I can't believe I never heard this story before. I also kind of can't believe it's true, but it is. Click over and read it. I'll wait. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, a teacher points out to a soon-to-be-humbled businessman from an ice cream company that while he can send back an "inferior" shipment of blueberries for his top-quality ice cream, teachers can never send back children.

Look, don't believe all this nonsense about me on Twitter. Really, have you ever heard of a snake who could tweet? It's absurd. I yam what I yam, like Popeye, and you won't see me writing cutesy nonsense on some iPhone gadget.

The truth is the Mayor came by, and who would've thought he was a Parselmouth? But there it was, and once he explained his problems, I could see he'd been misled. I mean, here's this guy trying to fire teachers who make too much money so he could have the newbies take their place, and he's saying it's a budget thing, that if he gets so much he has to fire so many, yadda yadda yadda, and other such unbelievable nonsense.

I told him this was not the way to go. He complained that his Department of Education was being run by some clueless lush, and that he didn't know what to do. I told him I'd take care of things for him if he could supply me with rodents, and he said Tweed was full of nothing but. I told him I'd be happy to eat, or at least bite anyone he couldn't fire, and we set off arm in no arm. I knew I was what he'd been looking for. He said he used to have someone just like me but he'd set off to make more money.

He mentioned how everyone complained how his programs didn't work and I told him it was not about whether they worked or not. It's about getting what you want. So now we have an agreement. I will visit every school in the city, get rid of every teacher making over 50K, and spare all others until they, too, reach 50K. This will not only allow millions to be freed up for preposterously expensive no-bid computer programs, but will also eliminate the need for future costly pension programs.

I'm really looking forward to my new gig, but Rupert Murdoch came by this morning and offered me something political, which really appeals to me. But the mayor says if I stick with him through his fourth term he'll make it worthwhile.

Anyone know the name of a good agent?

I went to one of our school's baseball games recently to cheer on the team. A few of my students and a few others I know slightly are playing, and I genuinely enjoy cheering them on. Shortly after I arrived and checked in with my colleagues to find out about the score, I looked, through the chain link fence, up and down the bench until I found Richie.

That's you and me. How did we become such a dire threat? Tough to say.

Right here if seniority protections are not stripped from NYC teachers, the quality of teaching will plummet and lives of our children will be ruined. This does not apply to teachers in other parts of the state, for whom quality does not matter. Nor does it apply to police or firefighters, because it makes no difference what the quality of their services may be. This is what Mayor Bloomberg wants us to believe, and this is why he's set up groups like ERN and E4E, to relentlessly push this illogical fairy tale.

In Wisconsin, of course, they need to save money.

There is no fiscal crisis in Wisconsin.  Governor Walker reports a nearly 130 million dollar deficit, but doesn't report that he caused it by giving a 140 million dollar tax break to large multinational corporations here in Wisconsin (e.g. WalMart). 

But even after the teacher unions offered large givebacks, Walker insisted he needed to preclude collective bargaining, and has been pushing through his programs, laws and courts be damned.

In Florida they're changing teacher evaluations in a manner described as all stick and no carrot. Why anyone wants to teach there is a mystery to me. In fact, in states all over the country, newly elected teabagger governors are going after teachers in a big way. Even in liberal New York, Governor Andy Cuomo is is posing draconian education cuts while refusing to extend taxes on New York's Richest.

You see, people who make 250K, or even 1 million a year, can't pay any more taxes. But teachers need to take pay freezes, benefit cuts, and lower pensions. And kids, particularly poorer kids, need to make do with fewer services, fewer courses, fewer teachers, and larger class sizes. In fact, in Missouri, just around the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster, they're contemplating the rebirth of child labor.

How did we become so gullible, so apathetic, so docile as to accept moving back the clock a hundred years or more? Wisconsin appears to have awakened, and there are signs of life elsewhere.

But any country that's made its teachers the enemy has a questionable future at best. What can we do to move away from this paradigm, move away from oligarchy, and reclaim our city, state, and country?

That's what Andrew Cuomo appears poised to deliver.

Here's Obladi Oblada, done in unforgettable fashion by a bunch of musicians I've never heard of. (Miss Cellania has all the details.) All in all, a very cool low-rent music video:

Kristina Daniele says teachers are not the enemy after all.

It's kind of heartbreaking what's happened to journalism in these parts. You have to wade through oceans of crap to get anywhere, and even then you can't be too sure what you're looking at. But in America today, we get very selective news. Is there war in Afghanistan and Iraq? I mean, I don't see it on TV, so how can it really be happening?

Education news was looking up for a while. I mean, sure, the Post prints the same one-sided crap all the time, there's a definite slant at the Daily News editorial page, but at least there are all these blogs, where real people give it to you firsthand. Gotham Schools was a really exciting prospect. For the busy blogger, you could find all the headlines every morning rather than combing the web every day. Sure, every piece of crap one-paragraph "story" from the Post got a link, and some things seemed to escape them, but there it was.

Yet their community section has progressively become less challenging. It's dominated by one of the very worst writers I've had the misfortune to come across, who's managed to acquire remarkably little insight about our profession. Of course, when we found this writer was a member of E4E, featured on a Michelle Rhee video, and angling for a "reformer" gig (none of which Gotham Schools saw fit to include on his bio), there was suddenly a reason Gotham may have seen fit to feature him. Never mind that none of the programs this writer embraced had any track record, or any realistic possibility of helping education. Never mind that his group is funded by "reform" billionaires--this baseless point of view was something Gotham Schools felt needed further exposure. After all, Bill Gates can always use a helping hand, what with so few outlets available to him--Oprah, the so-called "Education Nation," and the entire corporate media can only get you so far.

Gotham crossed a line when it chose to spit in the face of a bunch of teachers who supported union. A movement, led by teacher-bloggers, called Edu-Solidarity, offered dozens of posts last Tuesday about why union was important to them. Gotham Schools thought it would be a good idea to put up a disingenuous scab post the following day.

Gotham Schools is free to publish what it sees fit. Like Murdoch ventures, it need not trouble itself with whether or not what it publishes is accurate, valid, or based in anything resembling objective reality.

But that big old "screw you" to bloggers like Miss Eyre, Jose Vilson, and Stephen Lazar is disgraceful, an act of outright depravity. And again, Gotham Schools may do what it wishes. It can even pretend to be objective when doing so. But I'm not buying.

Are you?

I hurt myself a couple of days ago--no big deal, just a sprained ankle at yoga. For the last three days, I've been hobbling around my school on crutches, trying to avoid putting any weight on it.

Here's a piece by Linda Darling-Hammond. She did not prove to be the darling of the "reform" crowd, which prevailed upon our eager-to-compromise President to hire Arne Duncan, whose Rennaissance 2010, an abysmal failure, needed to be replicated for the entire US of A. There's a very good reason Darling Hammond is not popular in "reform" circles.

She actually looks at what works, and thinks about it:

In a statement rarely heard these days in the United States, the Finnish Minister of Education launched the first session of last week's with the words: "We are very proud of our teachers." 

That is indeed rare in these parts. All I ever hear about is how we can fire teachers without regard to seniority. In fact, Finnish teachers are all unionized. What's more is they don't use standardized tests. They--get this--let teachers decide how and what to teach. And it turns out, by international standards, they do way better than us. I guess Bill Gates didn't do much checking before he started talking about Finland.

Not only that, but there is a tendency in other countries to actually pay teachers. Because it's an important job, because we trust our children with teachers, other cultures feel we ought to compensate them for it. I've met young teachers who had to debate whether they could afford to see a movie. I've met others who had trouble coming up with ten bucks for a gift pool. What the hell kind of way is that to treat people we trust with the awesome responsibility of teaching our children?

And now there are people saying it's not cost-effective to keep them on, that we ought to dump senior teachers, that teachers don't learn anything after the first three years. That's simply ignorant. We learn and improve all the time, and those who judge us solely by standardized tests are unfit to discuss education at all.

Officials from countries like Finland and Singapore described how they have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all of their teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters' degree level, where they receive a salary while they prepare. There they learn research-based teaching strategies and train with experts in model schools attached to their universities. They enter a well-paid profession - in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors -- where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together - engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other's classrooms. And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.

From my vantage point, in a trailer behind an overcrowded building, that sounds pretty good. As Miss Eyre mentioned yesterday, we actually have less time for preparation than our foreign counterparts, spending more time in the classroom. Now I'm not complaining, but how are we rewarded for that? By having Mayor4Life Bloomberg unilaterally announce that teachers would get half of the raise all other city workers got, and only on part of their salaries, and then announcing, to avert layoffs, that we were getting nothing whatsoever. Then, of course, with a 3.1 billion dollar surplus, and the DOE sitting on 275 million dollars, he announces he needs to do layoffs anyway, to save 269 million dollars.

As if that isn't enough, he and his billionaire buds get a bunch of scab teachers to leave their jobs, pretend they're still teachers, and try and subvert union from within.  They claim to revere "excellence" but unlike Darling-Hammond, have not the remotest notion how excellence is achieved here on earth.

In these summit discussions, there was no teacher-bashing, no discussion of removing collective bargaining rights, no proposals for reducing preparation for teaching, no discussion of closing schools or firing bad teachers, and no proposals for ranking teachers based on their students' test scores.

Sound decisions are based on what works rather than the druthers of billionaires. If President Hopey-Changey were interested in making education better, he'd have nominated Darling-Hammond rather than already-failed Duncan. I can't believe Obama is too ignorant to know the difference, and ultimately, that makes me respect him even less.

Why on earth must the United States indulge in such nonsense rather than help our children?

UPDATE: Go to EDUSolidarity to view similar posts from educators around the country. GothamSchools has also picked up the story.

I'm reading Lord of the Flies with my 9th-grade daughter. I don't exactly love it. The prose is leaden and confusing, and her teacher insists on making every word, no matter how obscure or impractical, a required part of study. But despite my misgivings,  the book's message is starting to resonate with me.

Americans are all riled up against our particular beast--quite different from that in the book--more modern, frightening for different reasons, but still ourselves. We're guilty not of savagery, but of being a middle class, personified by unionized teachers. We threaten society's march toward "progress," lead by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.

All woes are attributable to us. Families are blameless, and poverty plays no part either. The siren call of computers, Ipods, and even Gates' own Xbox, popular for the most desensitizing and vile war games, plays no part in America's failure to achieve. The primary culprit is the classroom teacher, and we must pay (being the largest group, inevitably followed all remaining unionized employees).

And pay we do, as state after state makes it unprofitable, demeaning, and pointless to pursue our much-vilified profession. NYC's Bloomberg trots right at the heels of Scott Walker, though he's managed to appear less fanatical to many. (Recent abysmal poll numbers suggest that may be changing.)

We have an Education Secretary who takes marching orders directly from billionaire Gates, echoing his message at regular intervals. It doesn't matter that none of their programs work, that there is no research to support them, or that the goals are plainly impossible. No child must be left behind, and if we have to close schools, fire teachers, and eliminate every program that doesn't focus on math or English, we will continue pursuing that impossible goal. As we do this, neither Gates nor Duncan takes any hint of responsibility the failure to realize whatever it is they claim to wish to accomplish.

The bodies we leave in our wake will be washed out to sea, and no one need know that we're abandoning our own interests, ourselves, our middle class, that we're depriving the children we didn't leave behind of a future, or that we've given away their prospects to further comfort the comfortable. We siphon more and more money to those who have no need of it, and MSM, along with most politician from both major parties, pointedly ignore this. Witness Cuomo's ads boasting of no tax hikes, the ones that fail to note cuts to education and health care for those who most need it.

And that doesn't take into account the legions of Americans that eagerlyt believe the utter nonsense that appears daily on Fox News, in the New York Post, and in scores of less blatant publications. We don't question it.

Given that, maybe there's a glimmer of truth in what they say. Maybe education has failed us after all. Otherwise, we'd rescue ourselves.

If we don't, you can bet your life no one's coming to our island to do so.

Don't miss Mr. A. Talk's shot at the big time. This is one blogger who will leave no stone unturned in his ruthless quest to the top.

Diane Ravitch writes an impassioned condemnation of Governor Scott Walker, and his cynical, disingenuous push to kill collective bargaining rights even though all his economic requests--the ones he said were crucial--were met. Of course there'd be no crisis whatsoever had Walker not granted Walmart such a huge tax break, but that's neither here nor there.

Several commenters suggest that unions are extortionists. Simply because they offer advice, representation, negotiation of contracts, benefits, higher wages, and all sorts of other services, you have to not only join, but also pay dues. How dare they? Actually you don't have to join, but unions here require you to pay a fee anyway, so there's not any advantage in not joining.

I know how these people feel. After all, I failed to vote for George W. Bush, not once, but twice. Despite this decision, every time I looked at my paycheck stub, I'd paid plenty to support his programs, many of which I viscerally opposed. There were those endless wars. There was that utter lack of support for organized labor (which I happen to support). Then there were those tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, who least needed them, while we were at war. There were the huge deficits. There were the reprehensible social priorities, the loathsome and cynical disregard for the needs of most Americans, the rampant corruption.

Yet still I had to pay taxes. And now, President Barack Obama, for whom I actually voted, seems not much different from cowboy GW. In fact, his education policies seem not much different from those Johny McCain proposed, the ones that kept me from voting for him. We're still in both wars, the health care bill is a shadow of what I'd hoped for, the Bush tax cuts are extended, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which Obama promised to support, is more dead than Elvis in the face of the GOP House.

Now President Obama spends his time talking education with Jeb Bush rather than walking it in Wisconsin.

If I had half a chance, maybe I'd withhold taxes. If there were a President I liked a bunch of other people would withhold taxes. But when you're part of a community you can't, you don't do that. Those who speak of freedom to withhold union dues do not want union to survive, just as a government couldn't survive with voluntary taxes.

Their talk of freedom is simply nonsense, another distraction. We're all about distractions in this country today. If people were paying attention, the whole country would look like Wisconsin--if not Egypt.

Ah, parent-teacher conferences. The day on which you get together with the parents of your students to duke it out over whose fault it is that darling Johnny is failing. (Just kidding! Obviously it's yours.)

She cut my class day before yesterday. Well, that's not precisely true. When she didn't show up, I called her Mom, who failed to answer the phone. That was not a huge problem--Mom likely speaks only Chinese, and I don't speak it at all. But then I noticed she'd written her own cell number too, so I called her. She said she was on her way, and would make it for the second period of my double-period class. Half a loaf is better than none, so I told her to hurry up.

Only she never showed.

So yesterday, when she did, I told another girl to tell her I wasn't speaking to her, which the girl did with great delight. I folded my hands like one of those guys who sends the poor waif into the snow in an old movie. Predictably, that didn't work at all. So I asked her directly why she didn't come, and she told a sad story about security guards not letting her in or something. It sounded viable, but I felt the need to tell her she needed to show up, she shouldn't be late, and all that teacher stuff they pay me to tell kids.

But she just nodded her head and smiled, and I couldn't stay mad at her. I wanted to, though, so I enlisted the help of my friend who teaches Chinese. Once she gets yelled at in her native language, I figured, things would clear up immediately. But the Chinese teacher, who I know is well-equipped to yell (she yells at me all the time), seemed to lose steam in the face of the girl's smile. Where was the rancor? Where were the withering looks that turned crazy teenagers into shaking masses of jelly?

There was no hope whatsoever. This girl just kept smiling. Something inside her made her happy with herself, and no matter how we tried to shake her, she was determined to stay that way. Somehow, she was smarter than both of us. 

How dare she be like that at 14 years old!

I received an e-mail from a friend today asking me what I thought about this op-ed from Nicholas Kristof in yesterday's Times. And on first blush, I wasn't sure what to say. So since I'm always telling my students that writing is, among other things, a way to sort out what your thinking on a subject actually is, I thought I'd try a blog post about it.

Mayor Bloomberg says dirty oil is so bad it costs lives. But that doesn't stop him from using it in hundreds of city schools.

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is demanding we pay teachers more. Sounds good, doesn't it? Which teacher couldn't use more money? It kind of makes you think he's pro-teacher. And it would be true, if it weren't for the fact that no one is actually offering teachers more money, and the priority in these United States is not compensation for teachers, but lowering taxes for Steve Forbes.

Nonetheless, you'd think the man who declared qualifications for teachers were so onerous that Meryl Streep and Colin Powell couldn't get classroom jobs (despite the fact that neither had expressed the remotest interest in them) had finally come to his senses.

But like the Republicans, who claim it's in the public's best interest to strip working people of bargaining rights, Kristof tosses out misleading headlines and saves his real message for later:

Look, I’m not a fan of teachers’ unions. They used their clout to gain job security more than pay, thus making the field safe for low achievers. Teaching work rules are often inflexible, benefits are generous relative to salaries, and it is difficult or impossible to dismiss teachers who are ineffective. 

In fact, history dictates that teachers did even worse before the advent of unions. Of course, history is neither here nor there to teacher-bashers. The media devotes enormous attention to a charter with a handful of teachers that are allegedly paid more. Never mind that its track record is miserable, that there is no research whatsoever to support its methods--that's what you'll see on 60 Minutes, rather than what's really happening in the overwhelming majority of American schools.

Kristof knows nothing of what's really happening in most schools, can't be bothered to research it, and seems to pull his opinion directly from his hind quarters. Despite his apparent sympathy for teachers, there's no indication he remotely understands what people in Wisconsin are fighting for--the right to come together and fight for what's in their best interests.

In fact, the non-union utopia of Kristof's vision already exists, in non-union and union-lite charter schools. And guess what? Such teachers, despite dubious exceptions like the one mentioned above,  are not paid more than union teachers. They are subject to arbitrary and capricious dismissal and do not seem to remain on the job as long as their public school counterparts.

But at the New York Times, you can propose ideas with no research, no basis in practice, no vision for realizing them, and still make many times more than any public school teacher.

Kinda makes ya think we're in the wrong business, doesn't it? Of course, educators, unlike American journalists, are supposed to deal in truth.

And that's one more reason the big money, disingenuously dangled by faux-liberals like Kristof, consistently eludes us.

...and too many horse's asses, my grandfather used to say. If we believe the nonsense spread by MSM about how public sector workers are breaking the bank, that's us. But it doesn't have to be.

Here's an Ohio Congressman speaking sanity to power. Worth a look, and hopefully America is listening.