Detroit has issued an ultimatum to its teachers--they have to come up with 88 million in savings for the city and raises are out of the question. The teachers are standing firm and threatening a strike in September.

It would be easy for many to say "those greedy teachers" and condemn unionism for giving them the power to stand together. But New York teachers have heard this song before, and it doesn't play well with us.

We accepted zeroes from Giuliani in what turned out to be one of the biggest economic booms in the history of the city. The last contract we took, while Bloomberg was sitting on billions, included massive givebacks of time, perks, and rights, and failed to even meet the inflation rate. Bloomberg claimed the surplus would soon disappear. When it increased instead, he still gave DC37 less than cost of living.

Perhaps Detroit is different. But in New York, during rough times, public employees take one for the team. During good times, they simply take another.

Thanks to Schoolgal

There are a lot of words flying around about the UFT's threat of no contract-no work. They made themselves a target with that threat. First of all, the threat is bogus.

It's utter nonsense, in fact, designed to persuade rank-and-file that Unity means business, which is only true if you interpret that to mean "business-as-usual." And it's utterly irresponsible of self-serving Unity hacks to toss around idle threats. Every good teacher knows the folly of making threats you're not prepared to follow through.

The fact is Unity values the dues checkoff far more than the well-being of teachers, kids, or anyone on God's green earth. How could they sit around the UFT office and collect 6 figures a year, and go on all-expenses-paid junkets to Hawaii or the west coast without our money?

Still, by arrogantly exercising their mouths before engaging their brains, they've given the folks with whom they constantly argue a lot to talk about. I'd like to particularly address a very clever point made by Joe Williams of The Chalkboard.

Joe's out of sorts because the charter cap has been reached, and he says Sheldon Silver won't raise it unless they agree to unionize new charters. Personally, I support unionizing new charters. I'd settle, however, for a card check, in which the teachers could vote on whether or not they want union.

Joe makes a stronger point, though, inspired by the empty threats of the self-serving UFT leadership. Don't hold your breath for a substantive response from Unity hacks:

When teachers, school boards, and the general public were first pitched the merits of collective bargaining in the 1960's and 1970's, it was supposed to be one of the grandest win-wins of all time...

So... what happened? In places like NYC that have had collective bargaining for 40 years, teachers are still pissed off...

Is this the best we can do for teachers and students?? Is it possible there is a better way to do this??

First of all, "collective bargaining" does not traditionally entail the Taylor Law, which is designed to cripple labor's power to negotiate. One result of the Taylor Law, which imposes draconian penalties on employees but none whatsoever on management, is that contract negotiations drag on for years. Why should the city sign? Better to wait a few years, and save up for stadiums.

Not only are teachers pissed off at this sort of treatment, but so are cops, firefighters, and virtually all city workers, except those of DC37, who seem to revel in more work for less pay. Of course when you consider their documented history of fraudulent contract votes, that may not be the case. It got very brief press coverage, though, and did not seem to outrage the otherwise perpetually incensed Mayor Giuliani.

You don't see this sort of anger in suburban schools, which actually grant cost-of-living raises to employees.

If you consider what city teachers made before unionization, which I've read in today's dollars would be around $14,000, you see that, despite what the UFT has rotted into, teachers do far better today. If you read about Nicole Byrne Lau, you see that there are definite benefits to unionization. Ms. Lau, no fool, vowed never to work in a non-union shop again.

There is a better way, and it begins by voting out the folks who currently own our union. Like the folks who run our country, they shun democracy. When the will of the union threatens them, they simply change the rules to suit themselves. High school teachers voting non-Unity? Throw their votes into a larger pool. Stop voting for Unity employees and let the Prez hand-pick 'em. Like the folks who run our country, prison is where they belong.

Still, even with their bag of dirty tricks, they're gonna have to do better to get re-elected. For anyone curious about available alternatives to union, check out Klein's 8-page contract, which leaves us with no rights whatsoever. Of course we can do better.

But it's not gonna happen until we toss out the monopoly leadership.

1. Sapient Sutler quotes children.

2. April May describes a rafting trip, and reveals the secret of halting tiresome complaints from children.

3. Get on the Bus debunks John Tierney.

4. I Thought a Think takes on Mort Kondracke, by cracky.

5. School Me shows not all gumballs are equal.

There are numerous discounts available to DoE employees, among them substantial savings on several brands of cell-phone service.

While I don't own stock, consider that Cingular is a union shop. In any case, you can apply for discounts on your existing service if your provider is listed.

Dr. Andres Alonso is the new head of instruction in New York City Schools. He doesn't care for kids being called "at risk." He's had it with tired old excuses. (The kid can't read. The kid fights with classmates. The kid repeatedly assaulted me. The kid's parents tie him to a table and use him as a sex toy.) Enough with the blah, blah, blah. If kids don't pass, it's exclusively your fault.

And don't bring up that tired old nonsense about the city hiring substandard teachers since 1976. Or the whining about Bloomberg refusing to support the CFE suit designed to give kids quality teachers, lower class size, and decent facilities. That's your fault too.

Poverty has no role whatsoever in whether or not kids can learn, according to Dr. Alonso. The fact that the worst schools tend to reside in impoverished neighborhoods worldwide can be attributed to coincidence. And bad teachers, of course, who apparently wake up in the morning and say "I think I'll find the worst neighborhood possible and get a job teaching there." Why they're drawn to such places is one of life's enduring mysteries.

Dr. Alonso took legal custody of one of his former students, a 15-year-old. That's a curious move, since parents, according to his philosophy, play no role whatsoever in the welfare of their children. Why didn't he simply change the kid's teachers, since they are the one and only factor in child development?

Thanks to Schoolgal and Norm

Here's an idea that NYC Schools Chancellor Klein would love (so don't tell him). In Osaka, Japan, principals will now be able to build educational teams by trading teachers. Need a chemistry teacher? I'll trade for a football coach.

Maybe if you have a really good football coach, you could swap for two math teachers and a cash bonus. The possibilities are endless.

Thanks to Schoolgal.

While perusing reality-based educator, I couldn't help but notice that instead of the subversive commie propaganda I've come to expect from him, he actually wrote about education. RBE was discussing this story, about a charter kindergarten where the kids have no toys, no blocks, and spend their time doing grammar drills, phonics drills, arithmetic drills, and the like.

Now when I was in kindergarten, we spent a great deal of time blowing bubbles in our milk, and several of us actually turned out alright. Still, things are different nowadays.

My daughter had to take a multi-day standardized test in kindergarten called Terra Nova. She got excellent reading scores, which I found curious since she most certainly did not know how to read. A further look at her scores, though, left me in some distress--she had no language skills whatsoever. Naturally, it being a standardized test, I believed every word of it, and focused all blame on her teacher (OK, not really).

The teacher explained to me that this pattern was the same with most of the class. They took the "reading" test the first day,and the "language" test the last, by which time their 5-year-old attention spans had pretty much had it.

I thought that was taking things a bit too far. Achievement First East New York Charter School takes things even further, and the kids, apparently, are being trained to read at that age. I don't have any problem with that, but I'd like to very little kids eased into it a little more.

I liked my kid's kindergarten teacher very much, and got the feeling she shared my sentiments about the Terra Nova. It's a mistake to neglect socialization and play for young children. While my child was taught the alphabet in kindergarten, along with letter sounds, she spent a lot of time playing, and learning how to get along with her classmates. She formed a positive attitude about school that she still carries.

Pressing for too much too early can have bad results. I often think of one of my college students, a bright, soft-spoken and charming young woman, who told me her parents forced her to practice piano several hours a day from the time she was five. She was not permitted to stop until she left her country and came to New York. She adored New York, and hated music.

As for the charter, even the teacher had mixed feelings:

“Achievement First gives them a solid foundation,” she said.

But even as she took pride in her students’ progress, Mrs. Rattray betrayed ambivalence about the method. “If it were my own child,” she said, “I would want more time for play.”

Hope she doesn't get fired for that.

Go, John, go.

See John go.

John goes.

John goes down.

See John go down.

Down, John, down.

When pro-wrestler David Schultz punches your frigging face out.

Unity patronage mill workers have a lot on their plates. First of all, imagine all the work it takes to manage two pensions. Also, UFT HQ is now open an entire extra hour a week. Finally, they need to write all those columns on Edwize letting us know what a great job they do.

The Unity employee who runs Edwize claimed no one gets paid for writing those columns. But if Leo "6-figure" Casey, for example, spends business hours sitting in the UFT building, making 50% more than any working teacher, and writing for Edwize, it seems to me that we are paying for whatever it is he does. After all, Mr. Casey's salary comes directly from our dues.

When mere rank-and-file UFT members comment on Casey's columns, the ones we're paying him to write, he can't be bothered responding. If pressed, he may say things like "Now let's answer some real questions, " or "How dare you ask me questions during the week of my relative's birthday?" as though UFT members had such occasions marked on their calendars.

Mr. Casey responds to folks like Eduwonk, or Joe Williams from The Chalkboard, or Mike Antonucci from Intercepts, because their opinions, apparently, are important. Perish forbid that people who aren't on potty patrol criticize the great and powerful Unity monopoly. As mere duespayers, though, why the hell should he care what we think? Make no mistake, that's the message.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Casey pays very close attention to opposition voices. When the United Teachers Party, or UTP, started a website a while back, he was outraged by their iconography. Eagles! They must be Nazis! Also, they'd originally featured a quote from Charles Lindburgh. Egads! Further proof! And they'd used a clenched fist! That clearly supported skinheads (notwithstanding its use in traditional militant labor images).

The UTP look, actually, including the eagles, was based on the United Farm Workers site. That did not deter the dogged detective work of Unity, though. The fact that not one word the UTP had written remotely hinted at a Nazi philosophy was also neither here nor there.

The intrepid Mr. Casey went on to discover not only the offensive use of eagles, but that ICE had linked to the UTP website. How dare a UFT opposition party link to another UFT opposition party! This proved that ICE was no good either. After all, not only did they question Unity, but they were clearly in cahoots with the Nazis!

So remember, the next time you wonder why the hell you're paying 6-figure Unity hacks so you can get potty patrol, extra days, extra classes, and unpaid suspension based on unsubstantiated gobbledy-gook, all for less than cost-of-living, bear in mind that's not the only thing you're paying for. For no extra charge, you're protected from the Nazis!

In response to an important critic (a non-duespayer, of course), Casey complained this week that Bloomberg imposed a pattern negotiated by another union.

To me, that was an odd complaint, considering that the UFT had gone to PERB with full knowledge they'd endorsed pattern bargaining, and full knowledge of what the pattern happened to be (5% over three years, one being for givebacks). You'd think they'd know better. I did.

But little did I know they were fighting the Nazis! How could they bother negotiating a decent contract when they were on such a vital mission? After all, what's a 20-year contractual setback when one considers Unity has gone back and re-won World War II single-handedly? How can you greedy teachers fret over making mortgage payments when your very freedom is at stake?

Thanks goodness for Leo Casey, and the heroic Unity party. I hope they all enjoyed the AFT convention we just paid to send them to, unmarred by a single solitary voice from the 40% of teachers who oppose them, those Nazi bastards.

Update: The UTP website reports that a complaint about their iconography and such was made to the Anti-Defamation League, and found to be without merit.

Thanks to Norm and Advisor

Chance at Sapient Sutler says it's Dubya-Dubya Three.

And here I was, thinking I'd almost recuperated from 2004.

Also---check out the Carnival of Education over at Text Savvy.

There are few things quite like an 86 degree day (and night) in a New York apartment building without electricity. Mayor Mike, of course, being a billionaire, needs not fret over such trivialities.

That's why, in his typically out-of-touch fashion, he just asked New Yorkers to thank the CEO of Con Ed., who left tens of thousands of them without electricity for days. This aroused the ire of his usally reliable good buddies at the local tabloids.

You see, when billionaire CEOs don't deliver, they're doing their best. When working people, like the transit workers withhold their service, they need to pay crushing fines. That's the way it is in Mayor Mike's fiefdom.

Things being that way, I'd suggest Mayor Mike deserves our appreciation as well, for hopelessly tying up the CFE suit that aims to give city kids quality teachers, smaller classes, and decent facilities.

So line up New York, and get that gratitude flowing.

Thanks to Schoolgal

A few years back, my supervisor approached me and asked if I'd be willing to have someone come and lecture my students on better ways for them to seek employment after they'd left high school. I said fine, and a couple of guys showed up in my classroom a few weeks later.

The first thing they did was pass out cards, on which my kids filled out their phone numbers. They then proceeded to give a hard-sell lecture to the kids about their two-year college, in which they offered associate degrees, and for which financial aid was available. I was amazed these guys had the audacity to do such a blatant bait-and-switch. I told them not to come to any of my other classes.

I reported this to my supervisor, who watched them lecture someone else's class, but for reasons that defy my comprehension, did not see what I found objectionable. They were allowed to continue visiting other teachers' classes, and return year after year.

The next day, and whenever I heard they were visiting, I told all my students that the good folks from the Interboro Institute were a couple of con artists, and that they'd be far better off going to a community college if they wanted an associate degree. They were significantly cheaper, and equally, if not more valuable.

Now the New York Times reports that not only did they do what I saw, but they paid their crack scorers 50 bucks a pop to pass students who didn't merit it. This qualified them for the loans that, apparently, are the lifeblood of this great institution. So remember, anything that sounds too good to be true, is. And anything that doesn't even sound very good in the first place, isn't.

As teachers, though, it's our job to warn our kids, who are often too young and naive to know the difference.

A few bloggers are on that topic this week. For one, there's perpetually-amusing Mamacita at Scheiss Weekly, from whom I stole the great cartoon on the left.

Also, Happychyck, typically, is wondering whether we're doing our students a favor with formulaic essays.

Happychyck sent me to yet another blogger, Tim Fredericks, who has a series of posts about lies teachers tell regarding essay structure, the importance of assigned books and student laziness, to name a few.

I'm not sure about all of Tim's points, but I certainly agree about the myth of the all-important five-paragraph essay. While it may be a good starting point for kids with no organizational sense, it's ridiculous to teach kids (and even college students) that structure and then maintain they know how to write. I commented:

Ya know, I've always felt that way about the five-paragraph essay, ever since I was first forced to teach it. Who the hell sits down to write a five-paragraph essay, ever?

Ironically, I've been having to teach ESL students how on earth they could pass the NY English Regents exam, which is entirely inappropriate for them (but that's yet another topic).

The way I've devised is teaching them a very simplistic FOUR-paragraph essay, and it seems to work. But I'd be deluding myself (not to mention my students) if I were to pretend this skill, which I spend up to a year teaching, were useful for anything but passing that one test, which they need to graduate.

While I teach in a trailer, while my building is ready to burst from dusk to dawn, we're providing enormous subsidies for private universities in New York City. What's Mayor Bloomberg had to say about that? Nothing whatsoever.

This document, Fatal Subtraction, suggests NYC lost as much as 7.3 billion dollars last year in uncollected property taxes from private universities.

How much in taxes do you suppose we get for the Chrysler Building? Well, let's see, that must be a chunk of change. It is, actually, since NYC taxpayers have been going without a dime on it since 1931. I'm pretty sure my little 3-bedroom house supports public education more than the Chrysler Building, and I don't mind admitting we have far fewer bathrooms.

Actually, Cooper Union is entitled to charge taxes on that building, and keep the proceeds.

NYC hugely subsidizes Cooper Union, NYU, and Colombia University, among others, while CUNY students struggle to make tuition. A large percentage of students attending private universities aren't even residents. Why NYC taxpayers need to supplement their education, while their own kids are squeezed into odd spaces like sardines, is a mystery to me.

It's unconscionable that this happens while the CFE lawsuit, which would provide good teachers, smaller classes, and decent facilities for NYC kids, languishes is legal limbo, after being endorsed by NY State's Supreme Court.

Check out the report for much more detail.

Thanks to Norm and ParentAdvocates.org.

I've replaced the photo that was, according to comments and emails, causing people to lose their lunch in the post below.

Hopefully that will help.

They don't do anything, and our kids are all stupid. Why the hell won't they kick in for their health insurance, so they can make less money? Why don't they give up tenure, so they can be fired for writing those crappy self-serving teacher blogs? Why don't they come in nights, weekends, and summers for free? Why do they get pensions? Why can't they eat cat food like everyone else once they retire? Don't they even care?

That's what you read in the Daily News and the New York Post, on a fairly regular basis. When the United Federation of Teachers was selling us the awful contract that halved our prep time, denied us presumption of innocence, and set us back over 20 years, one of its lines was "What will the tabloids say if we don't agree to this?" Now we know. They'll say the same things they said before, and even though we took that contract, they continue to say it.

It's not surprising that newspapers, which have unions of their own to deal with, or which have already managed to break them, don't much care for unions. What's surprising is that regular people read this stuff and then repeat it.

My brother-in-law is a factory worker in Canada. He has all the benefits NY teachers have, and his prescriptions, since he's now in a union, are free. His wife, when she had a baby, got a year off from her job, with pay. The government provides free child care for Canadian pre-school kids, and she now runs a daycare center in her home. And yes, they were able to buy one of those too.

Furthermore, they won't need a second mortgage to send their children to college.

How can Americans ask "Why do teachers get these things?"

They should be asking "Why doesn't everyone get these things?" Look at Canada and Europe. If you think our standard of living approaches theirs, you've got your eyes closed.

And for those who'd make the absurd argument that teachers who say such things don't care about kids, our kids will inherit the country we leave them.

Ours is sorely in need of improvement.

A lot depends on who you ask. I had a student once who was fond of standing up at odd moments and announcing "All men are pigs!" Sometimes this provoked conversation, sometimes not, but as she never bothered anyone much beyond that, I tended to let her be. I'd heard she'd had a bad breakup, and her proclamations seemed to make her feel better.

But a lot of people do say boys are trouble. Our brains are different. We don't like to read, because it's too "girlish." We'd rather be off starting wars, because the only emotion it's socially acceptable for us to express is aggression.

Now some say a good solution is more male teachers. Naturally, I don't mean just any male teachers. I mean real men. Some men don't want to bother with that, because of all the hunting, fishing, and watching sports it entails.

It's odd, because some years people say boys get all the attention, but this year it's girls. Jay Matthews, of the Washington Post seems unable to decide whether or not we're having a boy crisis or not.

My college class, one year, complained that I called on the female students more than the male students. So I went to an index-card system, where I call on everyone whether or not they want to talk.

Check out the article, which is well-organized and easy to read. I particularly like its explanation for the new phenomenon of "boomerang kids:"

Simple economics helps explain why so many young men are returning to the nest. Recent college graduates are carrying 85 percent more debt than graduates of a decade ago, while pay for entry-level jobs has not kept pace with inflation. “Him living here is not a problem for us,” said Harry Hartshorne, a suburban Detroit retiree whose 42-year-son, Neal, a stained-glass craftsman, has been living at home since his early 20s. “It may be a problem for him, but he’s not anxious to solve it.”

The disapppearing middle class hurts us all, regardless of sex.

One word of caution: please, don't email me asking how you can become a real man. Real men never ask for directions, especially when they're lost.

Thanks to Alison.

The College Board, a la Enron, commisioned a report from a company it had paid over 5 million in fees in 2005. This was in response to having been caught with 5,000 incorrect scores on SAT exams last year.

What possible motivation could this company have to put a more positive sheen on the report?

Kinda makes ya wonder what they did to your SAT, doesn't it? Should you have been going to Harvard instead of York College? Or Crawford Community instead of Yale?

Did you really answer those analogy questions correctly? And if you didn't, could it have left you overconfident?

We'll just never know.