If This Was What Day One Of The Trump Administration Was Like...

Joe Scarborough, GOP shill and Trump bootlicker, on how Day One of the Trump administration went:

The Trump Administration's 1st day was deeply troubling to intel agents, journalists and allies. For the sake of all, Day 2 must be better.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) January 22, 2017

Here was the "failing" New York Times (as Trump likes to term it) on how Day One went in a piece entitled With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift:

WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd.

In a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency intended to showcase his support for the intelligence community, Mr. Trump ignored his own repeated public statements criticizing the intelligence community, a group he compared to Nazis just over a week ago.

He also called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” and he said that up to 1.5 million people had attended his inauguration, a claim that photographs disproved.

Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the press secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where Mr. Spicer scolded reporters and made a series of false statements.

He said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday in an attempt to sow divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country, warning that the new administration would hold them to account.

 The statements from the new president and his spokesman came as hundreds of thousands of people protested against Mr. Trump, a crowd that appeared to dwarf the one that gathered the day before when he was sworn in. It was a striking display of invective and grievance at the dawn of a presidency, usually a time when the White House works to set a tone of national unity and to build confidence in a new leader.

Instead, the president and his team appeared embattled and defensive, signaling that the pugnacious style Mr. Trump employed as a candidate will persist now that he has ascended to the nation’s highest office.

Here's what Day One looked like on the Washington Mall as hundreds of thousands protested Trump as part of the Women's March :

Overhead shot in Washington, D.C. shows massive crowds in every direction rallying for Women's March on Washington https://t.co/o3Al1Fo3N4 pic.twitter.com/3MxtAbOTDD

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 21, 2017

Millions across the country (and the world) took to the streets in similar protests:

NYC today. 42nd and 2nd. pic.twitter.com/vgiLljt7Bs

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) January 21, 2017

An aerial view of the Chicago #WomensMarch right now (+150k people). pic.twitter.com/0OufEmSWU2

— Zach Stafford (@ZachStafford) January 21, 2017

This is happening at the #WomensMarch in #Denver. Media can air the prayer farce all they want. You won't ignore us! pic.twitter.com/2CBPAZc7mK

— sammyemerson (@sammyemerson) January 21, 2017

We’re in a helicopter high over the #WomensMarch in Boston. Watch on Facebook Live https://t.co/6UvxfnW14A pic.twitter.com/HPZgpX9ihL

— CNN (@CNN) January 21, 2017

Thank you Los Angeles for marching (and standing 😉) today. #HearOurVoice #WomensMarchLA pic.twitter.com/eSDrJ65Kq5

— Women's March LA (@wmnsmarchla) January 22, 2017

Blown away by the crowd sizes https://t.co/RMy9ksWVJN

— Andrew Fishman (@AndrewDFish) January 22, 2017

Day Two picked up where Day One left off, with embattled Trump shills still spewing lies, propaganda and horseshit:

"Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods," Chuck Todd tells Pres. Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway this morning. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/Ao005dQ13r

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 22, 2017

If this is how the beginning of the Trump administration is going, imagine what will happen when there is a real crisis to handle?

Some are worried that Trump has rendered truth and facts moot, that he has inaugurated a post-truth society wherein his deplorables will always believe him over their lying eyes and continue to go to the mattresses to protect him:

Re Spicer's lies, this is from someone who worked in a past administration. Important read. pic.twitter.com/XrjLJHRAGL

— Anna Rascouët-Paz (@rascouet) January 22, 2017

There's something to this, of course, but Trump is beyond the campaign now and while there will be a certain percentage of deplorables who stick with him no matter what, there is a level of incompetence and insanity going on here that anybody who isn't completely incompetent and/or insane themselves will eventually see (if they haven't already.)

It's clear from yesterday that Trump is in way over his head, that he is incapable of growing into the job and that he is going to govern abysmally.

It is also clear from yesterday that A) the opposition to Trump is large and growing and B) many in the media are not going to take bullshit from the Trumpsters lying down without calling them on it.

Conservatives and wingers want Trump to get on with the job of gutting the government - but the fatal flaws in Trump's character may be the best defense against that:

@RMConservative @ShannonJoyRadio You understand that w/ Trump, that's what he cares most, yes? Crowd size, ratings, etc

— rbe (@perdidostschool) January 22, 2017

@RMConservative @ShannonJoyRadio If you supported DT, you will own the insanity of next 4 yrs. Yesterday was a preview.

— rbe (@perdidostschool) January 22, 2017

In sum, Benjamin Dixon on how best to combat Trump:

The easiest path to Trump's self-destruction is his ego. https://t.co/7KdjbsEcvP

— Benjamin Dixon 🌹 (@TheBpDShow) January 22, 2017

And would add:

This ridiculous whining by Trump and Sean Spicer is a pretty clear sign the pressure is working. Keep it up, everyone.

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) January 21, 2017

Moskowitz Presser Addressing "Got To Go" List Allegations Is Theater Of The Absurd

Melodrama, Moskowitz-style, via Eliza Shapiro at Politico NY:

Eva Moskowitz said Friday that she will not fire the Success Academy principal who created the "got to go" list of struggling students he wanted to leave the school, as documented in a widely read New York Times article.

"At Success, we simply don't believe in throwing people on the trash heap for the sake of public relations," Moskowitz, the charter network's CEO, said during a press conference convened to respond to the Times piece.

Moskowitz said she had received "a lot of P.R. advice" suggesting that she fire the principal, Candido Brown.

Brown sobbed throughout the press conference, apologized for creating the note and said he was not directed to do so by any of his managers. He left before the event ended.

Brown and Moskowitz were flanked by dozens of Success principals, several of whom wept, and others who stood with their arms folded, looking stonily at the reporters before them.

While Moskowitz said she would not yield to pressure to fire Brown, reporters were handed print-outs of an email Moskowitz sent in which she describes Brown as "stubborn and somewhat dense."

"The normal intellectual explanation or boss tells [sic] to do something does not get through," Moskowitz added, in an email from December 2014.

That email was part of a thread that was meant to demonstrate to reporters that Brown was properly reprimanded after the "got to go" list was discovered by high-level Success administrators.

Moskowitz noted that Brown was immediately called into a meeting and was censured for creating the list.

Shapiro goes on to report that Moskowitz canceled another appearance today and that no one in the charter world would defend her (other than James Merriman who defended her yeserday in the Times story.)

Ah, if only Arthur Miller were alive to dramatize this story for the stage.

So basically Moskowitz throws the "dense" principal under the bus for putting into writing what is Success's push-out policy, but gets him to stay around so she can say that Success doesn't "throw people onto the trash heap."

Moskowitz also claims this "Got To Go" practice at SA Fort Greene was an anomaly that only happened at that one school. 

What a show!

I have a difficult time seeing how this helps Moskowitz long-term - it simply adds to the bad reputation, with the SA staff staring stonily at the press as the sacrificial lamb/dense principal cries through a press conference while also laying down a marker for the press to follow up on.

If the push out practice was an anomaly, then it had better not show up anywhere else.

The Taylor Times story reported that the practice did indeed happen at other schools.

Other news organizations have reported the same (see here, for example.)

That's a road map for reporters to follow to prove that the push out practice was not an anomaly, that it goes to the core of what Success does.

I can't wait to see what kind of press response Eva puts on if more stories of push out follow this one.

One final thing to say about Eva - you can see why the powers that be didn't want her to run for mayor and why they're not defending her now.

Not only was this the kind of scrutiny she was going to get as a mayoral candidate, but clearly, given the insane press response she put on today, she's not exactly the best at defusing these situations.

It's not going out on too much of a limb to make a prediction that Eva gets the heave-ho from Success if this stuff continues.

Just as Michelle Rhee was dispensable to the hedge fund managers/education reformers, so is Eva Moskowitz.

She's doing more damage than good to the charter/privatization cause - don't be surprised if there's not a lot of pressure behind the scenes from the SA sugar daddies to push her out.

Daily News Declares War On Teachers And Parents Who Are Critics Of Corporate Education Reform

The Daily News editorial page is certain that Governor Cuomo MUST not decouple student performance from teacher evaluations:

Gov. Cuomo’s sudden call for a “comprehensive review” of New York’s use of the Common Core educational standards stands as a loud warning that the drive for teacher accountability is in dire jeopardy.

...

What Cuomo should now clearly state is not what is on the table but what’s off it. Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia should join him in laying down non-negotiables:

They will not bend on ensuring higher standards that closely track Common Core guidelines developed over many years by the nation’s top education experts.

And that they will not accept any attempt to decouple student achievement gains, as measured primarily through rigorous state tests, from teacher ratings.

The teachers union, petrified about finally being subjected to serious evaluations, has played a skillful and cynical game in amplifying anti-Common Core anxieties among parents and legislators.

Stunningly, Speaker Carl Heastie, who represents the Bronx, has gone along with a suburban-based movement that works to the disadvantage of the city’s largely minority student body.

Kids in struggling schools have for years been plagued by low expectations and too many lower-performing teachers.

For their sake, supporters of higher standards for kids and more accountability for teachers must gird for war.

Did the Daily News just declare war against parents and teachers in this state who are opposed to the corporate education reform agenda Cuomo, NYSED and the Regents have imposed?

They did indeed - and of course, they do so with a straw man argument that attempts to paint teachers as children who wish to skirt accountability and parents who go along with critiques of the APPR teacher evaluation system as dupes of the teachers union.

Another straw man argument from a pro-reform newspaper editorial board about teacher evaluations - gee, what a surprise.

Let's dispense with the straw man argument that teachers don't want to be evaluated.

Teachers are not afraid of evaluations - we're afraid of an irrational evaluation system that has an adverse affect on our jobs, professional reputations, and ability to take care of our families.

Cuomo's vaunted APPR teacher evaluation system - the one the reformers at the Daily News love so much - is currently in the courts with a judge deciding whether to toss part or all of it onto the junk heap because it is an irrational system set up not to fairly evaluate teachers but rather one that uses a value-added method that NYSED refuses to explain, that often seems inexplicable (more on this in a moment) and is rigged to find at least 7% of teachers "ineffective."

Sheri Lederman, 19 year veteran teacher, sued the state over her APPR VAM because she went from 14 out of 20 on her state test component to 1 out of 20 in a year - even though her students performed similarly on their tests in both years.

Lederman, who was rated "effective" overall on her evaluation, nonetheless was given an "ineffective" rating on her state test component, something that now matters a lot since Governor Cuomo has insisted the state test component should count for 50% of a teacher's evaluation.

Here's Carol Burris in the Washington Post explaining the irrationality of the system and how it played out in the Lederman court case:

The exasperated New York Supreme Court judge, Roger McDonough, tried to get Assistant Attorney General Galligan to answer his questions. He was looking for clarity and instead got circuitous responses about bell curves, “outliers” and adjustments. Fourth-grade teacher Sheri Lederman’s VAM score of “ineffective” was on trial.

The more Ms. Galligan tried to defend the bell curve of growth scores as science, the more the judge pushed back with common sense. It was clear that he did his homework. He understood that the New York State Education Department’s VAM system artificially set the percentage of “ineffective” teachers at 7 percent. That arbitrary decision clearly troubled him. “Doesn’t the bell curve make it subjective? There has to be failures,” he asked.

The defender of the curve said that she did not like the “failure” word.

The judge quipped, “Ineffectives, how about that?” Those in attendance laughed.

Ms. Galligan preferred the term “outlier.” Those who got ineffective growth scores were “the outliers who are not doing a good job,” the attorney said. She seemed oblivious to the fourth-grade teacher who was sitting not 10 feet away from where she stood.

“Did her students learn nothing?” Justice McDonough asked. “How could it be that she went from 14 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points in one year?” He noted that the students’ scores were quite good and not that different from the year before.

Back behind the bell curve Ms. Galligan ran. As she tried to explain once again, the judge said, “Therein lies the imprecise nature of this measure.”

...

Lederman was not the only teacher in the school to get a poor score. In 2014, 21 percent of the staff at E.M. Baker School received a score of “ineffective,” 21 percent “developing” and 57 percent were “effective.”  Just the year before, not one teacher received an “ineffective” score.

The irrationality was not limited to the teachers of Sheri Lederman’s school, one of the highest performing elementary schools in the state. In 2014, 44 percent of the teachers of the Fox Meadow School in Scarsdale received growth scores that said they were not “effective” teachers with 22 percent rated “ineffective.”  Yet 61 percent of the school’s students were proficient in English Language Arts, and 75 percent were proficient in math—more that double the state’s proficiency rate.   Similar results were found at the high-achieving Harbour Hill School in Roslyn, where 36 percent of its teachers received growth scores that labeled them “ineffective.”

The Lincoln School in Rochester, is a school designated as a priority/failing school by the state. Its proficiency rate was less than 3 percent. In 2014, 100 percent of its teachers received “effective” state scores, with 7 percent being rated “highly effective.”  At another school facing receivership, The Martin Luther King Jr School in Utica, New York, 60 percent of the teachers received “effective” VAM scores and 40 percent were given VAM scores of “highly effective .”

I point out these dramatic differences not to disparage or embarrass the teachers of any school, but rather to shine a light on the irrational state-produced teacher scores based on the New York Common Core tests. For more information on the unreliable manner in which these scores functioned in 2013 and 2014, read here.

Bruce Lederman argued the irrationality of that rating system before the court. He laid out a careful, systematic argument. He was not opposed to evaluation. He was not even opposed to evaluation based on a measurement of student learning growth. He objected to a rating created in a black box that spit out predictions that compared his wife’s students to “avatar students.” He was disturbed that when questioned, that system responds with “because we say so.” He noted that “the magic of numbers brings a suspension of common sense.”

“There is nothing in the law that requires a bell curve,” he argued. He explained that a bell curve with its forced failures violates that law that requires that every teacher must be able to get all scores. Not only did he want the court to set aside his wife’s score, he wanted the court to “declare the measure an abuse of discretion” because “the State Education Department does not get a pass on unreasonable and irrational actions.”

NYSED never showed cause for why Lederman received the 1 out of 20 on her VAM score the year after she received 14 out of 20.  They instead tried to have the Lederman case dismissed twice (here and here), arguing there was no harm to Lederman because she was rated "effective" overall despite the "ineffective" VAM score.

But the evaluation system that the Ledermans have put on trial has been made that much worse by Governor Cuomo and the Legislature this year, with test scores now increased to about 50% of a teacher's evaluation rating, so the "irrationality" of the state's APPR VAM matters greatly and a decision by the judge to declare the measure "an abuse of discretion" will have serious consequences for the governor, the Legislature, the Board of Regents, NYSED and teachers and schools all across the state.

But not for the reformers at the DN editorial board.

They want teachers held "accountable" for student performance, the rationality, sanity and justice of the evaluation system be damned, and so, they publish a straw man argument in today's paper to warn Cuomo they will not be happy if his teacher evaluation system is changed and warning that "war" coming between reformers and the rest of the system.

BTW, Sheri Lederman got her latest APPR teacher evaluation rating from the state and her state test component VAM has again changed drastically - she received an 11 out of 20 on it.

So from 14 out of 20 to 1 out of 20 to 11 out of 20 in three year's time.

That's some trend.

How exactly do the reform-friendly writers at the Daily News defend a system that jumps around like that?

Reality is, they don't - they simply ignore the problems with the system, smash their proverbial fists down onto their desks, insist upon "teacher accountability!" and "gird for war!"

A shameful editorial, but just the kind of thing we can expect from education reformers as they desperately try to save their precios education reforms.

Online Pre-K - The Next Frontier In Education Reform

Given the excitement by the investor class over online, for-profit education, you knew this was inevitable:

WASHINGTON—Saying the option is revolutionizing the way the nation’s 3- and 4-year-olds prepare for the grade school years ahead, a Department of Education report released Thursday confirmed that an increasing number of U.S. toddlers are now attending online preschool.

“We found that a growing number of American toddlers are eschewing the traditional brick-and-mortar preschools in favor of sitting down in front of a computer screen for four hours a day and furthering their early psychosocial development in a virtual environment,” said the report’s author, Dr. Stephen Forrest, who said that the affordability and flexibility characteristic of online pre-primary education are what make the option most appealing, allowing young children to learn their shapes and colors on a schedule that works best for them.

“With access to their Show-And-Tell message boards, recess timers, and live webcams of class turtle tanks, most toddlers are finding that they can receive the same experience of traditional preschooling from the comfort of their parents’ living room or home office. In addition, most cited the ability to listen to their teacher’s recordings of story time at their own pace as a significant benefit of choosing an online nursery school.”

Forrest added that, despite their increasing popularity, many parents remain unconvinced that online preschools provide the same academic benefits as actually hearing an instructor name farm animals and imitate their noises in person.

Okay, the story is from The Onion and it's a parody.

But given the push for online schooling from the reform movement and Wall Street, it may not be parody for long.

NY Times: APPR Teacher Evaluation System Complete Mess In NYC

Left another tweet for Sheriff Andy, this time with a link to a NY Times story chronicling the mess that it is his APPR teacher evaluation system:

@NYGovCuomo APPR eval system total madness. Time to change it or vote out pols who support it! http://t.co/BsOWZhNoeY
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 23, 2013

Add The SLO's And The City Tests To Next Year's Battery Of State Tests

A parent made the following comment on the Newsday article about the Opt Out movement:

My son gets almost 90's on every one of his "real" tests. He doesn't need to sit for 420 minutes of standardized testing in April, nor countless dozens of other hours for SLOs, benchmarks, field test questions and what every else they throw at these kids that is NOT used to determine a report card grade.

While outrage is beginning to grow over the state tests, let's not forget that this coming school year children may have to sit for city "assessments" as well as the state standardized tests.

The city "assessments" will be used to grade not children but their teachers, as required by APPR.

Not every school will be using the city "assessments."

Some may choose to develop their own "assessments" or may use some variable of the state tests that have not been used to calculate the state testing component of teacher evaluations.

But the point still stands: Students will be facing multiple standardized "assessments" in every grade in every subject so that their teachers can be evaluated per the new APPR system imposed by John King and hailed by Michael Mulgrew and the UFT.

If anything, the APPR insanity that requires teachers to be evaluated by both state measures and local measures adds strength to the Opt Out movement.

If parents are already upset over what the state has done to state testing regime, wait until they see city "assessments" added to the school year, along with the Pearson field testing, the state standardized tests, and the various other reformy measures like Student Learning Objectives (SLO's) that kids will be toiling away at not to improve their knowledge or skills but simply so their teachers can be evaluated and the NYSED and the Regents can expand their school privatization agenda.

Bloomberg: We're Lucky The CityTime Crooks Ripped Us Off!

Yeah, he said it:

New York City is lucky it got ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the CityTime scandal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning.

Mr. Bloomberg’s argument was that because the fraudsters agreed to pay the city back $500 million after being hounded by federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Investigation, the project of modernizing the municipal payroll system ended up being a bargain.

“That whole system cost us something like only a 100 million dollars and it should have been many times that,” he said. “We were lucky because of the fraud. And in the end it turned out, because of the recovery, we saved a lot of money.”

The mayor arrived at this topic after defending the city’s much-maligned 911 system, which has been barraged with reports of dysfunction and shutdowns. Mr. Bloomberg compared the two cases and maintained the system was working just fine.

“When was the last time you heard a complaint about the basic accounting system for the municipal workforce that has something like two thirds of all municipal workers on it? None one. Not one complaint,” he said, latter adding, “It certainly works and this 9/11 system certainly works as well. Will there be glitches? Computer systems all the time have glitches. Nothing’s perfect.”

A little 4 year old girl died during one of those 911 system "glitches".

Bloomberg's response?

Oh, well - what can you do?  Nothing's perfect...shit happens...

I'm sure he believes his own b.s. here that the CityTime fraud was awesome because it ended up saving the city money and the new 911 system is working swimmingly despite the half dozen crashes a day it's been having and the dead 4 year old who just might have been saved had the system worked like it was supposed to work.

He's clearly delusional and divorced from reality at this point in his life and I wouldn't be surprised to see him diagnosed with some kind of disorder or dementia in the coming years.

Politicker: Lhota Calls Bloomberg Education Results "Incredible"

Bizarre speech from former Giuliani budget director Joe Lhota:

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota heaped praise on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education legacy in a speech this morning, commending the current mayor for achieving “incredible” results, and admonishing his Democratic rivals for failing to give him equal praise.

Mr. Lhota pointed to a smattering of improvements on state tests, as well as the city’s jump in graduation rates–which actually dipped slightly this year.

“I believe these results are incredible,” said the former deputy mayor, speaking at an Association for a Better New York breakfast at the New York Hilton Hotel in what was billed as the first major policy speech of his campaign. Coincidentally, the remarks came a day after the city’s powerful teachers’ union endorsed former Comptroller Bill Thompon, who has promised to roll back many of Mr. Bloomberg’s most controversial policies.

But Mr. Lhota criticized the union’s the influence, and argued that when crime dropped under his old boss Rudy Giuliani, electeds fell “all over themselves to join in taking credit.” Today, he said, Mr. Bloomberg has been forced to stand alone, without the support of the Democrats vying to succeed him, or the teachers’ union.

“I look at the great success of the Bloomberg administration with the education system in our City and I ask, ‘Where are the other elected officials?  What are they saying? Where is the support of these officials for the achievements of Mayor Bloomberg. Why aren’t they rallying around him?’” he said.

“The answer is: They are afraid.”

Unlike the Democrats running, he said, “I will not pander to the union. I am willing to cooperate with the UFT, but labor should not expect me to give them a backrub in an election year like so many other candidates.”

Nothing incredible about Bloomberg's education policies or achievements.

Everybody knows the test scores plummeted to earth a few years ago when the state revealed Richard Mills and his merry Regents (including Merryl Tisch) were inflating the test scores like the real estate market circa 2006.

Everybody knows the graduation rates are horse@#$%, artificially inflated by credit recovery programs that had students reading Spiderman comic books, watching Spiderman movies and comparing the two for semester credit.

Everybody knows that the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Latino students is as large now as when Bloomberg and Klein first took over the school system.

Everybody knows these things - except for Joe Lhota, who apparently does not know these things.

But what can you expect from a guy who challenged a 77 year old man to a fist fight at an MTA board meeting? 

This is not exactly a rational or sane man we're dealing with here.

Lucky for us he has little chance to become mayor.

They Don't Trust Teachers To Mark Their Own Tests, But They Trust Them With Guns?

I don't get this - at all.

Oregon State Representative Dennis Richardson sent the following to three school superintendents on the day of the Sandy Hook shootings:

From: "Rep Richardson"
Subject: RE: Preventable Tragedy in Connecticut
Date: December 14, 2012 2:53:06 PM PST
To: [redacted]
[redacted]:
The Sandy Hook shootings are another heart breaking failure of school personnel to ensure the protection of innocent children and adults. Sadly, most of the deaths could have been prevented.
If I had been a teacher or the principal at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and if the school district did not preclude me from having access to a firearm, either by concealed carry or locked in my desk, most of the murdered children would still be alive, and the gunman would still be dead, and not by suicide.
When will our school officials open their eyes to the reality that law enforcement officers, in such instances as these, can respond only after the unfettered killings have occurred, and that our children's safety depends on having a number of well-trained school employees on every campus who are prepared to defend our children and save their lives?
Dennis Richardson

 Richardson has been a critic of teachers in the past, saying that they use students as "pawns" to garner higher salaries and concessions from the school district:

I cannot remain silent when surrogates for a teachers’ union encourage 100 Eagle Point High School (EPHS) students to break school rules, march off campus and stage a protest to “respect the teachers.” Such a stunt, implicitly intended to pressure the school district to accept the union’s final offer and avoid the strike that the union called, is despicable. Notwithstanding the misinformation given to the students, the impasse in collective bargaining has everything to do with money and power, and nothing to do with respecting the good teachers of EPHS. 

Eagle Point, a southern Oregon community of 8500, has become the most recent community facing the battle between public unions and public school districts. The dispute is over how limited tax resources should be spent, and after a year of collective bargaining negotiations, the teachers and classified workers at Eagle Point School District 9 are scheduled to walk out of the E.P. schools and strike.

...

In response, the unions call for a strike and focus on generating propaganda to coerce public agencies to cave under misinformed pressure from the media and public—even using children for union purposes. I’ve seen this done at the Capitol when young children were brought in to beg legislators to vote for higher allocations to the State K-12 Budget. Now we are seeing Eagle Point High School students being used as pawns for the teachers’ union. 

It is time for such antics to stop. The unions are all about maintaining power and getting concessions for their members—I understand that. Nevertheless, public agencies and school districts cannot just raise the price of their products or move production off-shore like businesses would to deal with escalating labor costs.

 

Interesting that Richardson apparently believes teachers are capable of filling their students' heads with "misinformation" about budget cuts and using students as "pawns" in a protest that he terms a "stunt," but he wants to arm them in the classroom too.

Weird.

I just don't understand this stuff.

For years now, we have been told by the media and politicians that teachers are greedy, incompetent idiots incapable of intrinsic motivation or pride in their jobs, but now some of these politicians want to start handing us guns and ammunition in order to keep our students safe.

I'm having a hard time getting around the contradiction in that - teachers fill their students' heads with misinformation and lies, they use their students as pawns, they're greedy sapheads, but boy, we ought to arm as many of them as we can so we can head off the next Sandy Hook.

If they think so badly of us, why would they want to arm us?

Bloomberg's Office Threatens Volunteers In Breezy Point

So now the Mayor of Money, the man who can't get food, water or power to storm-affected areas like the Rockaways, Broad Channel, Gerritsen Beach and Breezy Point, the man who has ordered the city to demolish over a thousand damaged homes in these areas, has decided that volunteers who give out food to storm victims must be licensed.

Denis Hamill has the story.

Mulgrew Admits He Doesn't Think The State's Value-Added Model Will Be Any Better Than The City's VAM Model

Wow - check out this doozy of a statement from UFT President Mike Mulgrew today:

In their lawsuit attempting to stop the ratings from being released, United Federation of Teachers officials identified more than 200 such errors. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said today that the errors showed that the city had not been respectful of teachers in developing or releasing the ratings.

“This was a complete debacle in terms of how the DOE has handled [the reports] and the mismanagement of the data inside of the system,” he said.

Asked whether he thought the state’s model would avoid the pitfalls the UFT identified in the city’s reports, Mulgrew said, ”I’m not confident.”

But he said the state’s evaluation requirements are an improvement over the Teacher Data Reports because the new evaluations will showcase the value-added calculations alongside other measures of teacher quality.

Okay, let me get this straight - Mulgrew's not confident that the state's VAM model will be an improvement over the city's VAM model used in the TDR's - you know, the one with the margin of error as high as 75% in math and as high as 87% in ELA - but he STILL agreed to make it THE determining factor in a teacher's evaluation?

After all, come up "ineffective" on the part of the eval based just on test scores (40%) and you have to be declared "ineffective" overall as a teacher, no matter how you score on the other 60% based upon classroom observations and other measures.

Two consecutive years of that ignominious "ineffective" designation and you're fired.

And STILL Mulgrew of the UFT and Iannuzzi of the NYSUT agreed to that evaluation system even though Mulgrew's not confident that it will be any better than the one the city used with the high MOE's and the wide swings in variability?

Gee - that makes no sense.

Mulgrew better send out Lying Leo Casey to spin that doozy.

Leo is a master crafter of b.s., so perhaps he can spin this into something people support.

But on the face of the statement Mulgrew made to Gotham Schools today, the UFT president is saying he agreed to a teacher evaluation system based on student test scores that he lacks confidence in.