UFT Contract Vote: Predictions And The Roadmap For The Future

Expected to be announced today:

The teachers union’s new $9 billion contract with the city is expected to be ratified Tuesday.

The secret ballots of more than 100,000 eligible members of the United Federation of Teachers will be scanned by the American Arbitration Association in lower Manhattan.

Union officials hope to announce the results by mid-afternoon.

Urban Ed thinks the contract passes with a slim margin, somewhere between 60-40 and 55-45.

James Eterno weighs in:

Virtually everyone thinks the contract will carry with the teachers.  If it is defeated I would be very surprised.  I would also be astonished if it gets 84% approval like the TWU contract did recently. Considering the resources we don't have and what we are up against, anything over 35% would be a success for the opposition forces as I see it.  We'll know later today what happened.

And Megan Behrent of the MORE Caucus explains where to go from here whether the contract is approved or voted down:

As ballots wait to be counted at the American Arbitration Association, much of the media as well as the union leadership anticipate the vast majority of UFT members will vote “yes” to ratify the contract proposal. If that is the case, Mulgrew and the Unity caucus will be quick to declare victory for their “historic” contract.

But regardless of the final count, we need to look beneath the surface of the vote to understand what it reveals about the state of our union. Over the past few weeks, MORE has been part of a groundswell “Vote No” campaign, but rank and file anger was much broader and deeper than those active in any caucus.

...

Ultimately, the key question is how do we build a movement that can draw lessons from our ‘Vote No’ campaign, and encourage a new group of activated members to join MORE in the struggle for union democracy and reform.

Demoralization is one possible response to the ratification of this lousy contract; but organization is far more powerful.

Whatever the final results on the contract turn out to be, the key question remains. How do we save our union and revive a tradition of rank and file activism that puts the struggle for our schools at its center?

We know that if this contract is ratified, in 2018 we will be faced with more of the same, as we will once again be told that there is no money– especially since the majority of retro payments occur in 2019/2020 AFTER the proposed contract expires. The more important question is where will MORE be? Who will be running our union? Our schools? What kind of rank and file base will have? Will we have greater reach and more capacity to fight for the contract we deserve?

We are at an important historical juncture in the battle for our schools: there is a growing national movement for union reform, against standardized testing and against the education deformers. It is this movement that has inspired a growing opt out movement among parents opposed to testing, inspired teachers to boycott administering soul sucking standardized tests, and inspired a growing number of educators to demand more from our union and more from our schools. It is the same movement that has given confidence to people to vote no on this contract. This is a potentially powerful movement that can transform our unions and our schools.

The 2014 contract agreement became the receptacle for a lot of anger and frustration for what has happened to schools, teachers, and the teaching profession over the past decade or so here in NYC.

I think it is important to build on that anger and frustration and turn it into fruitful action against the education deform agenda that is destroying the public school system, the children in that system and the teachers who teach there.

Megan Behrent points out how important it is we build on that anger in a fruitful way, avoiding the trap of demoralization by organizing to take back our schools and our union.

Certainly we can look to Governor Cuomo's re-election campaign and begin to take out some anger and frustration on him.

Our union leaderships ensured that the Working Families Party would not run a candidate against Cuomo from the left, but that doesn't mean teachers, parents and other critics of Cuomo's education reform agenda cannot coalesce around a pro-public education ticket.

Howie Hawkins/Brian Jones Green Party ticket can be just that ticket.

And of course the UFT election is two years away and building on the anger and frustration UFT rank-and-file have displayed the past month to mount a substantial challenge to Michael Mulgrew and his Unity caucus.

Lastly, I'd say building relationships with parents and working together to take on deform, as CTU has done in Chicago, can go a long way toward building a groundswell of support for teachers and public schools in the coming battles against the corporatists looking to privatize the school system for their own benefits.

How Do We Counter The Sophisticated P.R. Operations Of The Corporate Deformers?

The battle over the UFT contract agreement has gotten me thinking about public relations and messaging.

Earlier I wrote a post asking people to start thinking through the p.r. war that is sure to come if the UFT contract agreement is voted down.

My argument basically was this:

Contracts are not negotiated in isolation of the political environment - what gets reported in the press, the propaganda that gets spewed, affects negotiations.

Even more importantly, it affects the kind of support teachers can get from the public on a whole host of things, not just contract negotiations, but school policies, charter vs. trad schools, etc.

We have to start to find effective ways to get our message out in the face of a hostile corporate print press and electronic news media.

This is true not just in this contract fight but in the fight against the corporate reform agenda and its proponents as a whole

What first spurred this on for me was watching the fight between Eva Moskowitz and Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio had the moral high ground here when his chancellor announced that three Success Academies co-locations were being canceled - one of which would have taken space away from special needs kids, another of which would have put young elementary school kids in the same building where high school kids rioted in the recent past.

Despite de Blasio inhabiting the moral high ground in this battle, Moskowitz went on a p.r. offensive worthy of a presidential campaign, reached out to Governor Andrew Cuomo and other charter-friendly politicians with entreaties and campaign cash and, in the end, thoroughly routed de Blasio.

Moskowitz managed to do what GOP consultant Karl Rove always said political campaigns should do - she made her own weakness into a strength and her opponents strength into a weakness.

Eva played the victim here, messaging to the public through press conferences and ads that played over and over that her "kids" were being thrown out onto the street by the charter-hating Mayor de Blasio.

The truth was, Eva was throwing deaf kids out of their school space, but de Blasio and Farina never got that message out to the public and wound up smeared as the villains in the charter wars.

This was a sophisticated and masterful p.r. operation, one that was most certainly helped by the $4 million+ Moskowitz and her hedge fundie friends could spend on ads.

Nonetheless we should not dismiss the masterfulness and sophistication of the Eva p.r. operation just because she had the money to get her message out.

Instead we must find ways to match the sophistication and masterfulness in the messaging wars against the deformers and their destructive agenda, and do it without the help of the money that Moskowitz has behind her.

We know we cannot count on the unions because they are playing for their own interests and those often do not coincide with the interests of teachers looking to protect traditional public schools, the teaching profession, etc.

I stand in awe of what Karen Lewis and CTU managed to do in Chicago, reaching out to parents in a long-term effort to find common cause against the deformers.

I see some of the same happening in the battle against Common Core, the Endless Testing regime and APPR teacher evaluations.

While many parents are not necessarily going to go out of their way to fight for fair evaluations for teachers, they show much more willingness to do so when it becomes apparent that APPR evaluations are behind so much of the Endless Testing.

When it was just teachers complaining about Common Core, the papers were pretty brutal toward CCSS critics.

But when parents joined the protests, suddenly the paper coverage got a lot more nuanced and fair (in Newsday in particular.)

I think there are some lessons here that we can use going forward as we try and combat the messaging of the deformers in the p.r. wars.

More and more, I am becoming convinced that we must get more sophisticated and masterful in how we approach the p.r. wars against the deform movement - not just in the contract battle, but in the whole "war" against corporate reform.

I know there is a lot of anger and fury among teachers that has been building up for over a decade.

I share this anger and fury with you.

I don't think coming from a place of anger and fury is a terribly effective way to actually get the outcomes we want, either short-term or long-term, however.

So, finding a way to channel our anger and fury and get a coherent message out despite the millions of dollars the other side has for p.r. - this must be our task going forward.

Is Randi Feeling The Pressure From Karen Lewis And CTU?

Gates Foundation Education Week wonders:

One of the reasons this situation bears watching is because of how the rise of Lewis and CORE have had reverberations throughout the American Federation of Teachers, CTU's parent union.

AFT has played the card of being the more accommodating of the two national teachers' unions with respect to national policy movements, such as teacher evaluations based partly on student achievement. But Lewis has shown that outright resistance and opposition can work in some contexts, too, and that has proved to be an attractive option for some.

Opposition groups modeled on CORE have sprung up in the AFT's affiliates in New York City and Newark, among other places. And they seem to be having an effect on AFT, which has taken a much more strident tone on standardized testing and school closures lately.

Norm Scott says no:

Don't leave out the connection to the Chicago 80% victory by Karen who is leading the battle against ed deform while Randi once again defends Common core in the NY Times. The AFT I believe gave the CTU money to support the CC or something like that. But from what I hear they are ready to take on that battle. At the AFT convention in LA in July 2014 many of these issues will be fought out with the local 800 Unity slugs just elected will still be pulling back from the battle.

Ed deform will not fall until we drag the UFT/AFT into the battle. The Chicago election was a referendum on the Randi collaboration strategy and that took a beating.

I take a hardline on Randi.

Having watched her here in NYC, I can tell you that all Weingarten cares about is advancing her own career.

This is a labor "leader" with no core beliefs, no principles, no standards of conduct other than "How do I get on television more?"

She maneuvered herself into the "reform-friendly labor leader" slot because that was the place that would personally enrich and benefit her the most.

Until she has her power stripped from her or is carted out on RICO charges, Weingarten will not abandon her chosen role in the education reform war - the collaborator who works from within to destroy teachers and teachers unions.

I am glad that Karen Lewis and CTU are putting some pressure on the AFT leadership.

Winning with 80% of the vote after winning a fight with Rahm Emanuel is, I believe, making the AFTers a little worried that other locals will clamor for the same kind of pushback from their union against the deformers.

So their making some noises like they're pushing back.

But make no mistake, just because the AFT leadership is feeling a little pressure from a local doesn't mean their core collaborator policies will change.

They'll make it look like they're changing their policies without actually, you know, changing their policies.

Kinda like calling for a moratorium on high stakes attached to the Common Core tests, but not pushing for the end of high stakes attached to the Common Core tests.

Sure, Weingarten made headlines, but in the end, she did nothing to halt the education reform steamroller about to crush teachers with value-added measurements based on the Common Core tests that were added before the Common Core curriculum was taught.

That's the stuff Weingarten is made of - getting headlines for herself while doing nothing to help teachers (or worse, actively harming them.)

Karen Lewis Reelected To Head CTU (Update)

Good news:

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, an often controversial leader who took on Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a strike last fall and has been leading the fight against the district’s plan to close schools, was reelected to a second three-year term Friday, according to preliminary and still unofficial results released by the district.

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) slate led by Lewis retained other officer positions, which includes vice president Jesse Sharkey, the union said.

Teachers voted at their schools throughout the day. Challenging Lewis was a slate of candidates led by Tanya Saunders-Wolffe, a Chicago Public Schools counselor.

We'll have to wait to get the official results, but it's good to see the indication that the Unity-Lite/Weingarten slugs running against CORE went down to defeat.

UPDATE: Fred Klonsky posts that Lewis won 80% of the vote.

Great Guardian Article On The Sham That Is Education Reform And The School Closure Movement

The Guardian, despite its funding from the Gates Foundation, remains one of the few major newspapers around that really gets how much of a sham education reform is.

Today's article from Micah Uetricht on the Chicago school "reforms" is a case in point.

It is so good, I wanted to repost it in full:

If you want a glimpse of what slash-and-burn free market education reform does in cities throughout the US, look no further than Chicago. Last week, Chicago Public Schools announced its plan to close 54 public elementary schools in the city by next year – about 8% of all public schools in the city. Almost all are located on the city's south and west sides in predominantly black neighborhoods.

In a city where the majority of black children live in poverty, in communities long plagued by hyper-segregation, unemployment, youth violence, and disinvestment, these neighborhoods will likely be thrown into further chaos, as students (91% of whom are students of color) are forced to cross into rival gang territories. Public schools, which served as one of the few remaining community anchors, will be shuttered.

Chicago Public Schools claims the move will save $43m annually, and is necessary to close a budget deficit of $1bn over the next three years. The district has a history of using questionable math, issuing loud proclamations of deficits to justify austerity measures like closures, then quietly discovering budget surpluses months later. Even if CPS is telling the truth about the size of its deficit, the numbers on closures don't quite add up. They would only shrink the district's deficit by a small percentage and only in the long term, at least according to the district's statements. Independent analyses also show that past closures have produced minimal or nonexistent savings for the district.

So if budget shortfalls aren't the real issue, why, in neighborhoods desperately in need of strong public institutions like neighborhood schools, would a district shutter 54 schools and "turn around" or consolidate 17 others? And if the deficit is the issue but savings wouldn't be seen for several years, why would CPS propose the largest number of school closures in American history, in one fell swoop, rather than proceed cautiously with a few each year for several years?

Perhaps because some within the district are looking to dismantle education as a public good by handing schooling over to free market forces, and they know the only way to accomplish this is through "shock doctrine"-style policies, ramming the closures down the throats of a citizenry that would never freely choose them.

Over the past two decades, a remarkable consensus has solidified among both American political parties that free market reform is the panacea for all that ills public education. And Chicago has long been what education policy scholar Pauline Lipman calls the "incubator, test case, and model for the neoliberal urban education agenda," through programs like Renaissance 2010 (pdf), a program to close and "turn around" schools deemed failing (and the basis for the Obama administration's Race to the Top program), mayoral control of schools with an unelected CEO and school board, and the 110 charter schools that have cropped up in recent years.

The rise of charters has been central to the reform plans of current Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his predecessor, Richard M. Daley, including their school closure strategy. In the past dozen years, CPS has closed 75 schools; 40% are now run by private operators, most of which are charters. Of the schools targeted for "turnaround" under Ren2010, a process that includes firing all teachers at schools deemed low-performing, nearly all are now charters.

The district insists that the current spate of closures is necessitated by declining enrollment, but plans to open new charters are continuing full-steam ahead. Charter operators like the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), for example, a close ally of Emanuel that runs 13 schools in the city and recently caught flak for giving millions in publicly funded contracts to executives' close friends and family like a kind of 21st century patronage organization, was awarded a $98m grant from the state of Illinois in 2009 and recently applied for $35m. The network has big plans to open new schools in the near future, amassing huge amounts of debt (serviced with public money) to fund its expansion.

Maybe the district's goal isn't to fix underutilization. Maybe CPS is more interested in expanding charter schools, privatizing public education, and weakening the Chicago Teachers Union. Charters, of course, are overwhelmingly non-union, and that is a principal appeal for reformers pushing them. Charter school students may not outperform traditional public school students, in Chicago or elsewhere, but they do help weaken teachers unions – the biggest potential roadblock to the free marketeers' agenda.

Not all teachers unions have had the willingness or wherewithal to resist that agenda; many have capitulated, or at least been complicit. But the Chicago Teachers Union has fought back. In November, 10 people were arrested in a sit-in outside Mayor Emanuel's City Hall office. Today, thousands of CTU members – alongside community activists, clergy, CPS students, and members of other unions – will return to City Hall, shutting down part of downtown in the middle of rush hour before many are arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The union and the communities will demand the district halt all school closings.

The school reformers peddling neoliberal snake oil, promising the healing benefits of privatizing the country's public school system, are undoubtedly watching Chicago very closely, looking for strategies to export to other cities. But the teachers and communities sure to be devastated by such policies should pay attention, too, as free market education policies spread from New Orleans and Detroit to Philadelphia and beyond, they might glean some useful lessons for resistance.

The entire article is excellent, but the last two paragraphs speak the most to me.

Teachers unions have mostly been complicit in the neoliberal snake oil reform movement, but there are lessons here in Chicago for future resistance - and "Share My Lesson sure ain't on the blueprint.

Chicago 2013

From The Guardian:

More than 100 demonstrators taking part in mass civil disobedience were arrested in Chicago on Wednesday as several thousand people marched against the largest proposed round of school closings in recent memory.

Many carried placards proclaiming "Strong Schools, Strong Neighbourhoods" and "Protect Our Children" while chanting "Whose Schools, Our Schools" and calling for mayor Rahm Emmanuel's resignation.

"We're signalling that there is going to be a large and determined movement that will use the tactics of civil disobedience and direct action in order to keep these schools open," said Chicago Teachers Union vice-president Jesse Sharkey, who was arrested outside City Hall, one of 131 detained by police. "We see this event as kicking off an extended campaign this spring and we think it was a great success."

The city last week announced plans to close 54 schools affecting more than 30,000 students, primarily in low-income black and Latino areas. The proposals – which had already sparked huge, rowdy protests at hearings throughout the city prior to the announcement – mark Emmanuel's second major confrontation over education in less than six months following the teachers' strike in late August.

 "People have a right to the neighbourhoods in which they live," said CTU leader Karen Lewis at the rally. "Children have the right to a safe, nurturing, loving environment."

 CTU has laid down the gauntlet:

"In the same time these school closings have been taking place over the past decade, the city has opened about 100 charter schools in the very neighbourhoods where they're now closing schools through under-utilisation," said Sharkey. "Meanwhile supports of charter schools have been very open ideologically about making school competition part of the larger picture.

"We have not yet won the argument with the people of Chicago that this is a critical moment to be active. But this was a good start. Four or five thousand people and lots of different schools represented today. The argument can and will be won."

...

The CTU emerged with considerable public support after it blunted Emmanuel's attempts to tie teachers' pay to test scores last year. It has pledged to continue the campaign of non-violent disobedience. "People who work in the schools and rely on public schools will oppose the mass closings by any and all peaceful means," Sharkey has told union members. "[School closings] are not something we are prepared to accept without a fight ... We're going to take this fight as far as we have to, to defend our community schools."

Jesse Jackson was there.

Randi Weingarten was not.

She must have been paling around with her friend Bill Gates, finding new ways to use technology to evaluate teachers via test scores.

Thankfully Lewis, Sharkey, CTU and thousands of parents and concerned citizens from around Chicago did show up to fight this massive privatization of the city's school system.

It's going to be a long, hard fight. 

And as Sharkey said, they haven't gotten all the people in Chicago up in arms that this is critical moment to fight back.

But at the very least, they're trying to do just that.

Anger At The UFT Leadership Is Building In The Rank And File

The UFT leadership are a smug bunch.

They've been in power for a long time and the swagger they exhibit whenever they deign to come and talk to the rank and file makes me think that they think they're going to be in power for a lot longer.

Now I wouldn't bet against the Unity caucus staying in power in perpetuity or at least until the neo-liberals complete their privatization job on the NYC public school system, but I got an eye-opening look into something this week that I haven't seen much of in my 12 years as a UFT member - genuine outrage, anger and frustration aimed at the UFT leadership.

I graded Regents exams this week with teachers from a dozen different schools around Manhattan.

Many of them expressed outrage over the DOE, anger at Bloomberg and Walcott, and frustration over the latest ed deforms that are wreaking havoc across the system.

But there was also a lot of fire and brimstone aimed at Mulgrew and the UFT leadership for their collaboration with the deform movement and the DOE.

One teacher said, as we were talking about all the ways the UFT has caved to Bloomberg and the DOE since the infamous 2005 contract, "I can't think of one thing that they've really said no too that ended up really being no."

And it's true - they say there's too much emphasis on high stakes testing, but then they help develop the APPR system; they give the okay on the Teacher Data Reports with the assurance that the numbers will never see the light of day in public and when the DOE decides to publish them in the media, they half-heartedly fight that with ineffective lawsuits and the TDR's end up in the papers with names attached.

One teacher, now working in high school but then working in a middle school said "I can't tell you how angry that made me, when they published the Teacher Data Reports - angry at Bloomberg for doing it and angry at the union for not stopping him from doing it."

Someone else told a story about working in one of the SIG schools and how unhelpful and indeed toxic the union people were, almost as unhelpful and toxic as the DOE and network people were during the turnaround battles.

"All they wanted to do was sell us on the Danielson rubric and tell us how great it was.  But we were telling them that the administration was using it as a weapon against us and they didn't want to hear it.  They only wanted to hear how great the Danielson rubric was."

Someone else concurred.  "Yeah, the union people never really want to hear from you.  They want you to listen to them, not the other way around.  And that makes me really, really angry.  Why am I paying union dues?  What am I getting out of this?"

Someone said "Dental insurance?"

And everybody laughed. "Yeah - and shitty dental insurance at that!"

Someone else complained about all the perks the core UFT people get and wanted to know why they were getting those when so many rank and file members are fighting for their jobs.

Now I hear this kind of anger, outrage and frustration toward the union leadership in the blogosphere all the time and I express this kind of anger, outrage and frustration myself toward the union leadership on this blog all the time.

But to hear this same anger, outrage and frustration toward the union leadership in person from a whole swath of people from a dozen different schools was very informative for me.

It means that the swaggering bullies in the UFT leadership had better watch out.

There is a huge amount of anger, outrage and frustration out there already and we haven't even gotten the APPR system yet with the official use of the 57 page Danielson rubric which you had better do well on or you're "I-Rated," and the Student Learning Objectives that require 170 folders with a dozen pieces of Common Core work graded per semester which you also had better do well on or you're "I-Rated," and the value added measurements based upon test scores which you had better show growth on or you're "I-Rated," and the additional meetings and paperwork that are going to come as a result of the APPR system.

Just wait until that stuff comes to fruition.

My sense is that Mulgrew and his Unity hacks think they can bullshit their way through the APPR fallout just the way they have bullshitted their way through the odious '05 contract and the '07 extension to that, just the way they bullshitted their way through all the closings and the turnarounds, the TDR reports and the naming of names in the papers, and now the evaluation negotiations.

Experience says the UFT leadership are correct - they will be able to bullshit their way through APPR no matter how bad it is and maintain their power and privileges and double pensions.

But the anger, outrage and frustration I saw at the grading sessions this week leads me to believe that the UFT leadership will have a harder time bullshitting their way through the APPR fallout than they have over the other stuff in the past.

First, because all this stuff has built up - the odious '05 contract, the TDR's, the school closures, the co-location fights, the increase in "U-Ratings," the SIG mess, the Leadership Academy principals and the horror that is the ATR pool.  There is a lot in the pit already and when the APPR fallout hits, the pit is going to be close to overflowing.

And second, because we are now seeing anger, outrage and frustration aimed at the UFT leadership from teachers who used to be pretty apolitical folk but have found themselves politicized by the crimes perpetrated on them by the Tweedies that the UFT either ignored or couldn't do anything about.

Somebody mentioned MORE today during this discussion (not me, btw) and everybody at the table said they would be open to hearing from someone new, someone who would be willing to stand up for teachers rather than sell them out, somebody who would be more interested in political issues that mean something to teachers rather than just public relations opportunities to aggrandize themselves and further their own careers.

I'm not naive enough to think the Unity people won't win this coming election - Mulgrew will probably win another overwhelming "victory" that will put a smirk on his face and the double "g's" in his swagger.

But the same person who mentioned MORE at the grading session mentioned how Julie Cavanagh is an appealing leader who really could give Mulgrew a run for his money in the future.

I think that is right with one qualification - the future is farther off than this next UFT election.

We haven't hit bottom yet in the NYC system. 

There is more horror to come, as Bloomberg attempts to go out causing as much chaos and destruction as he can.

And the state has some horrors up its sleeve too with APPR and the VAM.

I think after a year or two of that kind of devastation, the anger, outrage and frustration at the smug, swaggering Unity guys is going to be at a fever pitch and that will give some new blood - hopefully MORE - a real opening to do to Unity what CORE did to the entrenched CTU leadership.

If that happens, I will remember what I heard today from those teachers from a dozen different schools as they told their Tweed horror stories.

Chicago Teacher Strike Suspended

From the Sun-Times:

The Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates voted Tuesday to end its strike after seven days, meaning classes will be in session Wednesday for 350,000 Chicago Public Schools students.

“Everybody is going back to school,” said Jay Rehak, a delegate from Whitney Young High School.

Delegate Mike Bochner said “an overwhelming majority” of delegates voted to suspend the strike on a voice vote.

“I’m really excited, I’m really relieved,” said Bochner, a teacher at Cesar Chavez elementary.

At a press conference a short time after the vote, CTU President Karen Lewis said the vote was approved by a margin of “like 98 percent to 2.”

“We said that it was time, that we couldn’t solve all the problems of the world with one contract. And it was time to suspend the strike.”

She said teachers were excited to return to work.

“I am so thrilled people are going back,” she said. “... Everybody is looking forward to seeing their kids tomorrow, I can guarantee you that.”

Nevertheless, there were some “die-hard hold-outs” in favor of continuing the walk-out, Lewis said.

“We cannot get a perfect contract,” Lewis said. “There is no such thing as a contract that is going to make all of us happy.”

While the strike is over, the entire 29,000-member union still has to approve the contract.

Sad sad Rahm didn't get his injunction against CTU.

CTU members talked this contract over for two days and decided it was time to go back to work and have an up or down vote in the near future.

Democracy in action.

Sad sad Rahm hates that.

I couldn't be prouder of my fellow teachers.

They stood up to the corporate reformers, they stood up to Rahm "F---ing" Emanuel, they put the Obama education agenda on trial, they got people talking about class size and liberal arts and humanities classes and the absurdity of VAM and the damage poverty does to children.

Then they showed how democracy works by taking the extra two days to read over the contract in detail, talk about this with their colleagues and families, then call for a suspension of the strike.

The concern trolls in the corporate media hated that last part.

How dare they show how a real democratic operation works rather than operate as some top-down organization wherein the members do what the leadership wants!

But that's because the corporate media, like many of our politicians and certainly like Arne Duncan, prefer authoritarianism to democracy.

One person pushes the agenda and everybody else falls in line.

That's what corporate reform is all about.

That's what mayoral control is all about.

That's what the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation and the USDOE and the Obama administration are all about.

It's nice to see a group of people show how good old fashioned democracy can work.

Now the rest of us have a model to use.

As CTU said in a statement:

“Our brothers and sisters throughout the country have been told that corporate ‘school reform’ was unstoppable, that merit pay had to be accepted and that the public would never support us if we decided to fight. Cities everywhere have been forced to accept performance pay,” the statement said.

“Not here in Chicago. Months ago, CTU members won a strike authorization, one that our enemies thought would be impossible. Now we have stopped the board are imposing merit pay! We preserved our lanes and steps when the politicians and press predicted they were history. We held the line on healthcare costs. We have tremendous victories in this contract; however, it is by no means perfect. While we did not win on every front and will need to continue our struggle into the future, we soundly defended our profession from an aggressive and dishonest attack. We owe our victories to each and every member of this rank and rile union. Our power comes from the bottom up.”

Are you listening, Randi?

How about you, Mike?

I know you are.

Because what happened in Chicago must scare the shit out of you guys...

Emanuel Takes CTU To Court, But The Judge Won't Hear The Case Until Wed

Rahm was enraged when CTU delegates voted to extend the Chicago teachers strike through at least Tuesday, giving them time to read over the details of the new contract and discuss the particulars with union members.

So he took the CTU to court to force them back to work tomorrow.

But a judge has put a wrinkle in Rahm's suit:

Chicago Public School students appeared less likely to be heading back to school Tuesday after a Cook County judge declined Monday morning to take up immediately a lawsuit by Chicago Public Schools asking the judge to end the teachers strike.

In a brief hearing, Cook County Judge Peter Flynn told a city attorney he preferred to schedule a hearing on the matter for Wednesday, a city law department spokesman said. The spokesman could not immediately provide a reason for the delay.

Wednesday is, for now, the earliest possible time students could return if the teachers union House of Delegates votes to approve the tentative deal at its meeting Tuesday.

Chicago Public Schools balked at that timeframe, wanting to sent students back on Tuesday. It filed a lawsuit in Cook County court Monday morning, asking a judge to end the teachers strike because it is illegal and presents a “clear and present danger to public health and safety.”

The complaint is asking for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to halt the strike.

“All of these students now face the all too real prospect of prolonged hunger, increased risk of violence and disruption of critical special education services, and all because of decisions not of their making, in which they did not have a voice or a vote,” the complaint alleges.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of Rahmbo taking the CTU to court because he says the strike is withholding critical services from students when his budget cuts and deliberate starvation diet for schools has been doing just that, it seems Rahm's ploy isn't going to work if a judge won't hear the case until after the CTU have another delegates meeting scheduled to make a final decision on whether to end the strike or not.

Nice try, Rahm, but like much of the your other ploys in this fight - from rigging the strike vote to 75% to publicly hammering teachers for months in order to drive down public support for them to bragging behind the scenes about how you're going to fuck these teachers right after the election by closing 100 schools, this strategy seems to have backfired.

How Dare CTU Members Read A Contract Before They Sign It!

CTU delegates have voted to extend the teachers strike until at least Tuesday while they read the final details of the contract and discuss it with their chapter members before a final up or down vote on whether to end the strike or not comes Tuesday night.

Of course the concern trolls in the media will explode at this - how dare they extend the strike, how dare they inconvenience parents and harm students, blah blah blah.

You know what?

Rahm "F---ing" Emanuel has already reneged on one contract signed by his predecessor.

It behooves CTU members to see the final details of this contract before they decide to stop the strike or not.

In addition, Rahm Emanuel is a banker by trade - never, ever trust a banker or sign anything one of these criminal bastards puts in front of you without reading it first - all of it.

We have plenty of instances since 2007 of lying, weasel bankers screwing people who didn't read what they signed - and even screwing people who did read what they signed.

We also have at least one instance in which Rahm "F---ing" Emanuel's word has been worth less than Enron stock.

CTU members should take the time to read this contract, discuss it with their colleagues and family and figure out what they want to do.

That's a good lesson not only for other teachers around the country, but also for all kids - see all the details of an agreement and read what you're going to sign, discuss it with others first, get all the information you can - especially when the group you're doing the deal with has shown themselves to be dishonest and devious in the past.

Democracy may not be quick and easy, but it sure works better when people actually take the time to think, reflect, share, and discuss with others important things like this.

Chicago Tribune: Emanuel "Bumbled" His Way Through The Strike

Corporate shill James Warren called CTU President Karen Lewis a "bumbler" earlier this week at the Daily Beast, trying to put the blame on her for the first teachers strike in Chicago in 25 years.

But the Chicago Tribune reports today that it was Mayor Emanuel and his team who actually bumbled their way into and through the strike:

The measure of who won and lost in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's showdown with the Chicago Teachers Union won't be clear until the details of the new contract emerge, but last week's strike took some of the luster off the mayor's self-portrait as an innovative leader brimming with new ways to solve the city's most vexing challenges.

The long, stressful path to getting a contract in place offered a glimpse that Emanuel perhaps is not as multidimensional as he tries to appear. Repeatedly, the mayor turned to one tool: the attack.

That singular approach contributed to the first teachers strike in 25 years and served to heighten organized labor's suspicions of the new mayor, whose union bashing kept him from playing a hands-on role at the negotiating table.

On Friday, after spending more than a year attacking the teachers union, Emanuel sought to strike a conciliatory tone as word spread about the much-improved prospects for a deal.

...

The dialed-back rhetoric stands in contrast to what came before. Emanuel's argument for a longer school day and year started out as an accusation, not a conversation.

In building his case, the mayor said Chicago Public Schools teachers had regularly received pay raises, the city had labor peace and students got the shaft. Emanuel's contention, made last September shortly after his hand-picked school board took away half the teachers' previously negotiated raise, implied that educators were lazy, resistant to change and didn't have students' best interests in mind.

It's a classic Washington tactic: Define your opposition before they can themselves. It's the kind of approach Emanuel perfected during his political upbringing in the nation's capital as a congressman and veteran of two White Houses.

It also underscored the learning curve Emanuel has yet to master — an executive must have the ability to maneuver between dominance and persuasion.

"Well before the strike, there were a number of shots fired that were unwarranted, and it set the tone," said Ald. John Arena, 45th. "The mayor has tended to be very one-dimensional in his tactics. This isn't Congress anymore, or the backroom."

Emanuel treated the teachers negotiations as just another political campaign: Win the message of the week, then the month and ultimately the war. It's much the way Emanuel won other faceoffs with labor, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he passed for President Bill Clinton.

This battle was different. It was a collective bargaining agreement, not legislation. At some point, the two sides had to sign a deal.

As the threat of a strike grew, it became clear to labor leaders that Emanuel's closest advisers lacked significant experience in hashing out such a collective bargaining contract. Emanuel's political team contacted leaders of other unions across the city looking for insights on how best to talk to the teachers and to game-plan ideas, said a labor source who was approached and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"They wanted to know that if X happens, what would the teachers think and then how would labor in general react," the source said.

Some close to Emanuel said the mayor and his team experienced growing pains in the run-up to the strike. He desperately didn't want the teachers to walk out and hoped the nonstop public relations campaign would win him support.

"It's been a new world for all of them," said one longtime Democratic political strategist close to Emanuel.

Even in the midst of the strike, Emanuel couldn't resist his tendency to try to score political points in the rhetorical contest with the union.

Last week, he repeatedly compared Chicago's teacher union to its counterpart in Boston, which just resolved its own long-standing dispute. But Emanuel ran into a veracity problem.

The mayor said Boston teachers stayed in the classroom while negotiating. What Emanuel didn't mention: It's illegal for teachers to strike in Boston.

"If we had a right to strike and we had to deal with such an obstructionist mayor as Mayor Emanuel, then we probably would have gone out on strike as well," said Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, who describes himself as a friend of Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. "Fortunately in Boston, we have a more collegial atmosphere."

Emanuel also suggested that the district's proposal would give Chicago teachers more money than educators in Boston. The mayor said Boston teachers accepted a 12 percent increase over six years while Chicago teachers were seeking 16 percent over four years.

Emanuel's math didn't take into account that Boston's contract also includes increases for teacher experience and education beyond the 12 percent.

Ald. Daniel Solis, 25th, said the strike presents a growth opportunity for Emanuel.

"I think this has shown him the importance of broadening the base, that it's not all about sound bites or commercials," Solis said. "If I was the mayor, I would look at what happened and say, 'I need to learn from this.'"

It sounds from this Tribune article that the "bumbler" in this situation was Rahm - he misread the union, misread Lewis, misread the public and continued to double down on heated rhetoric and attacks that made the strike inevitable.

Will Rahm learn from this strike?

Doubtful - like most education deformers, Emanuel is an arrogant asshole convinced of his own righteousness.

He'll simply try and game the fight better next time.

Maybe he can get the crooks at the statehouse to change the percentage of union members voting for a strike to 100%?

Education Deformers Worry That Chicago Could Be The Beginning Of A Trend

Teachers in Chicago are striking over the teacher evaluation issue - and it's got education deformers worried.

This strike could be the beginning of the push back:

How teachers should be evaluated has become a contentious issue across the country, but Chicago is the first big city to see its teachers strike over it, experts said Wednesday.

“This is a first for a district,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. “I don’t even know a small district to strike over teacher evaluation.”

Plus, a growing number of states and districts are in the process of implementing new teacher evaluation systems as part of an attempt to win federal Race To the Top funds or to win waivers from some of the more onerous provisions of the No Child Left Behind law.

As a result, “Chicago is all we’re talking about,” Walsh said. “The nation is watching Chicago because most districts in the country are trying to implement [a teacher evaluation system], so naturally it’s going to raise concerns when teachers go out on strike over it.’’

Here in NY State, the NYSUT and the UFT have already happily agreed to the very evaluation system CTU is striking over in Chicago.

In fact, they shared the stage with Tea Party Governor Cuomo, Unofficial Pearson Employee John King and K12 Inc. booster Merryl Tisch when the new evaluation system was announced.

Any time somebody pushed back against that system, the UFT sent Lyin' Leo Casey out to attack them or drown them in drivel.

Now had the CTU continued to be governed by the old guard, it would have remained a company union that would not have pushed back against Rahmbo and the Reformers.

But the CORE leaders - led by Karen Lewis - have done a masterful job of framing what this battle is about ("The soul of education"), getting parents, students and other Chicago citizens on board, and fighting back.

That same thing could happen here in NY State and NYC too, but we would need to either convince the current company leadership that it's actually in their interests to fight back against the deform movement rather than collaborating with it or we would need to dispense with them altogether and put some new leadership in place.

The political reality is, the leadership is not going anywhere for now, there is little support to get rid of Mulgrew and Unity, Ianuzzi and the NYSUT leadership, Weingarten and the other corporate hacks at the AFT.

But the way forward is clear - if teachers want a union led by teachers that actually stands up and protects teachers, CTU is the model.

The UFT and the NYSUT are not.

I wrote the following in a comment yesterday on Assailed Teacher's blog:

It IS time to push back – not only against Bloomberg, Cuomo, the DFER’s, Mistress Eva and the rest of the reformers, but against Ianuzzi and the NYSUT, against Mulgrew and the UFT and against Weingarten and the AFT.

Remember, Ianuzzi and Mulgrew were on that stage back in February holding hands with our reformer governor touting the new 40% eval law (BTW, AT, I would characterize the law as 40%, since that is the NYSED’s intention – to have 40% of an eval based upon test scores, whether city or state.)

Remember too how Leo Casey came out at Edwize to attack Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris and Gary Rubenstein and anybody else who pointed out how horrible the new agreement was.

The problem here in NY, indeed the problem nationally, is that we have union leaders who see themselves as part of the establishment and are willing to give the elites almost everything they want in policy.

The reason why we need this CTU fight to be successful is twofold: first, it puts the reformers on notice that teachers AND parents are fed up with the corporate reform crap pushed through legislature back room by rich mother^&****** like Jonah Edelman and are going to fight back.

It is also puts a spotlight on the issues – class size, resources, etc. (I sent an email to a vicious editor, James Warren, who called teachers whiners for crying about air conditioning and asked him how he’d like to teach all-year round school with 40 kids in a 100 degree classroom with his evaluation based upon their test scores?)

But as important, this fight puts the NEA, the AFT, the UFT and the NYSUT on NOTICE – they can send the Leo Casey’s of the world out to shill for their sell-outs, but there is a REAL union with actual members running it in Chicago who are pointing the way forward.

Make no mistake, Weingarten and Mulgrew want Lewis and the CTU to FAIL. It is in their interest to have Lewis flame out so that their brand of sell-out union leader doesn’t go out of style.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Randi puts a knife in Karen Lewis to help out Randi’s out Clinton buddy, Rahm (and herself in the bargain.)

So I really am hoping the CTU gets a win out of this – it is important to not only put the reformers on notice, to put the politicians on notice, to put Obama on notice.

It is important to put Weingarten, Mulgrew Ianuzzi, Van Roekel and the rest of the crooks running the teachers unions these days that their days could be numbered if they continue selling members down the river.

I reiterate those sentiments again today.

POSTSCRIPT: One final note. CTU may have gotten a very big concession in the evaluation fight overnight:

CTU President Karen Lewis said her message to parents was “for sure, plan for something for your children for [Thursday]. Let’s hope for Friday.’’

School Board President David Vitale agreed. He called the talks “very productive” and said “we’ll hope for Friday.”

After a long day of talks that ended around 11:30 p.m., Lewis said the system’s offer on teacher evaluations, a key stumbling block, had improved to the point that “I’m smiling. I’m very happy.’’

Although she was not ready to check it off her list, “it’s a lot better,’’ Lewis said.

Earlier, Chicago Public School officials Wednesday released what one expert called a “pretty generous concession” to the union on teacher evaluations.

The district’s proposal softens an evaluation system that the union said could have put nearly 30 percent of CPS teachers on the path to dismissal if they didn’t improve their performance within a year.

The proposal made public Wednesday would allow those teachers to stay at their jobs indefinitely, as long as their scores didn’t dramatically decline after the first poor score.

“I think it’s a pretty generous concession,” said Tim Daly, president of the Brooklyn-based New Teacher Project.

...

The change to the teacher evaluation system was included in a 19-page proposal released in an email from CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll Wednesday night.

“I would call it a significant step forward on one of the two thorniest issues,” she said of the change to the evaluation proposal.

The proposal also sweetens the name of the key rating category at issue: from “needs improvement” to “developing.” That would be the second from the bottom of four rating categories.

Daly noted the offer is a step backward from a growing national trend to get rid of teachers in the second-to-last category.

“You typically can’t stay there forever,” he said. “You typically stay there for one year and then you can’t repeat that rating. You’re dismissed or lose tenure.”

He says it’s the type of offer districts may have to make if they want to put kids back in school.

“It’s the kind of proposal that if you’re on the union side, you should be happy to come away with.”

Illinois law, as is now true in many states, mandates test scores as part of the evaluation process, so CTU can't gut that totally.

But if they can mitigate the worst parts of that process, while working with the community, parents and students to get the law changed, it goes a long way.

"The Revolution Will Not Be Standardized" -- Karen Lewis

Yesterday, CTU President said the following about corporate education reform:

“The revolution will not be standardized,” she said. “The assault on public education started here. It needs to end here.”

The corporate media are doing the best to undercut the CTU and smear Lewis.

They're calling her "silly," "bumbling," and other things.

But there's nothing silly about a union standing up for its teachers and a union leader putting the elite on notice that THIS union will NOT collaborate in its own destruction or in the destruction of public education.

The revolution will not be standardized.

Hey, Rahm, Why Can't Chicago Kids Have The Kind Of Education Your Kids Get At The Lab School?

See here.

Rahm's kids go to a school without high stakes tests.

They go to a school with seven full time art teachers.

Their school has three different libraries.

In Chicago, kids take 18-25 days of standardized testing.

Many schools have no art or music teachers at all.

Many have no library.

Many have no air conditioning - not even the ones that are in session in July and August.

Why, Rahm, do your kids get the high quality education taught by teachers not under the VAM death watch while Chicago kids get the shaft?

The same, btw, can be asked of President Obama and his daughters.

Obama's kids get a high quality education at Sidwell Friends School while Obama promotes federal education policies that call for high stakes testing throughout the year in every grade in every subject so that many teachers can be fired.

Politicians of BOTH parties are dumbing down and narrowing down the educational opportunities for the vast majority of the children in this country while making sure their own kids get an elite education fit for the sons and daughters of kings.

Rahm says it's nobody's business where he sends his kids to school, that it's a private decision.

But that's jive.

When you enact policies meant to destroy the working and middle classes while ensuring your kids have every educational opportunity, it is no longer a private decision.

It is a political decision - one that must be pointed out.

Why do the Emanuel and Obama kids get the quality education while these two men enact policies that hurt the vast majority of American kids - but most especially those in the inner cities?

The Differences Between CTU And The UFT Are Striking

Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union have gone on strike today after negotiations between the union and the mayor broke down.

Apparently one of the major sticking points is using high stakes standardized test scores to evaluate teachers - or, as my friend NYC Educator calls it, "junk science."

Now there's an excellent reason to strike!

Of course, here in NYC not only does the United Federation of Teachers agree to the use of high stakes standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, they champion it and attack anybody who points out its "junk science".

So for those of you keeping score at home - CTU goes on strike to battle the use of high stakes standardized test scores in evaluations; the UFT agrees to high stakes standardized test scores as part of teacher evaluations and battles anybody who says that's a bad idea.

CTU - a union that actually works to protect members.

The UFT - a company union that works to protect the mayor and his interests.

Good For The CTU And Chicago Teachers

That was a really great job getting concessions from Rahmbo on work hours, new hires and recalls.

But as CTU President Karen Lewis said:

"This is movement in the right direction, but let me make this very clear, this does not settle the outstanding and mandatory issues in the contract,” said Lewis. “In order to get us where we are today it took a march of nearly 10,000 educators, a strike authorization vote and a fact-finder’s report to get CPS to move on this issue. This is yet another example of the CTU’s determination and dedication to fighting for solutions that will strengthen our schools.”

Kudos to her and the CTU leadership for knowing that victories in small skirmishes do not mean the war is over.

Note to UFT: Turnaround school battle is NOT over.

Bloomberg, Walcott and the DOE are going to do everything in their power to destroy those schools before Bloomberg goes.

That means you guys have to stand up for those schools and make sure they are given the resources and support to survive and thrive.