In a stunning turnaround, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced fundamental revisions to his proposed merit pay scheme.

"I've been reading the NYC Parents Blog lately," said the Mayor. "It turns out that test scores don't actually determine who is and is not a good teacher, and that none of this stuff is proven. Not only that, but merit pay has been kicking around for a hundred years, and it's never produced any results whatsoever. In fact our merit pay trial in NYC didn't work either, and I don't even know what made me want to do it again. Maybe one of those recently graduated education advisers. Who knows?"

The Mayor went on to explain that he'd been getting most of his information from pro-"reform" sites, and was dismayed to learn that the commenters he'd relied upon for information were largely motivated by the prospect of gift cards for free footlongs from Subway.

"How the hell can you rely on people who write things only because they want free sandwiches?" mused the Mayor.

The new plan will save money by making merit pay totally arbitrary. A wheel will be installed at Tweed, which will then be spun to determine the schools in which merit pay will be distributed. Then, lucky merit pay winners' names will be pulled out of hats in their respective schools.

"It's as good a method as any," said Bloomberg, running to meet the SUV that drives him to his preferred subway station. As we waited for the room air-conditioner to be installed in the SUV window, the mayor confided, "We'll save a lot of money and time this way. No one really understands the data, it's completely unreliable, and I personally hate the little weasels who have the patience to plod through it anyway."

Asked why he didn't simply give teachers the raise all other city employees got for the 2008-2010 bargaining period, Bloomberg said the expense was prohibitive, and pointed to the 80-million the city wasted on ARIS, due to be scrapped for a state system very soon. The mayor intimated that the entire notion of merit pay was specifically designed to spare the city the expense of raises, and he hoped that other unions would embrace it so as to make it easier to provide tax cuts for speculators, investors, and his neighbor Cathie Black.

As Vice-President of the United States, I'm pleased to address all you teachers! I know you're here because you have a calling, a dedication to teach our kids. Otherwise, why would you be facing pay cuts, additional fees for pensions and health care, and be buying supplies out of pocket?

When President Obama and I see the things Republicans are doing to you, we're horrified, and that's why we're out there every day, paying teachers valuable lip service. And let me assure you that, when and if President Obama finds his comfortable shoes, he may or may not be out there with organized labor, protesting the loss of collective bargaining rights!

Now I can see there are those of you who object to some of our programs, specifically Race to the Top. Sure, you say, it brings more testing, and that your very jobs depend on getting better grades on those tests. While that is certainly true, remember that our priority is to make the United States the best educated country in the world. That's why we do whatever Bill Gates asks us to, whether or not it's been tested or disproven. After all, if he didn't know about this stuff, why would he have all that money? And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that President Obama said in his State of the Union speech that he wanted less testing! So what more do you want? For Chrissake, he's the goshdarn President of the United States!

Remember, the President's kids and my grandchildren go to the Sidwell Friends School, where there is less testing, so we're putting our money where our mouth is, and anyone else who wants to can just move to DC and pay 33K a year to send their kids there too! This is the land of opportunity!

So don't be a Gloomy Gus! Some things we do may not please you, but the important thing to remember is that the things Romney will do may be even worse! He doesn't care about class size! Arne Duncan cares deeply about class size, which is why he said class sizes should be raised just one week after Bill Gates said so. And I know you all admire Bill Gates, since he was the keynote at your last convention! Can I get an amen? No?

Well, anyway, I realize the whole merit pay, teachers getting fired for no reason, and school closing thing doesn't resonate among teachers, and I truly regret that those troublemakers from Chicago are actually saying so out loud. Honestly I was not prepared for that. So let's put our differences aside and take a real look at what I've done since I arrived here.

As I look around me, I notice many of you are smaller than me. In fact, I've seen many of you walking down the stairs, and I chose not to push any of you. Not only that, but I saw several of you walking by the fountain, and I didn't toss any of you into it. This was my choice. Could you say the same for Mitt Romney? Nobody knows, right? Let me tell you something about Romney. He supports high-stakes testing, charters, merit pay, privatization, decreased teacher voice, and vouchers. Let me make one thing perfectly clear--President Obama and I DO NOT support vouchers! That is a promise.

So God bless America, God bless teachers, and remember, when you're in that voting booth, Joe Biden has not pushed any teachers down the stairs, as far as you know. And thank you, AFT, for endorsing us without asking us for any concessions whatsoever! Those goshdarn LGBT and Latino communities actually pushed the President to change his positions, and that was pretty freaking inconvenient!

So believe me when I say this administration really appreciates teachers!

Extraordinary. I rate her highly effective.

As an aside, why did the UFT exclude every member who'd publicly say what she did about value-added from attendance or participation? When will we get a voice in the AFT?

This week we've been examining precisely what it takes to represent the UFT at a national or state convention. The prime requirement, of course, is to be an invited member of the elite Unity Caucus, and to do that you must agree to support all union positions in public. Ravitch, though I like her very much, fails to meet the standard. Here's why.

1. She publicly opposes mayoral control. UFT supports it, and this alone would disqualify her. It's a long tradition to expel Unity members for failure to conform. In fact, Albert Shanker used to expel people for opposing the Vietnam War. Mayoral control is what brought us the rubber-stamp PEP, and I've seen high-ranking UFT officials get just as frustrated with them as most of us are. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and placing all that power in the hands of an elitist billionaire, let alone anyone at all, was a huge error. We ought to stop pretending otherwise.

2. Ravitch vehemently opposes VAM, and has publicly labeled it for the junk science it is. She does not support using it for teacher evaluations, not at any percentage. Standard union argument is that principal's judgment can be flawed, and therefore other measures are needed. I cannot really argue that point, nor the one that there are plenty of crazy principals out there, but adding random nonsense to the mix hardly helps. In fact, if you have a small-minded principal, it's likely this person could work to see your value-added scores scour the depths of whatever underworld whatever remains of the soul of Joel Klein has been relegated to.

3. Ravitch fails to support Common Core, contending it should be tested before it's put into effect. This makes perfect sense to me. In fact, with the AFT circulating a petition against excessive testing, before supporting it, wouldn't it be a good idea for us to find out precisely how much testing it will entail? The spectre of nine tests a year, to me, hardly bodes well. I'm upset by Common Core in that it does not differentiate between ELA for American-born kids and ESL for my students. To me, that's patently idiotic. Issues like these ought to be addressed before we throw our support to any program.

4. Ravitch is highly critical of union-endorsed President Barack Obama, going so far as to say he's given GW Bush a third term in education. UFT members won't be talking any of that when Vice President Joe Biden addresses the crowd in Detroit. When Obama's people applaud entire teaching staffs being fired, when Arne Duncan states Katrina was the best thing to happen to NOLA education, Obama says nothing, but Ravitch is not impressed.

I could go on, but you get the point. I commend the AFT for selecting Ravitch this year. She's a much better choice than Bill Gates.

On the other hand, it's not particularly admirable that UFT leadership has excluded absolutely every New York City teacher who publicly supports her ideas.

I am doing some professional development this summer.  At one of these sessions, I heard from a professor at one of our city's great universities, who has done some work with high school students over the summer.  This gentleman was lovely and learned, and very respectful of and attuned to his audience, which was composed almost entirely of New York City high school teachers.  Nevertheless, I couldn't help but listen to this man's remarks and feel like a bit of a chump.

This gentleman was very proud of the work he did with his high school students, as well he should be.  His syllabus was rich and challenging; the samples of discussion we heard and writing we saw certainly looked rigorous and engaging.  And the students themselves were lively and focused.  All well and good.

This gentleman caps his class at fifteen students.  All fifteen of those students have to apply to his class. There are no grades, only written and oral feedback from the professor and his three assistants (for fifteen students) throughout the course.

He emphasized that, of course, work like this is made much more possible under his circumstances than ours.  And fair enough; I have no personal beef with him.  But surely some idiot from the DOE could come to his presentation and say, "Well, look, he's working with New York City high school students, and look what he can do!  Look what they can do!  Why can't you lousy unionized public school teachers do it?"--forgetting, of course, that he is working with fifteen highly motivated, hand-picked students and three (three!!!) assistants.

I persist in my work as an educator because I feel that it is important, and I am good at it, and I am generally treated fairly at work.  Don't cry for me; if I really wanted to do something else, I could and would.  But that's precisely the problem: Many of us teachers are bright and motivated and talented enough to do something else.  Is it any surprise that many of those of us who feel underappreciated, disrespected, and powerless move on, in the face of the challenges we face, in the face of the paperwork and the bureaucracy?  When the students and the paperwork pile up with no assistance, no extra time or space or money, and no end in sight?

We'd all like to teach in his situation, and I think, and at the same time I can accept that I probably never will.  Still, maybe we, and "the system" in general, should look at it as a goal, rather than a pipe dream.

UFT has just scored a victory against Mayor4Life, conclusively establishing that even those as rich as Bloomberg need to listen to voices other than those in their heads. CTU has just provided proof that a determined and cohesive union can negotiate a win-win. However, there's work ahead on both fronts. In NY, it's likely an embittered mayor will move toward more traditional school closings, because he needs what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. And Chicago, just like NY, still has not agreed upon a new contract.

A time like this is a time for us to stand firm, and stand together. Yet in Detroit, UFT will be represented only by leadership-selected members who have signed an oath to support what they're told to support. This includes mayoral control, the prime source of city school closings, and also value added methodology, now embedded in NY State law. Value-added has been vigorously opposed by a bold group of New York State principals, and also by prominent education historian Diane Ravitch. It's largely regarded as junk science, and that it can cause teachers to be denied tenure, or even be fired for no good reason.

Yet this weekend, at the AFT convention, there will be not one single solitary vocal critic of VAM from the UFT. Can it really be that 100% of UFT members support junk science? Again, it's because every UFT rep has promised to support what leadership supports, good, bad, or indifferent. Regrettably, that's not the sort of thing that strengthens us. Rather, it encourages and increases the sort of cynicism that keeps all too few of our members from active participation. There's a good reason why fully three quarters of UFT members don't even bother to vote in union elections.

As for VAM, the debate within UFT is not whether or not we will be using VAM, but whether it will entail 20%, 40%, or indeed 100% of the final evaluation. That's an interesting conversation, but it ought not to be the one and only one.

As I've repeatedly suggested, the optimal percentage of junk science in any evaluation should be zero, and it's unfortunate this merited no previous discussion, and that there will be no UFT member in Detroit to point that out. I'm very confident large numbers of our members, given enough info (the kind largely unavailable in MSM), would strongly agree. There are not a whole lot of teachers I know who strongly advocate for junk science--I can't think of a single one, in fact. Yet dissenting voices, in a group that applauded for Bill Gates, will get no consideration whatsoever.

UFT leaders need not agree with us. They need not adopt our positions. But again, they ought to entertain them, reason with us,  rather than simply shut us out altogether. Winning hands, like the one just blooming in Chicago, are not achieved by erecting brick walls across the paths of passionate and active unionists.

To be continued...

NY Post's Yoav Gonen reports on Twitter judge ruled DOE cannot restaff 24 so-called "turnaround" schools. Big loss for Mayor4Life. All his hopes to revive his flagging reputation now revolve around getting New Yorkers to stop drinking those darn Big Gulps.

If you wish to join Unity Caucus, and participate in leadership decisions, you have to agree to support all Unity/ UFT decisions. One of those decisions, in 2002 and again in 2009, was to support mayoral control. Many of us are painfully aware of what that entails--a fake school board called the PEP that rubber stamps absolutely anything our billionaire mayor desires.

In 2002 many members had reservations about giving all that power to any one person. I know I did. Giuliani had always tried to get that sort of control, but he was always pursuing insane lawsuits, like the one to bring him mistress into the home he shared with his wife and young children, and no one took him seriously. Bloomberg, much smarter than his predecessor, made it happen.

By 2009, it was pretty clear what Bloomberg's notion of democracy entailed, given he'd dismissed a couple of members who dared to contemplate voting against him. And, of course, the PEP has approved every school closing, ignoring the cries of teachers, parents, students, community leaders, and absolutely everyone but Michael Bloomberg.

UFT asked for some modifications, but got nothing that substantively eroded what is effectively mayoral dictatorship. However, feel free to correct me if I've missed anything.

Regardless, virtually no Unity member in New York City was able to publicly speak against mayoral control, because that violated the official leadership position. Then, in 2010, they were sent to Seattle to applaud for Bill Gates. While no UFT members were permitted to oppose Gates, some AFT locals apparently had people who did, and those who were vocal in opposition were ridiculed by the faithful as they walked out.

Whatever margin Unity won by, there is a large percentage of UFT teachers who oppose what Gates has done to education. Even if it were solely the 9% that opposed Unity/ New Action, that 9% ought to have a place in leadership. I'd suggest, though, that many more teachers oppose Gates than represented in the percentage that voted for opposition.

It's a far cry from democracy to deny those teachers a voice. We ought not to run our union the way Michael Bloomberg runs his PEP. In fact, by granting zero voice, zero votes, to anyone but leadership-invited caucus members, we're doing worse--at least Bloomberg grants five representative votes to face his insurmountable eight.

To be continued...

At the last AFT Convention, incredibly, Bill Gates was the keynote. Personally, I was horrified. Here is this man who's doing everything his billions will permit to eviscerate our profession, and we're inviting him in to tell us about it. Why on earth would anyone want to do that? I have no idea.

Stunningly blunt article in the Daily News today on how Bloomberg's signature initiative, school closings, has been an abject failure. It's important to note that the US Education Department favors similar programs, based on Arne Duncan's Renaissance 2012, also an abject failure.

It's pretty clear that high-needs students do not, in fact, disappear, no matter how many schools you close (except at charter schools). Also, poverty does not simply disappear when you treat the nation's teachers like second class citizens.

Since all public schools get letter grades, largely based on how many high-needs students they happen to serve, shouldn't we be giving Tweed one given they've been doing this for a decade and it doesn't work? Will Arne Duncan or Bill Gates read this and determine they've been moving the nation backwards for no good reason?

More to the point, will Daily News readers remember this the next time they read an editorial stating that Bloomberg is a savior and the teacher union is trying to subvert the education of our youngest and most vulnerable?

Only time will tell.

I can't say as I blame you. Principals can't wait to install another Smartboard, put out another iPad, hook up WiFi to the boiler room, and incorporate computers into everything and everyone.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love computers. I love the internet. It's like the public library right here on my laptop. Why deprive anyone of that?

On the other hand, there are some things we still need to do ourselves--like writing. How many times have you received a paper with the internet address still on top of it? How many times have you googled a sentence from a student composition to find it's copied word-for-word from Wikipedia or Sparknotes? How many times has the next composition you read been identical to that purloined essay?

That's why, especially in writing classes, I demand almost all work be done in front of my eyes. I've given up on assigning writing homework. "My brother/ cousin/ girlfriend/ dog helped me." I don't want to know how your brother/ cousin/ girlfriend/ dog writes. I need to know how you write.

I have nothing against the use of tech in the classroom. For a time last year, by mistake, I was temporarily assigned to a classroom with a Smartboard instead of the barren, too hot, too cold trailer. I used the thing every day. On a computer, I have excellent handwriting, and kids no longer laugh at my miserable indecipherable scrawl.

Scrawl notwithstanding, I don't need the Smartboard. I don't even need my little iPad (though you'll pry it out of my cold, dead hands). They're here to help us. They are tools that extend the activities we've already planned. We'd be silly not to use them. But while machines break down, we don't. We need to be able to do without the machines.

And despite the cartoon, despite the rantings of Bill Gates, machines will never take our place, never be able to answer our students' questions, and never be able to give the guidance we provide--unlike the "reformers," we always look at more than test scores.

It doesn't make you a bad teacher if you don't use tech, even if your admin gives you a hard time. But if you can't do without it, there's something other than tech missing from your bag of tricks.

Christine Quinn has a very sharp sense of what's good for Christine Quinn. That's why she enabled a third term for Mayor Bloomberg--it bought her one too. Others, like Tony Avella, declined to continue when Quinn, Bloomberg and company decided to overturn the twice-voiced will of the voters and extend their political careers.

Yet when it comes to others, Quinn is not all that concerned. Should New Yorkers get paid sick days? This, apparently, is not the sort of thing that keeps Quinn up at night. So what if people wake up sick and need to go to work? It's not like Christine Quinn has that problem. So why worry about it?

And that, apparently, is the character of the front-runner for mayor who will follow Bloomberg. It's important that we have a mayor who actually cares about working people. This means we need someone different from Giuliani, Bloomberg, or Quinn. So it's back to the drawing board for NYC Democrats. We have a sufficient number of political hacks from which to choose already.

Let's have someone with character and vision, for a change, if it's not too much trouble.

"So how are the ninth graders?" my principal asked me a few days ago.  I'm teaching in the summer bridge program for our incoming freshmen, so I'm in a position to know.

"They seem nice," I said.  "Haven't had any issues.  I mean, the ones who are here voluntarily over the summer probably aren't the tough cases, but the kids who are here are all right."

"Can you figure out who the class clowns are yet?" he asked with a laugh.

"Oh, definitely," I assured him, laughing back.

I enter this real conversation into evidence.  All of this was said in a gentle, joking tone, so no worries that I'm letting the kids dis me before the school year even starts:

POTENTIAL CLASS CLOWN, to MISS EYRE: So what do you teach?

MISS EYRE: English.

PCC: Oh.  Figures.

ME: What do you mean?

PCC: Well, you know, you look like an English teacher.

ME: Come again?

PCC: You know.  Like a brainiac.

ME: Um, because math teachers or Spanish teachers can't be brainiacs?

PCC: No.  Like an English teacher brainiac.  You know, with the glasses and everything.

ME: Well, I have to say, this is the first time I've been told I look like a brainiac.  [Incredibly enough, this is true.]  Usually I just get that I look like a student.

PCC [attempting to be reassuring and failing miserably]: Oh no.  You don't look like no student.  You look old.

ME: Like how old?

PCC: Oh, like old.  Like maybe 30.

ME: I think I liked my old freshmen better.  They said I looked 24.

ANOTHER STUDENT [catching on]: No, she's not 30!  She's like...27.

ME: See?  Now, if I have her, she's getting an A all year.

PCC: It doesn't matter!  You're just old!

OTHER STUDENT [clarifying]: ALL teachers are old, miss.

Mayor Bloomberg, in what may be his last term in office, is determined to leave his imprint upon the city school system. It's certainly true that his endless decade of "reform" has not brought about improvements in test scores, the only thing he actually cares about. And with hundreds of closed schools and the decimated neighborhoods in their wake, we know the quality of life is not anything to jump up and down about either.

But it's important that his good buddy, Eva Moskowitz, gets as much of a foothold as possible into what was once a purely public school system, so Mayor4Life is giving her even more schools to privately manage. One is Washington Irving, scheduled for closure, and the other is the High School of Graphic Communication Arts. The latter was one of the 24 scheduled for Bloomberg-style "turnaround," which appears unlikely.

But nothing nips at morale quite like a two-tiered system within a single building, where private-school students of Eva Moskowitz are treated better than the lowly kids actually served by public schools. There's nothing like seeing your building crumble at the seams, entering through a back door, or having your library disassembled and boxed up to let you know just where you stand. And, with low morale and disillusionment, "failure" and closure can follow closely behind.

It's kind of amazing to have a mayor who cheerleads for failure and closure of his own public schools. But with Bloomberg, it's become sort of a tradition.

Let's hope it ends conclusively next year, and the NY has the sense to vote in a mayor who actually wants city kids to get a decent education, as opposed to the enrichment of hedge-funders and one-percenters enthused about charter schools.

That's the education news, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that teacher unions spent a lot of money on causes they support. When the teacher unions spend money on causes they don't support, that will be news.

In the spirit of being reasonable, Bloomberg and Walcott have conceded they may need to follow the law after all. This is a huge step for Mayor4Life, who actually managed to change a law twice affirmed by voters so he could buy himself a third term. After all, what's the point of having all that money if you actually have to follow rules clearly intended for the little people?

Nonetheless, after having one's ass handed to one twice in a row, one begins to wonder whether the third time is a charm. Given the very real possibility they may be compelled to keep all those darn teachers, rather than dumping literally thousands of them into the ATR, it's time to plan for it. After all, the longer they keep their heads in the sand, the harder it is to breathe.

So the move here is to plan for what may be inevitable. But there's yet another wrinkle. Meryl Tisch, state education chancellor, is pressuring Mayor4Life to come to an agreement with the UFT over teacher evaluations, saying 292 million in state funds will be withheld if that doesn't happen by year's end.

I wonder whether that money is earmarked for "reform"-style nonsense or whether it can be used in the classroom. If it's only for evaluation and merit pay and other useless nonsense, she can keep her money. But the public won't perceive it that way since the papers never specify such things. Either way, there are problems with this agreement. Problem one for me is that teachers will be evaluated via VAM, which is total crap. UFT leaders will argue it's only 20% crap, and that they will absolutely not allow it to creep up to 40. Others will maintain it's 100, since teachers cannot get a decent rating without doing well on so-called objective measures.

But before we even have that discussion, there are other issues. For example, two ineffective ratings, and teachers will be pretty much fired, no matter how nostalgic they are about tenure. And UFT negotiated that 13% of ineffective rating will go to an independent arbitrator rather than Walcott's ever-ready rubber stamp. For folks like me, this sucks because 87% of working teachers won't get a fair hearing.

Mayor4Life, according to my UFT sources, has a completely different view. He finds it outrageous that even 13% of teachers should get a fair hearing, because he's Mayor Mike, and he should do what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants. Therefore he will not finalize this agreement during his tenure. Now some of us may conclude we should jump with joy since this precludes being evaluated by junk science.

That's a very valid point. The counterpoint is that any new evaluation system would necessitate a new contract, which would also necessitate facing the fact that all city employees except educators got an 8 plus % raise during the 2008-2010 round of pattern bargaining. Personally,  I think it's a mistake to take money in exchange for junk science, particularly since our brother and sister unions did not grant concessions this round, none of them are rated by junk science, and even the so-called shield against making teacher ratings public is so full of holes you could drive a city garbage truck through it.

But that's just me. What do you think we should do here?

I've never worked summer school before, but I've also found that a strange entropy seems to overtake me by the second week of August.  I think it's because I don't have kids of my own and Mr. Eyre works in the Big City, so I'm alone for long stretches of time in the summer.  On the surface I don't mind this, but I decided it might be better for my mental health to work at least a little this summer.  So I'm teaching two weeks of summer school.

This is not as bad as I feared it might be.  I'm working a "Bridge Academy" because my genius principal figured out how to afford it, and getting to know the incoming 9th graders is actually pretty nice.  Obviously, the kids who would come voluntarily over their summer vacations tend not to be the hard cases, so it's low-key and enjoyable.

I wish I could say the same for the teachers who are teaching the credit recovery classes.  It just seems to be more of what didn't already work the first time.  Attendance is spotty, motivation is nil, what have you.  I don't know who to feel worse for, the teachers or the kids.

So far, working at least part of the summer seems to work for me.  How about you?  Who's spending at least some of their summer on the great per-session payroll?  Or am I a chump who should be sleeping till noon and chilling at the beach?