots of people playing their own guitars and singing along to great busking material like "Tracks Of My Tears" and "Cecilia".

In the middle of all the busking music, Billy threw in his own "There Is Power In A Union," a song with the following lyrics:

There is power in a democracy, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is a power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities to the farmlands in the trenches full of mud
Cuz war has always been the bosses' way sir

The Union forever defending our rights
Let's fight the Right Wing, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union

I couldn't help but think of the irony of Bragg singing a song about the power of union members sticking together to fight the bosses at a show sponsored by ace union-buster and NYC Boss, Michael Bloomberg.

I also couldn't help thinking about the irony of all those union-busting Educators4Excellence members who were denied tenure at the end of the school year because the NYCDOE and the man who runs it, ace union-buster and NYC Boss Michael Bloomberg, made a political decision to deny tenure to as many young teachers as possible to make a strong political statement about the tenure system.

The NY Times reports that Bloomberg bragged at a press conference at Tweed yesterday about how 42% of teachers who were up for tenure were not given it.

Most of those teachers were not denied tenure outright, but they were extended for another year.

The mayor says this is because these teachers "are not up to our standards yet," but the Times reports some teachers denied tenure this year say the process was flawed and unfair:

Some teachers complained that the evaluation standards were unclear. At one middle school in Manhattan, for example, teachers were given two weeks to prepare portfolios of students’ work, with little guidance.

One math teacher who has a business background said she had rushed to put together a three-inch binder of student work to submit along with other data, including a number of satisfactory evaluations. But she may have been penalized, she said, because her students’ standardized test scores dropped in her second year. Speaking anonymously because she feared retribution, she said that a decision on tenure for her had been deferred. Only about 15 percent of those who qualified for tenure at her school got it.

The Times also reports that Michael Mendel, the secretary of the UFT, stated that principals were told to deny tenure to teachers if they did not get a chance to observe them enough or if the principals were new to the school.

In addition, Teacher Data Reports were used for tenure decisions for teachers of math or ELA in 4th-8th grade.

Gotham Schools reports that if a teacher was not rated effective or higher on this report, they were not granted tenure no matter how glowing an evaluation they were given by their principal.

The value-added methodology used to create the evaluations for these reports, btw, has a large margin of error, perhaps as high as 36%, so it is quite possible that lots of teachers who received glowing reports from their principals were denied tenure because a flawed test score data system was unfairly used to evaluate them.

And that's how I would term a system with a 36% MOE being used to evaluate people for high stakes career decisions - "unfair" and "flawed".

In addition, many excellent young teachers may have been denied tenure because word came down from Tweed that Boss Bloomberg wants low tenure numbers this year so he can give a big speech about how he has transformed tenure into an Ironman competition that only truly "excellent" teachers can pass and pontificate about the same on Meet The Press the next time Fluffy invites him on the show.

It seems to me that a political decision was made to screw lots of teachers out of tenure this year and then the data and paperwork were manufactured to back that decision up.

Which brings me back to the Billy Bragg performance of "There Is Power In A Union" I saw tonight.

As he was singing it, with the logo Bloomberg emblazoned all over the stage, I couldn't help but think of all those Educators4Excellence members who may have been denied tenure not because they are bad teachers, not because they don't deserve tenure, but rather because the mayor made a political decision to screw them and then the DOE minions in the TDR department and the principals in the schools created the numbers and "data" to back that decision up.

I remember back during the layoff battle how many of those E4E members argued in the media that "objective data" like Teacher Data Reports should be used to decide who gets laid off and who gets to stay.

I remember saying then that there is no such thing as "objective data" in the hands of dishonest people like Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, or Cathie Black, that they will manufacture data and make it fit whatever political or economic decisions they have already made and screw the teachers they feel like screwing.

During the layoff battle, when Bloomberg wanted to lay off expensive veteran teachers, especially ATRs, the data would have been fiddled with to make that point (and help out the E4E's.)

But with tenure, the mayor wants to screw younger teachers, so the data is skewered in such a way to back that story up (and hurt the E4E's.)

Now if all teachers stuck together - young, old, veterans, newbies - and fought Boss Bloomberg as one big entity rather than turned on each other like the Educators4Excellence have (with the help of lots of funding from the hedge fund criminal class and the Gates Foundation), maybe the mayor would have a harder time justifying these jive-ass political decisions that have nothing to do with reality but simply help him make his political points (in this case, that teachers suck.)

I do hope some of the Educators4Excellence and other young teachers denied tenure this year come around to see that there is indeed power in a union and that if workers don't stand together and fight the bosses, they will continue to be exploited and screwed and beaten down, as Bloomberg is doing with the tenure process, as he does ever year with the layoff threats.

After the show last night, I bought a couple of cds and had Billy Bragg sign them for me. I told him I was a member of a teachers union and was heartened to hear him sing "There Is Power In A Union," especially since it been such a bad few years for union members.

He nodded and said "You've got to stick together and you've got to keep the faith, mate!"

And that's what I would say to my young teacher friends who were denied tenure this year for no other reason than that the oligarch who runs things wanted it that way.

We teachers have got to stick together and we've got to keep the faith.

It's a powerful message and there is history to prove that it works when it's followed.

It's a powerful song too and here's part of the performance of "There Is Power In A Union" by Billy Bragg last night from Lincoln Center:

If you listen carefully, right at the end, that's me yelling "Screw Bloomberg! Screw Bloomberg!"

The rest of what I said, though it is cut off on the tape, is this:

"He's a unionbuster! He's a unionbuster!"

That's a powerful message too and there's history behind that as well.

In fact, more of that was made during Bloomberg's tenure speech at Tweed yesterday.

I went to a rally yesterday with thousands of my fellow teachers. We marched the streets of Manhattan, and it's very clear to me that in numbers there is strength. The more we're out there, and the more of us who show up out there, the less the Emperor will be able to sit in his castle and ignore us. I'm inspired by the spirit out there, and amazed that I managed to run into half a dozen local bloggers, including the elusive Miss Eyre. (I only recognized her because she recited several of her posts verbatim on demand.)

I also noted some oddities, including a guy all by himself on the side of the road waving a sign that said, "We stand together."

There was also an endless chant of, "Enough is enough," accompanied by some very insistent drummers. I kind of wished they would grow a sense of irony, but I suppose it got lost in the crowd. 

I was highly impressed by the guy in front of me who was wearing a pink Barbie backpack. "That guy is a real man," I told my marching companions. I don't think I'd have the nerve to do the pink Barbie backpack thing. (To tell the truth, I favor messenger bags anyway.)

A lot of teachers I know said they had to go home, they had to watch the news, they needed some "me" time....ya know what? Me too. But I went anyway.

So I have a question for those of you who weren't there, and it's very simple.

Why the hell weren't you there? Mayor Bloomberg is bringing us a little bit of Wisconsin, and it behooves us to throw hearty shovelfuls of Wisconsin right back in his smug disingenuous face.

You can see me in the back there. I'm the guy not holding a sign. Am I gonna see you there next time?