The CDC and the FDA just recalled a million doses of the Hib vaccine for children.

Every year, 14 million doses of the Hib vaccine are given in the U.S.

The Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine (Hib vaccine) prevents serious bacterial infections, including:

• Meningitis, an infection of the covering of the brain and spinal cord
• Pneumonia, a lung infection

Apparently, the vaccine itself may be contaminated with bacteria.

The federal government says there's no problem just yet, but can I recall one or two high-ranking feds making mistakes before. If you have young children who need this vaccine, be very careful about where it may have come from.

That's good news, I think, particularly after reading all those NY Post editorials. And Ithaca wants you to spend the February break, where else, in Ithaca.

Get the details right here.

The NY Daily News reports that a principal at an East Harlem high school sent a memo out to teachers telling them that they aren't passing enough students and need to dumb down their classes and pass more:

"If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities," Principal Bennett Lieberman wrote in a Nov. 28 memo to teachers at Central Park East High School. "You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional."

The memo, obtained by the Daily News, urges teachers to review their homework and grading policies, and reminds them that "most of our students ... have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

One of the benchmarks the DOE uses to measure how well schools are doing is credit accumulation.

If students don't pass classes, they don't accumulate credits. And if they don't accumulate credits, the school does not do so well on the school report card. And if the school does not do well on the school report, the principal gets fired, the staff are dispersed and the school is closed.

So principals and assistant principals are putting pressure on teachers to pass more students.

In talking with friends of mine around the system, I know that Central Park East High School is not the only school in the system where teachers are being told to pass 90%+ of their students.

Homework, attendance, test scores - all of these benchmarks are out the window in the new "Pass More Students" movement coming from principals and assistant principals.

And yet, I'm not sure how dumbing down classes and pressuring teachers to pass students who don't deserve to pass their classes makes schools better or improves education.

But under the Bloombergian education reform movement, this is exactly what is happening.

As for Principal Bennett Lieberman, a graduate of the mayor's Leadership Academy, he apparently hasn't learned what many other principals and assistant principals have learned over the years - never put orders like "Pass More Students No Matter What!" in a memo which the Daily News can get its hands on.

POSTSCRIPT: Central Park East High School is one of 200 New York City public schools where teachers will receive merit pay if the school meets certain benchmarks.

Run, Jim, Run.

Jim runs fast.

See Mommy chase Jim.

See Daddy chase Jim.

See all the 6,652 mommies and daddies chase Jim.



Run, Jim, run.

Thanks to David Bellel

Related: Over at Edwize, Maisie apologizes for Jim Liebman, calling him "smart and decent," and maintains the public school parents were "grandstanding." Does the UFT leadership agree the accountability officer is accountable to no one for anything? Is it really their job to defend those who blatantly try to bury the issue of class size?

The NY Sun reports that federal officials are looking to create a single standard for how to decide which students are excluded from testing for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam and which receive special accommodations, such as extra time or permission to take the test in a small group.

The revisions to the testing standards come as a result of Department of Education officials in New York City giving extra time and other modifications to 20%-25% of students who took the NAEP exam while just 5% of students received extra time and additional modifications nation-wide.

The NAEP exams are considered the "gold standard" of standardized tests for elementary and middle school students, but officials who oversee the examine say discrepancies undermine the test's purpose and the standards for the exam must be uniform across the nation:

One board member, James Lanich, said not having a reliable standard prevents states and researchers from drawing lessons from the NAEP results. Without knowing for sure which states are performing the best, lessons on which policies to pursue are harder to grasp, he said.

Studies have shown that excluding students can unfairly inflate test scores, though the effects of accommodations are unclear.

NAEP officials admit that trying to enforce one national standard for the NAEP exam may be impossible to do and probably could be overturned if states or municipalities challenged the standards in court.

Nonetheless the Sun article says a voluntary compact among states and municipalities to follow the same standards for the exam could be a workable solution. Such a voluntary compact agreeing to measure high school graduation rates by a single standard was signed by 45 state governors in 2005.

The article concludes with an NAEP expert, Richard Innes, noting that some states or cities might not want to sign up for such a voluntary compact for fear of having to abandon generous accommodation policies that help inflate scores.

Mayor Michael Bloomerg's New York City is one such area.

Ironically, New York City's NAEP scores have actually stayed stagnant during the Bloomberg years despite huge gains in state test scores and despite Bloomberg's Education Department quadrupling the number of students receiving testing modifications compared to what other areas give.

Here's a chart from the NY Times showing the divergence between state scores and scores on the NAEP:



Notice how much better city students do on the state tests than the national tests?

Notice how little students have improved on the national tests during the Bloomberg years?

Anybody wonder what those national test scores would have looked like if Bloomberg didn't have the option to dole out extra time and other testing accommodations to 20%-25% of the students taking the test?

Anybody wonder how likely Bloomberg and the state pols are to agree to national standards that take away their testing accommodations options?

Anybody really believe Bloomberg and the state pols are going to allow accurate test scores to be reported when they can manipulate the testing standards and artificially inflate the scores?

by guest reviewer Schoolgal

When a TV show isn't afraid to show the reality of teaching, it gets my attention. A sub-plot of season four deals with a former Baltimore cop who becomes fast-tracked as a Junior High School math teacher in an inner-city school. The administration welcomes the fact he was a former cop and hires him right on the spot. Despite his background, he cannot control his class.

Along comes another character... an academic with a grant under his belt. He and his team are given permission to pull the most disruptive students, or "corner kids" out of classes and put them in a controlled environment. The result--the cop is finally able to teach. He is able to motivate his students as well as conduct workshop style lessons--that is until the whole school must put teaching on hold to prep their students for the upcoming assessments. Sound familiar?

Although he worked hard with his students, they score what is the equivalent of 1s and 2s. This teacher did everything right, but still his students could not pass. Why? The series delves into the home and street lives of these students. Those forces (drugs, poverty, abuse and of course crime) outweigh any progress he can make.

The "controlled class" does not follow any curriculum. Instead, the facilitators' objective is to socialize the students so they can function in the real world. Unfortunately the superintendent, who only wants to see immediate results, puts an end to the experiment. Now these students must also follow the test prep schedule. The superintendent fails to see this experiment as "valid teaching" because to her, test results are more important.

After the final episode, I watched the DVD's bonus features. The show's creator was both a former cop and teacher. The producers as well as the actors and some Baltimore politicians examine what is wrong with the education system. And guess what? They were all pro-teacher. They didn't place the blame for failure exclusively on the teachers. They expressed respect and gratitude for a very difficult job under difficult circumstances.

My question is, why close so many NYC schools and displace all those teachers? If the system needs revamping, include those teachers in the process. Not everything should be about scores. The overall development of the child should be our first objective.

It's sad when a TV drama understands the needs of teachers and students more than our own mayor and union president.

The NY Daily News reports that a high-ranking DOE official, after repeatedly stating that the Department of Education is responsive to parents at a Monday City Council hearing, fled through a side door "with parents in hot pursuit."

The official - Jim Liebman, the DOE's chief accountability officer - ran down three flights of stairs and circled around and around a courtyard with parents and reporters following him.

The parents - part of a group called Time Out From Testing - said it had collected 6,652 signatures from parents upset about school report card grades and wanted to give the signed petition to him.

The Daily News reports that Liebman at first refused to comment on the issue "as he tried to slip through the gate that separates City Hall from the Tweed Courthouse."

Later Liebman said he thought another DOE staffer was going to collect the petition and that in any case the scene in the courtyard "was not a moment for a reasonable, calm exchange of information."

Lisa Donlen, an elected parent leader who was at the City Council meeting on the school report card program, said Liebman's flight from parents was "indicative" of the way the DOE treats parents:

"He wouldn't even stay to hear our questions ... after we sat for three hours and listened to his testimony," she said.

The News reports that during the hearing most Council members said parents in their districts were opposed to the school report card program but felt their views were ignored by the mayor, the chancellor and the Department of Education.

And then the DOE's chief accountability officer, who is apparently accountable to nobody for anything, crystallized the DOE's treatment of parents with his cowardly flight away from them.

I have two things to say here:

First, it's good to see the City Council and parent groups hammering the mayor's ridiculous school report card program that hands out "F's" to schools like PS 35 in Staten Island (where 86% of students passed the reading test and 98% passed the math test.) And it's good to see some in the news media reporting on the contemptuous way people in the mayor's administration and at the DOE treat anybody who doesn't wave the pom-poms for the mayor's reforms.

Second, none of this matters if City Council members and other politicians rubber stamp autocratic mayoral control when it comes up for renewal in '09.

If parents and politicians want the DOE and the mayor to be responsive to somebody other than themselves, they will have to write that into legislation by taking away some of the mayor's autocratic control of the school system.

Here's how rumors are created---First someone takes your message out of context, and misinterprets it completely. That's what Eduwonk did yesterday, when he suggested the aim of this post was to "begrudge KIPP teachers" of their five day trip to the Caribbean. Anyone who'd bothered to read the post could see that my criticism was directed toward KIPP's leaders.

To buttress his position, Eduwonk used this link to claim the trip was not taken with public money. Only problem is--that's not at all what the link says. What it says, exactly, is this:

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

For a good rumor, you need others to extend the misinterpretation. Having read Eduwonk's post uncritically, his very first commenter managed to extrapolate that I was "profoundly anti-teacher." Perhaps this was because I suggested KIPP teachers work too hard and aren't paid enough. Perhaps it was because I bemoaned their complete and utter lack of job protection. Maybe it was because I thought they ought to be able to travel with their families rather than their supervisors.

Or maybe it was because he (like Eduwonk, perhaps) hadn't actually read the post very carefully. The commenter concludes thusly:

NYC educator, if your school produced results like KIPP, I'd want you to be given a trip to the Bahamas also. Until then, I'd prefer that you not assault the character of a group of outstanding educators, who deserve that trip and more.

Again, the very worst thing I suggested about KIPP teachers was that they were overworked and underpaid. Oh, and I called some of them "loyal." Still, it's quite a stretch to interpret that as "character assault."

As for my school, it's regrettable Eduwonk's commenter opts to speculate on topics about which he knows nothing. As it happens, my school is one of the very best regular high schools in the city, and our test results (a big factor for KIPP enthusiasts) are consistently excellent. Furthermore, individual kids don't need to be at our school from 7:30 to 5, and can have lives after school (just like their teachers).

Despite his apparent good wishes, I don't suppose that commenter will send me an airline ticket anytime soon.

By the way, as a direct result of the short-sighted policies of "reformer" Mayor Michael Bloomberg, our school's mushroomed to over 250% capacity. I can only hope that whoever replaces him puts an end to that trend, as our school is something well worth saving.

Related: PREA Prez weighs in here.

...only there is, actually, in public schools. Every year my school district sends me a free lunch form for my daughter, and every year I duly toss it in the trash. I happen to know I make too much money to qualify, so why bother filling out an extra form? Anyway, my daughter refuses to eat the school lunch and prefers to bring her own.

But a lot of kids in my district qualify, and perhaps that's why they had representatives from tutoring programs stationed at the door of my daughter's school one day. Now on this day, my wife happened to be taking her home, and a guy from a tutoring company offered her free tutoring. She said we probably made too much money and wouldn't qualify, but eager sales guy said no, everyone qualifies. As the price was right, she signed up.

The next week, the company mailed us a two-dollar plastic headset to hook up to the family computer, and my daughter commenced her tutoring. She spent two hours talking with the folks who run the program and several kids from her class. She wrote one paragraph that no one checked, corrected or criticized (except me, after the class).

As it happened, I have a little experience with extra help programs. A few years ago, when my daughter was struggling, I put her in a program called SCORE, run by Kaplan. That was a good program, but this was crap. Still, she said she enjoyed it, and it didn't seem to hurt anything, so with great effort, I kept my big mouth shut.

Three days later, we got a call from the company. Apparently we didn't qualify after all, and would we please send them three hundred bucks so my daughter could continue this valuable program? My wife, who is much nicer than I am, politely declined.

The next week, my daughter's teacher suggested a program of some sort for my daughter. It cost money, but we could send her for free if we qualified for free lunch. My wife called me and I told her not to waste her time. But she figured we had nothing to lose and filled out the form anyway. The following week we were approved for free lunch, though my income is at least double what it ought to be to qualify.

The day after we were approved, the tutoring company called, and congratulations to us, we didn't have to pay the three hundred bucks after all. Unfortunately for them, I happened to pick up the phone, gave the gentleman a few choice words about leading my daughter on and disappointing her, and hung up. However, this was a question of money for the guy, so he kept calling back.

It was very important I hear his side of the story. He shouldn't have said everyone qualified, that was his fault, but this was a great opportunity. I told him I thought his program was a waste of time, my daughter was involved with school activities, sports, and other things, and I'd just as soon let her watch TV as chat with his employees. He asked what I knew about education. I hung up, and he called back (note to self--buy phone with caller ID for attic office).

I'm not sure whether or not these programs are an offshoot of NCLB. When I complained to my daughter's school, the principal characterized this particular company as "overly aggressive." I told her he was an opportunistic dirtbag with no business hawking his wares in a public school. She apologized, but said she had no control over who came in with tutoring programs.

It's a disgrace such lowlife companies are granted access to our kids. They aren't properly screened, if indeed they're screened at all. With a minimum of effort, we could do a lot better.

The NY Sun reports that one of the city's oldest independent educational watchdog groups - the Educational Priorities Panel - is closing because Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have created an environment where criticism of their educational policies is not tolerated.

The city contracts out a huge number of services to community groups. Many of these groups will not criticize city policy for fear of losing city contracts or losing funds from other groups that receive city contracts.

According to the Sun, the closing of the EPP next month reflects both trends:

The longtime executive director of EPP, Noreen Connell, said one challenge was the number of members who stopped participating in advocacy efforts after the mayor took control of the schools. "A lot of the people who were contractors or very close to the Bloomberg administration were not participating in EPP any longer," she said.

A member of EPP who represented the Presbytery of New York City, Cecilia Blewer, said member groups' discomfort with taking a hard line against certain policies led the EPP to dampen some criticism — and, on some issues, such as mayoral control of the schools, to avoid speaking out altogether. "There was a timidity that didn't used to be there," Ms. Blewer said. At the same time, outside support also dissolved.

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said EPP's dissolution is a punishment for speaking plainly. Reports from the group have objected to the Department of Education's new per-student funding formula, criticized its move to empower school principals as treating them too much like private contractors, and characterized claims that the city is pushing more money into classrooms as overstated.

"They actually spoke truth to power, and I think they got hurt for it," Ms. Weingarten, said.

Bloomberg supporters claim EPP's closing has more to do with the group "wrapping itself so tightly around the 'more money for schools issue'," that once that lawsuit was won and the state was forced to give more money to city schools, the group was no longer relevant.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps the word is out that if you say anything bad about Big Brother Bloomberg and his education policies, the no-bid contracts the city loves to dole out to contractors and vendors will be at risk.

It's not exactly like Bloomberg is saying you can't criticize him or his policies.

He's simply saying you may not want to criticize him or his policies if you want to do business with the city or receive funds from other groups that do business with the city.

We've been saying here at NYC Educator for a long time now that we think that quality schools and quality teachers matter in education.

But we have also been saying that there are other factors that affect how well students do in school and one of the most important is what takes place in the home.

The Educational Testing Service - the fine folks who develop and administer 50 million standardized tests a year, including the SAT - have just concluded an education study that finds the same thing:

The study, “The Family: America’s Smallest School,” suggests that a lot of the failure has to do with what takes place in the home, the level of poverty and government’s inadequate support for programs that could make a difference, like high-quality day care and paid maternity leave.

The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.

“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of what was going on in their schools.

Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.

Richard J. Coley, director of E.T.S.’s policy information center and a co-author of the report, concludes the following:

“Kids start school from platforms of different heights and teachers don’t have a magic wand they can wave to get kids on the same platform. If we’re really interested in raising overall levels of achievement and in closing the achievement gap, we need to pay as much attention to the starting line as we do to the finish line.”

Indeed.

The reason why this study is important is because it emphasizes something educators already know - our classrooms and our schools do not exist in vacuums. Our students come to us with lives and backgrounds that are far more influential upon their academic potentials and performances than whatever I do for 45 minutes a day, 183 days a year.

This means that if we really want to address the achievement gap in education, we have to look outside the school system for some of the solutions to the education problem.

We have to look to health care so that students come to school ready and able to learn.

We have to look to day care so that students begin the education process long before they start school.

We have to look to a living wage so that single parents don't have to work three jobs in order to make ends meet and give their kids the short shrift out of necessity.

We have to look to vacation time and dinner time so that families can begin to spend time with each other instead of simply seeing each other coming and going at the door.

What we hear from the billionaire businessmen, computer company execs and hedge fund managers masquerading as education reformers is that students do not perform well in school because the school day is not long enough, the school year is not long enough and the teachers are not good enough. So if we just increase the school day and school year and add more standardized testing/accountability mechanisms for both teachers and students, we can fix the problems with education.

But as the ETS study found, these solutions are false.

At the high school I attended years ago, a Jesuit school on the West Side of Manhattan, school officials have a rule that all after-school activities must be over by 5 PM and all students must be out of the building by then.

You see, these school officials think it's important that families spend quality time together at the dinner table if at all possible and they know that if kids are still at school after 5 PM, it's difficult for families to do that.

Now many families may not be able to spend time together at the dinner table out of economic necessity, but nonetheless these school officials see families eating dinner together as part of the education process (albeit the home part of it.)

What a novel idea - an hour spent talking with mom and dad about what happened during the school day is worth more than an extra hour spend with Mr. ____ or Ms. ____ at some after school activity.

What we need to do is rebuild an American society where families that have the time and the money to be able to do this can exist.

Currently, we're heading the other way.

Many Americans have to work longer and harder to make less than their parents did.

It takes two incomes now to do what it used to take just one to do 30-40 years ago.

Increased debt has replaced wage gains for many Americans.

Until we have a conversation in America that starts with "Hey, how come only the top 5% have made an economic gains in the last 20 years...", none of this is going to change.

But the one thing we can do is fight the billionaire media moguls, the computer company execs, and the hedge fund managers who favor re-feudalization of society and want to socialize kids to it as soon as possible with their education reforms of working longer and harder to make less.

As NYC Educator posted yesterday, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found in an audit that the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx paid nearly $70,000 dollars for staff development trips to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

KIPPsters claim donated private funds were used for the overseas staff development trips but according to the report "auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid."

Lack of documentation seems to be a chronic problem with the KIPP Academy. The state audit also found the following deficiencies:

* lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;
* an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;
* no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;
* missing or incomplete overtime records;
* no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and
* no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

Notice how the KIPPsters just can't seem to provide much documentation for how they hire people, what kind of criminal background checks they do on hirees, how they pay them, how they dole out bonuses, how they dole out no-bid contracts or how they track sicktime/overtime.

Apparently the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx, supported by free-market proponents who want to privatize public education in order to bring the efficiencies of the free market to the public education sphere, have taken the whole free enterprise thing to heart and are running the school with "Enron-style accounting."

You remember Enron-style accounting. That's where business CEOs and boards lie, cheat and steal from stockholders/customers all the while living high off the hog on their ill-gotten largess. You keep the documentation to a minimum, put all the bad stuff "off the books" so that regulators don't see it and have another drink on the poor suckers who don't know any better.

Currently Enron-style accounting is back in the news because many financial institutions like Citigroup, Wachovia, WaMu, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch are using the "off the books" documentation method to avoid having to list billions of dollars of losses they've taken in the mortgage mess.

Apparently the post-Enron, post-Tyco, Post-WorldCom, post-Adelphia regulation that free marketers are always complaining about (Sarbanes-Oxley) didn't actually take care of the fuzzy documentation problem on Wall Street. Eventually these venerated financial institutions will probably have to acknowledge they've lost billions, but for now they play a game of hide and seek with the losses.

And KIPPsters, backed by Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers who have created and/or enabled this fuzzy documentation environment where truth is held off the books and money losses do not become real until you acknowledge them, have learned their lessons well from their free market masters.

Keep the bad stuff off the books. Keep as little documentation as possible. Complain about regulation. Shrug when regulators come and ask for the documentation. Extol the free market. Continue to hand out the no-bid, no-competition contracts. And most importantly, cheat the poor suckers who are providing you with the money for your operations.

POSTSCRIPT: One of the more disturbing findings in the audit is that the KIPP Academy couldn't provide documentation for the criminal background checks of seven employees.

The school lists 25 employees on its website, so they couldn't provide auditors with criminal background check documentation for 28% of the staff!

I don't know about you, but in this day and age I don't think I'd want to send my kid to a school where they don't know if the math teacher is an upstanding citizen or a felon.

Apparently the boys and girls running KIPP don't have the same concerns.

Mayor Bloomberg, who's pledged to build new schools to relieve overcrowding, has backed away from a pledge to rid New York City of classroom trailers by 2012. A representative from the school construction authority claims a lot of schools want them, and managed to muster a principal who called them "a delight."

"If I didn't have those four classrooms out in the schoolyard, I would have no art rooms, no science rooms," he said. "My preference would be if I had everybody in the main building, but I have overcrowding.

Oddly, that sounds more like desperation than an endorsement. It's as though Mr. Bloomberg bragged about all the things he'd done for us, and when pressed for specifics, said, "Think of all the flights of stairs I don't push you down." Of course trailers are convenient when faced with the alternative of rampant overcrowding. However, this mayor has repeatedly promised to relieve this overcrowding, and has consistently failed to do so.

Typically, there is no "accountability" for such failures.

I too appreciate the trailers, though I wouldn't go so far as to call them a delight. While the thermostats break, they're crumbling into dust, the bathrooms are filthy, puddles of water and sheets of ice appear on the floor, and there are fire extinguishers or screens on the window, they're better than nothing. They're also better than the new windowless unventilated classrooms that have begun to pop up in my school.

Another innovative space making method we've created is building walls through the center of on classroom to create two. Mr. Bloomberg can't be bothered with soundproofing, so you can hear every sound in the adjacent classroom. Also, there's not really enough space for 34 kids, so there are no rows, no circles, no semicircles, and no order whatsoever---just a mess of desks piled almost on top of one another. How on earth you give a test in these rooms without kids seeing one another's papers is a mystery I've been unable to unravel.

School advocates are concerned that construction plans appear to cut plans to build some new schools - one school originally budgeted for $31 million now has an impossible $1 million price tag - but Greenberger said that school is being funded in a different way and that all 63,000 planned seats will be built.

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you (my email's on the upper right). It's remarkable that, after years of failing to deliver, Mr. Bloomberg's people have the audacity to make such preposterous statements and expect people to believe them. But if you read tabloid editorials, you know at least someone is buying it.

Under Mr. Bloomberg's benevolent leadership, my school has exploded to over 250%. There's simply no end in sight, and if my school's "grade" suffers, it will be the fault of the overcrowding (and not the teachers, actually). But ultimately, you'll see no "accountability" from this administration.

Their forté is passing the buck.

Joseph Parker, the principal of the ironically-named ACORN School for Social Justice, doesn't think parents and students need to know how he spends their student dues. He's not very good about providing classroom materials either:

PTA President Dawn Beckles said her daughter's American history class spent most of the fall without enough textbooks to go around. Then the class got textbooks dating from 10 years ago. New books finally arrived this week.

I've taught classes with no textbooks, and no hope of ever receiving them. I thought that was par for the course in NYC schools. Intolerable, sure, but you have to expect a few inconveniences when you select folks like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg to run school systems. Honestly, though, I've never understood how city schools full of kids with little money mustered the nerve to demand "senior dues" from graduating seniors. Of course, at ACORN, things are even worse:

"A yearbook, that's ... part of the memories from high school. How dare you take something like that away from us?" said graduate Jacole John.

When John's mother called the school in July, she was told the yearbook was on its way, John said.

A representative of the yearbook publisher, who didn't want his company named for fear of scaring away business, said ACORN had an outstanding balance of $4,282.82 from 2005 as of last month, and had not come up with a payment plan.

Mayor Bloomberg saves a fortune by saddling New York City with the highest class sizes in the state. He doesn't bother making remotely adequate space for the kids who already attend, preferring to construct seats in sports stadiums. But those savings, at least a portion of them, ought to help out these kids.

Personally, I could understand charging kids for yearbooks, if they want them. But to preclude kids from attending graduation because they haven't paid for it is really unconscionable.

Thanks to David Bellel

Imagine you run a charter school. Now, you've got the teachers and kids working six days a week, and longer days and years than public school teachers. Though you boast about how you pay your teachers more, for the time they work, you actually pay them less. The health insurance you offer is not equal to that which public school teachers have.

And of course, if anyone looks at you the wrong way, you fire them. Some NYC charters have fired the entire staff in the same school year. That's because the teachers were terrible, and had nothing whatsoever to do with administration making poor choices, of course. In any case, every time you get rid of one teacher, you hire another at minimum salary. No one ever makes it to maximum salary, except maybe one teacher who you trot out for press conferences.

"Step right up, folks, and look at the hundred-thousand dollar charter teacher! She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile!"

So by the end of the year, you've saved a bundle. What do you do with the extra money? You're on salary, technically, so you can't just keep it (you could do that more efficiently with vouchers).

Whopee! Let's spend five days in the Bahamas on the taxpayers' dime! That's what they do over at KIPP! Forget about vacationing with your family. First, you don't have time, and second, you can't afford it. It's go with your slavedrivers or don't go at all.

KIPP founder Dave Levin, who as superintendent of the academy attended the Bahamas retreat, called the trips essential to motivating teachers to work the extra Saturdays and extended hours demanded by the school.

Yeah, Dave, when you treat teachers and kids like dogs all year, they need a break. What--the kids didn't get one? Too bad for them. Well, if they're gonna grow up to work 200 hours a week with few benefits and no job protection, you can't train them too early, can you?

Loyal KIPP teachers rationalize the trips by explaining they don't actually have any fun while on them:

Math teacher Frank Corcoran, who attended a foray this year to the Dominican Republic, said formal meetings made up about 40 percent of the trip, but informal school-related chats dominated the spare time.

"So it feels like work even though people are walking around in swim trunks," he said. "Everyone comes out feeling motivated and pumped up, whereas at the end of the school year you're just burned out."

I can certainly understand being burned out after those six day weeks and being on call round the clock with the KIPP cell phone that allows parents to call you all night (precluding any sort of social or family life). And while workaholic executives may choose this very same lifestyle, KIPP teachers don't remotely earn executive-style money or perks.

Of course, KIPP denies using public money anyway, as they are beyond reproach:

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

"Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean," DiNapoli said. "Money intended for education should be spent on education."

I'll pay for my own vacation, thank you, and I'll go with my family rather than my assistant principal (who appreciates this arrangement just as much as I do). My kid goes to a public school where they don't need to work her or her teachers to death.

You can kipp KIPP, thank you very much.

The NY Post has been following the saga of 13 intrepid Bronx kids from PS 70 who wish to compete in a national championship chess tournament in Houston. Although the trip was privately funded, the principal canceled it for no apparent reason, finally agreeing to let them go if they left their coach, Jonathan Alejandro, behind. And waddya know--Mr. Alejandro just happens to be the UFT chapter leader.

Though principal Kerry Castellano declined to speak to the reporter, or offer any explanation whatsoever as to why Mr. Alejandro must be excluded, the DoE supports her decision.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigations said Alejandro is the subject of an ongoing probe, but refused to say when it started or what it involves. Alejandro blames recent clashes with Castellano growing out of his role as union chapter leader. "It's a disgrace. This is sick. They're trying to sabotage me," he said. "She claims we have too many differences. What does it have to do with chess?"

PS 70's team, known as the Bronx Bombers, was depicted in a 2005 TV movie starring Ted Danson.

Now parents of 10 of 13 members have decided to boycott the tournament if the coach is excluded. This is not an easy decision for a parent; it would really break my heart to prevent my kid from participating in anything like this. For a city that purports to value parental involvement, they're treating these involved parents very shabbily indeed.

UFT President Randi Weingarten and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were unavailable for comment, as they were at a party. As soon as they get back, though, it's Children First all over again.

Thanks to Schoolgal

While UFT President Randi Weingarten was laughing it up with Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the political elite at her 50th Birthday Party/Charter School Fund Raiser, the city was announcing that 8 "failing" city schools will be closed by the end of the year.

The schools slated to be closed are:

EBC East New York High School for Public Safety and Law; the Business School for Entrepreneurial Studies; the Tito Puente Education Complex; P.S. 101 in Manhattan, and the middle school at the Academy of Environmental Science Secondary High School in East Harlem; P.S. 220, a Bronx elementary school; and Far Rockaway High School in Queens.

The city says a total of 14-20 schools will be closed by the end of the year.

Before Randi got on line to conga with Mayor Mike at her party, she and Leo Casey issued the following statement about the closures:

“These closings represent a major upheaval for all involved, and it is important that every effort is made to ensure that everyone affected is treated with care, dignity and respect. That means students in the affected schools should be assured of a full education as the schools are phased out, and they should have every opportunity to successfully complete their education. It also means that staff members who choose to stay on during the phase-out years should have opportunities to work in other schools.”

Then Randi got hugs and kisses from Mayor Mike at her party and went back to her conga line.

Conga, conga, conga!

Makes you wonder just how she plans to force the city to make sure that everyone affected by these closures is treated with care, dignity and respect when she and the mayor are so buddy-buddy on the party circuit.

It also makes you wonder if, to paraphrase a comment that Schoolgal made in this thread, the relationship between Randi and Bloomie runs so deep that we're just pawns the whole time.

Indeed.

While Bloomberg and Klein were announcing the closure of the 8 failing schools and threatening to close another 12 before the end of the year, the NY Sun reports that parents want the principal of one failing school to be fired but the city so far refuses to do it.

The principal of the ACORN High School for Justice, Joseph Parker, a graduate of the city's Jack Welch Principal's Leadership Academy, is a terrible administrator who runs the school with a prison mentality and refers to administrators as "wardens."

The school has a high teacher turnover rate (as you can imagine) and makes do with a constant stream of inexperienced rookie teachers from the city's Teaching Fellows Program.

The graduation rate at the school is 37%, the school received an "F" on its report card and last year's valedictorian, Sharifa Noble, stood up at graduation and said "ACORN has let me down."

Nonetheless, the city has so far resisted pulling the plug on Principal/Warden Parker, though the DOE did say through a spokesperson it retains the right to close ACORN later in the year, just as it retains the right to close any school that received a "D" or an "F" on its report card.

Call me cynical, but I find it odd that the principal from Bloomberg's vaunted Principal's Leadership Academy who runs his school like a prison hasn't been fired while the city has no problem announcing the closure of the other 8 schools and announcing that as many as 12 more will be closed.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the connections Principal/Warden Parker made through his time in the Principal's Leadership Academy? Or the mayor's reluctance to push out the principals/CEOs he trains at his vaunted academy?

In any case, at the end of the day I'm dubious that the United Federation of Teachers leadership will really force the city to prove all of the schools they're going to close this year are really "failing" (remember, schools with high standardized test scores received "D's" and "F's" on their report cards) or force the city to treat those affected by closures "with care, dignity and respect."

When Randi and Mayor Mike are as close as they are, it's difficult to believe she'd really do anything in a showdown between the union and the city but talk tough.

You see, it's all about the "connections" - whether they're forged on the party circuit conga line or at the mayor's Principal's Leadership Academy.

Here's a You Tube video of the 50th birthday party/celebrity roast/charter school fund-raiser Randi Weingarten held for herself last night at UFT Headquarters:



Just in case you work at the NYCDOE and your computer doesn't have speakers, here's what the mayor said about Weingarten at the roast:

“Like Christina Aguilera, she’s a superstar performer (cue small shimmy from the union prez), like Robert Moses, she’s literally changed the lives of 8 million New Yorkers, and, like Brad Pitt she really loves beautiful women.”

Oh, yeah - that's funny.

And then there was the merit pay joke the mayor made and "the big hug and kiss" he gave her:



Or how about this yuk yuk from the UFT’s Brooklyn Borough Representative Howard Schoor:

Schoor suggested that Weingarten abandon her life as a lesbian and marry Klein, noting the two have a lot in common, including: “kissing Bloomberg’s ass for the past six years.”

None of this is funny, of course, but it does go to show you just how chummy this "labor leader" is with the captains of industry, Wall Street types and politicians who see gutting union protections and Walmartizing public schools as a life's work.

In addition to Bloomberg, Quinn, Thompson and the rest of the elected political parasite class, Al Sharpton showed up looking spiffy (according to the Daily News) and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary sang Happy Birthday to Dear Leader.

You'll note that the one guest not at the party was a working teacher.

Oh, I'm sure there were plenty of Unity/New Action apparatchiks there to play the dutiful role of working teachers who are devoted to Ms. Weingarten, but they're just paying back the extra pensions, no-show jobs and other patronage gifts Ms. Weingarten and the UFT leadership hand out to people who do their bidding.

As for real working teachers like you and me, we were only there in spirit - and in the money used to pay for the building, the electricity, the food and drink and the party favors.

Remember, we paid for this abomination with our hard-earned money that we give to these crooks every two weeks out of our checks.

At the end of the day, the joke is really on us.

UPDATE: As of 7:54 PM, the Weingarten party hasn't been mentioned on either Edwize or UFT.org. This is strange, since the UFT never misses a chance to tell us what Randi has been up to, so you'd have to think the leadership really doesn't want most rank-and-filers to know how they're spending our money.

I left this comment on Edwize's "Teacher News of the Day" post for December 5th to let them know how I feel:

Gee, how come the dues-funded soiree/birthday party/fund raiser for charter schools Randi threw for herself, the Mayor, the chancellor and a bunch of other dignitaries at UFT Headquarters didn’t make it to Teacher news of the Day or to the front page of UFT.org?

Usually you never miss a chance to tell us what Randi’s up to but strangely enough the hugs, kisses and yuk-yuks Randi enjoyed last night with the mayor and the rest of the political establishment at the building built and powered by rank-and -file dues money didn’t get a mention.

Could it be you don’t want the rank-and-file to know the party was held and partially funded by dues money?

I reprint the comment here because Leo Casey, fresh from his fake censorship battle with Mickey Mouse, will no doubt promptly censor my comment from the official UFT blog paid for by my dues money as a "personal attack."

...to find the Carnival of Education. It's right here.

The right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union NY Sun editorial board wrote a love letter to Rod Paige's favorite teachers' union leader today to help her celebrate her 50th birthday.

The Sun lauds UFT President Randi Weingarten for her "idealism" and her "leadership." They note how Ms. Weingarten won her fourth presidential term with 87% of the vote (no mention of the fact that only 30% of the membership actually voted) and teacher's salaries have gone up 43% since Weingarten started negotiating with Bloomberg in 2002.

Finally the Sun says they're sending Rod Paige's favorite teacher labor leader a copy of Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" in the hopes that she'll add vouchers to the list of concessions she has already handed the education reformers/Walmart proponents like added days, added time, gutted work protections (seniority, grievance rights, the return to bathroom duty), authoritarian mayoral control, union-sponsored charter schools, merit pay and reformatted school financing that favors getting rid of costly veteran teachers and hiring lots of Teach For America missionaries.

Just to show you how much Weingarten despises the role of being a traditional union leader (i.e., actually looking out for the rights and needs of her union membership) and loves sucking up to the education reformer/Walmart proponent lobby, the NY Daily News says that she held a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters last night to mark her 50th birthday.

That's right - a fund-raiser for her charter schools at UFT Headquarters paid for by you and me and the rest of the UFT rank-and-file.

What's that tell you about Ms. Weingarten's priorities?

The Sun also reports that Representative George Miller (D-California), an architect of the No Child Left Behind law who would like to expand the law to science and social studies next year, has praised New York City for two "groundbreaking" programs: the merit pay program Weingarten agreed to earlier this year and the school report cards that have caused such controversy here in the city.

Leaving aside the idiocy of Miller for now (and make no mistake, what he says is idiocy - a few minutes of research on Bloomberg's school report card program would have told him how stupid and reductionist it is to base a school's grade almost wholly on test score progress rather than overall performance), let us note that both the school report cards and the merit pay program were enabled by concessions Weingarten made to the mayor.

Miller says he'd like to take some of these "groundbreaking" programs national and while the current leadership of both the NEA and the AFT disagrees with much of Ms. Weingarten's education "reform" agenda, she is expected to go to Washington and take control of the AFT pretty soon.

Which means nationally teachers can expect to see some of the same "groundbreaking" concessions like merit pay, additional time and days, charter schools and gutted work protections that Ms. Weingarten has brought UFT members here in New York City.

Before she goes, it is expected that she will also concede teacher tenure to Mayor Bloomberg and replace it with something called "due process" which she and her minions currently praise at the Green Dot charter schools they have helped bring in to the city (Due process, btw, means the administration can "do" whatever the hell they want to teachers and there's not much you can "do" about it.)

Perhaps the Ayn Randians at the NY Sun editorial board will even get a Merry Christmas present in the form of vouchers from Ms. Weingarten before she heads off into the sunset to destroy teacher work protections nationally the way she has destroyed them here in New York (though even I think Ms. Weingarten knows that would be going too far.)

But who know? When Rod Paige - the man who compared the NEA to terrorists - says you're the only teacher labor union leader he can stand and when the right-wing, pro-voucher, anti-union editorial board at the NY Sun sends you love letters to mark your 50th birthday and when you hold a fund-raiser for charter schools at the new UFT headquarters building constructed with the dollars of actual working rank-and-file UFT members/teachers, it's hard to say just how you will sell out next.

But one thing is for certain - she will sell out.

...according to Elizabeth Green of The New York Sun. Sure, Randi Weingarten withdrew the 28 million bucks of UFT pension money (as reality-based educator wrote this morning), in view of the non-union workers involved. But it appears the construction workers may have wanted more (See pamphlet at left--click for a clearer view) .

Thus, the construction workers have threatened to protest en masse at Ms. Weingarten's 50th birthday party. It appears Ms. Weingarten's people are negotiating furiously to preclude this humiliating prospect.

But it kinda makes you wonder. Why, when it's time to negotiate teacher contracts, do they just go to PERB and say, "Give away whatever you feel like and don't worry about whether it meets cost of living or not"? Clearly such negotiations are of considerably less importance than those that may impact upon this birthday party.

I guess, though, if it were my party, I wouldn't want it sullied by these embarrassing pamphlets.

On the other hand, if I were a union prez, I'd have made damn sure the project used only union labor before committing 28 million bucks of my members' pension funds. In fact, I might have gone so far as to dedicate pension funds to paying pensions.

But that's just me.

Update: The UFT and the construction workers are still negotiating, but agreed at the last moment that Ms. Weingarten's birthday party would not be picketed. Thank goodness our leadership can take action when vital interests are at stake.

This year Talking Points Memo is hosting an end-of-year contest "honoring the great acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and general muckiness"... any possibility of doing a similar series of posts for this year in the DOE?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/060120.php

The NY Sun reports that Randi Weingarten and the UFT have pulled back their support from a low-cost housing project that was supposed to provide 200 affordable apartments for educators because the project is using non-union labor.

The low-cost housing project was a partnership between New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the New York City Housing Development Corporation, and the city's teacher pension fund.

After being informed by construction unions that the developer of the project, Atlantic Development Group, was using non-union workers, Weingarten requested that the Teacher' Retirement System get back the $28 million Weingarten anted up for the project.

Weingarten says that her support for the project was contingent upon the developer using union labor to build it, but after contacting Atlantic Development Group to discuss the allegations that non-union labor was being used to build the project, she became convinced she had been "materially misled."

The UFT plans to picket the development site today. The project may not be completely dead, however. Comptroller Thompson says he supports adding union labor to the project so that the development can "move forward."

Couple of things here:

1. Why is the UFT using the teacher pension fund to get into the real estate business? With pension funds across the country in danger of going belly-up as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the housing bubble burst (see this Bloomberg News article here about the latest victim to the crisis - the Florida public employees pension fund), shouldn't the pension fund be used only for safe investment vehicles that will ensure decent returns?

2. Why is the UFT using the teacher pension fund to build apartment buildings that are supposed to provide low-cost apartments for teachers when most teachers make too much money to actually qualify to live in them when the project is finished?

I'm glad to hear that Weingarten is pulling back support from the project now that she "knows" that non-union labor is being used to build it, but I still don't understand why she agreed to this "Weingarten Village" project in the first place.

The only thing I can figure is that she sees the teacher pension fund and the UFT Welfare Fund as her own little kitty for whatever whimsical ideas and/or business ventures come to mind.

Wal-Mart's an interesting place. They're a huge success story for corporate profits, yet the people who actually work there can barely afford to buy the shirts their uniform requires, let alone the health insurance that only 43% of their employees manage to acquire. How does Wal-Mart treat unions?

The only union success at a Wal-Mart branch was short-lived. In 2000, staff in the butcher's department at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. Shortly afterwards, in what Wal-Mart insists was an unrelated move, it closed the department.

Yes, perhaps it was just one of those remarkable coincidences. What happens when a whole Wal-Mart store is in danger of voting to unionize?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it will close one of its Canadian stores, just as some 200 workers at the ___location are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators that would make it impossible for the store to sustain itself.

Oddly, despite over 100 billion in assets, that hard-pressed Walton family can't afford a unionized work force. It's a question of values, I suppose. Now Whitney Tilson, hedge fund manager, voucher enthusiast and vice-chairman of KIPP Academy is running a group called Democrats for Education Reform. So you have to wonder, how does such a "Democrat" feel about Wal-Mart? Well, he's positively bullish, actually, projecting it will double in 3-5 years. Any worries about the company's long-term exploitation of working people all over the world? None that I could detect.

So with "Democrats" like this, who really needs Republicans? Another reason for Mr. Tilson's enthusiasm for Wal-Mart could be the company's continual financial support of charter schools. In fact, Wal-Mart will give up to a quarter-million bucks to folks willing to open charter schools in Columbus or Cleveland.

You have to ask yourself--is the Walton Family Foundation, the same folks who fight unionism by any means necessary, purely altruistic in this venture? Or are they simply interested in weakening one of the last bastions of unionism in the United States of America? And make no mistake, unionism has been in decline since the 80s, when President Reagan busted the only union foolish enough to have supported him.

I started looking at charters with a very open mind. But the more I hear about them, and the more I learn about those who support them, the more I'm convinced they're just another step in the Walmartization of America.

And that's far from a good thing for those of us who need to work for a living. And it's not a good thing for our kids either--if they're attending public schools, chances are good they'll have to work for a living too.

Thanks to Columbus Education Association

by Schoolgal

Interesting how some teachers feel that merit pay and the end of tenure will solve problems.

We "older" teachers had similar experiences, but not on the same level you guys do. Since NCLB, the system and union has drastically changed. Yes we still had horrible administrators and lazy teachers, but we had each other. We also didn't have the mandates that make it impossible to teach and be creative.

Protections in this field are more important than ever. I made it my business to articulate to the administration how I felt about the PD and non-collaboration. Had it not been for tenure, I'd have been out the door.

The union gave away one of the better hiring practices we ever had, the SBO selection, and they took away the right to grieve letters. Instead of using our old extended 50-minute Mondays for pure collaboration, we were forced to listen to stupidity that was far removed from actual teaching. I was on a Professional Development Committee, but my principal would not attend the meetings or listen to our suggestions. The other members were afraid to grieve even though there was a directive from then Deputy Chancellor Farina to develop such a committee. So, the committee disbanded. Again, had our union been stronger, teachers would have supported our efforts. Yet our union is teaming with a charter school that allows for collaboration, input, discipline and real parent involvement. These issues should have been the focus of our contracts; not the givebacks.

I really believe when teachers are empowered, even the so-called lazy ones will once again be enticed to do a better job. No teacher or any employee wants a U rating. So don't blame tenure for the failure of our system. Many schools work because they have innovative and respectful leadership.

Merit pay would also be a disaster because it assumes all children have the same learning styles and progress rates. They don't. Even the new school report card system has given some of the most violent schools As while the best in the city got Bs and Cs. It seems that students who already achieve 4s cannot progress any higher, so the school grade suffers. My school not only got an A, but had the highest raw score. Believe me, it didn't deserve it. The teachers were so afraid that the principal would retaliate that they answered positively on all survey questions.

Yes, there are teachers who decide to stay with the job even though they hate it because of their love for the kids. But that makes it sound like anyone who wants to explore any new options are selfish. I left teaching for a few years because I felt confined. I tried the business world, but I missed teaching. And when I returned (back in the 80s) I was determined to do a great job. I was given a "bottom class". The first thing I did was put my students in groups rather than in rows. All the other teachers still had them in rows. I was the first to use the cooperative model and incorporate journal writing (This was before Lucy came to town). The principal let me do whatever I wanted because she knew I was good. Some teachers, and not all of them "older" did not appreciate my style. But the students and parents liked it. The kids were excited to learn.

Now, I find it hard to incorporate those styles because the ELA is around the corner and the pressure is incredible. The pressure was also there when I started teaching, but the tests were given in April and May. By that time, the students were ready and they improved.

I also know other great teachers who left teaching and are now happier. Personal happiness is very important. And those that make the move away from teaching are not abandoning their students. Others will take their place. One thing I learned from all my years teaching is that no matter how good you are, you are expendable. Look at how many of our best teachers are being driven out of the system because of their age or because they disagreed publicly with the system.

The idea of merit pay or loss of tenure improving this or any school system is, at best, simplistic. The changes must go to the heart of the failure, and to do that many highly-placed people would be out of a job,

Over at Edwize, unelected UFT Vice-President Leo Casey responds to Mike Antonucci's assertion that his disappeared name from Disney's "Teacher of the Year" is just a lot of nonsense. Antonucci responds here.

In any case, according to Mr. Casey, Disney knew he organized the letter that protested troglodyte/reporter John Stossel's analysis of education (the one UFT President Randi Weingarten willingly participated in). And the corporate response of Team Rodent was to delete his name from a page very, very few people had any interest in.

Apparently, as they are wont to do, the forces of evil have once again ganged up to attack Mr. Casey personally. With all these conspiracies to battle, it's a wonder he finds time to go to UFT headquarters and do whatever it is they do in there.

Mr. Casey was conspicuously silent on the issue of all the unrelated names Mr. Antonucci discovered to be missing. He also had no comment on why, as he so abhors censorship, that his blog regularly deletes comments that fail to share his point of view. Mr. Casey also failed to apologize for or withdraw his libelous contention that I was responsible for the words of the LA Times.

What can we glean from this? It appears to me yet further evidence that Mr. Casey and his party are never wrong, and that facts which indicate otherwise are to be ignored at all costs.

Yomister remarked in this comment thread that the UFT, which bills itself as a "Union of Professionals," is now running on its homepage an advertisement for botox treatments, breast enhancement and other kinds of plastic surgery by some doctor in Staten Island (I'm not putting up a link to the guy, but that's his logo over to the left.)

Yomister wonders when the ads for escort services and the like will show up on the UFT website.

If you click on the link for other advertisers on the UFT webpage, it's clear that the escort service ads are actually already there.

Listed on the advertisers page are:

1. Washington Mutual Mortgage Home Loans - a company that is being probed by NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for pressuring a big title insurer to inflate appraisals of homes so that they could hand out bigger mortgage loans and charge higher rates to people

2. Countrywide Financial - the nation's largest mortgage company that pioneered such innovative financial products as the NINJA loan (no income, no job no assets - no problem!!!) and handed out hundreds of thousands of adjustable rate mortgages to anybody with pulse no matter whether they had the ability to make payments once the mortgages reset to higher rates or not.

Like WaMu, Countrywide has also been accused of inflating home values so they could push higher mortgages (with higher fees) onto people. But the dishonesty and criminality didn't stop there. Gretchen Morgensen wrote the seminal article on the unethical Countrywide Financial for the NY Times back in August. Here's a taste:

Countrywide’s entire operation, from its computer system to its incentive pay structure and financing arrangements, is intended to wring maximum profits out of the mortgage lending boom no matter what it costs borrowers, according to interviews with former employees and brokers who worked in different units of the company and internal documents they provided. One document, for instance, shows that until last September the computer system in the company’s subprime unit excluded borrowers’ cash reserves, which had the effect of steering them away from lower-cost loans to those that were more expensive to homeowners and more profitable to Countrywide.

...

Countrywide’s product list showed that it would lend $500,000 to a borrower rated C-minus, the second-riskiest grade. As long as the loan represented no more than 70 percent of the underlying property’s value, Countrywide would lend to a borrower even if the person had a credit score as low as 500. (The top score is 850.)

The company would lend even if the borrower had been 90 days late on a current mortgage payment twice in the last 12 months, if the borrower had filed for personal bankruptcy protection, or if the borrower had faced foreclosure or default notices on his or her property.

Such loans were made, former employees say, because they were so lucrative — to Countrywide. The company harvested a steady stream of fees or payments on such loans and busily repackaged them as securities to sell to investors.

If you have heard about all the record foreclosures across the country, then you know just how much complicity Countrywide Financial has in the whole sub-prime mortgage mess.

The bottom line here is that if you have done any business with either WaMu Mortgage Home Loans or Countrywide Financial, you have more likely than not been cheated by them. The track record is there for all to see if you simply google these companies.

Yet our union, the dear old UFT, is helping these two unethical companies cheat UFT members by letting them advertise on the UFT website and taking a fee to do it.

I dunno about you, but that definitely sounds like the definition of "whoring" to me.

I wonder if that's what Randi means when she says the UFT is a "Union of Professionals"?

Ya know, when you're a lowly teacher like me, you wonder what the hell it is that folks making twice our salaries over in UFT headquarters actually do all day. I mean, as far as I can tell, half the UFT budget, 40 million bucks a year, goes to paying their salaries, sending them to conventions, paying their limo drivers, and ensuring they go to a lot of gala luncheons. And honestly, I wouldn't begrudge them a single cent, a single dollar, if I were convinced they had our interests at heart.

So what do they do? Well, I know UFT Vice-President of Academic High Schools (the one that rank-and-file never voted for) Leo Casey spends a great deal of time writing for Edwize. From reading his pieces I've learned that everything Randi Weingarten says is brilliant, that more work for less pay is a fine thing, and that fewer opportunities for working teachers is the way to go on most issues. And he must be right, because Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization." Paige says he's doing a heckuva job.

What else does Leo Casey do? Well, it appears he checks a Disney website regularly to make sure his "teacher of the year" award, the one he got a million years before he became a UFT muckety-muck, is reflected on the website. Look, there it is.

But alas, one day he checked and it wasn't there. Horrors! Did Mr. Casey call Disney and ask what was going on? No. He simply assumed it was a personal attack. Now personal attacks, to Mr. Casey, are unworthy and intolerable (unless he happens to be delivering them). But wait a minute. Look at what EIA Intercepts says:

Of the 25 honorees who signed the letter, Casey is the only one who is missing from Disney's web page. The letter lists the signatories in alphabetical order, giving Casey no special recognition as the composer of the letter.

Hmm...kinda makes ya think, don't it? But theres more:

Surprise! I only checked through "H" and I still found 14 other Disney honorees whose names, like Leo's, didn't make it to the new page. They are:

Karen Butterfield, 1993 honoree for Visual Arts
Colleen Mary Callahan, 1991, Performing Arts
Lauradis Cardet, 1990, Foreign Language
Todd Coleman, 1993, Early Childhood
Carolyn L. Cotton, 1990, Vocational Arts
Judy Darden, 1992, Early Childhood
Beverly Y. Davidman, 1994, Mathematics
Stephen Fox, 1991, Physical Education/Health
Katherine K. Fujii, 1991, Science
Rebecca Goldman, 1992, Early Childhood
John E. Guardia, 1990, General Elementary
Janet Walton Hayes, 1990, Physical Education/Health
Herbert Lee Holland, 1991, Performing Arts
Virginia Honomichi, 1991, Athletic Coach

I could have continued to "Z," but why? As far as I can tell, none of these teachers has reason to fear petty retribution from Disney, yet they, like Leo, are also missing. The fact that all the names are from the early 1990s suggests transcription errors, rather than some ridiculous conspiracy theory.

So, what can we conclude from this? Why does such a highly placed union official jump the gun and make such accusations? Why does he accuse opposition parties of Nazism? Why does he casually libel real working teachers? And why does he negotiate and unquestioningly support the worst contracts I've seen in my 23 years on this job? Why does the UFT Academic High School Vice President censor our questions rather than respond to rank and file?

Because he doesn't do his homework, that's why.

Now what message do you give your kids when they don't do their homework? And what message should we send UFT President Weingarten for placing someone like that in a position of so much power--and for regularly seeking his counsel?