Occupy

Schedule for Sunday and Monday here.

Foley Square tomorrow.

Wall Street on Monday.

See you there.

Bloomberg Threatens Layoffs Over Taxi Medallions

The Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg is back to threatening to layoffs again:

Mayor Bloomberg followed through on a threat Friday to slash city agencies — and possibly lay off city workers — in part to make up for revenue the city will lose if Bloomberg can’t move forward with his outerborough taxi plan.

The mayor’s budget director, Mark Page, sent a letter to agency heads Friday asking them to come up with ways to gut their budgets by as much as 5.4% in the current fiscal year — and 8% next year.

Cuts that large are bound to include at least some layoffs, though it’s not clear which agencies will lose staff.

A judge struck down the outerborough taxi plan last month, blowing a billion-dollar hole in the city budget.

Though police and schools are often spared the brunt of budget cuts, Bloomberg ordered cost savings even from those essential agencies.

The police, fire, sanitation and corrections departments must submit plans to cut 2.7% of their budgets this year and 4% next year.

The Education Department was asked to slash its budget by 1.6% this fiscal year and 4% next year.

“We will once again need to curtail planned spending and do so in a way that prioritizes and preserves necessary city services and quality of life,” Page wrote in the letter.

This will be the 12th round of cuts Bloomberg has instituted since 2007.

And as usual, the outside consultants are spared.

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%?

Why VAM Is Junk Science

Please read Sean Feeney's piece at the Washington Post about how badly APPR is designed and how it will ruin teachers careers and reputations.

Then send it around to everybody you know - especially people not in the education world.

Send it to the virulently pro-VAMers like Nick Kristof and the NY Times editorial page as well.

They won't care because they've convinced themselves the "science" of this is right.

But at least you can document to these people how much harm APPR is going to do so that when the harm comes to pass, we can say "We told you! We told you! Now do something about this!"

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 Evaluation System Is Rigged

Here is the evaluation system they're fighting over in Chicago:

The board’s proposed new evaluation system ties teacher ratings to a score based on the observation of their classroom and student growth on standardized tests as well as a “performance task,” such as singing a song in music or doing a complicated word problem in math.

A key sticking point, said Bloch, is CPS’ proposal to create a teacher rating category that, based on projections from a pilot, would land 28 percent of teachers in the second from the bottom category of four possible categories. Teachers in that category whose scores do not improve after a year would be automatically moved to the bottom category, where they face dismissal if they don’t improve within 90 days.

The CPS cutoff scores make the second to the bottom category far too big, Bloch said.

“Thirty percent of teachers shouldn’t be on the bubble for discharge. That’s not a fair system,” Bloch said. “This is not reform. It’s simply mass firing of teachers in the hope that a new crop will somehow be better.”

Teachers are also concerned that their evaluation scores could fail to improve due to a host of factors beyond their control — a sudden increase in class size, the injection of more behavioral problems into their classroom, new principals who grade teachers more harshly than their predecessors, or an end-of-the-year heat wave that creates oppressive learning conditions in schools without air-conditioning. And, they say, if they don’t teach a tested subject, part of their evaluations will be based on schoolwide test growth in a subject they don’t even teach.

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll contended teachers in the second-from-the-bottom category are safe, as long as their overall evaluation scores improve. Guidance based on the extra detail in the evaluation format should help them improve, Carroll said. And, teachers would serve on a committee that will make adjustments to the plan as needed, Carroll said.

However, one CTU delegate who asked for anonymity said teachers feel they can’t rely on their voice to be adequately heard on any joint CPS committee.

“This is a culture of distrust. We don’t trust them,” the delegate said.

These same problems exist here with the evaluation system in NY State.

Unlike CTU, our unions - the UFT and the NYSUT - held hands with our Tea Party Education Reform Governor while he pushed through an eval system that puts every teacher on a bell curve and slates the bottom rung to be fired every year.

These systems are rigged to fire a certain percentage of teachers every year.

Unlike our unions here in NY State, the CTU are fighting this system.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a union leadership that stood up for its members instead of selling them out?

"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.

Another Teachers Union Goes On Strike

From the Sun-Times:

Lake Forest High School teachers decided to strike after walking out of contract negotiations late Tuesday night.

The district’s 1,718 students from Lake Forest, Lake Bluff and Knollwood will have no classes Wednesday and there will be no sports practices or competitions until contract differences are resolved.

There are 150 teachers at the high school.

Lake Forest Education Association spokesman Chuck Gress said the union was “disappointed that the Board of Education did not respond to the LFEA’s last salary submission.”

The LFEA was prepared to negotiate a settlement but the school board “chose not to counter,” Gress said. He would not say what the union offered.

A small union, to be sure, and a slightly different rationale for the strike, but another sign that teachers are fed up wit the treatment they're receiving and are fighting back.

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?

Parents Are With The Teachers

The Sun Times reports that striking Chicago teachers are receiving the backing of parents in their fight for better schools:

Aldermen almost unanimously fell in line behind the mayor, with Ald. “Proco” Joe Moreno (1st) saying the Chicago Teachers Union was “hell-bent on striking,” and Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) warning a protracted strike could send middle-class families fleeing to the suburbs.

But as the strike began, the majority of parents and students at school gates across the city seemed to be taking the teachers’ side. The huge number of motorists honking their horns as they passed picket lines suggested teachers have substantial public support ­— for now, at least.

“I don’t know if bullying is the word I would use, but my feeling is the mayor is not really listening,” said Jorge Bernal, the father of two students at Peirce School of International Studies in Edgewater Beach.

Fellow Peirce parent Wendi Brown waved a pro-union sign and said she would never undermine the teachers by leaving her son at school while his teacher picketed.

“I’m a Jewish girl who voted for Rahm to be mayor of this city and I am disappointed — I’m almost embarrassed to say I voted for him,” Brown said. “I agree with him on many issues but we got him there and he needs to stand with us today.”

...

And at the nearby Lane Tech High School, history teacher Missy Smith declared herself “surprised by all the honking.”

“It’s very humbling and very appreciated...I just hope people realize it isn’t just about us and pay,” she said.

Lane Tech History teacher Noah Ochsenhaut added, “I think hard working people relate to other hardworking people.”

CTU did the hard work of reaching out to parents and families and garner their support for this battle.

You can see that in the way they are getting the support of many of the parents.

Rahmbo has the politicians and the corporate media on his side (take a look, for example, as this hit piece James Warren wrote about Lewis and the CTU at the Daily Beast...it's full of scorn for Lewis and the teachers "bemoaning" things like a lack of air conditioning in schools that are in session over the summer.)

But the teachers have the parents.

Ryan, Romney Stand With Emanuel Against CTU - Obama Remains Mum

Not a surprise, of course, but it's good to get this on record:

There may be no stranger bedfellows than Representative Paul D. Ryan and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, the former White House chief of staff, but on Monday Mr. Ryan declared his support of Mr. Emanuel in the Chicago teachers’ strike.

“We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel,’’ Mr. Ryan said.

Mr. Emanuel and the teachers’ union are at loggerheads primarily over a new evaluation system tied to student test scores and whether laid-off teachers should have priority to fill future job openings.

...

“This does not have to divide the two parties,’’ Mr. Ryan said at a fund-raising event in Portland, Ore., according to a pool report. “And so we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former chief of staff, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union?’’

Mitt Romney also issued a statement condemning the Chicago Teachers Union and accusing the Obama administration of being beholden to unions at the expense of children.

It's nonsense that the Obama administration has been beholden to unions.

This is just another lie from a man who has made a living out of deception and double dealing.

In point of fact, Barack Obama has been as anti-union as many a good Republican, though perhaps not as virulent about it as, say, Scott Walker or Rick Scott.

Just ask the people at the UAW given a 50% pay cut.

Or the teachers Barack had whacked at Central Falls.

Nonetheless Paul Ryan does bring up a good point.

Where does Obama stand in this fight publicly?

Now you know and I know that behind the scenes, he sides with Rahm.

After all, the corporate education reform agenda that Rahm is trying to finish imposing on Chicago students and teachers is Barack Obama's official education policy - school closings, teacher firings, high stakes standardized tests all throughout the year and teacher evaluations tied to those scores.

Indeed, that was the agenda of Arne Duncan, Barack Obama's current Secretary of Education, when he ran Chicago schools back in the mid-2000's and it continues to be Duncan's agenda today.

Obama hired Duncan at USDOE and gave him wide powers to promote corporate education reform because that's the policy he wants promoted.

So it's no real secret where Obama stands on this.

But Obama can't come out and say that's where he stands on this because he needs the unions - particular the teachers unions - for November's GOTV effort as well as fundraising.

So instead the White House and the Obama campaign inhabit some jive ass middle ground that doesn't really exist.

Like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, Barack Obama and Joe Biden stand with Rahm Emanuel against Chicago teachers and union members.

Is that a good enough reason to not vote for any of these people if you're a teacher?

I know it is for me.

Why help out in a campaign or vote for a guy who's just looking to use you until November, then do to you what his buddy Rahmbo wants to do now?

So Obama can remain mum on this strike all he wants - we know where he stands and it sure as hell ain't with the students, teachers and parents of the CPS.

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.

Bertha Coombs: Dumbest Tweet Of The Day

The NY Times is running an article today about the increase in cheating in schools.

CNBC's Bertha Coombs tweets the following about the story:

NYTimes: Studies Find More Students Cheating -Are shame & guilt obsolete? How do you sleep when you "succeed" cheating?

Coombs covers the financial markets - you know, the venue where Goldman Sachs bundled worthless financial products to unsuspecting customers while shorting those same products because they knew they were worthless and made hundreds of millions of dollars both coming and going.

This is the same market where MF Global "lost" a billion dollars of customer money making trades they weren't supposed to trade but no individual was ever brought to account for the loss.

It is the same market where 16 banks colluded to "fix" the LIBOR rate that underlies most financial products and loans in order to, first, make more money, and then later in '08, to make their books look better than they were.

And Coombs has the nerve, the audacity to ask how students can sleep at night knowing they've succeeded by cheating?

She is either the dumbest person on the planet or the most compliant corporate shill there is.

You want to see some cheaters who got ahead by cheating, Bertha?

Look the fuck around you.

You're surrounded by liars, cheats, con artists, pirates, and corporate criminals - and that's just in the CNBC offices.

This nation is run by cheaters in Washington, on Wall Street, in the media.

The kids are just learning the lessons they see from the adults around them - and they're learning them well.

The Best and Brightest are cheating in Stuyvesant High and at Harvard.

And soon most of them will take that cheating someplace where they can really cash in - Wall Street and the corridors of power in Washington.

Have A Great Start To The School Year

NYPD Ends Spying On Muslims After Six Years - Not One Lead Came From The Effort

But since this was a Bloomberg/Kelly effort, of course it must be successful - after all, everything they do is successful:

New Jersey's attorney general has assured a group of Muslim leaders that a New York police department unit that conducted surveillance of Muslims is no longer operating in the state.

A spokesman for attorney general Jeffrey Chiesa confirmed that Chiesa told a private meeting of New Jersey law enforcement officials and Muslim leaders Wednesday that the NYPD's demographics unit had ceased operating in New Jersey.

The NYPD's covert surveillance program faced scrutiny after an investigation by the Associated Press beginning in August of last year detailed the extent of the operations.

Following September 11, with the help of the CIA, the NYPD's counterterrorism surveillance efforts included spying on Muslim neighborhoods, infiltrating Muslim-owned businesses and cataloging mosques in the north-east.

The demographics unit gathered information on people based on their language and ethnicity, though there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the individuals.

Muslim college students at more than a dozen colleges in the north-east US were a particular focus of the program which would monitor Muslim students' websites on a daily basis and monitored Muslim student associations.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie criticized the police department's operations in the state as did Newark mayor Cory Booker who said in February that he didn't know about the program that mapped and photographed 16 mosques in Newark and profiled several restaurants.

The NYPD has defended its surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey as legal, and Chiesa has said New York police did not violate New Jersey laws.

NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, who has defended the program, said Wednesday he wasn't aware of the New Jersey meeting.

In late August, the police department acknowledged that the secret demographics unit did not generate a lead or case in the six years the program has been in place.

Not one lead or case generated after six years.

And you can bet had there not been push back from Jersey on this, they would still be doing it.

Actually given that both Bloomberg and Kelly are liars, I wouldn't be so sure they still aren't doing it anyway.

Just because they say they stopped something doesn't mean they really stopped something.

Joel Klein's School Of One Doesn't Work

So reports the Daily News:

Former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein's highly touted School of One math project dropped by 2 of 3 schools in pilot program
Initiative was hailed by Time magazine as one of the 50 best inventions of 2009, but NYU study shows $9 million effort failed to raise test scores more than old-school math classes.

But the DOE is forging ahead with plans to utilize the program anyway - even though all it is, really, is a glorified test prep program.

Bringing Back The Six Day Work Week

Ultimately the goal of our corporate masters is to reinstitute feudalism.

They've got a pretty good start going in Greece:

Greece's eurozone creditors are demanding that the government in Athens introduce a six-day working week as part of the stiff terms for the country's second bailout.

The demand is contained in a leaked letter from the "troika" of the country's lenders, the European commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. In the letter, the officials policing Greece's compliance with the austerity package imposed in return for the bailout insist on radical labour market reforms, from minimum wages to overtime limits to flexible working hours, that are likely to worsen the standoff between the government and organised labour in Greece.

After a long delay caused by months of political paralysis in Greece, the troika inspectors return to Athens this week to scrutinise Greek observance of its bailout terms. They are expected to deliver a verdict next month that will determine whether Greece is ultimately allowed to remain in the single currency.

The letter, sent last week to the Greek finance and labour ministries, orders the government to extend the working week into the weekend.

"Measure: increase flexibility of work schedules: increase the number of maximum workdays to six days per week for all sectors.

"Increase flexibility of work schedules; set the minimum daily rest to 11 hours; delink the working hours of employees from the opening hours of the establishment; eliminate restrictions on minimum/maximum time between morning and afternoon shifts; allow the consecutive two-week leave to be taken anytime during the year in seasonal sectors."

The instructions focus on labour market reforms, calling for the national labour inspectorate to be radically reformed and put under European supervision.

The letter reveals the detail of eurozone intrusion into a national system and culture of work widely seen outside Greece as dysfunctional.

There should be a permanent "single-rate statutory minimum wage", seen as an incentive for getting people back to work in a country where unemployment has soared to around 30%.

"Unemployment is too high, and policies are needed to prevent it from becoming structural," the letter says.

Unemployment is really high, but if we force the people currently employed to work, say, 10 hours a day instead of, say, seven, we'll put more people back to work.

Sure.

Greece's "creditors" don't care about putting people back to work.

They care about getting their dough.

Somebody in The Guardian comments wrote the following:

Neoliberalism: soft slavery in which the slave pays for their own food and shelter.

Somebody else wrote:

Actually, fuck them, just don't pay your debts off. Seems to work for the banks.

Indeed, that does seem to work for the banks.

Gets you a pat on the head from President Obama, in fact.

Fair Student Funding Anything But Fair

From the NY Daily News:

New schools founded in the last three years get more money per student than schools the city began shutting down this year, a Daily News analysis finds.

Under a reform — ironically called Fair Student Funding — the city distributes the bulk of school funding based on the enrollment and demographics of each school.

The reform introduced in 2007 hasn’t been fully funded because of budget cuts in recent years, but all 30 new schools opening this year get their full share of the money to which they’re entitled while the struggling schools remain badly underfunded.

“These are the mayor’s showcase schools. He wants to show they’re doing well,” said Gregg Lundahl, a social studies teacher and teachers union chapter leader at a closing school — Manhattan’s Washington Irving High School. “It’s very unfair.”

Washington Irving, for example, is underfunded by $790,702 — roughly 13 percent of its overall budget, according to the city’s own numbers.

The 24 so-called “turnaround schools” — where the city unsuccessfully moved to ax half the staff — are underfunded by more than $30 million combined, more than 10% of their overall current budgets.

“Why are we getting less money?” asked Shenia Rudolph, mother of eighth-grader Coby Brown, 12, and seventh-grader Capri Brown, 12, who both attend Middle School 391 in the Bronx, a former turnaround school.

“That’s Bloomberg and Walcott. They need to distribute to schools equally.”

Why are your kids' school receiving less money, Shenia?

Very simple - Bloomberg and Walcott are waging a political battle against teachers and the union, they want to close all of these turnaround schools and fire as many of those teachers as possible, so they're purposely underfunding the schools in order to help their manipulative process along.

That's it in a nutshell.

Bloomberg and Walcott blame the state of course - it's Cuomo's fault, not enough state aid, blah blah blah.

But they can move money around in the system if they want to - they choose not to.

Instead they choose to fund these schools at 100% and then hand them more money for "start-up costs" as well.

On top of that President Obama also has it out for the older schools - what he calls "dropout factories".

Race to the Top provides money for these new schools.

So the fix is in - the city, the state and the feds all have it out for your kids' school, Shenia, because they have it out for your kids' teachers and their union.

You and your family just happen to be collateral damage in the battle.

But remember this: the next time Chancellor Walcott or Mayor Bloomberg claim the union protects bad teachers and hurts kids while Bloomberg and Walcott always put children first, think about how they're funding the system.

All Summer Long

I started the summer off this year with a Beach Boys show in Saratoga.

Seems appropriate to end with the Beach Boys here on Labor Day:

An Opinion Piece In The Washington Post Says Parenting Matters More Than Schooling

First read this piece here - then send it to every editorial board around, including the one at the paper where they published this piece.

There is only so much I can do as a teacher - especially when I have 170 students a semester that I am teaching.

And yet the education reform movement blames teachers for not fixing all the problems that arise when kids come from dysfunctional backgrounds, from poverty, from places of hardship.