The alignment of these subcomponents among each other and with Student Performance category will be
subject to audit and corrective action
that may require changes in a collective bargaining agreement
.
And:
If
a district’s system does not result in meaningful
feedback
for
teachers and principals, the Department
may impose
a corrective action
plan that may require
changes to a
collective bargaining
agreement.
They want to make sure everybody knows that NYSED has the power to take "corrective action" on the parts of the APPR system that are locally negotiated.
In short, you have the freedom to locally negotiate an evaluation system that meets exactly what they want or they will take "corrective action" and change it.
So much for local control or collective bargaining.
Michael Mulgrew, the current President of the UFT, represents the Unity and New Action caucuses.
New Action has made an agreement to back Unity’s top leadership in
exchange for officer/executive board positions. This agreement dates
back to 2003, predating when Michael Mulgrew replaced Randi Weingarten
in the UFT presidency.
We cannot and will not differentiate between these groups. Unity and
New Action have exchanged seats and cross endorsed each other. This is
the type of back-room deal that epitomizes the dirty politics that has
come to define this union leadership.
What has been gained for the supposed alternative agenda of New Action in this time?
Similar to the way that Mulgrew signs onto deform policies, and then
cries foul when the effects become detrimental, New Action has
criticized some of these moves. Yet, this critique becomes disingenuous
when it has supported the leader that took these actions, and then
criticizes these policies. When the leader’s core policies are so
fundamentally detrimental to the membership and our students, we must
ask, how is this stance a credible opposition?
In 2009Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew signed onto the Common Core; Mulgrew endorsed the extension of mayoral control.
In 2010UnityNew Action’s Mulgrew signed onto the Race to the Top;
Mulgrew made public lies that the rubber rooms were closed –in fact,
detainees have been merely dispersed from large ones to district
offices.
In 2011Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew signed onto the weekly rotation of ATRs
and the observation of ATRs in substitute assignments. (This was
approved by the Delegate Assembly at an emergency meeting held after
school on the last day of school, June 28, 2011. No ATRs were involved.
The ATR pool itself was created by loss of senority excessing rights
from Unity’s 2005 contract.)
In 2011Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew, without a membership vote, endorsed the Danielson Framework for evaluating teachers.
2012 and 2013, in defiance of a rising clamor for a membership vote on the issue, Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew has endorsed the use of high-stakes tests as the basis for teacher evaluation, a methodology proven to be junk science.
In 2013 Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew has reaffirmed his belief in the failed policy of mayoral control which has led to the closing and/or privatization of our neighborhood schools and has left thousands of teachers as ATRs
Unity/ New Action endorsed Race to the Top
In 2010 Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew said that New York’s Race to the
Top (RTTT) application had teachers’ support. But just where did that
race take us?
RTTT expanded the leadership academies; it took New York
City’s burdensome data systems and network models state–wide, proving to
be a failure everywhere.
RTTT mandates constant assessment and data management, spiking
administrative costs and depriving teachers of proper preparation time.
RTTT pressured New York State to have high-stakes test-based
educator evaluations, resulting in more testing and less learning for
our students.
RTTT pushes districts to have destructive turn-around programs, school closings, and increases the number of charter schools.
Unity/New Action didn’t have to endorse RTTT.
13 states did not participate in the last round of Race to the Top applications.
The California Teachers Association criticized RTTT because its “One
Size Fits All Hurts Students” and it said that RTTT requirements hold
school systems “hostage by their purse strings.”
RTTT – Not worth the costs.
RTTT – Wrecking our working conditions and our children’s learning conditions.
Vote the MORE slate to improve working and learning conditions.
In each of the years of the tenure of Unity/New Action’s Mulgrew, the
UFT has failed to stop dozens of school closings and even greater
numbers of charter school co-locations. The privatization of our schools
has led to fewer resources for our public schools, inequality in
learning conditions, and the loss of union protections.
While New Action claims that it supports Mulgrew on some points and
opposes him on other points, one must ask oneself: how could New Action
be considered an opposition caucus when it will not challenge the
fundamental betrayals of leadership that brought about the conditions
that they complain about in their literature?
Unity claims they are “seasoned leaders in troubled times”, yet they
are years removed from the classroom and their willingness to sign onto
failed profit-driven reform is proof-positive that Unity has been the
cause of these “troubled times”. They claim to fight school closings and
co-locations, but cannot hide from their record of lack of mobilization
against these policies (for the antithesis of Unity, please see the
Chicago Teachers Union/Karen Lewis’ response) and agreeing to run their
own charter school. Unity has allowed our members to go without a new
contract for over four years; this is not leadership.
MULGREW/NEW ACTION/UNITY - disastrous management in a time of historic attack on teachers
CAVANAGH/MORE - positive alternative leadership to restore dignity to our profession and compassion for our students
They make a great case against the current UFT leadership.
Can you imagine a UFT leadership that actually cared about its members, that actually came from the membership to rise to the union leadership positions not so they could get out of the classroom and live off the perks and double pensions but so they could protect teachers in a time of historic attacks on public education and provide a positive alternative to restore dignity to teaching and compassion to students?
If you can imagine such a leadership, you should vote for MORE.
Because the current leadership is just going to continue taking us down the path of destruction via APPR, Danielson, VAM, SLO's, and growth models.
After all, this is leadership that has decided education corporatists John King and Andrew Cuomo can be the independent arbitrators between the union and the city on the evaluation negotiations and impose whatever system they want upon us.
Then I remember how he assured us the APPR system would be collectively bargained in each district so we wouldn't have to worry about it and could safely ignore the criticism of the APPR system coming from naysayers like Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch.
Leo Casey is full of shit. As chief propagandist for the UFT, his
job is to get you and I to think his shit is roses. He can try to jazz
up his shit with jargon and legalese and, my personal favorite, that
condescending tone of “Son, you don’t know what collective bargaining
is…” crap, but the truth is Casey is still full of shit and the crap
he’s selling us hasn’t turned to flowers despite his efforts.
They’ve given management the right to impose any system they want on
us. That’s the reality, no matter what shit Casey is slinging.
Perhaps it’s the lapsed Catholic in me, but I really hold contempt
for people who spend their lives lying to other people to fool them into
thinking up is down, war is peace and surrender is victory. And that’s
Casey’s JOB – to pull the wool over people’s eyes and fool them into
thinking the various UFT sell-outs and concessions are in their best
interests.
Just ask the ATR’s how Casey’s assurances over the odious ’05
contract worked out. Or ask the 4th-8th grade math and ELA teachers who
had their names and ratings printed in the paper (complete with 52%
margin of error) how Casey’s assurances over the Teacher Data Reports
worked out.
Leo Casey’s the perfect emblem for a corrupt union leadership that
serves its own interests and only its own interests. You should believe
NOTHING he says, ever – not even the words “is” and “was”.
Close the door on him, send him back out into the rain, send him back to the UFT/AFT boiler room.
You don't want to buy what Lyin' Leo Casey's selling you.
The future of American public education has been happening in Rhode Island these days.
In Central Falls, Rhode Island, teachers were all fired this week last year because their school was "failing". These firings were a DIRECT result of the Obama administration's Race to the Top policy which promotes firing teachers at the "worst" schools in America, closing those schools and reopening them as charters.
Eventually those teachers were rehired when they agreed to concessions like a longer work day, a longer work year and extra professional development.
But the point had been made - GIVE the administrations in Washington, the states and the municipalities what they want or you're gone.
In the year since, the teachers union in Rhode Island has gone out of its way to be collaborative with reform - agreeing to a new teacher evaluation process, signing onto Race to the Top without any reservation (and hrlping the city get $75 million in federal funds), agreeing to other concessions in school turnarounds to make the districts and state happy.
And what have the teachers of both Central Falls, Rhode Island and Providence, Rhode Island gotten for all this "collaboration"?
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, considers it "shocking" that Providence may send dismissal notices to the city's 2,000 teachers.
"What makes this even more stunning is that the district and the Providence Teachers Union have been working collaboratively on a groundbreaking, nationally recognized school transformation model," Weingarten said in a statement released Wednesday night. "A mass firing, announced in the middle of a school year, does not help solve a budget problem -- the purported reason -- but, rather, disrupts the education of all students and the entire community.
"The mayor claims he needs flexibility," she said. "We looked up "flexibility" in the dictionary, and it does not mean destabilizing education for all students in Providence or taking away workers' voice or rights."
Weingarten said that mass firings are not fiscally or educationally sound. She urged the mayor and the school superintendent to resolve their issues by working in a collaborative way.
"For the past two years,'' she said, "that's what they have been doing when it comes to work on improving low-performing schools, developing an innovative hiring process and revamping the teacher evaluation system."
Yes, for the last two years the teachers have been collaborating with the state and the districts, giving them the "reforms" they wanted, even when those reforms seemed short-sighted, badly designed or just plan wrong, and what have they gotten for all that collaboration?
They ALL got FIRED.
So much for the collaboration on the part of the state and the districts, eh?
As the fall-out from Obama's Race to the Top continues to spread nationwide, you can be sure that what happened in Central Falls, Rhode Island last year will happen all across the country in the next few years.
And just as the Providence, Rhode Island mayor decided to fire EVERY teacher in the city to plug an alleged hole in the budget, you can be sure that many mayors and governors around the country will do the same if they can get away with it.
This Rhode Island mass firing is in many ways WORSE than Scott Walker's trying to end collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin.
The mayor of Providence just said "F--- you, I don't care what rights you have or what union you belong to. You're all fired and I'll hire who I want to hire. What are you going to do about it - complain to Obama? Ha!"
Okay, so what have we learned from the last two years of collaborating with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, with the ed deform movement and with the corporatists who insatiably ask for more, more, more from teachers and teachers unions.
That collaboration gets you fired.
Collaboration gets you screwed.
There is NO amount of collaboration that will save you when they want to fire you.
In fact, if you've collaborated with them in the past, you might be first on the chopping block because they KNOW what a stupid sap you've been, that you've given them EVERYTHING they wanted and gotten NOTHING in return.
I don't want to take this analogy too far, but really, Weingarten and the union leadership act like Neville Chamberlain in these aggressive, anti-teacher and anti-union times.
They declare we need to do more collaboration with the ed deform movement and hail past collaborations even as the end result of that collaboration is that EVERY TEACHER IN PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND HAS BEEN TERMINATED.
View the tape of the fired teachers above and then read Randi's words and tell me she doesn't sound like Chamberlain?
We have collaboration in our time.
Uh, huh.
And a whole swath of fired teachers and a broken teachers union in Rhode Island.
It is time to end COLLABORATION - with Obama, with Duncan, with the mayors and governors, with anybody in the ed deform movement, especially the rich oligarchs like Bill Gates.
They ARE the enemy and until every teachers union local in the country realizes this and bands together to STOP them, they are going to keep squeezing, keep scapegoating, keep firing.
People on the way to Madison for the rally against the fascist Scott Walker and his Republican and neo-liberal allies proposal to gut union collective bargaining rights:
Fred Klonsky points out that some of the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers and former Packers have come out in support of public employees, unions and collective bargaining rights:
STATEMENT BY CURRENT AND FORMER MEMBERS OF THE SUPERBOWL CHAMPION GREEN BAY PACKERS ON GOVERNOR WALKER’S ATTACKS ON PUBLIC WORKERS
We know that it is team work on and off the field that makes the Packers and Wisconsin great. As a publicly owned team we wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans.
It is the same dedication of our public workers every day that makes Wisconsin run. They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.
The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards. Wisconsin’s long standing tradition of allowing public sector workers to have a voice on the job has worked for the state since the 1930s. It has created greater consistency in the relationship between labor and management and a shared approach to public work.
These public workers are Wisconsin’s champions every single day and we urge the Governor and the State Legislature to not take away their rights.
This statement was issued by the following current and former Green Bay Packers:
Curtis Fuller Chris Jackie Charles Jordan Bob Long Steve Okoniewski Brady Poppinga Jason Spitz
Wisconsin is the center of the war against unions and public employees right now.
If Walker gets away with this here, Christie will try and get away with this in Jersey, Cuomo will try and get away with this in New York.
The time to fight these neo-liberal and wingnut corporate scum is NOW.
Walker, Christie, Obama, Cuomo - all of them.
The Dem corporate whores like Cuomo and Obama want labor to support them and they use the specter of guys like Walker and Christie to get labor to support them.
But make no mistake, Obama and Cuomo will do the SAME to unionized workers and public employees as Christie and Walker - only with a smile on their faces.
