NY Post Calls UFT Contract "Satanic"

I know, I know - you think I'm engaging in hyperbole.

But I'm not.

A piece by Jenny Sedlis of StudentsFirstNY, written in reaction to some bravado remarks Mulgrew made Wednesday at the Delegates Assembly, is entitled: "The Satanic Details".

The remarks Sedlis is "outraged" about were these:

Union boss Mike Mulgrew went to his delegates on Wednesday and ’fessed up to his goal: revenge.

• He admitted his intention to “gum up the works” and undermine teacher evaluation so that it would be harder to identify and reward great teachers and improve low performing ones.
• He wanted a pilot program for innovative schools, but only as a way to undermine the good work that charter schools are doing. “We are at war with the reformers,” he warned his members.
• And he wanted to slap ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “By working with this mayor,” the UFT chief said, “we have come up with a creative way to one more time wink at Bloomberg and say, ‘Gotcha.’”

Let's deal with two layers of phoniness here.

First, Mulgrew is full of shit over the "we are at war with reformers" jive - few locals around the country have done more to work with reformers to undermine the way teaching used to work than the UFT.

From the Teacher Data Reports based upon test scores Randi Weingarten agreed to with Chris Cerf to signing off on mayoral control twice to signing off on Race to the Top to actively promoting Common Core (and Mulgrew himself demonizing CCSS critics) to dropping the lawsuit against the Regents/SED over teacher evaluations to agreeing to APPR in the first place to helping Governor Cuomo get a deal in place in February 2012 that ensured APPR would be in effect everywhere in the state to hailing SED Commissioner John King's imposition of an odious evaluation system in NYC, the UFT leadership has given tremendous aid to the reformers' work.

The latest contract also contains goodies the reformers wanted - adding merit pay and ways to circumvent the contract at 200 NYC schools while changing the way the ATR pool is run.

Mulgrew engaged in bravado at the DA the other night, spouting off the tough words because he needs to fool as many members as possible into thinking he's actually fighting for their interests when you can see quite clearly he's working hard to undermine them.

The second layer of phoniness here is Sedlis' "outrage" - and the Post's.

They know how much they've gotten out of the UFT leadership in the last 12 years, how radically different the system is now compared to a decade ago, but they want to make believe like nothing's changed, that Mulgrew's intransigence is keeping things the way they have always been and, in the end, it's just "satanic."

Two layers of phoniness going on here, a whole bunch of people - Sedlis, Mulgrew, the Posties - who are simply full of shit.

In the end, what's really "satanic" is how phony the whole "war" between unions and reformers is.

That war ended a long time ago when union leaders like Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew began "collaborating" with reformers to implement their reform agenda.