Free Refreshments Courtesy Of The Gates Foundation-Funded Educators4Excellence

A notice was passed along about an Educators4Excellence "Testing Networking Event!" tomorrow between 3PM and 5PM in Manhattan.

In case you're unfamiliar with the Educators4Excellence group, they're an astroturf organization run by some ex-educators who started a reform group that aligned well with what wealthy education reformers want for public education, then quit teaching to live high off the Gates Foundation-funded hog.

They push for all kinds of fantastic "teacher-led" reforms like teacher evaluations tied to test scores, 6+ observations a year, more and "better" testing, and of course Common Core.

You know, the kinds of top-down reforms that were shoved through by the Wall Street-funded Obama and Cuomo administrations, both of whom lap up the donations from the same wealthy education reformers who fund the Educators4Excellence (see here and here.)

In any case, the Educators4Excellence have got some excess Gates cash to burn tomorrow and they're holding a "Testing Network Event!" that you are cordially invited to:

Come celebrate the start of a new school year and network with some other teachers!  Enjoy complimentary refreshments on Educators 4 Excellence and hear about teacher-led change!

When: Friday October 17th
            3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Where: CK-14 The Crooked Knife
             232 W. 14th Street

Why: Network with like-minded educators that teach in your area, learn about E4E, and discuss teacher recommendations around testing and assessment.

No notice if you have sign a loyalty oath before you partake in the complimentary, Bill Gates-funded refreshment or discussion about "teacher-led change!", but in the past E4E has been known to make attendees at their get-togethers sign oaths before they were allowed in.

If there's no oath to sign and you're in the neighborhood around 14th Street, why not stop by, enjoy some Bill Gates-funded complimentary refreshment and let the Educators4Excellence astroturf folks picking up the tab know what you think of them and their "teacher-led change!"

Of course, since the braintrust at E4E, such as it is, have quit their jobs to work in "advocacy," they really ought to term their jive "ex-teacher led change!", but whatever.

Oh, and make up your own joke about why they chose "The Crooked Knife" for their pro-deform "Testing Network Event!"

My take is, that's the knife they use to stick teachers in the back with - bought and paid for by Gates and other corporate deformers, of course.

Wall Street Journal Covers ATR's

The Wall Street Journal reports that the ATR issue is a major part of the contract discussion:

As negotiations drag on over a new contract for the city's teachers, one sticky issue involves how to handle teachers who lost permanent jobs during cutbacks but keep getting full paychecks as they bounce around schools for brief stints, filling in for absent staff.

Hundreds spend years in limbo. A city Department of Education analysis in July said the group's size fluctuates but totaled 1,186 teachers last spring and cost at least $105 million last year in salaries and benefits—after counting the savings from not hiring regular substitutes.

...

 

Representatives for Mayor Bill de Blasio and the United Federation of Teachers confirmed that how to treat the group, called the Absent Teacher Reserve, is under discussion as they hammer out a contract to replace one that expired in 2009. They declined to comment further. Other major issues include back pay and raises.

The WSJ goes to the famed Educators4Excellence, an astroturf group of dozens of mostly ex-teachers now on the Gates Foundation payroll, for context on the ATR issue early in the article:

Educators 4 Excellence-New York, an advocacy group of more than 8,000 teachers, plans to release a policy brief Wednesday recommending that teachers in the pool get two April-to-August hiring seasons to find jobs. The brief argues that if they don't get hired within that period, they should be put on unpaid leave.

"Two hiring cycles strikes a balance between providing a fair opportunity for teachers to find a new teaching position and at the same time provides schools and the system the autonomy they need," said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director.

They get a couple of statements from ATR's, one of which seems to back up the E4E argument:

David Levin, a 13-year teacher in his fourth year in the pool in the Bronx, said it isn't his fault principals usually prefer to hire cheaper "newbies." He makes $80,987 a year.

Mr. Levin said the system should be fixed somehow—perhaps by deploying these teachers as mentors or extra help in difficult classrooms. It is hard for substitute teachers to keep students under control because there is little time to learn their names and behavior, he said. In one class, rowdy teenagers turned off the lights and started throwing chairs. "I don't know the students, the culture or the school," he said. "The kids act out."

Pasqual Pelosi, a language arts teacher in the Bronx pool who makes $75,937 a year, said his 12 years of experience were being squandered. He said at times he thinks shuttling teachers to different schools weekly is designed to wear them down so they quit in disgust.

"There's plenty of frustration," he said.

Among the frustrations over his career, Pelosi acknowledged facing several accusations, including an instance of alleged corporal punishment. 

"Any teacher who has been around for as long as I have is bound to have had some sort of allegations lodged," he said, adding that was especially true for a "disciplinarian" such as himself. "Nothing has been proven against me," he said.

And of course the Journal provides the two page Educators4Excellence "policy paper" putting forth the "Fire The ATR's" policy, along with quotes from education reform shills at StudentsFirstNY and The New Teacher Project, to slam home the idea that the ATR's are valueless employees.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew is given the last word, however:

The union's Mr. Mulgrew said nearly three-quarters of the teachers in the pool get permanent jobs within three years. "Our studies show that the most important single factor is money," he said. "The least experienced (and thus cheaper) teachers are the first to be selected."

If they ended the "fair funding" system that had schools paying for teacher salaries dollar for dollar out of their own budgets and went back to the system at large covering the salaries of teachers, many of the ATR's would be hire.

The truth is, so long as the dollars come straight out of the individual school budget, an administrators is always going to look to hire the $50,000 candidate over the $80,000 candidate.

Asshats Use Gates/Hedge Fund Cash For Propaganda

The Asshats4Excellence, otherwise known as the Educators4Excellence to you Gotham Charter Schools readers, have gone up with a pro-APPR ad calling for Cuomo to impose his own teacher evaluation system on NYC teachers.

Where do the Asshats, a "grassroots" group of a few dozen teachers and ex-teachers (no matter what their roster says, they can never get more than that number to their public events), get their funding for these ads and help with their group?

You got that right - from the Gates Foundation and the Democrats For Education Reform and some other hedge fund/Wall Street connected groups under the umbrella of Education Reform Now and assorted other corporate reformy groups.

In 2010, the group raised a little under $350,000 in donations.

In 2011, the group had a little under $2 million.

That's a lot of cash money for a couple of dozen teachers and ex-teachers.

Of course the corporate media uncritically runs with the story that "an independent teacher group" is calling on Cuomo to impose an evaluation system on NYC teachers.

But this isn't some independent teacher group going up with the ad.

This is the Gates Foundation/DFER's/Education Reform Now/hedge fundies going up with the ad.

It would be nice if that fact showed up in the news stories about the ad.

But that would be asking too much, wouldn't it?

But What Great Asshats!

Above is a photo of Evan Stone and a few other members of the Asshats4Educators, the Gates Foundation/DFER-funded corporate education reform group that brought about two dozen members to City Hall Park yesterday for a rally to pressure the UFT into caving to NYCDOE demands on a new test score-based teacher evaluation system.

The boys in the green asshats don't look too happy at their little rally and that's because there were almost as many people at the Asshats4Educator rally protesting the Asshats4Educators as there were Asshats.

What was worse, many of the Asshats present were ignorant of their own agenda, as the crack team at South Bronx School showed in this interview of an Asshat member on what value-added measurement is:




There we have an Asshat4Educator in City Hall Park protesting for value-added measurements of student test scores to be used on him who can't explain what value-added measurements are.

As the guys in the Guiness ad used to say "Brilliant!"

The Asshats4Educators rally was so demoralizing for the Asshat faithful that even Asshat-friendly education reform website Gates Foundation/Gotham Schools, normally happy to publish all things asshattery without any criticism or skepticism whatsoever of the Gates Foundation-funded corporate reform astroturf group, had to acknowledge the protest against the Asshat demo right under their ad for the Asshat4Educator rally.

And with the counter rally looking like this, no wonder the corporate reform shills at Gates Foundation/Gotham Schools couldn't ignore it:

Which brings us all back to the top picture of Asshats looking so unhappy:

Wanna know why the Asshat brass look so unhappy in that photo?

Because normally they're used to excluding anybody from Asshats4Educator events who doesn't sign an Asshat loyalty pledge or promise undying fealty to their corporate reform agenda, as Ednotes reported here, but this time given the public nature of the rally, the Asshats couldn't keep the real teachers and anti-reformers away from their little shindig and they got some reality-based criticism of the corporate-funded horseshit they're trying to sell to the public.

So overall, not a great day for the Asshats4Educators, but really, when you're wearing such great free, Gates Foundation-funded green asscaps, who cares if the rally didn't go so well.

I mean, everybody loves free Gates Foundation swag, right?

Educators4Excellence Group Members Even Dumber In Person

The Gates Foundation-funded Asshats4Educators are pushing a corporate education reform agenda that includes lots of high stakes testing, teacher evaluations tied to the tests, the end of tenure and seniority protections and other "reforms" that make Mike Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee all wet and squishy between their legs.

The Asshats like to make believe they're a grassroots organization with thousands of members even though no more than 150 ever show up to their events (and some of those are MORE and GEM members looking to push back against the Asshat agenda.)

They also like to make it like they're the progressive, informed ones in the debate over education reform while those opposed to corporate education reform are the Neanderthals.

The crack team at South Bronx School infiltrated the Asshats' Gates Foundation-funded demonstration outside City Hall today and exposed just how informed and progressive the Asshats are in this interview with one Asshat holding a pro-APPR sign:





That, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is emblematic of the Asshats4Educators - a member holding up a pro-APPR/VAM sign who can't explain what VAM is, won't take up the challenge of telling the audience why VAM and test-based evaluations are so great, but boy does he look fab-o in his green asshat.

I am sure that the corporate reform shills at Gotham Schools will write this story up tomorrow and mostly ignore this pushback that came from the crack team at SBS and other teachers who aren't idiots like the A4E guy with the green hat on his head.

But this is the real story from today's Asshat demo - the rank and file Asshats4Educators are even dumber in person than they are when they're showing up in the opinion pages of the News, Post, Schoolbook, Gotham Schools and other reform-friendly sites and outlets.

And in no way should the UFT leadership feel pressured to give in to Bloomberg's local APPR system because a few idiots in green hats are holding up signs saying they should.

New Teacher Layoff Plan: Fire Anybody With A Douchebag Hipster Beard

Now this is a layoff plan I can fully support.

Under this plan, layoffs should commence immediately.

And shaving won't help, all you bearded hipster douchebags.

We've got the photos.

And the Gotham Schools posts.

Bloomberg Like Nixon, Only He's His Own Bebe

Norm at Education Notes was over this story earlier in the week, the News has done a couple of articles on it, and Gotham Schools had a story as well, but between work stuff and parent-teacher conferences, I haven't been able to give the story that the DOE used parent coordinators to promote Bloomberg's political causes the attention it deserves.

First, here is the latest on the story from the Daily News:

The city Education Department has drafted school workers into political fights even before this week's controversial petition drive, union officials said Thursday.

In January and February, department officials asked parent coordinators to get parents who supported Mayor Bloomberg's policies to attend public meetings on closing low-performing schools.

"That is definitely, totally illegal," said DC 37 Local 372 acting President Santos Crespo, noting parent coordinators from all over the city were asked to participate in the turnout efforts.

A Manhattan parent coordinator said she was "dumbfounded" by the instructions for turning people out to public meetings.

"The model was 'We don't want to hear anything negative,'" she recalled.

Education Department spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said officials were within their rights.

"There is nothing wrong with encouraging parents to come out and participate in meetings that determine what happens to their children's schools," she said.

Ravitz again acknowledged that "DOE staff acted inappropriately in asking parent coordinators to circulate a petition" earlier this week that called for ending seniority protections for teachers.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew on Thursday asked the special schools investigator to determine who was responsible for the petition drive and how much the city spent on it.

The DOE violated the law by pushing this policy.

Who was behind the idea?

How far up the Bloomberg chain did it go?

What other political manipulations are the ypulling on the public dime?

Were any parent coordinators paid extra to aid in the cause?

Were any parent coordinators given Gates Foundation or hedge fundie largesse to aid in the cause?

Let's be honest here, the coordination of the education deform movement is pretty intricate.

Let's take the Asshats4Educators group.

They were supposed to be a "grassroots" movement of young teachers who were opposed to seniority protections, tenure and lots of other things that Bloomberg and Klein hate.

This group got lots of press at hedge fundie-funded Gotham Schools, got lots of press in the Murdoch papers, got lots of attention on the Murdoch-owned TV stations.

They DIDN'T get lots of scrutiny, however.

Mr. Talk at Accountable Talk was the first to notice that the Asshat4Educator website looked an awful lot like the DFER website.

A little scrutiny into the matter exposed the connection between the hedge fundie DFER's and the Asshats - they were funding the website and subsidizing the group.

Since then, the Asshats - who are still introduced as "educators" even though they no longer work as teachers - are enjoying not only Whitney Tilson-inspired hedge fund largesse but also lots of yummy, yummy Gates Foundation money.

No wonder Chancellor Klein met with the Asshats and hailed the group as "heroes" of the education world.

They're a manufactured grassroots movement, completely funded by corporate interests, who promote education policies those corporate interests want promoted in media outlets owned by those same corporate interests.

If you don't believe me, just read this NY Times story from back in February on the connection between the Asshats, the anti-seniority forces, the DFER's, the DOE, Bloomberg and the hedge fund managers.

They do a heckuva job on the coordination, don't they?

Now we get the story that the DOE was using parent coordinators to promote some of the same corporate-friendly policies that the Asshats are promoting.

I have no inside knowledge of any of this, but how much do you want to bet that some of the same money that has found its way to the Asshats4Educators found its way to any of the parent coordinators who have done the bidding of the Bloomberg administration and DOE on these political matters.

It's all very Nixonian, and while I am sure there are no tapes with John Dean saying there is a cancer on the presidency, I would say there is a cancer in the city that destroys the healthy body politic with bribes and corporate largesse and greed.

That cancer is located right down at City Hall Park in the two buildings off Broadway - City Hall and Tweed.

And what we need is a little scrutiny on the political operatives in those two buildings to see just how far the political manipulations have gone.

You can be sure that this use of parent coordinators to promote Bloomberg's political policies on the public dime is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Problem With Finance, Politics, Education - Everything In American Life

Summed up quite nicely at Political Wire:

Matt Taibbi was talking to a former Senate investigator about the financial crisis -- "one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals" -- and he summed it up this way:

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

Indeed - that's how Bloomberg, Murdoch, Gates and a bunch of hedge fund criminals are able to finance "grassroots" organizations like the Asshats4Educators that promote their corporate-driven agenda without, you know, getting called on it.

Hey, media - the Asshats4Educators AREN'T teachers anymore - they're PAID LOBBYISTS on the Gates, Bloomberg, and/or Murdoch payrolls.

See how that works?

You call bullshit bullshit.

The Connection Between Bloomberg, Black, The DFER's, Education Reform Now and The Asshats

Here it is - right in plain, borrowed, advertising language:

When Cathleen P. Black, the schools chancellor, testified before the State Legislature on Tuesday about what she called the unavoidable teacher layoffs in New York City that would take place if the governor’s proposed education budget were approved, a line from her remarks might have rung familiar to regular watchers of television ads.

“The answer is obvious: Keep the most effective teachers, whether they have been in the system 2 years or 22 years,” Ms. Black told members of the Assembly and Senate budget committees.

Ms. Black borrowed the line from an op-ed piece she wrote last month. But since Thursday, a nearly identical line — spoken by a teacher — has been featured in a widely broadcast one-minute advertisement placed by backers of the mayor’s agenda, in a war of commercials with the teachers’ union on the issue of seniority-based firing.

...

The anti-seniority advertisement, paid for by an organization called Education Reform Now, features three New York City schoolteachers explaining why they think firing by seniority hurts children.

“If there have to be layoffs, we should keep the best teachers — it’s that simple,” Rogelio Herrera Jr., a teacher at Public School 1 in the Bronx, says in the ad. Finishing the thought, Jane Viau, a teacher at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, says, “Whether that means they’re a second-year teacher or a 22nd-year teacher.”

The echo of the wording may be coincidental, but the close ties between the group that paid for the advertisement, the professionals that made it, and backers of the mayor’s education agenda are anything but.

Education Reform Now is an advocacy organization headed by Joel I. Klein, the former schools chancellor. The public relations company that produced the ad is SKD Knickerbocker, and its producer, the organization’s president said, is Josh Isay, a political consultant who advised Mr. Bloomberg during his 2005 re-election campaign and his 2008 fight to eliminate term limits.

Bradley Tusk, the campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg in his 2009 campaign, said in an e-mail that he helped conceptualize the advertisement. He has his own political consultancy, Tusk Strategies Inc. Also on staff at Education Reform Now, in charge of field operations, is Patrick Van Keerbergen, who worked on the mayor’s 2009 re-election campaign.

Stefan Friedman, an executive at Knickerbocker who has been a political consultant to the mayor, handles the Education Reform Now account. The firm also handles communications for Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that shares a telephone number with Education Reform Now’s New York Office. Joe Williams is both the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform and the president of Education Reform Now.

Knickerbocker also represents Educators 4 Excellence, which calls itself an “independent voice for educators” made up of former and current public-school teachers who oppose seniority-based firing. That group on Monday laid out a plan to more easily fire teachers that echoes Mr. Bloomberg’s public remarks on the subject.

And the three teachers in the Education Reform Now ad are part of Educators 4 Excellence, said Kerri Lyon, who handles their account at Knickerbocker, and who worked under Mr. Klein at the Department of Education press office until last year.

Mr. Williams said Monday that the groups he worked for have agendas similar to the mayor’s sometimes, but differences as well, and that they do push back.

“If we had a ban on hiring people who have worked for the mayor, we probably couldn’t hire anyone in New York,” he said of the political consultants Education Reform Now works with. Every one “was on the mayor’s payroll.”

It's such a coincidence that the DFER's, the mayor, Education Reform Now and the Asshats4Educators all have the same agenda and the same advertising and consulting people working for them but claim to be, you know, independent from one another.

Here at Perdido Street School, we don't have ANYBODY working for us.

We write our own own copy.

Here's some copy straight off the presses for you - ALL of these groups - the mayor, the chancellor, the DFER's, Education Reform Now, and the Asshats ARE CONNECTED.

THEY ARE THE SAME GROUP.

Just follow the money and follow the advertising and consulting people working for them.

So the next time one of these commercials run, you can say "Look, the mayor is running another anti-union commercial."

Same goes for the next time one of the ex-teachers in the Asshats4Educators has a press conference to read off recommendations about layoffs they're giving the mayor to use that the mayor's people wrote for them.

The level of corruption in this endeavor is astounding.

It's not all that different from the level of corruption The Nation detailed in Bloomberg's attempts to manipulate the Comcast-NBC Universal merger to his advantage.

That a billionaire oligarch can manipulate the airwaves and public opinion like this with impunity is a sign that democracy in America needs an Egyptian-like cleansing moment wherein all these corrupt influences are flushed down the toilet and out into the Atlantic.

Ruben Brosbe

Gotham Schools has a habit of scrubbing my comments at their site, so I want to post this comment I put up about Ruben Brosbe:

Ruben created all the animosity when he agreed to write his “TDR reports are useful” jive in the Post. Ruben says these reports are helpful and can make teachers better by pointing out short comings. Except that the TDRs have a 35% margin of error if two years of test score data is used, a 25% margin of error if 5 years of test score data is and a 12% margin of error if 10 years of test score data is used.

Unlike Ruben, I am less enamored of allowing myself to be publicly evaluated with a rating system that veers between a 12% and a 35% margin of error.

As I have said before, you can be sure Bloomberg wouldn’t trust a company that has a 12%-35% margin of error in its financial reportings. Obama wouldn’t trust a political poll with a 12% MOE (let alone 35%!). So why should the public be given teacher ratings with these kinds of margins of errors? Why should teachers be subject to public slandering with false, inaccurate data?

The powers that be don’t say. Neither do collaborators like Ruben Brosbe.

Dunno if Ruben is just a naive young man or if he is looking to cash in on some of that hedge fund and bankster largesse his E4E colleagues have cashed in on (must be nice to retire after two years teaching with a Whitney Tilson-paid consulting gig!).

Either way, as a ten year vet who wants to continue his career in teaching, I will stand up against people like Ruben Brosbe who actively look to destroy the teaching profession by giving a veneer of legitimacy to a teacher ranking system that is error-ridden jive.

There - got that down.

What is it with Gotham Schools and scrubbing?

They must not like me.

Poor RBE.

I guess if I was more like Ruben Brosbe, I could get published at GS and not have my comments scrubbed.

Heck, if I was more like Ruben, maybe I could get in on some of the hedge fundie and bankster ed deform largesse too.

Come to think of it, why don't we ALL sell out like Ruben and his Asshat4Educator pals and rake in the dough?

Oh, right - I like to sleep at night knowing I'm not evil.

Maybe you feel the same way.

Asshats4Educators

The Asshats4Educators are out in full force these days, funded by the hedge fund and ed deform movement and talking their "Great Teachers Deserve No Rights!" jive.

Miss Eyre takes them down over at NYCeducator.com:

I don't want to join E4E, first of all, because I'm already a dues-paying member of an organization that is supposed to represent my interests and I find that what E4E stands for runs counter to those interests--or, at least, what those interests are nominally supposed to be, whatever your views on the UFT may be these days.

I don't want to join E4E because I passionately resist the condescending leadership of two individuals who loved teaching and loved children so much that they quit to run a, um, "grassroots" organization. For that matter, I don't want to join E4E because I feel that they have not been honest about who is backing them and where their funding is coming from.

I don't want to join E4E because I hope to someday be a career educator who would like to enjoy the rights that I've paid to have defended (and in some cases, like my pension, actually paid for, myself, personally).

I don't want to join E4E because I have no reason to believe that there are vast armies of defective teachers against whom I must defend myself and my career. Is it still safe to say that I find most of my colleagues to be at least my equal in dedication, responsibility, intelligence, and professionalism?

I don't want to join E4E because I dislike having to sign a loyalty oath to attend an event that is billed as a "conversation." And I have to tell you, I heard about that on GothamSchools and assumed it couldn't possibly be true, so I went to their site and tried to sign up for the Mulgrew event without signing on to E4E itself. And it turns out that that's true. Say what you like about, say, the Tea Party--even they wouldn't require me to sign some statement of beliefs just to show up and hear someone talk.

Hear, hear.