Board Of Regents Members Pay Political Price For Their Common Core/Education Reform Support

I have been saying for a while now that until there is a political price to paid for pursuing education reform policies, those policies will continue apace.

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY reports a political price was just paid by two (now former) long-time members of the Board of Regents:

ALBANY—The two long-serving members of the state Board of Regents ousted by lawmakers on Tuesday were brave soldiers for the Common Core standards and other recent education reform efforts, board chancellor Merryl Tisch said.

And ultimately, she said, Robert Bennett and James Dawson, each of whom have served more than two decades, were casualties of recent battles over the controversial policies.

“Do I see these replacements as a reaction to what people are hearing in their home districts? Absolutely,” Tisch told reporters after members of the Assembly and Senate deliberated in a joint session for five hours on seven of the board’s 17 seats. “A lot is frustration. A lot is misinformation. But … these are remarkably courageous public servants who really stood on a front line and took a lot of incoming, a lot of incoming. [They] put themselves in public space a lot. [They] put themselves in harm’s way a lot.

...

Ultimately, the Assembly Democrats, who control the process, booted Bennett and Dawson while re-electing three others, two of whom are among the loudest critics of the board’s policies. Lawmakers also chose four new members, all women with experience in public education. Three are minorities.

...
Even though lawmakers were more vocally critical of the board last year, they made a much stronger statement on Tuesday, replacing two members who had served for more than two decades and electing four new members.

Bennett, former chancellor of the board who has served since 1995, and Dawson, a geology professor at SUNY Plattsburgh who has served since 1993, got word in the days before Tuesday's election that they would not be reappointed.

Make no mistake, the members of the Board of Regents have seen themselves as untouchable previous to last year, though with one Regent replaced last year and two more whacked this year, they should no longer view themselves that way.

A political price has been paid for shilling for deform and the potential exists for more functionaries to pay that price.

With Sheldon Silver under indictment for corruption and stripped of his speaker role, Regents Chancellor Tisch no longer has a protector in power to help her maintain her position.

She's next on the list to go. 

A Closer Look At The Polling On The Common Core

Neal McCluskey at Cato has done a great job of showing how much of the polling around the Common Core is problematic.

If you haven't read his posts, they are here, here and here.

Next time you see a poll purporting to show support for the Common Core, look to see what wording the pollsters used before they asked the questions around CCSS support.

When pollsters read the boilerplate from the Gates Foundation about how CCSS are a set of standards that states have voluntarily adopted that are going to help children compete in a globalized economy blah blah blah, of course people say "Yeah, I'm in favor of those!"

That's the kind of crap polling the CCSS-supporting Wall Street Journal does.

But when people are told that the Core Standards were devised by a small coterie of non-educators, financed by billions from rich philanthropists, promoted by the USDOE through carrots like RttT and sticks like NCLB waivers and designed to go along with national tests (which have been funded by the feds) and lifetime data tracking of children, the support is less than enthusiastic.

And with all that being said, the trajectory for CCSS support is still very, very negative:

Yesterday, I wrote about new survey results from the Friedman Foundation showing that the Common Core, if even close to fairly presented, has either negative, or thinly positive, levels of public support. But I posted that too soon; not long after I wrote it, two new polls came out showing even bigger trouble for the Core.

The first was a Rasmussen survey that revealed plummeting support for the Common Core effort among parents of school-aged children. Support dropped from 52 percent in November 2013 to just 34 percent in yesterday’s release. Opposition now outweighs support 47 percent to 34 percent. Assuming the question was unchanged between surveys, that is a huge drop.

The second survey was a University of Southern California poll of Golden State residents. The Core hasn’t been as controversial there as in many states–at least, there doesn’t seem to be a major groundswell to dump it–but it’s getting drubbed there, too. The USC research showed a marked increase in the percentage of Californians who claimed to know about the Core since the survey’s 2013 administration, and among those who reported knowing something only 38 percent had a positive feeling about the Core. Some 44 percent had negative impressions. Presented with pro- and anti-Core statements, a larger percentage of respondents–41 percent to 32 percent–agreed more with the negative statement. In 2013, the pro statement got the plurality, 36 percent to 25 percent.

Carol Burris wrote yesterday that you can stick a fork in the Common Core State Standards, they're done - and I think the polling is starting to bear that out.

It would be interesting to know what the support for CCSS would be if polls conducted by pro-CCSS outfits like the Wall Street Journal were on the up-and-up instead of serving as push polls for the wonders of Common Core.

SUNY Chancellor Says She's Not On Common Core Payroll

Behind a Capital NY paywall, but the Common Core-shilling SUNY chancellor answered the question I had this morning:

SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher said she’s not getting paid for her participation in a national campaign she joined this week to promote the Common Core standards.

Of course the next question that comes to mind, if we take Ms. Zimpher at her word that she's not taking cash to shill for Common Core, is what future benefits might she expect for the work she's doing hawking Common Core?

Randi Weingarten and The Day of Misdirection.

 Oh wait, that's every day for her...

That's Michael Fiorillo's response to Randi Weingarten p.r. over today's "Day of Action" to recalaim the promise of public education.

And indeed, there is a diversionary tactic in this call to action.

Even as our union leaders take millions of dollars from Bill Gates to promote the CCSS, to agree to teacher evaluations tied to test scores, and to collaborate on other education reform policies, they call for "unity" within the ranks of the unions today as they look to send a message to Bill Gates and other education reformers that public education is not for sale.

You see the problem here, don't you.

I let Weingarten know how full of crap I think she is over this stuff (you can see some of that here and here) and you should let her know that too.

By all means support public education today, as you do every day of the year with your work.

Support schools, students, teachers, public school parents and all who keep the system alive.

But also don't forget to let Randi Weingarten know how you see through her hypocrisy, how you know she took $11 million in Gates money to promote and/or collaborate on policies that wreck traditional public schools and the teaching profession.

And don't forget to let everyone else you see today know the same.

Daily News Shills Play Fast And Loose With Facts On Charter Schools

The neo-liberals at the Daily News have an editorial today supporting Eva Moskowitz's walk across the bridge protest for charter schools.

As usual with the DN, they play fast and loose with the facts:

The innovative approaches, longer school days and longer school years they offer — almost always carried out by teachers working outside the union contract — are undeniable. Just one example: On the tough new state tests, about 26% of public school students citywide were proficient in English, and 30% in math.

At the Success Academy Charter in the Bronx, 97% got over the bar in math; 77% did so in English. Across the entire Success network, 82% of kids were proficient in math, and 58% in English.

See the sleight of hand here?

The DN shills are using stat wide stats and comparing them to just one charter school chain to declare the charter school sector a rousing "success" over the traditional public schools.

But if you compare city traditional public schools to city charter schools, here is what you get:

Across the city, about 25% of charter school students rated proficient in English, compared with 26% of traditional public school students. In math, 35% of charter school students rated proficient, compared with 30% of traditional public school students.

That's a report from the Daily News on August 8, btw.

Notice how strikingly different the numbers are from the DN charter shillery today.

Why not be honest and say "Hey, charters outperformed traditional public schools on the math tests, traditional public schools outperformed charters on the ELA exams?"

Because the Daily News editors have an agenda - to promote charters and choice over the traditional public schools, to promote school privatization and to destroy the teachers union.

They never let facts or truth get in the way of their agenda - whether it's Ben "Where Are The Perverts?" Chapman doing a smear job on rubber room teachers or the Daily News editors using misleading stats to sell charter schools.

The public backs charter schools - as the DN shills point out, the latest NY Times/Siena poll shows this.

But the reality is, the public has been fed a bunch of lies and deceptions over the supposed superiority of charters and nowhere is that more evident than in today's DN editorial that plays fast and loose with the facts and stats.

If there was accurate reporting over the charter sector, over how the test scores are not better than those in traditional public schools, over how charters don't accept every student and often counsel out the "problem" children that will bring their scores down - I bet the charter school polling would look a little different.

Education Nation Should Invite Carrianne Howard To Talk About How Wonderful Lloyd Blankfein's Art Institutes Are

Raging Horse does an excellent job of pointing out who NBC should have invited for their corporate education reform-slanted Education Nation propaganda-fest this year.

Alas, NBC isn't much interested in having anybody on that stage who won't carry water for the corporate education reform agenda, so they only invited deformers like Michael Bloomberg, Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, et al. to this year's Education Nation.

Even Diane Ravitch was only invited to sit in the audience, an outrageous insult to not only Ravitch but to every teacher in this country who has been slammed and smeared by corporate reforms like Klein, Rhee, et al.

But of all the corporate education reform-friendly guests NBC did invite, I find Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein the most outrageous.

You see, Goldman Sachs, in addition to being the most evil corporate entity on the planet, owns 41% of the parent company of the notorious for-profit swindle college, the Art Institutes.

Bloomberg News published a devastating expose of the Art Institutes and Goldman Sachs back in 2010 that found degrees from the Art Institutes essentially worthless, debt levels incurred by students at the schools extremely high.

They use the story of Carrianne Howard, a young woman who graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and now makes her living as a stripper, to show just what a scam the school is (that's Howard pictured above, with her Art Institute diploma):

Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”

...

Carrianne Howard, the Florida student, didn’t borrow for her education. Instead her parents paid roughly $70,000 in tuition bills. Her mother, an airline data analyst, and her father, a computer engineer, sold their California home and moved to Virginia after her father lost his job and her mother retired. They used money from the sale to pay for tuition, and her parents are now struggling financially, Howard and her mother say.

Howard grew up in Valencia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, and became drawn to video gaming during high school. One afternoon in 2004, an Art Institute ad popped up on her PC.

“I was as excited as can be,” she says. “I thought it was a dream come true.”

She and her mother toured the Fort Lauderdale campus, a bright, modern three-story building flanked by reflecting pools and palm trees. Her tour guide “just made it sound really exciting and a lot of fun, like I was going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Howard says.

EDMC schools train representatives to make “no promise, implication, or guarantee” about employment, Muller says.

A couple of years into her studies, Howard says she grew disenchanted. Some classes consisted largely of playing video games, she says. She wanted to drop out but her mother insisted she finish because the family had spent so much already. She graduated in December 2007; in March 2009 she lost her first job, at GameRecruiter, a Fort Lauderdale-based gaming industry employment agency where she was making $12 an hour. Marc Mencher, GameRecruiter’s president and CEO, says she was let go only because he closed down her entire department, and calls her “an exceptional performer.”

She may be struggling to find work in part because of inadequate preparation from the Art Institute’s gaming department, Mencher says.

“It’s a weak program because it’s understaffed,” says Mencher, who serves on the Art Institute’s national advisory board for gaming programs. “I personally feel the students aren’t getting their money’s worth.”

After Bloomberg Businessweek asked EDMC for comment, Mencher sent a follow-up e-mail, saying that although the Art Institute is “not perfect and they have issues like any organization,” it is “an excellent program built on input from respected industry professionals along with local employers.” It has an “outstanding placement” record for graduates, he said.
Lido Cabaret

Howard applied for dozens of jobs, not only in gaming but also in grocery stores and nursing homes, mostly for minimum wage, she says. In October 2009, Howard turned to adult entertainment by doing paid Web chats. In March she started dancing at Lido Cabaret, earning $400 to $1,000 a week, she says.

She now hopes to save enough to go back to college and get a business degree. As she considers returning to school, Howard also helps run an anti-Art Institute website, where she has collected more than 70 names in a petition to send to the U.S. Education Dept.

The private, nonprofit Florida Institute of Technology, where Howard would like to enroll, won’t accept any of her credits from EDMC, according to spokeswoman Karen Rhine, because the Art Institute doesn’t have the kind of accreditation the traditional college requires. In its school catalog and other documents, the Art Institute “does not imply or guarantee” that credits will transfer to other universities, says EDMC’s Muller.

At 1 a.m. on a recent weeknight, Howard finished a shift at Lido. “This is what I do,” she says. “When I’m in here, I try not to think about the Art Institute.”

NBC ought to add Carrianne Howard or any of the other students who graduated from Art Institutes with a worthless degree and tens of thousands in debt to talk up the school.

But instead they invite banker criminal Blankfein instead.

In the past, they have had the CEO and head criminal of the University of Phoenix at Education Nation.

This year, the executive VP from Apollo Group, the owner of the University of Phoenix, will be there.

So every year, NBC doesn't miss a trick to not only invite every corporate deformer they can think of to sell the corporate deform agenda, but there's always a for-profit college criminal shill on the panel as well.

But no Diane Ravitch, no Anthony Cody, no Karen Lewis, no Susan Ohanian, no Lois Weiner, no actual working teachers who don't carry the ed deform message

And no students from one of these for-profit scam schools like Art Institutes or University of Phoenix to tell the audience how much debt they carry as they work at Starbucks or Applebees or, like Carrianne Howard, a strip club.

NBC's Education Nation ought to come with a scammer alert on the bottom of the screen.

The entire "symposium" is nothing but propaganda for the corporate education deform movement and for the criminal for-profit school industry.

Bloomberg Propaganda-Meisters All Over The Internet

You see these Bloomberg shills, paid press whores like Howard Wolfson or Andrew Kirtzman, flacking their Bloomberg propaganda all over the place these days as the mayor's Reign of Error sunsets and Bloomberg's anxiety over his legacy heightens.

Here's a recent example from Kevin Sheekey, former deputy mayor and current Bloomberg LP executive (because there is always a gig for you in a BLOOMBERG enterprise if you are a loyal servant to Bloomberg the man):

Is the Progressive the retiring Mayor? Will successor create largest affordable housing plan in nation's history? http://t.co/pVYYQdFGzf
— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 18, 2013

Of course it's easy to debunk this jive Sheekey is spewing and somebody quickly does:

.@ksheekey I hope so cuz Bloomberg's 50,000 homeless could use a place to sleep!
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) September 21, 2013

Expect the amount of pro-Bloomberg propaganda to increase exponentially as the end of the year nears.

Bloomberg has a ton of press shills and p.r. people on his payroll and tons more who are dying to get on that payroll as their own journalism jobs and outlets die.

Bloomberg is going to have his shills mount a Bloomberg Legacy propaganda-fest that will put Bush's Iraq war propaganda-fest to shame.

Cranky Bloomberg Doesn't Think City Is "Repudiating" Him

The NY Times has a telling article about a press conference Mayor Bloomberg gave yesterday in which he was, uh, let's just say not in the happiest mood about the direction of the mayoral campaign.

Here we present the article, almost all in full, for your enjoyment:

At a news conference on Wednesday on the Lower East Side, Mr. Bloomberg snapped at several reporters who wanted to hear his thoughts about the end of the Bloomberg era and the start of New York City’s next chapter. 

When one reporter suggested that a mixed-use development he was announcing might be one of his last such initiatives as mayor, he looked at her as though she were a lobotomy patient. 

“I hope not,” he said. “We’ve got 104 days, and you can rest assured we’ll be working as hard as we can. Why do you assume that?” 

Before she could answer, he went on: “You probably wrote that after the second term we wouldn’t do anything. And I think we’ve done more in the third term than any administration’s ever done — certainly more than we did in the first and second term.” 

When the reporter asked him to reflect on his development legacy, he sniffed, “I’m not sure what the word even means.” 

In fairness, Mr. Bloomberg has plenty to be annoyed about these days. In the race to succeed him, the candidate who has been his sharpest critic, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, is leading the Republican nominee, Joseph J. Lhota, by 43 points, according to the latest WNBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll. 

Mr. Lhota is generally more positive about Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure, but even he is emphasizing his differences from the mayor on the campaign trail. 

Campaign rhetoric is not the only irritant for Mr. Bloomberg these days. 

On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the city’s request to stay her order for changes to the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice. 

When a reporter asked about Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s decision, saying that the judge had “ruled against you on the appeal,” the mayor interrupted. 

“No, no, she didn’t rule against me — she ruled against the people of the city,” he said. 

Saying that the ruling had been expected, Mr. Bloomberg continued, “I don’t know why it’s even newsworthy, and I don’t know that anybody even covered it other than a tiny bit.” 

Another reporter asked what the mayor thought of the many voters in the primary who said in exit polls that they wanted to see the city move in a new direction. 

Why did he think that was the case? 

“I don’t know, that’s up to your job to find out,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I really have no idea. All I can do is tell you what we’ve done. If you want to write that, or if you want to make up some stuff, that’s totally up to you. I have no idea.” 

Finally, a reporter asked whether a poll released on Tuesday evening, which showed Mr. de Blasio leading Mr. Lhota 65 to 22 among likely voters, amounted to a repudiation of his mayoralty.

“I haven’t read last night’s polls, I don’t know what they say,” he said brusquely. 

“Why would you repudiate — I don’t understand the question,” he went on. “We’re supposed to do the best job we can, and pretty hard to argue most people aren’t happy with the city and the way it goes.” Then, referring to his press secretary, Marc LaVorgna, he added, “Marc told me there’s even polls out that say I’m popular.” 

In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last month, 44 percent of city voters approved of Mayor Bloomberg’s job performance, and the same percentage disapproved. Eleven percent had no opinion.   

He surrounds himself with yes men and women like Marc LaVorgna and Howard Wolfson and Dennis Walcott and they all tell him what a genius he is and how nobody has ever been a better mayor and how popular he is among the city plebeians and then, when faced with the reality that his approval/disapproval is 44%/44%, when faced with poll after poll that finds 2/3rds of the citizens of this city want the next mayor to go in a different direction with his policies (especially with his school policies), when faced with a Democratic mayoral nominee who won because he is the "anti-Bloomberg" and a GOP nominee who doesn't want his endorsement because it is the "kiss of death," Bloomberg seems to get awfully cranky.

That's what happens when you surround yourself with courtiers who only tell you how great you are - reality has a way of hitting you and pricking your bubble of awesomeness.

And right now, Bloomberg's bubble of awesomeness sure is being pricked.

The truth is, people don't despise Bloomberg the way they despised Giuliani pre-9/11.

But they are sick of him and they are ready for him to go away to Bermuda and have somebody come in and take the city in a new direction.

Bloomberg Tells Walcott: Drinks Are On Me!

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott took what the New York Daily News termed a "victory lap" yesterday over the Common Core test scores:

Cheers to us!

Under relentless criticism from his would-be successors, Mayor Bloomberg took a victory lap Monday over the fact that 22 of the 25 top-ranked schools on new state tests are in the city.

The mayor even suggested that his teetotaling Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott toast the results.

“You can have an extra drink tonight, it can be cranberry juice or vodka tonic, anything you want, but you deserve it,” Bloomberg said.

Sixteen of the 22 highly ranked schools have selective admissions, so only top students can get in.

Bloomberg said it was cause for celebration that city schools can compete with “wealthy suburbs."

“In ’01, zero out of the 25 best schools in the state were in New York City. Today, 22 out of the 25 schools,” he said. “I don’t know how you could write anything other than, ‘It is just amazing.’”

Actually the test scores have plummeted during Bloomberg's Reign of Error over the city school system - first in 2010 when the state admitted to test score inflation and city scores fell 26 points in reading and 24 points in math (to 42.4% proficiency in reading, 53% in math), then again in 2013 when the state changed the 3rd-8th grade tests to the so-called Common Core and test scores fell to 26% proficiency in reading, 30% in math.

Bloomberg has hawked tests scores throughout his Reign of Error as proof positive his Children First education reforms are working, so he has had to live and die by the test score numbers.

With scores now lower than they have ever been and with this his final year in office, he has been looking for any way he can to fool people into thinking his Reign of Error over the NYCDOE hasn't been a disaster.

Thus the "Hey, we've got 22 out of the top 25 schools!" bit (even though they've manipulated that by using selective admissions to certain schools.)

It's pathetic, really, and I bet even Walcott, who sort of lives in reality, knows that (I've always suspected Walcott's just in this for the money he will make off Bloomberg when his governmental service is done - Bloomberg is notoriously generous to those who stick by him.)

Bloomberg, however, believes his own b.s., so I have no doubt he really thinks he's done a swell job with the schools, despite having to spin the new Common Core test scores as another Bloombergian victory when they are anything but.

The Mayor of Money surrounds himself with yes men and women like Howard Wolfson and Dennis Walcott who never tell him anything he doesn't want to hear, so he's rarely given the opportunity to have to confront reality as it is rather than reality as he wants to see it.

As NYC Educator noted in a comment on another post I wrote about Bloomberg and his beloved statistics:

What I notice is when scores go up, it's great. When they're proven inflated and static, that's also great. And when they introduce new tests and scores plummet, that's great too.

So I guess when you're Wolfson, you just can't lose.

 And indeed, that seems to be the case.

No matter what the stats are, what the test scores are, Bloomberg always wins!

No wonder the drinks are on him.

Walcott, Threatened By Criticism, Launches Propaganda Offensive

Dennis Walcott and Michael Bloomberg are planning to launch a counteroffensive against all the criticism they have been taking over their running of the school system:

The Democratic candidates for mayor have promised, in varying degrees, to revamp the city’s school system by undoing some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature policies. 

The attacks have put City Hall on the defensive, leaving aides worried about the future of one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to overhaul education. 

Fearing a sea change, the city’s Education Department has worked over the past few months to lock in critical components of Mr. Bloomberg’s agenda. Education officials have reserved space for charter schools more than a year in advance, called for a permanent system for evaluating teachers and sought new contracts for school bus routes, saving money in part by eliminating union job guarantees. 

And now, after months of campaign-trail criticism, culminating in calls last week for a “truth commission” to investigate Mr. Bloomberg’s management of schools, the administration is taking its battle to the public. 

Dennis M. Walcott, the schools chancellor, is planning a campaign to remind voters of what he sees as the administration’s chief accomplishments, including rises in graduation rates and test scores. He will call on the candidates to put forth a compelling vision for city schools. 

Mr. Walcott will begin his effort on Saturday, in a speech before nearly 2,000 school administrators. He will warn that the school system could fall into disarray if the policies endorsed by the Democratic candidates are put into effect. 

“What these promises have in common is that they would hurt children in the service of political interests,” Mr. Walcott will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “I find that disgraceful.” 

...

 

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Walcott recounted spending Mother’s Day sending incredulous messages to his aides after reading comments made by Democratic candidates at a forum sponsored by the teachers’ union. Several cast doubt on Mr. Bloomberg’s claims of narrowing the racial achievement gap in city schools. “We’re going to create our own truth commission,” Mr. Walcott recalled telling his staff. 

In his speech, Mr. Walcott will warn of a return to the days of the old Board of Education, which he portrays as a time of rampant dysfunction and favoritism in the school system. City Hall views the proposals to return some power to neighborhood boards as a Trojan horse to give critics of reform efforts more say over key hires, since union-backed candidates tended to dominate school board elections. “To dismantle the reforms of the last decade would be a disaster for our children and this city,” he is expected to say. “We cannot turn back the clock on our students.” 

You can see how threatened they are not only by the changes that the candidates are proposing for the system but also the attacks on their "legacy" running the schools.
The charge that the test scores and graduation rates are phonied up seems to bother them the most.

If Walcott wants a Truth Commission of his own on the Bloomberg education legacy, let's have it.

But Bloomberg doesn't get to have that Truth Commission rigged the way he has rigged the Panel for Educational Policy board, with members who must see things the way he sees them or he removes them immediately.

Bloomberg doesn't get to have the Truth Commission filled with the journalists he has been hiring by the droves to shill for him at Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Views, and Bloomberg Philanthropy - propaganda-meisters like Jonathan Alter and Andrew Kirtzman.

Nope - this Truth Commission has to be filled with parents and teachers and students who have lived through 12 years of his autocratic rule and mismanagement of the school system, who have had to deal with his pitting the Have's against the Have Not's by stealing resources from traditional public schools in order to hand them to his charter pals like Eva Moskowitz, who have endured his data-driven system where the only thing that matters is the test score.

Poll after poll shows New Yorkers want a change in how the school system is run and want autocratic mayoral control to end (see here and here for the two most recent examples.)

That is a fact that is clear from the polling data.

It is not some union-contrived propaganda to swing over the candidates to the union's view on policies.

The candidates are simply reacting to what voters want, what parents and students want.

Walcott can launch his propaganda offensive all he wants.

He cannot win because the facts are not with him and the closer the Bloomberg administration gets to sunsetting, the less control they have over the narrative.

It is true that Bloomberg still has the editorial boards to shill for him, especially at the Zuckerman-owned Daily News and the Murdoch-owned Post.

"Independent" news sites beholden to corporate grants and philanthropic gifts like Gotham Schools also carry his water for him.

But the public is no longer fooled by the propaganda - not the kind that emanates from the shills at the Daily News, the Post or Gotham Schools, not the kind that comes directly from Bloomberg and Walcott in the form of speeches, press conferences and press releases.

So I say, let's have that Truth Commission that Walcott is calling for, that Mulgrew has called for.

Let's look at the test scores, the gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students, the graduation rates, the credit recovery statistics.

Let's look at how Bloomberg and Walcott set up the schools they want to close to fail years before the actual closures by stealing resources and using these schools as dumping grounds for students from other closed schools who need the most support.

Let's look at the outside consultant contracts, all the money they have spent on technology that doesn't work or that people don't use because it doesn't work well (ARIS comes to mind.)

Let's have your Truth Commission, Mr. Chancellor and Mr. Mayor.

But you don't get to pick the members and you don't get to have only your journalists spin the findings.

Why Do The Elite Media Love Michelle Rhee?

I've wondered this - for being such a controversial figure, why does Michelle Rhee get such adoring press?

Considering this cheating scandal has been following her for two years now, she's managed to make lots of public and media appearances without ever being asked "Ms. Rhee, why won't you come clean on these allegations?"

She's also managed to avoid questions about the alleged sexual misconduct her husband, Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and current mayor of Sacramento, engaged in at his charter school and just what actions she took to help those allegations go away.

It's difficult to imagine other public figures with the stink of two different scandals swirling around them avoiding press and media scrutiny

And yet, Michelle Rhee has consistently made public appearances and gone on TV without ever being called to account for either of these scandals.

The press, for whatever reasons, seems to like her and give her the benefit of the doubt over these things.

Michael Tomasky wrote back in 2011 that part of the reason why Rhee gets such uncritical treatment from the elite press is because they see her as one of their own:

That's it, in a nutshell. She's one of them. Or us, whatever, although I didn't get within a light year of the Ivy League when I was young, as you know. But this is the story. I've met Rhee, once. She presents well. She dresses well. She seems, and I suppose is, refined. You could imagine meeting her at a cocktail party and discussing the latest issue of The New Yorker with her, or Jonathan Franzen, or whether it'll be The Social Network or The King's Speech.

Union officials? Please. They were plaid shirts, polyester ties, thick glasses. They went to SUNY New Paltz, or small and obscure Catholic schools. There was a time when these descriptors applied to journalists, too, and I guess they still do regionally, but not in the elite press. Hence, the identification has been almost entirely with Rhee.

I do think elitism is one of the reasons why so many journalists, especially in the national media, identify with Ivy League education reform elites like Rhee and Kopp over working teachers and identify with the Ivy League-laden Teach For America over, say, the latest graduating class of education majors at Hunter College.

They see themselves as part of the same fabric of meritocratic excellence that Rhee and Kopp like to wrap themselves in.

That that fabric of meritocratic excellence is a sham with both Rhee and Kopp and their education reforms doesn't seem to bother the elite journalists any.

They just keep printing the hype over Rhee and Kopp/TFA.

I also think they like the drama and sensationalism Rhee brings to her work - the broom to sweep out the "bad teachers," the bee she supposedly ate during her teaching days, the excitement she brings to firing people (as in the time she happily fired a principal on camera for Frontline.)

You know the saying in journalism - If it bleeds, it leads, and there sure is a lot of blood around Michelle Rhee, though rarely her own.

I also think many of them want to believe her jive (and Kopp's jive too) - that class and poverty don't matter, that if children from high-poverty backgrounds are just given "great teachers," they can overcome anything.

Let's be frank - journalism, especially political journalism, resembles WWF wrestling more than anything else these days.

Journalists pick the winners and losers beforehand and then run with the script - Gore is a bore, Bush is a "regular" guy, Rhee is a "warrior woman" out to fight entrenched interests like teachers and unions (as Oprah might say.)

They pick someone like Rhee to back because

a) she gives them lots of drama to write about and

b) she promotes a vision of society they, recipients of the same cultural and financial help she has received, want to believe in - that hard work and merit are what matter, not who you know or what family you have been born into.

Will they now turn on one of their own or will they continue to protect her as they have done so far?

Make no mistake about this - Rhee has been protected by the corporatists in power like Barack Obama and Arne Duncan as well as the wealthy backers of her reforms.

But she has also been protected by the elite media.

For Rhee to be taken down by this scandal, they have to turn on one of their own and start reporting truth.

Good luck getting them to do that.

Diane Ravitch notes there is already a ho-hum factor setting in on the cheating memo.

The likelihood is, the elite press will continue to protect her and she will be back bashing teachers in no time.

NY Post Education Reporter: MOE on Teacher Data Reports As High As 75% For Math, 87% For ELA

You got that right - the Teacher Data Reports which use value-added measurements that Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools reported "appear to do the job that no measure of a teacher’s quality has done before: They estimate the amount of learning by students for which a teacher, and no one else, is responsible, and they do this with impressive reliability" have a 75% margin of error on math rankings and an 87% margin of error on ELA rankings.

That anything with MOE's this high is going to see the light of day is absurd.

That personnel decisions were made in the past on anything with MOE's this high is very disturbing.

That New York State plans to use a very similar system to decide which teachers are "effective" enough to keep their jobs and which ones should be fired is even more disturbing.

Most disturbing of all is how reporters who know this data is worthless and evaluation systems based on value-added are unreliable at best, highly damaging at worst, are happy to publish the reports with names attached.

UFT Takes Ads Out Against Data Report Publication But Inexplicably Supports Using A Similar Method For Teacher Evaluations

What jokers we have at the UFT:

The New York City Education Department will release the ratings of thousands of teachers on Friday, ending a nearly year-and-a-half-long legal battle by the teachers’ union to keep the names confidential.

The ratings, known as Teacher Data Reports, grade nearly 18,000 of the city’s 75,000 public school teachers based on how much progress their students have made on standardized tests. The city developed these so-called value-added ratings five years ago in a pilot program to improve instruction and has factored them into yearly teacher evaluations and tenure decisions.

Even before their release, the ratings have been assailed by independent experts, school administrators and teachers who say there are large margins of error — because they are based on small amounts of data, the test scores themselves were determined by the state to have been inflated, and there were factual errors or omissions, among other problems.

The union, the United Federation of Teachers, is responding to the release with a $100,000-plus newspaper advertising campaign starting on Friday. With the headline “This Is No Way to Rate a Teacher,” the advertisements will feature an open letter from the union president, Michael Mulgrew, that displays a complex mathematical formula followed by a checklist of reasons why the ratings are problematic.

“The Department of Education should be ashamed of itself,” Mr. Mulgrew said Thursday. “It has combined bad tests, a flawed formula and incorrect data to mislead tens of thousands of parents about their children’s teachers.”

Mr. Mulgrew is absolutely correct on all three counts - the tests were badly designed, the value-added formula has a high margin of error and wide swings in stability, and some of the data attributed to individual teachers is incorrect.

Those are some damned good reasons to oppose the publication of the Teacher Data Reports.

They're also some damned good reasons to oppose the new teacher evaluation system that bases 40% of a teacher's evaluation on similar data and value-added measurements to the TDR's.

Somehow Mulgrew and Company can run an assault against the TDR's as flawed and error-riddled, but defend their agreement with Cuomo to let the state grade every teacher in New York with a very similar method without any irony.

The teachers quoted in the NY Times article understand the problem with basing a teacher's evaluation on test scores and value-added measurements, however:

The New York Times, one of a number of media organizations that had requested the records, plans to publish the ratings on its education blog, SchoolBook, and has asked teachers to respond online. On Thursday, several posters on SchoolBook called the reports deeply flawed and criticized the city as well as the news media for making them public.

Marie Kallo, a sixth-grade English and social studies teacher at Intermediate School 234 in Brooklyn, said that even though she had received an above-average rating, she was troubled by a significant error in her report: It said she had taught 120 students in 2007-8 when she had actually taught more than 200.

“That makes me question the accuracy of all the data reports,” Ms. Kallo said, adding that she also did not understand how the ratings were calculated. “How is it fair to be judged on information that is not accurate?”

Karen Fine, a third-grade teacher at Public School 134 in Manhattan who previously taught fifth grade, said she and her colleagues believed that the ratings were an unfair and inaccurate measure of a teacher’s performance because they used an unreliable methodology that had been criticized by many respected researchers and statisticians, and because they did not account for factors that could affect students on the day of testing, like being tired, nervous, or scared.

“For many of us who teach in N.Y.C., this has been our life’s calling,” she said. “We are constantly attacked on so many levels for what ails education in our country when we know that it takes a community to help children learn: principals, administrators, parents, lawmakers, and yes, teachers. The responsibility cannot lie solely on us.”

Indeed.

But the new teacher evaluation system agreed to last week by the NYSUT and the UFT will help politicians, so-called education reformers, media elites and others continue to attack and scapegoat teachers for all that ails public education.

What's worse, because the unions failed to make Cuomo impose this piece of garbage evaluation system himself and instead held his hand onstage when he announced it, they co-own the evaluation system along with Cuomo, the NYSED, and the Regents.

No wonder they're sending out Leo Casey, the UFT's resident shill and used car salesman, to fool people into thinking the new evaluation system will be nothing like the madness that is the Teacher Data Reports.

But Leo can sling his bullshit all he wants and Mulgrew can take out all the ads he wants on the TDR publication - in the next year when every teacher gets the memo that states 40% of their evaluation is based upon test scores (20% from the state tests, 20% from the city tests), that over 20 high stakes standardized tests are going to be added to the school year in order to pull the new eval system off, and that if a teacher comes up "ineffective" on the 40% based upon test scores, they will be declared "ineffective" overall and slated to be fired in a year, the UFT won't be able to hide their capitulation.

Same goes for when teachers discover that they can be declared "effective" in all three components of the evaluation system yet still come up "ineffective" overall as a teacher and thus be slated for firing in a year, or come up "effective" in all three components and still come up "developing", which means hours of garbage PD to "improve" before the next eval.

Just wait, fellas.

You can fool people with bullshit for a long time, but eventually even the blind notice the overwhelming stench of fecal matter with the moniker UFT stamped on it when they're up to their necks in it.

Rupert Murdoch Talks, Andrew Cuomo Listens (and Snaps To Attention!)

Rupert Murdoch offered the following via Twitter yesterday after Mayor Bloomberg's State of the City speech:

Bloomberg’s bold teacher proposals today terrific. How will chicken Cuomo respond? If UFT refuses this money good teachers will scream.”

Now Cuomo, who needs and wants Rupert Murdoch's respect and love (and press) even more than he needs and wants air, could have responded two ways.

He could have responded the way he usually does when someone attacks him (or he even thinks somebody attacks him) - with a rhetorical sledgehammer.

This is what he did to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver this week.

Or he could bow down to almighty Rupert's wishes and back Bloomberg up on his teacher bashing.

Which is EXACTLY how he responded a half an hour later after Rupert's "tweet":

“I commend Mayor Bloomberg for outlining a positive vision for New York City’s future and the most important part of building that future, our students. The State and City’s education system is facing a crisis in accountability and performance. Our continuing pattern of being number one in the nation on spending in education and thirty-eighth in graduation rates hurts our students across the State, including the over 1.1 million public school students in New York City.

As I said in my State of the State Address, and Mayor Bloomberg reiterated in his State of the City today, we need an education system that puts students first. Both the Mayor and I agree that this starts with implementing a teacher evaluation system that holds teachers accountable for their performance. I look forward to working together to create an accountability system that puts the interests of students ahead of the interests of the education bureaucracy."

It is interesting how Cuomo says New York teachers are unaccountable while he does the work of a newspaper mogul/media oligarch who somehow has skirted the law in a scandal in Britain involving phone hacking, computer hacking, bribery, extortion, evidence tampering and conspiracy to cover-up a crime that has seen 18 of his employees arrested, including his number 1 deputy in England, and may yet see his son, James Murdoch, taken away in cuffs.

Yet somehow Cuomo ignores all of that mess (that "lack of accountability") to back Murdoch and Bloomberg up that teachers are unaccountable and until this "crisis in accountability and performance" in New York public education is fixed, New York's school system will continue to suck (even though as ED WEEK and the business channel CNBC both showed this week, none of this stuff Cuomo says about the New York State school system is true.)

So Andrew Cuomo is a chicken, all right - a chicken who snaps to attention when his patron and surrogate daddy Rupert ""Phone Hacking" Murdoch says a cross word to him.

Whatever Rupert wants, Rupert gets - from "Chicken Cuomo".

Fortunately the Daily News reports that Shelly Silver and the Assembly are no longer going to defer to the governor on policies that are harmful to New York State, as they did last year.

That's important, considering "Chicken Cuomo" seems to be in the business of doing the bidding of a corporate criminal like Murdoch who stands to make billions off the teacher accountability measures Cuomo and Bloomberg want to enshrine into law.

How Badly Will The UFT Cave In The Next Contract?

Very badly, according to the Socialist Worker:

-- Health care and pensions: These are usually big contract topics. But this time, the UFT has made concessions already. In 2009, the UFT joined with other municipal unions in agreeing to $400 million in health care concessions by New York City public employees unions and accepted an inferior pension scheme for incoming teachers, disguised as a victory by winning after 25 years and 55 years of age (at little cost to the city) for the in-service membership.

-- Evaluations: The UFT and New York state agreed--as part of negotiations around the state's Race to the Top application last May--to an evaluation scheme that based up to 40 percent of teacher evaluations on test scores, including 20 percent value added on state tests and 20 percent to be negotiated by districts, with 60 percent on a rubric based on principal evaluations and other documentation. This is to be combined with a four-step evaluation scale. Teachers with two consecutive years on the bottom rung will face automatic proceedings for firing.

The UFT trumpeted the fact that nothing could move forward on evaluations until the details were worked out between the district and the union, a process mandated by state law. However, such a deal could be a major side agreement to a contract deal, and might not be able to be voted on by the membership, because the evaluation process is legally required. Given the union's pathetic response around the city's attempt to publish teacher data reports--a lawsuit, but no action--the UFT appears prepared to cave on the test-based evaluation issue.

-- Seniority: The city made a large public campaign last spring of trying to get rid of state laws requiring that teachers be excessed in order of seniority. The legislative effort was defeated, but served a useful PR purpose in the fight over potential layoffs.

But the elimination of this provision would quickly destroy any remaining shreds of shop-floor organization left in the UFT, as a principal could simply remove an active union member from the school on any pretext. Worryingly, the UFT has not made any promises to hold the line on this issue.

-- Job security The centerpiece demand by the city has been the right to lay off excessed personnel (numbering 1,800 at last count) after four months outside of a job at a school. Such a concession would dramatically accelerate the school-closing onslaught and give principals an incentive to trim costs by excessing teachers (currently, teachers who are excessed stay on the school budget).

The union has vehemently and consistently said that it would not cave on this particular issue. But given the AFT's retreat on this issue in other cities, a concession is quite possible.

-- Wages The union's demands are for 4 percent raises for each of two consecutive years, which is exactly the pattern awarded to the biggest municipal union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37 (DC 37), in a deal negotiated before the financial crisis hit, in exchange for DC 37's quiescence and an endorsement of Bloomberg in the last mayoral election.

Since then, Mayor Bloomberg has scaled back the money allocated for raises from 4 parcent to 2 percent to 0 percent--supposedly to compensate for canceling layoffs in November 2009 and June 2010. However, the $200 million in federal education jobs money allocated to New York City could be used to pay for these raises. Getting that money will take a fight, however. More state budget cuts are guaranteed when Andrew Cuomo takes office.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHAT KIND of deal for the UFT might emerge in this environment?

There is potential for an agreement in which Bloomberg comes up with cash to pay a substantial raise--say 3-4 percent--in exchange for some of the major concessions that the city is after. The UFT would dress this up as a victory (as they did with the evaluation deal), and say that it is the best that they could get.

And Leo Casey will write over at Edwize that the above concessions are a "noteworthy victory" given "these times and under these conditions" or some such jive like that.

Or maybe he'll just repost the blather from this apologia for the hideous '05 contract.

Either way, we'll hear that whatever cave-ins the UFT agrees to are the bestest thing since butter and bread.

Wow - Even The Daily Kossacks Aren't Carrying Obama's Water Anymore

Things are bad for Barack Obama when even the diary writers at the Daily Kos start slamming him and sounding like me.

But of course there are always a couple of co-dependents left to lug all that corporate sell-out water up the hill.

Yikes - some people have no self respect.