NY Times Shills For Common Core

At the end of a Motoko Rich NY Times piece on how states are manipulating Common Core test scores comes this bit of shillery:

Despite the pushback, teachers here continue to infuse their lessons with Common Core principles.

In a seventh-grade English class at Berwick recently, Rashaun James had posted this thought, paraphrased from the Common Core: “Gather relevant information from multiple sources and draw conclusions.”

Her teaching methods were more creative than the dry standard suggested. Cordoning off a large space in the middle of the classroom with yellow caution tape, she had faked a crime scene, strewing dirt and gravel from the school garden across a large piece of butcher paper on which she had drawn outlines of two bodies and stamped footprints of shoes dipped in red paint.

Ms. James urged the students to analyze the clues and come up with possible victims, suspects and motives for an ultimate assignment of writing a narrative about the crime.

She was not too concerned how the assignment would affect test performance. In 10 years of teaching, she said, tests changed and policies came and went. The Common Core could “go away tomorrow,” she said.

“But does it make a difference in terms of whether I have a crime scene in my classroom?” she added. “There will always be a crime scene in my classroom.”

How is this lesson "infused" with Common Core principles?

Students were never asked to analyze clues before the advent of Common Core?

Students were never asked to "gather relevant evidence from multiple sources and draw conclusions" before the advent of Common Core?

Also would note, what is "Common Core" about asking students to "write a narrative"?

Students were never asked to write narratives before the Common Core Era?

Actually, given how much emphasis is put on argumentative writing these days, having students write a narrative seems like a pre-Common Core lesson to me.

I've tried to get out of the educator reporter-bashing business the past few years, having realized it's mostly counterproductive, but I have to say that the NY Times education coverage is awful.

Rich pieces in particular tend toward offering conventional education reform wisdom framed as reporting.

Family Of Murdered Fishkill Inmate Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against State Agencies And Employees

They should add Governor Cuomo to this list:

The family of Samuel Harrell, the mentally ill inmate whose death at Fishkill Correctional Facility has been ruled a homicide, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against a myriad of state employees and agencies.

The 36-page complaint filed late Tuesday includes 11 causes for action against everyone from the state Department of Corrections and Community Services and Office of Mental Health commissioners to named and unnamed DOCCS and OMH employees. The agencies themselves, as well as the state correctional officers union, also are named in the complaint.

Harrell’s death was detailed in a New York Times article last month. Many of the same details regarding the alleged beating he received while seemingly in mental distress are included in the lawsuit.

...

Fallout from the Times report has included a swapping-out of superintendents at the Dutchess County prison, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office taking on an investigation into Harrell’s April death and now the lawsuit.

Harrell's death is not the only allegation of prisoner abuse in the state prison system.

In August, the NY Times reported that 60+ prisoners at Clinton Correctional Facility have alleged they were beaten, choked and tortured by guards after two inmates escaped from the prison in June.

One of those prisoners was "stared down" by Governor Cuomo hours before he was taken to a closet, beaten, choked and threatened with waterboarding.

Just days before the Clinton Correctional story was reported in the NY Times, Governor Cuomo was given a criminal justice reform leadership award  from the Urban League by Hakeem Jeffries.

Since then, 60+ allegations of beatings and one homicide by guards in the state prison system have been reported by the NY Times.

Some leadership on criminal justice reform.

The Harrell Family deserves justice for the death of Samuel Harrell and New York deserves a prison system where prisoners aren't beaten, choked and killed with impunity by the guards.

Alas, what we have under Governor Cuomo is Gitmo on the Hudson.

Preet Bharara Launches Probe Into Homicide At State Prison

This news should throw chills into Cuomo:

ALBANY — U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating the death of an inmate at the state's Fishkill prison.

The Manhattan-based federal prosecutor said in a statement that a joint probe with Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady is investigating the death of Samuel Harrell, who died after several prison guards beat him, according to affidavits from more than a dozen other prisoners first reported by The New York Times.

State officials announced Tuesday that Fishkill was getting a new superintendent whose mandate would include reviewing “all safety concerns” in the building where Harrell died. The Correctional Association, an advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect state prisons, had called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a probe of conditions in the state's prison system, citing a “pervasive culture of violence and abuse.”

Spokespeople for the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The NY Times has reported over the past few weeks that there have been 60+ abuse allegations levied against guards at Clinton Correction Facility since June as well as allegations that a group of corrections officers known as the "Beat Up Squad" had beaten a prisoner to death at Fishkill prison, then covered the murder up by claiming he died of a complications from synthetic marijuana use.

Other than the Times and the Times Union, the abuse allegations and homicide were ignored by news media around the state.

The Daily News ignored the abuse allegations and the homicide even as they blasted Bill de Blasio and his handling of Rikers Island two days in a row on the front cover of the paper.

Same goes for New York politicos - for example, Criminal Justice Reform Warrior Hakeem Jeffries, who had just given Cuomo an award from the Urban League for his "leadership" on criminal justice reform issues, completely ignored the Clinton/Fishkill allegations.

With Bharara picking up the probe into the Fishkill homicide, the story ought to be ignored no more.

It's a big story and it needs to get the same attention that the Rikers abuse has gotten.

We'll see if it does.

Given that the story affects Cuomo and not de Blasio, I have a feeling it won't get the attention it deserves from either media or politicos.

That's how things have gone so far and I see no reason for any of that to change.

Hope I'm wrong - what's going on in the state prison system is horrendous, needs to be stopped and those responsible need to be brought to justice.

Opt Out Poses Serious Threat To Elites

You can hear how threatened the elites are by the Opt Out movement in the shrillness of this NY Times editorial attacking opt out as "an alarming...ill-conceived boycott."

The shriller the elites get in their pushback against ordinary citizens stepping up to protect themselves against the abuses of the state, the more you know how threatening that movement really is

The elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They have paid lip service to parent and teacher concerns over the Endless Testing regime but in the end have gone full steam ahead with it anyway.

Numerous complaints have been made about the badly designed Common Core tests based upon the fundamentally flawed Common Core "State" (Sic) Standards tied to the irrationality of the APPR teacher evaluation system, but the response from the elites has been "Shut up and take your tests - we know what is best for you!"

With the opt out numbers hitting the 20% benchmark (reformers love benchmarks) from 5% the year before, the elites know this "Shut up and take your test!" response isn't playing anymore, so they trot out the race card (the Opt Out movement is racist because it deprives children of color their civil right to a standardized test), they trot out the class card (they attack the movement as mostly white and affluent, though the opt out numbers from this year show that many of the districts where opt out was greatest were middle class) - anything to attack the movement and put an end to it.

Again, the elites know they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the Opt Out movement.

They used to ignore the movement, then mock it, as small and marginal, but that's hard to do now that the opt out rate has hit 20% and threatens to go higher next year.

They can try and hit districts with high opt out rates with sanctions, taking resources away from schools and children, but that doesn't seem like a politically palatable thing to do.

One thing they are loathe to do - actually listen to the criticism of parents and teachers and come to some real and legitimate compromise on education policy (not one of those phony Arne Duncan compromises that work like this - agree with Arne and now we have compromise!)

It will be interesting to see where the elites go now.

The threat is real, the threat is growing and shrillness in response isn't going to put an end to it, that's for sure.

NY Times Covers National Teacher Shortage, But Misses Point Of Why It's Happening

And so we've gone from "How do we fire teachers!" to "Gee, we can't find teachers!" in a pretty short period of time - even the education reporter at the NY Times noticed:

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers.

Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers.

...

Louisville, Ky.; Nashville; Oklahoma City; and Providence, R.I., are among the large urban school districts having trouble finding teachers, according to the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban districts. Just one month before the opening of classes, Charlotte, N.C., was desperately trying to fill 200 vacancies. 

But as is usual with the Times ed coverage, they screw up the story and miss why the shortage is happening:

Educators say that during the recession and its aftermath prospective teachers became wary of accumulating debt or training for jobs that might not exist. As the economy has recovered, college graduates have more employment options with better pay and a more glamorous image, like in a rebounding technology sector.

In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent between 2008 and 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.

Yes, it's true that a rebounding economy leads fewer people to go into teaching - there are more opportunities available for other kinds of work with "better pay and a more glamorous image."

But unexplored in the Motiko Rich Times piece is one big reason why teaching isn't a job with a glamorous image. - the consequences of 10+ years of corporate education reforms.

Every day you open the newspaper or turn on the TV, you see or hear some teacher-bashing crap, some politician like Christie saying he wants to punch teachers in the face, some rag like the Post blaming teachers for destroying the lives of children by using the Three Little Pigs as a DO NOW exercise to teach POV and bias.

Then there are the new "accountability rules" - the constant observations, the evaluation ratings tied to test scores (as high as 50%), the increased work load and stress for the same (or less) money, the decreased benefits, gutted pensions, and diminished work protections like tenure (Kansas is an emblem of this, but it's happening nationwide too.)

I'd say if kids are looking around at the job landscape and saying "Hell, I can do better than be a teacher!", they're right - and smart for saying it.

I teach seniors and I tell the ones who say they want to be teachers to think twice about the major - that teacher bashing and odious accountability measures (most of which simply add more work to a teacher's load without making them better teachers) make the job miserable these days.

I also tell them that teaching isn't really a career anymore, that the politicians and educrats and oligarchs who fund education reform see it as a McJob that can be filled by untrained temps who do it for a couple of years and move on (or get moved on by accountability measures) to something else.

To that end, the Times again:

Ms. Cavins, 31, who once worked as a paralegal and a nanny, began a credentialing program at Sonoma State University here in Rohnert Park less than a year ago. She still has a semester to finish before she graduates. But later this month she will begin teaching third grade — in both English and Spanish — at Flowery Elementary School in Sonoma. Ms. Cavins said she would lean on mentors at her new school as well as her professors. “You are not on that island all alone,” she said.

Esmeralda Sanchez Moseley, the principal at Flowery, said she could not find a fully credentialed — let alone experienced — teacher to fill the opening. “The applicant pool was next to nothing,” she said. “It’s crazy. Six years ago, this would not have happened, but now that is the landscape we are in.”

Before taking over a classroom solo in California, a candidate typically must complete a post-baccalaureate credentialing program, including stints as a supervised student teacher. But in 2013-14, the last year for which figures are available, nearly a quarter of all new teaching credentials issued in California were for internships that allow candidates to work full time as teachers while simultaneously enrolling in training courses at night or on weekends.

In addition, the number of emergency temporary permits issued to allow non-credentialed staff members to fill teaching posts jumped by more than 36 percent between 2012 and 2013.

At California State University, Fresno, 100 of the 700 candidates enrolled in the teacher credentialing program this year will teach full time while completing their degree.

“We don’t like it,” said Paul Beare, dean of the Fresno State school of education. “But we do it.”

Mission accomplished for education reformers - a cheap untrained temp workforce is soon going to be commonplace in schools, this will lead to an even bigger "teaching quality crisis" and allow reformers to promote privatization as the answer to the "education crisis."

Shame Motiko Rich missed the part of the story about how education reform has helped bring about the national teacher shortage.

But alas, this is another example of a Times ed article that only gets half the story: the "national teaching shortage" is reformer-generated and will serve the ultimate goal of may education reformers - to destroy the public school "monopoly" and privatize the public school system.

NY Times Doesn't Get That Full Literary Works Aren't Read In English Class Anymore

There's a pro-Common Core article in the NY Times today that makes the claim that Common Core has forced English teachers to teach something other than fiction and literature in English class and by golly, it's good.

The piece sets up a straw man argument that teachers only taught literature in English class before - and often badly at that, but Common Core forces them to teach lots of much more informative non-fictional texts in concert with literature:

Some teachers have resisted the changes. At Midwood High School in Brooklyn this year, the new assistant principal for English, Suzane Thomas, made the English teachers use the Common Core lesson plans offered by New York State, and some were not happy.

“There are several teachers who accused me of destroying the English department,” Ms. Thomas said. Previously, she said, teachers had been able to choose which books they wanted to teach, and many of them taught only literature. (She also noted that some teachers had taught the same books each year, no matter which grade they were teaching, so some students were being assigned the same books over and over again.)

Ms. Thomas said she believed many students were more interested in talking about real-world issues like genetic testing than about how a character changed over the course of a novel.

“I was in a class once and the bell rang, and the kids wouldn’t leave, because they were having a strong debate about whether privacy was more important than security,” she said.

That's right - before Common Core, teachers never paired non-fiction texts with the literature their classes were reading, they just taught the same books over and over again whether the students had already read them or not.

The Times reporter notes that because students are reading much more non-fiction in English class, some fiction has been cut, but she glosses over the real problem here -  that some students are going to come through the Common Core Era having read little or no full-length literary works at all.

Many schools are closely following the EngageNY ELA curriculum to get students ready for the ELA Common Core state test next year.

EngageNY does not value reading whole works of fiction at all - it picks and chooses parts of larger works, couples these excerpts with poetry, literary non-fiction or informational non-fiction, then focuses on close reading, annotation and evidence-based discussion and writing lessons that take the life out of the literature.

Back in 2013, I posted about an EngageNY module for 9th graders that spent 17 class days on one short story, Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.”

Here is how students "engaged" with the text:

The first day, they're excited to start a new lesson and read a story that seems to be about werewolves.

By the third day, they're bored by reading and discussing the same story for three days straight and starting to get antsy.

By the sixth day, they're outwardly hostile to the lessons and the teacher for teaching the lessons.

By the ninth day, they're totally disengaged from class and talk openly about how much they hate English.

By the twelve day, they no longer give a shit about anything - not the class, not the story, not the teacher, not the "assessment" (i.e., "test" for those of you who aren't fluent in reformy geekspeak) that is coming up on Day Seventeen.

By the seventeenth day, students complete the "assessment" with little regard to how they do on it because they stopped caring about the entire process somewhere between the end of Day Four and the beginning of Day Five.

Talk about taking the life out of the art - EngageNY certainly does that.

But what's worse, students who've been taught straight up from the EngageNY curriculum haven't read a full work of literature in high school.

Here was how one high school ELA teacher described the EngageNY curriculum and its approach to full works:

As a 9th grade ELA teacher following the Engage NY Curriculum, I have seen first hand how destructive it really is. For three weeks we have been close reading one story! For the first time, my 9th grade students are completely disengaged. How many times can you annotate the same passage?

I also believe now that these units are actually lowering the rigor of my class. We are now into the second marking period and have read one story and written zero essays. At this point last year my 9th grade class had written two essays, read 5 short stories, and were halfway through their first novel, and we were having fun doing it.

The end of the opening unit has students reading (only key scenes) from Romeo and Juliet and then showing the Baz Lerhman film to supplement. How is reading 5 scenes from Romeo and Juliet, rather than the whole play, more rigorous?

That same teacher has told me he has taught that same cohort of students in 10th grade and will be following them into 11th grade.

Students have been taught one EngageNY module each semester for a total of four EngageNY modules.

They have read a full work of literature only because the teachers revolted and pointed out that if they kept following the EngageNY modules, students wouldn't be reading a full work of literature ever in high school English class.

They would have read about 20% of Romeo and Juliet, but that's not reading the full work.

They would have read part of The Joy Luck Club, but that's not reading the full work.

They would have read most of Macbeth, but not quite all, as EngageNY jumps around a bit to focus on skills-based learning like close reading and argumentative writing on different parts of the play.

Reading a whole work of literature to nourish the soul, engage the spirit, encourage thought and reflection, jar some memory of shared experienced or, God forbid, take an opinion upon that isn't "rigorously" based in a close reading of the text - that's not part of high school English class anymore.

If it's not skills-based with an eye toward work-based skills, it pretty much isn't taught.

That's because the New York State ELA Common Core test contains lots of reading, 24 difficult multiple choice questions based upon those readings, an argumentative essay based upon four difficult (often arcane) informational texts, and one literary non-fiction reading that requires students to find a "central idea" in the text and show how it's developed through some literary device.

With teachers now having their careers tied to the scores from these tests, schools slated for state takeover if the test scores are bad, and students needing a 75 or higher in order to attend a four year CUNY school, it behooves to focus only on the skills that are tested and leave everything else out.

Reading full works of literature for pleasure and wonder?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum. 

Students writing personal responses to the literature they've read so that they can make some connections between themselves and the characters?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum. 

Students writing their own creative works to express themselves?

Gone from the curriculum - at least if it's the NY State EngageNY curriculum.

As an ELA teacher, I have no problem teaching non-fiction texts, either on their own or in concert with literature.

I do resent when a reporter for the NY Times writes a piece that is so full of pro-Common Core propaganda and PR bits that it sounds as if ELA Common Core architect David Coleman wrote it.

This Times piece makes it sound like the reason why some children and parents are finding Common Core English Language Arts dreary and soul-sucking is because schools and teachers aren't finding the right kinds of non-fiction to pair with literature to give students a broad experience with reading and writing.

The truth is, because the Common Core test in NY State assesses a certain kind of learning - close reading, mostly nonfiction reading, and argumentative writing (the argumentative essay on the CCSS test is worth a lot more than the literary analysis essay) - and because there are so many high stakes attached to the tests for students, teachers and schools, much of the wonder, excitement and allure of English class of old has been replaced by dreary, rote skills-based learning.

As an ELA teacher, I'm not opposed to teaching skills-based learning, indeed, I actually enjoy this and think it's a very important part of education, but it's also nice to have the freedom to teach a full work of literature that helps students to develop socially, emotionally and creatively too.

In the Era of the Common Core and the high stakes Common Core tests, that cannot be done anymore

Would have been nice if the NY Times reporter could have gotten into the story that we're going to have a whole generation of children come of age who haven't read much - or any - full length literature.

It will be interesting to see what the consequences of that will be in the decades to come.

NYSUT Writes To Cuomo, Tisch To Ask Why Charter Operators Get To Cancel School For A Political Rally

Via State of Politics, here is part of the letter Karen Magee and Andy Pallotta sent to Cuomo, Tisch and the shill who's filling in temporarilty for John King:

New York State United Teachers is seeking your views on several important questions raised by the upcoming Success Academy event. As a matter of policy, should Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc., as taxpayer-funded public schools, be permitted to close their doors and transport students, parents and staff to Albany for a rally? Even if they use substantial private funds, is this the “right thing for students?”

...

“If school boards and superintendents in the state’s nearly 700 school districts also wish to close en masse for a day and transport thousands of their students, parents and staff to Albany to lobby for additional state funding, would that be permissible? Would you consider closing traditional public schools for a rally to be good public policy and the ” right thing” for all students?”

Cuomo is of course on the charter school payroll, with charter operators and their supporters contributing significant amounts of money to both his campaign coffers and the state Democratic Party coffers (which has used that money to run ads promoting Cuomo and his agenda.)

He's also expressed much adminration for both charter schools and the people who own, er, run them.

So if I had to guess, I'd say he isn't upset at all that charter operators are closing their schools and heading up to Albany for some made-for-TV PR.

Especially since Cuomo himself was "pivotal" in last years "Let's Close Schools And Cheer For Charter Schools Rally" in Albany:

It was a frigid February day in Albany, and leaders of New York City’s charter school movement were anxious. They had gone to the capital to court lawmakers, but despite a boisterous showing by parents, there seemed to be little clarity about the future of their schools.
 

Then, as they were preparing to head home, an intermediary called with a message: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet.
 

To their surprise, Mr. Cuomo offered them 45 minutes of his time, in a private conference room. He told them he shared their concern about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambivalence toward charter schools and offered to help, according to a person who attended but did not want to be identified as having compromised the privacy of the meeting.
 

In the days that followed, the governor’s interest seemed to intensify. He instructed charter advocates to organize a large rally in Albany, the person said. The advocates delivered, bringing thousands of parents and students, many of them black, Hispanic, and from low-income communities, to the capital in early March, and eclipsing a pivotal rally for Mr. de Blasio taking place at virtually the same time.
 

...
 

At his prekindergarten rally, before a smaller crowd at the Washington Avenue Armory in Albany, Mr. de Blasio spoke about the value of early education. Not far away, a much larger crowd of charter school supporters was gathered on the steps of the State Capitol. In an act that his aides later said was spontaneous, Mr. Cuomo joined the mass of parents and students. 

“You are not alone,” he told the roaring crowd. “We will save charter schools.”

I'm glad to see NYSUT trying to put pressure on Tisch and Cuomo over the pro-charter rally, but these people are beyond shame, so I doubt it will get much of a reaction from them.

However it is good to get the news out there that charters are closing their doors on a school day and busing the kids up to Albany for a political rally.

Would the politicians who will speak at the pro-charter rally be so matter-if-fact if public schools closed on a school day and bused everybody up to Albany for a pro-public school rally?

I hope that question makes it into the press coverage of the pro-charter rally this week.

NY Times Should Look At Cuomo's Common Core Commission For Interference Too

The NY Times takes a look at Cuomo's first Moreland Commission - the post-Sandy panel that studied the failures of the electric companies during Hurricane Sandy and finds the following:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has faced intense scrutiny in recent months, including an investigation by federal prosecutors, over his management of a commission that he created to root out corruption in New York politics, but prevented from examining his administration’s conduct and then prematurely shut down.

 

An analysis of Mr. Cuomo’s handling of an earlier investigative commission, which highlighted the failures of electric companies in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, reveals some of the same hallmarks: interference, efforts to shield his administration’s role and a sense that the governor had a clear idea at the outset of what the commission should conclude.

Gee - what a surprise that Cuomo tampered with his LIPA commission, had a pre-determined outcome for what he wanted from the commission and worked to shield just what a sham the commission was.


These were also the hallmarks of Cuomo's Common Core Commission:

Todd Hathaway, a teacher at East Aurora High School and a member of the Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Common Core panel, ripped the process today after the panel released its report last night.

The recommendations include what Cuomo wanted: holding students harmless for the tougher exams, but not a three-year moratorium on using the tests to evaluate teachers.

The 11-member panel—which included two state lawmakers—said the state should keep Common Core-based tests in grades 3-8 from appearing on a student’s transcript, while capping the amount of instructional time that can be spent on standardized tests.

...

Hathaway said, “The report – and the process that produced it—is incomplete. the report was released suddenly, even as final comments were still being solicited. I had indicated the likelihood I would dissent and not allow the report to be spun as ‘consensus.’” Nevertheless, the report was issued with my name attached. I am very concerned that the report tries to make it seem like all the discussion had been completed.”

Here’s the rest of his statement:

“In fact, the Executive Office repeatedly ignored my concerns and the legitimate concerns of others about inappropriate state testing, the misuse of invalid tests for evaluations and the lack of transparency in state testing. The result is that some of the report’s conclusions and suggestions do not hold up to scrutiny. I wouldn’t accept this kind of work from my students and I don’t accept it here.”

“The failure to address testing and evaluation issues in a comprehensive way suggests the dynamics of the classroom will not change. The report seems to blame everybody else for the problems of the Common Core learning standards without adequately addressing the appropriateness of some of the standards and the testing that goes with it. This report should have addressed serious deficiencies in state testing. It should have discussed the lack of transparency in tests; the lack of diagnostic and prescriptive worth to teachers; the unacceptable delays in returning scores to school districts and the insanity of pretending there is validity to teacher ratings that are derived from student scores widely acknowledged to be invalid.”

“Finally, this panel should have recognized the need to pause in the use of assessments for high-stakes decisions for students and teachers. This would have allowed the State Education Department, as well as school districts, to refine the tests and testing materials; teachers to engage in the standards and develop a variety of lessons to meet them instead of just relying on modules; parents to understand the role and utility of data in education; and for teachers to receive the necessary professional development. Implementing massive curriculum changes do not just happen overnight. They take time. I fully support a delay in the use of tests in high-stakes decisions for students and teachers, but that issue was never fully explored. You can’t put students first if you put their teachers last.”

Cuomo knew what he wanted from the Common Core panel before it ever met.

It was a sham panel, just the way his first Moreland Commission was a sham commission, with the "findings" of the panel already pre-determined by Cuomo's needs and wants, just the way his second Moreland Commission was a sham commission.

I've covered this before, but it bears repeating:

The games Cuomo played with the Moreland Commission are the same games he played with the LIPA Commission and the Common Core panel.

Cuomo uses these commissions as political cover to get something he wants through, then rigs the panels and commissions so that it all ends up the way he wants.

The difference between the LIPA Commission and the CCSS panel and the Moreland Commission is, Cuomo was screwing around with potential criminality when he dealt away the Moreland Commission in order to get some minor league ethics reforms in the budget agreement.

With the other two panels, he was simply rigging a process and engaging in political gamesmanship, not dealing away criminal investigations in some quid pro quo budget deal.

That's why Preet Bharara wasn't going to look into the LIPA Commission or the CCSS panel process, but he is looking into just what Cuomo engineered in the Moreland mess.

Perhaps Cuomo, emboldened by four years of successfully manipulating these commissions and panels to get the outcomes he wanted, thought nobody would blink at his Moreland machinations either.

If so, Cuomo was wrong about that.

Too bad the Times Editorial Board doesn't read its own new section before it issues endorsements.

Maybe Cuomo wouldn't have gotten theirs.

NY Times To Lay Off/Eliminate 7.5% Of Newsroom Staff - How Come Opinion Page Columnists Are Immune From Cuts?

From the NY Times:

The New York Times plans to eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs, as well as a smaller number of positions from its editorial and business operations, offering buyouts and resorting to layoffs if enough people do not leave voluntarily, the newspaper announced on Wednesday. 

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the newspaper’s publisher, and Mark Thompson, its chief executive, said that in addition to the job cuts, NYT Opinion, a new mobile app dedicated to opinion content, was shutting down because it was not attracting enough subscribers.

The reductions, they said, were intended to safeguard the newspaper’s long-term profitability.

“The job losses are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times, but we know that they will be painful both for the individuals affected and for their colleagues,” the note said.

...

 

The Times has made cuts to its newsroom staff several times over the last six years. The paper eliminated 100 newsroom jobs in 2008, another 100 in 2009, and 30 more senior newsroom jobs at the beginning of last year.

It's interesting to me that every time layoffs are announced, the high paid columnists on the opinion pages are never part of the cuts.

How much are Brooks, Friedman, Dowd, and Kristoff making between them?

I bet you could save a couple of newsroom jobs by sending just one of them packing.

But it's never the high-priced neo-liberal whores on the opinion pages who get shown the door when cuts get announced.

How come that is?

Not saying I want to see the columnists lose their jobs (unlike some of those same columnists, who love the idea of firing teachers), but if it's between newsroom staff who are actually working for a living and these columnists who parrot neo-liberal talking points for a living, I'd rather see the columnists go.

Oh, and just to show you how warm and fuzzy capitalism is, the Times stock was up nearly 10% after the cutbacks were announced:

The announcements were welcomed by investors, with the company’s stock closing at $12.30, up $1.08, or 9.6 percent, after closing Tuesday at a 52-week low.

Lay people off, stock goes up.

The American Dream in a nutshell.

Why Isn't The Press Covering The Moreland Investigation Any Longer?

Thomas Kaplan reports many people around the state are taking the primary season to publicize their unhappiness with Governor Cuomo:

He has been snubbed by unions representing teachers and state workers. Editorial boards are skewering him. Political rivals are lobbing attacks from his left and his right.

A year ago, it looked as though Labor Day would mark the start of Andrew M. Cuomo’s smooth glide toward a second term as New York’s governor.

Now, Mr. Cuomo’s bid for re-election seems to have become more of a chore than a coronation.

Mr. Cuomo is expected to easily fend off a long-shot challenge by a law professor, Zephyr Teachout, in the Democratic primary next Tuesday. In November, his matchup against a Republican, Rob Astorino, the Westchester County executive, could wind up one of the most lopsided elections for governor in the country.

Instead of a nail-biting political contest, this year’s race has produced something else: months of grievances by union members, gun owners, liberal activists and others unhappy about Mr. Cuomo’s time in office.

Cuomo's shills tell Kaplan the complaints will all go away after he's re-elected:

At the same time, interviews with Democratic officeholders, labor leaders and political operatives suggest Mr. Cuomo’s unhappy days may be just that — a period of disquietude that will ultimately be overshadowed by a landslide victory in November.

“Would you rather not go through it? Of course you wouldn’t,” said Keith L. T. Wright, a state assemblyman from Harlem and the chairman of the Democratic Party in Manhattan. “But it’s a cost of doing business.”

Mr. Wright predicted Mr. Cuomo would emerge unscathed from his two electoral challenges. “It’s almost like a mosquito buzzing in your ear,” he said. “The question is, do you get the can of Raid or Off! and spray him? Or do you get the rolled-up piece of newspaper and smack him away? I think it’s a nuisance, because I don’t think either candidate is really up to his level.”

Nearly unstated in the article?

The Moreland investigation that US Attorney Preet Bharara is conducting.

What happens to Cuomo if he's re-elected but one or more members of his administration are indicted?

What happens if Cuomo himself is indicted. as has just happened to Rick Perry in Texas?

The Cuomo people want you to think his re-election is a done deal and once he's safely back in office for four years, he's going to settle all family business, helping the people and groups who helped him and damaging the ones who didn't.

That would be business as usual for Cuomo, but I'm not sure that's where things go.

Cuomo has been severely weakened by Moreland, the best he can hope for out of Bharara's investigation is a report that publicly criticizes him for horse trading away the commission for an on-time budget and there's an outside chance he's going to have deal with criminal cases against either himself or members of his administration.

I don't know why we're getting all these election horse race stories that deal with his re-election as a foregone conclusion but fail to mention the effect the Moreland mess will have on that.

Thomas Kaplan was one of the writers of the July Times story on Moreland that made the summer a very difficult time for Governor Cuomo.

Kaplan is very aware of the possibilities regarding Moreland, yet none of that showed up in the article.

It may be that neither side is leaking, so nothing's making it into the papers.

But what Bharara does with this Moreland investigation will have a large impact on what happens to Governor Cuomo for the next four years.

It Is Time To Revisit Cuomo's Charter School Budget Giveaway

Last legislative session, Governor Cuomo engineered a budget giveaway to his charter school campaign donors, forcing New York City to either co-locate future charter schools in public school buildings or pick up the tab for future charter schools on private property.

The charter school giveaway is expected to cost the city as much as $40 million dollars.

But Gotham Schools reports that a loophole in the law may mean the city has to pony up way more than that:

When Michael Duffy opened Great Oaks Charter School in a shuttered Catholic school building last year, he assumed he’d continue to pay rent as Great Oaks expanded, year by year, to eventually serve grades 6 through 12.

Starting this year, however, he’s hoping the city will pick up the tab.

Duffy’s newfound optimism comes months after the passage of a new state law that seemed to offer little to schools like his. The legislation grants some charter schools a right to publicly-funded space, but lawmakers said then that it would only help brand-new schools or schools that decided to apply for a new charter to add grades.

“The initial conclusion that I had was that it wouldn’t apply to Great Oaks because it would only apply to new schools,” said Duffy, who is the president of the Great Oaks Foundation. “I kind of put the issue aside.”

That changed in June, when the New York City Charter Center CEO James Merriman told charter leaders that he interpreted the law differently. And if the city accepts that reading of the law — or if the interpretation holds up in a legal dispute — the city could be on the hook for millions of dollars more in rent than it expected.

Merriman told school leaders that the law could also be read to include charter schools in private space that are adding grades under their current plans, like Great Oaks. The Center’s guidance on the law has encouraged schools to request that assistance from the city beginning this year, triggering a process that could mean big savings for the 45 charter schools that the Center says are still growing in private space.

When Cuomo pushed through the charter school giveaway in the budget fight last spring, he was coming from a place of political strength.

He had just engineered a slapdown to Mayor Bill de Blasio over charging charter schools rent, he had beaten de Blasio over the pre-K/tax issue, and, just to put an exclamation point on it all, had forced de Blasio to either find space for charters or pay rent for them in private spaces.

That was in the spring.

Now it's the summer - and Cuomo is no longer coming from a place of political strength.

Having had the NY Times publish a three page expose of how he meddled with the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption to ensure that his donors were left alone in any investigation and been publicly warned by the US Attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bharara, over witness tampering and obstruction of justice charges when Cuomo engineered public support from some Moreland Commissioners in order to use that support in his own public statements of defense, Cuomo is at the weakest point of his governorship.

The press around this has been brutal - the newspaper stories and editorial pages to be sure, but also the TV coverage.  Cuomo was savaged on Morning Joe all last week and the week before, Jon Stewart opened a show mocking Cuomo over Moreland.

Cuomo has been flailing about trying to find a response to the bludgeoning he's receiving, but that response - to coordinate statements of support from former Moreland Commissioners and use those as proof positive he didn't meddle in the commission's work - has made his plight even worse.

As Stephen Gillers wrote in The Nation last week in a piece entitled "Andrew Cuomo's Watergate":

Before Monday, I and others had been trying to figure out what statutes Bharara may have been looking at. Certainly, he could pursue evidence of corruption by state officials, including lawmakers, whom the commission had been investigating before it was dismissed, and about which it had files.
But Cuomo’s claim that he had a right to disband the commission, because it was “my” commission, did not seem to be a basis for federal investigation even if it was a politically foolish decision and defense.

Now, Bharara has a basis to investigate Cuomo himself and his aides. The statute would be 18 USC 1512(b) and possibly others. It is a crime to knowingly corruptly persuade another to keep information from an official proceeding. That’s the Arthur Andersen case in the Supreme Court, among others.

There is a sitting grand jury, which is an official proceeding, and former commissioners must have been aware that they could be witnesses even if not yet subpoenaed. Cuomo would also be so aware.

Bharara is warning Cuomo that any effort to coordinate a false story (of nonintervention) that these commissioners would tell the grand jury if called would be a federal crime. This is so even if their statements are so far only public statements, even if the effort fails because the commissioners don’t testify. The statute forbids attempts.

Now, as I say, it may all be innocent. The commissioners who spoke out, and who prior to doing so may have been contacted by the governor’s people to solicit their statements (Bharara says he “has reason to believe” they were), may have spoken truthfully with no “knowing corrupt persuasion” at play.

But Monday’s events put the governor is at risk in ways he was not before. The US obstruction statutes are incredibly broad. Whoever got the idea to coordinate the concurrent commissioner statements, assuming there was coordination and not a coincidence, and even if any such idea was entirely benign, may not have been aware of what they were handing Bharara for investigation.

What we have here now is a wounded governor, up for re-election but also under federal investigation, a governor just publicly chastened by the US attorney for potential tampering and obstruction charges and very much open to criminal indictment on those charges.

This is not a governor who can engineer the kind of giveaway he engineered for the charter school lobby last spring - and make no mistake, it was Cuomo who engineered that, as the NY Times made clear back in an April report:

It was a frigid February day in Albany, and leaders of New York City’s charter school movement were anxious. They had gone to the capital to court lawmakers, but despite a boisterous showing by parents, there seemed to be little clarity about the future of their schools. 

Then, as they were preparing to head home, an intermediary called with a message: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet. 

To their surprise, Mr. Cuomo offered them 45 minutes of his time, in a private conference room. He told them he shared their concern about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambivalence toward charter schools and offered to help, according to a person who attended but did not want to be identified as having compromised the privacy of the meeting.

In the days that followed, the governor’s interest seemed to intensify. He instructed charter advocates to organize a large rally in Albany, the person said. The advocates delivered, bringing thousands of parents and students, many of them black, Hispanic, and from low-income communities, to the capital in early March, and eclipsing a pivotal rally for Mr. de Blasio taking place at virtually the same time.

The moment proved to be a turning point, laying the groundwork for a deal reached last weekend that gave New York City charter schools some of the most sweeping protections in the nation, including a right to space inside public buildings. And interviews with state and city officials as well as education leaders make it clear that far from being a mere cheerleader, the governor was a potent force at every turn, seizing on missteps by the mayor, a fellow Democrat, and driving legislation from start to finish.

Mr. Cuomo’s office declined on Wednesday to comment on his role.

Cuomo's engineering of the charter school giveaway, not all that dissimilar in scope and intent from his Moreland meddling, saw him control events from behind the scenes, stage manage a rally to give the impression that the support for charters was bigger than it was (as Blake Zeff pointed out, the polling was actually with de Blasio), then push through a political outcome he wanted after some "negotiations" that already had foregone conclusions for how they would end.

Pre-Moreland mess, Cuomo could do this kind of engineering of political outcomes and stage managing of political events and get away with it.

Post-Moreland mess, he cannot.

In addition, as has been reported throughout the media last week, Andrew Cuomo is essentially friendless - he has few defenders in the time when he most needs them:

What the episode has done, people involved in government and longtime observers say, is make it OK, for the first time since Cuomo came to office, to defy him.

Where once other officials wouldn't publicly oppose the famously controlling governor, out of fear, they now will. Where once they would have flocked to his side, they'll now bide their time until they're satisfied that he's gotten a grip on things.

Bharara has very publicly seized control of Cuomo's narrative: Cuomo is no longer the white knight, he's the guy who reversed positions multiple times and presides over an administration under federal investigation. Just another Albany politician.

...

Added one Democratic strategist: “When they see [G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate Rob] Astorino do it, and [Democratic primary challenger Zephyr] Teachout, and now Preet—it will embolden people. He's basically had no real opposition for the last three years. People will start saying, 'He's not our ally, fuck him. Let's go after him.”

This mixes with an element of schadenfreude—indeed, the past weeks have offered the bubble's revenge. People in Albany knew about Cuomo's word-parsing, micromanagement and willingness to make threats, but have never before seen it called “fucking ridiculous,” or “ham-fisted” on national television.

This has been a fundamental thrust of both of his opponents: that Cuomo is arrogant and unliked. Now, they're also pointing to the Moreland mess to say that he's as bad as the ethically dubious politicians he's criticized.

In a post from last week, I wrote that

If you're opposed to Cuomo's policies, now is the time to strike against them and him.

The charter school giveaway Cuomo engineered in the spring could not happen any longer, not in this environment - it is time to try and walk some of that giveway back in the next session (especially now that Gotham Schools reports the city could be on the hook for a lot more money than was first thought)

It is also time to put more pressure on the governor and the Legislature over Common Core, testing and APPR - what is the governor going to do, tap another Common Core Commission to try and get his way on things?

The power and influence to "persuade" and "engineer" things behind the scenes that Cuomo exhibited for most of his first term is gone now.

So now is the time to push back against him, to push back against the policies he forced through in his first term.

Now is the time to say "Fuck him, he's not our ally! Let's go after him!"

And what I say is, it's about time. 

I'm doubling down on those statements today.

Now is the time to revisit Cuomo's charter school giveaway, particularly with the city on the hook for what looks to be millions more than originally forecast when Cuomo engineered the Eva Moskowitz budget back in the spring.

This will take some doing, of course - Cuomo thinks he's still got some juice and I'm under no illusions that either he or the charter school operators/hedge fund managers who back him are going to give back easily what was granted to them in the last budget giveaway.

But there has never been a better time to strike against Cuomo - before the election, while he remains under a "legal cloud," while politicians behind the scenes are saying "Fuck him, he's not our ally!"

Cuomo is politically wounded and vulnerable.

You can bet if the shoe was on the other foot, Cuomo would pounce on his enemies.

Let us seize the moment and pounce on Cuomo, Eva Moskowitz and the charter school giveaways Cuomo shoved through last spring.

Why Did The NY Times Edit Andrew Cuomo Statements Out Of The Libous Criminal Indictment Story? (UPDATED - 7/2 - 3:00 PM)

Here's the way the NY Times story on the indictment of State Senator Tom Libous, the second ranking Republican in the State Senate and a close friend and ally of Governor Cuomo, read this afternoon at 1:50 PM:

The indictment of Senator Libous effectively could deprive the governor of his most powerful and sympathetic ally within the Senate Republican majority. But it comes just weeks after Mr. Cuomo made a break of his own, agreeing for the first time to help Democrats in an aggressive effort to capture control of the chamber.

...

The senator is one of Mr. Cuomo’s closest allies in the Legislature. The two men are so fond of each other that Mr. Cuomo attended Matthew Libous’s wedding reception last year.

In an appearance at Binghamton University last week, Mr. Cuomo praised Mr. Libous at length, complimenting “his leadership and his character.” The governor praised their ability to work together to produce results, even though they are from different political parties, as an example of “the difference between the old Albany and the new Albany.”

“He is one of the really special human beings in the New York State Legislature,” Mr. Cuomo said of Mr. Libous. “And he is one of the natural leaders for the entire legislative body – Democrats and Republicans, both houses. And he’s been a great mentor and a great friend to me.”

Here's how the story reads tonight:

The indictment of Senator Libous could deprive the governor of his most sympathetic negotiating partner in the Senate Republican caucus, which has shared control of the chamber with an independent faction of Democrats. But it comes just weeks after Mr. Cuomo agreed to aid a renewed Democratic effort to capture control of the chamber.

In an appearance near Binghamton last week, Mr. Cuomo praised the senator for “his leadership and his character.” 

Notice the difference?

In the first edition of the story, it's clear just how close Cuomo is to the guy, calling him a "special human being," "a great mentor," and "a great friend".

In the second edition, gone is all the bromance language from Cuomo, replaced with Cuomo praising Libous for his "leadership and character."

Totally changes the takeaway from the story, no?

You have to wonder what happened between 1:50 PM this afternoon and the point when Cuomo's statements were edited out.

Or maybe not wonder - just what pressure did the Times get from Cuomo's people to pull those statements out of the story?

Thankfully, the Times has kept video of Cuomo complimenting Libous numerous times over the years on their site for now - video which you can see here.

Because the big part of this story is not just that the second ranking Republican in the State Senate was indicted for making false statements to the FBI back in 2010 - it's also that Andrew M. Cuomo's bestest buddy, the guy who was the "go-between" for talks between Senate Republicans and Cuomo, the guy who Cuomo called a mentor, a friend, and a special human being, is a crook and is now under indictment.

It's a shame that the Times took those Cuomo statements out of the story, because they tell you an awful lot about who Andrew Cuomo pals around with and what he considers a "special human being."

UPDATE - 7/2 - 3:00 PM: Azi Paybarah has the changes in the Times headlines between the two editions of the stories:

the @nytimes are a changing. #BeforeAndAfter cc @tmcgev @joepompeo @HuffPostMedia @brianstelter @onthemedia pic.twitter.com/dHT4cLXxsw
— Azi (@Azi) July 1, 2014

Would love to know what was said to the Times editors to get these changes in the story and headline.

OPEN THREAD: What Is The UFT/AFT Strategy To Counter Attacks On Teacher Tenure/Due Process Protections?

The NY Times published an attack on teacher tenure earlier in the week in an editorial and today the NY Post followed up with a sensationalized PERV TEACHER story that is meant to drive the "Reform Tenure" narrative and bring about political action.

The attacks on teacher tenure/due process here in NY State have begun in earnest.

What is the UFT/AFT response to these attacks?

Do they have any?

I have an idea or two as a response that I'll write about at length in coming days, but they're nothing you haven't heard before.

It's important for teachers unions and teachers groups to partner with parents and parent groups to engender good will and understanding within the state, the cities and the communities.

Attacks on teachers and due process protections are less likely to work, no matter how well funded they are, if teachers unions and teachers groups are partnered with parents and parent groups on issues in which they have mutually shared interests - like calling for lower class sizes, like fighting for more funding for education, like opposing Common Core, like the fight against Endless Testing.

Alas, our union leadership doesn't do the best job of outreach to even its own members, let alone parents and others outside the union.

On some of those issues - like CCSS and testing - they're on the other side from many parents and parent groups (and teachers, for that matter!)

So I don't see a whole helluva lot coming from the union leadership that gives me confidence that we can fight the coming attacks against tenure and due process protections here in New York.

What say you?

Any ideas how the unions should counter the coming attacks?

Any ideas how teachers can do it even when they're union leadership is either too inept, incompetent or uncaring to do it for them?

NY Times: Other Unions Pissed At Mulgrew, UFT Over Teacher Contract Details

The NY Times has an interesting report on what's holding up the contract announcement between the UFT and the city - the other unions:

Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York’s main teachers’ union are on the verge of announcing a deal to settle a nearly five-year labor dispute in which the union has sought more than $3 billion in back pay from the city.

The agreement would include retroactive pay equivalent to roughly 8 percent of salaries, annual raises of up to 2 percent a year and substantial savings for the city on health coverage, according to one official involved in the talks.

Three officials who insisted on anonymity because the deal had not been made final or announced said it could be disclosed at City Hall on Thursday; one official said the two sides would announce a nine-year contract.

...

 But officials warned that there could be last-minute snags because other municipal unions were weighing in with complaints that the raises given the teachers — which will probably set a pattern for the other unions — were too small and should be higher. Those pressures could cause some changes of the terms of the teachers’ deal.

...

 

Officials involved in the talks said the deal would address several major educational issues long in dispute, including the use of student test results in evaluating teachers’ performance, the length of the school day and the often-criticized pool of about 1,000 teachers who are still being paid even though their jobs have been eliminated because of school closings or for other reasons.

The officials said the teachers’ union had agreed to significant savings on health coverage that would not be made with cuts in programs or offerings and would not require an increase in premiums paid by city workers.

There could be difficulty, one official said, getting the city’s Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group of city unions, to approve the proposed health care savings, which generally must apply to city unions uniformly.

I'll reserve comment for now until we get more details about what's going on.

But let's just say, I wouldn't be surprised to hear the other unions are pissed off at Mulgrew and the UFT for screwing up the pattern.

Surprised These Poll Numbers Aren't Worse

A new Quinnipiac poll shows Mayor de Blasio under water in job performance:

Less than half of New York City voters approve of the job Mayor de Blasio is doing in his first three months in office, a mediocre rating that is well below his NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and City Controller Scott Stringer, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

Forty-five percent of voters said they approved of de Blasio's job performance, with 34 percent saying they disapprove, the poll found. Another 20 percent said they didn't know enough to form an opinion or didn't want to answer.

It's similar to results in a Marist poll out earlier this month, which found only 39 percent of voters thought he was doing a "good" or "excellent" job. A Quinnipiac poll from January had de Blasio with a 53-13 percent approval rating.

Hizzoner's latest numbers are much lower than ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg had at this point in his tenure. A Quinnipiac poll from March 27 2002 showed then-rookie Mayor Bloomberg with a 62 percent approval rating. Sixteen percent disapproved of Bloomberg in that poll.

A January Quinnipiac poll taken right after de Blasio was inaugurated found with a 53-13 approval rating, eight points above his current ranking.

Given that the attacks against de Blasio have been relentless and well-funded, from the Murdoch papers ginning up a snow controversy back in January, the attacks over "Forkgate" (when de Blasio ate pizza with a fork), "speedgate" (when the papers reported de Blasio's mayoral motorcade sped through the city a day after he pushed for new safety rules regarding speeding) and of course the infamous (and phony) "war against charters" that Eva Moskowitz and corporate media outlets claim he is waging, I'm quite frankly surprised he's not in the 30's in job performance approval.

And notice the Quinnipiac people putting the Bloomberg approval in there to stick it to de Blasio even more.

Two things to say here:

First, Bloomberg didn't have the media and charter school assaults de Blasio has taken since he was inaugurated, so the Bloomberg numbers don't mean all that much to me (especially since his fellow media moguls at the Times, Post, Journal and News all took it easy on him for most of his three terms - unlike what they've given de Blasio in his first few months in office.)

Second, there is still plenty of time for de Blasio to turn this around - but he must get better about handling the media, heading off controversies before they start, or, if that fails, putting them to rest after one media cycle.

He can't get beaten up too many more times before the meme that he is a failure as a mayor gets baked in.

If you missed it, Blake Zeff had a very good piece on where de Blasio should go from here at Capital NY.

NY Times: Teacher MUST Make Concessions on Seniority, ATR'S, Pay And Scheduling

Usual neo-liberal claptrap in the NY Times on the teachers contract.

The Timesmen want teachers to agree to get rid of salary steps and tie teacher pay to the new APPR teacher evaluation system ("highly effective" teachers would be paid more than other teachers - so what if the system is under attack all across the state, the Timesmen think pay should be based upon it.)

They want the union to throw ATR's under the bus.

They want seniority to be completely dispensed with for layoff decisions.

They want the union to agree to more "flexible scheduling" - i.e., a longer school day and longer school year.

They use all the propaganda nonsense ed deformers usually use to push this nonsense - charter schools outperform traditional public schools (not true according to state test scores), so traditional public schools should follow the lead of charters and increase days and time for longer classes and more teacher meetings.

Senior teachers are no better than younger, more inexperienced teachers and advanced degrees make no difference in teaching skill - all that matters is the final product (i.e., test scores.)

The Timesmen get one thing right in the editorial, however - UFT members are in a particularly sour mood these days - but they get the reason for that sour mood wrong.

It's true teachers are pissed that they haven't had a raise in four+ years, but it's even more true that teachers are pissed over all the concessions the UFT has granted to the state and the city via the APPR teacher evaluation system.

The UFT has already conceded on lost tenure protections (two "ineffectives" and you are fired is lost tenure protections), extra paperwork, extra meetings, mandated lesson plan formatting for Danielson (yes, I know they say it is not mandated, but if you don't do it the way Ms. Charlotte wants it done, you will be "i-rated"), and tying test scores to ratings (sure it's state law, but the UFT did not fight against that law.)

Now the neo-liberals at the Times (and you can bet elsewhere in this city too) want even more concessions to completely destroy what is left of the contract and give the powers that be the legal bludgeon they need to fire senior teachers whenever they want for whatever reason they want, get rid of steps and ladders and shove through merit pay, and add time and days to an already beleaguered teaching corps. - all for the 8% raise we were owed back as part of the old pattern.

I said it before, I will say it again - there must be NO CONCESSIONS in this new contract.

Not on days or time, not on steps and ladders, not on ATR's or seniority.

We have already given our concessions over the past four years and got stiffed on the last pattern raise.

It's fine for the neo-liberals to attempt to get these kinds of concessions in the next contract.

But you should let your chapter leader know that she/he should let the geniuses running the UFT know that if they agree to any of this stuff, there will be hell to pay.

And then you have to raise hell in your chapter to make sure rank and file teachers follow through on that hell the next time UFT elections roll around.

The NY Times Leads Off With Some Bloomberg Propaganda Today

Income inequality has skyrocketed in NYC during the 12 years Mayor Bloomberg raigned.

But if you read the NY Times opinion pages today, you learned just how much Bloomberg has done for poverty and how much more he will do not that he is freed from his municipal duties to focus on his "philanthropy" efforts.

And so, the inevitable post-Election Bloomberg Propaganda Juggernaut begins.

Ignore what your eyes and experiences tells you is so, instead listen to the magic words of the propaganda-meisters as they tell you how great Bloomberg is and was.

Geo Karo On The NY Times Sandanista Hack Piece On De Blasio

If you haven't seen Geo Karo's post on the hack job the NY Times did on Bill de Blasio the other day over the Sandanista bit, you should read it.

Geo says the Times took the FOX News route on this and I think that's exactly right.

That all three daily newspapers - the Post, the News and the Times - are attacking de Blasio daily should tell you something about the fears these people have over what a post-Bloomberg New York City will be like.

It seems unreasonable to me, as I wrote earlier today.

And yet, when you see how shrill they're getting, you can see how fearful they are.

NY Times Hit Piece On Bill De Blasio

Read Alex Pareene's take on the NY Times hit piece on de Blasio as a closet Sandanista.

Here's a bit:

The New York Times dropped a bombshell last night: As a young man, Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Bill de Blasio was… pretty left-wing. And he supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And he once was in favor of democratic socialism. The Times presents this information as something they uncovered, as if de Blasio had somehow hidden it.

In fact, de Blasio has spoken publicly about his time in Nicaragua as recently as last December. But the story of de Blasio’s youthful activism is interesting and not that widely known — I didn’t know about it, and I have actually been paying a decent amount of attention to this race — making it great material for a brief biographical sketch of the candidate as an idealistic young man.

This brief biographical sketch, though, sounds a bit like opposition research, or at least like an attempt to “shake up” the race and force the candidate to answer questions about his Commie past. It’s got hints of that very sober but slightly inflammatory tone that the Times puts on when it’s causing trouble. De Blasio, we’re told, “went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.” Unfettered! I don’t like the sound of that.

The Times says “[de Blasio's] time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known” (this is the declaration that the information in this article is relevant news and not just old stories) “and far more political than typical humanitarian work.” Yes, because it was… activism? I mean what is “typical humanitarian work” here, exactly? De Blasio was working with the Quixote Center, a Catholic social justice group that fights poverty and economic inequality and that is inspired by liberation theology. This is actually very typical humanitarian work, and Catholic groups in particular have been doing it for years.

I'm surprised the Times didn't launch this against de Blasio in the primaries. 

It is clearly a hit piece meant to damage him, as they deploy unnamed critics and some anonymous sources to tar de Blasio as a commie pinko.

But I'm with Pareene here - the story makes me like de Blasio even better.

Frankly, I always assumed he was some DLC Clinton-type just talking the progressive talk to get elected.

He may be doing that anyway, but it's good to know that he once did humanitarian work down in Nicaragua and stood against Apartheid and Reagan's illegal Contra war.

Also, as Pareene points out, there are plenty of Republicans out there who supported apartheid, Pinochet, and a host of other evil things back in the day and that stuff never gets reported as "So and so supported racist Apartheid policies and CIA assassination squads."

It's interesting how having a "lefty" past is a crime to the Times but flirting with fascism back in the day just warrants a yawn.