Here's How Some Teachers In Mexico Responded To Education Reform

From the Associated Press:

ACAPULCO, Mexico -- Striking teachers in Mexico's Guerrero state attacked the offices of four political parties and a building of the state's education department Wednesday after the legislature approved an education reform without meeting their demands.

Dozens of teachers carrying sticks and stones smashed windows, spray-painted insults at President Enrique Pena Nieto on walls and destroyed computers and furniture. They set fire to the state headquarters of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and another building.

No injuries were reported as the teachers, some masked, ran wild after a protest march in the state capital of Chilpancingo.

Minervino Moran, a spokesman for the strikers, said the attacks were in response to the approval by Guerrero's legislators of legislation similar to a recently adopted federal education law that requires teachers to be evaluated and that seeks to remove control over hiring and firing from the teachers' union.

"We as leaders and as a movement endorse these actions because there is a lot of anger, a lot of outrage with the decision the (state) congress made," said Moran, a spokesman for Guerrero state's Education Workers Union.

I'm not suggesting teachers unions in the United States of America should take a similar response to education reforms in the United States, but it does put Randi's big idea of creating a website called "Share Your Lesson" into perspective, doesn't it?

Bloomberg: We Have To Shred The Constitution In Order To Save Ourselves

Our inevitable post-9/11 slide into an authoritarian state run by plutocrats continues:

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.’s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks.

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11,” he said.

“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to,” he said.

It never seems to occur to the plutocrats and other Surveillance State functionaries that part of the reason why "we live in a very dangerous world" is because U.S. foreign policy makes it so.

Think of the ways our laws and interpretation of the Constitution have changed since 9/11.

We now condone torture.

The president says he has the right to assassinate anyone at any time for any reason, so long as that person is a "terrorist."

We hold "terrorists" or those we suspect are terrorists but can prove are so without a reasonable doubt in perpetuity in Guantanamo.

We drop drone bombs every week onto suspected terrorists all over the world, often killing innocents in the fallout.

Are we safer because of these acts and policies?

Or do we end up radicalizing many people, some of whom end up trying to take American lives?

I am of the opinion that the U.S. government and the plutocrats who run it were very happy 9/11 occurred.

They needed another endless "war" after the Cold War to use to control the populace through FEAR.

The never-ending War on Terror fits that bill perfectly.

They don't care about keeping people safe.

They care about control and power.

And they love when some horrific event like the Boston bombing occurs, because it helps along their cause - to impose as much surveillance on and control over people as possible.

Christine Quinn Hides Campaign Schedule To Keep Away Protesters

Poor Christine Quinn - so many people follow her around to protest her policies that her campaign has to place an embargo on her schedule:

Christine Quinn’s mayoral campaign scheduling arrives with a caveat that her rivals rarely, if ever, employ: “NOT FOR PRINT OR BROADCAST” and “ALL ITEMS EMBARGOED UNTIL DATE AND TIME OF EVENT.”

Beginning with her bid’s launch last month, the Quinn campaign has told reporters they cannot reveal Ms. Quinn’s whereabouts until the event she is attending is underway. In contrast, all but one of Ms. Quinn’s competitors have no stipulations whatsoever, oftentimes simply stating “Media Advisory” or “For Immediate Release.” Only Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s campaign says, “For Planning Purposes Only,” but there is no specific order to avoid publishing the details.

But Ms. Quinn’s spokesman Mike Morey insisted the “embargoed” directive was “standard practice.”

“It’s a template that we use on the public schedule,” he said, noting that her appearances at many public forums are reported elsewhere anyway, including yesterday’s. “In any campaign, there are times in which you embargo a news event that you plan to hold that day. But in this case, obviously this was a public event.”

It's not standard practice by the other campaigns, although it certainly is a template into the kind of mayor Christine Quinn would be:

“That’s a poor reflection of what kind of mayor she’d be, transparency is an important quality in a mayor,” said Todd Brogan, a spokesman for former Councilman Sal Albanese. “It doesn’t reflect well on Christine Quinn that she wants to keep the public from knowing what she’s doing.”

And of course the reason why the Quinn campaign has to embargo Quinn's scheduled appearances is because she has a dedicated cadre of protesters who follow her around wherever she goes:

Some operatives speculated the schedule strategy was to help Ms. Quinn avoid the clusters of dedicated protesters that seem to shadow her at many events, something Mr. Morey said was not the case. But one leading Quinn gadfly, documentary filmmaker Donny Moss, believes otherwise.

“Of course Quinn wants to keep her schedule private. She doesn’t want to have to explain why she’s greeted by protesters day after day,” he explained. “Our presence reflects poorly on Quinn, and it begs the question among the thousands of people who pass us, ‘What has Quinn done to stir up so much anger that people have taken to the streets to protest her?’”

Mr. Moss added, “We’ve watched her and her entourage navigate around piles of garbage to avoid passing by us.”

Quinn and her operatives walking through piles of garbage to avoid the protesters that follow her around to her events.

That's quite an image.

If she's elected mayor of the New York City, that will also become the emblem of her administration.

That Quinn's campaign has to hide her schedule to avoid the protesters is just another sign of how weak she really is as a "frontrunner."

Unity, New Action Lose Over 11,000 Votes From 2010 To 2013

More caucus has the final vote tallies from the 2013 UFT election up and they're extraordinarily informative:

CHART: VOTING SHIFTS FROM 2010 TO 2013

slate votes only * remainders are split ballots

Elementary Division

                                    2013                                                        2010

MORE                       1,140                                                 703 for ICE/TJC

New Action              534                                                    978

Unity                          5,111                                                7,761

Middle School Division

MORE                       398                                                  248 for ICE/TJC

New Action             161                                                     421

Unity                        1,185                                                 1,981

High School Division

MORE                       1,430                                              1,369 for ICE/TJC

New Action             452                                                   774

Unity                         1,592                                               2,595

Functional Division (non-teachers)

MORE                       951                                               708 for ICE/TJC

New Action              754                                              1,175

Unity                        5,167                                            7,337

Retiree Division

MORE                    1,490                                             1,037 for ICE/TJC

New Action           1,880                                            2,234

Unity                    18,155                                             20,744

Looking at these numbers, we can see that Unity lost 9,208 votes in 2013 from their 2010 tally, while New Action lost 1,801 votes from 2010.

The two UFT leadership parties lost 11,009 votes between them in 2013 from their 2010 tallies.

MORE, on the other hand, gained 1,344 votes from the ICE-TJC totals in 2010.

That's nowhere near enough to knock off the leadership parties, of course, but it is a positive trajectory for MORE that can be built upon in the next election.

And as I keep reminding people, MORE will have one inherent advantage next time around that Unity and New Action will not have - the MORE people didn't sign off on APPR, Danielson, and growth models as the current UFT leadership as run by Michael Mulgrew has.

Let's see how people feel about the leadership of the UFT after three years of APPR, Danielson and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us (with Michael Mulgrew's support, to boot!)

There were 10,000 fewer votes returned in the 2013 election than in the 2010 election.

As you can see from the above analysis, those 10,000 votes came out of the Unity/New Action totals.

MORE has much room for growth and will need almost all of that to actually make a serious attempt at knocking Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies off next time around.

With the advantage Mulgrew has with the retirees and the functionals (both reliable Unity voting blocs), he starts with a significant vote tally over the MORE candidate.

In 2013, Unity got 23,322 from the retirees and functionals alone on the Unity ballot line.  Add in the New Action ballot line totals for retirees and functionals (2,632) and you can see that Mulgrew started with 25,956 votes in his pocket before we even get to the elementary school totals.

The MORE candidate in 2016 will have to pick up a lot of support from active members to counter that advantage as well as try and turn some of those New Action/Unity votes into MORE votes.

With the retirees, that may be a difficult task.

That said, 75% of all UFT members this year did not vote.

There are plenty of opportunities for growth from that segment of what Norm Scott calls the Did Not Give A Crap vote and after three years of APPR, Danielson, and the mass "ineffective" ratings that are sure to sweep the system after John King imposes his own evaluation apparatus onto us, it's difficult to see those people, if they do vote, voting for either New Action or Unity.

So there is much to be feeling positive about here.

The news media, such as it is, may frame the Unity win as Mulgrew "cruising to reelection" (as Gotham Schools did yesterday), but an analysis of the numbers shows this was no easy cruise for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies in 2013 - not with a loss of over 10,000 votes from their 2010 tallies.

We have some difficult times ahead of us, with APPR and Danieslon and VAM and growth models and all the other ed deforms that are going to be used to bludgeon teachers and fire them.

Unless the UFT leadership changes course and starts defending teachers both individually and collectively from these ravages, 2016 is going to be a much different year than 2013 or 2010 for Mulgrew and his Unity/New Action cronies.

Cuomo Backs King, NYSED On Buffalo

Not a surprise:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is praising the State Education Department’s refusal to recognize a side deal between the Buffalo school system and its teachers union that would have held teachers harmless from some of the test results that are being instituted in order to evaluate teachers.

Cuomo earlier charged that the side agreement, which emerged earlier this week, amounted to a circumvention of a new law designed to make student test scores part of the teacher evaluation process. The teachers, though, argued that there were working with the understanding that the test/evaluations would go in place after a trial period.
Here is the governor’s statement:

“The State Education Department is correct in refusing to recognize any side deals between the Buffalo’s teachers union and the school district. The suggested collusion was a borderline legal and ethical fraud on our students and the Buffalo superintendent was right to affirm that no side deals will be recognized. We promised the students’ performance – they deserve it and they will have it.”

If Cuomo wants to see what ethical and legal fraud looks like, he can wait until the lawsuits over APPR and VAM start.

There'll be plenty of ethical and legal fraud to read about in the legal briefs filed against him, the NYSED and the Regents.

Because nothing encompasses ethical and legal fraud than an evaluation system put into place that is rigged to fire as many teachers as quickly as possible as APPR is.

John King Declares Side Agreement In Buffalo Void

Given that the whole rationale behind APPR is to fire as many teachers as possible, this is not a surprise:

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — New York state education officials have declared void an agreement between the Buffalo school district and its teachers union in which the district said it wouldn't hold two years of evaluations against teachers.

Buffalo Superintendent Pamela Brown says the district will go along with the state's finding.
The state objected to the Jan. 15 agreement between Brown and the Buffalo Teachers Federation because it conflicted with the teacher evaluation plan the district submitted to the state.

New York, by law, required all of its roughly 700 school districts to establish new teacher rating systems and to use the findings, in part, to weed out bad teachers.

Union President Philip Rumore says it's not fair for teachers' jobs to be at stake based on an evaluation system that's being newly implemented.

Who cares if the evaluation system is unpiloted, untested and not ready for prime time, says our erstwhile NYSED Commissioner with the whopping two years teaching experience - you WILL fire teachers using this system!

As a commenter on a previous news article about this Buffalo side agreement noted:

The fact that King continues to plow ahead asserting the need to eliminate teachers in an untested system reveals the true agenda for other people's children.

Indeed it does.

UFT One Of The Only Unions To Allow Retirees To Vote In Union Elections

Pretty good piece from Gotham Schools back in March on this. 

If you missed it here is the link.

It's clear if you are in the UFT leadership, so long as you maintain benefits levels for retirees, they will be your loyal voting bloc come election time.

Nothing wrong with protecting retirees or their benefits, of course.

I would like to enjoy those same benefits some day.

But the problem is, giving retirees so much say in the election results skewers the policies in the union.

This leadership doesn't have to worry so much about offending active members when they know they can count on 20,000 retiree votes every election.

Clearly the way these guys are running things these days, they know that.

Somebody in comments wrote the following:

My understanding that the increase in the retirees to vote was the change in the UFT constitution bylaws/articles.

The UFT executive board voted in favor of changing the constitution to modify that particular article.

So the question here is how do we inform the rank and file about the changes made to the UFT constitution during this union election that may affect the members' employment future?

It is time for the members to learn what the UFT constitution entails and how any changes made to it, voted on it, may affect the rank and file.

A good point made there.

The question is, how do we go about that?

Remember this is not to make it a battle between retirees and actives.

It's simply to get UFT rank and file to understand that most unions do not allow their retirees to vote, that the UFT does, and because of that, the UFT does not have to concern itself with the issues active members care about as much as they might were the retirees not to vote (as happens in most other unions.)

UFT Election Lessons

Norm at Ed Notes:

MORE increased the vote over the ICE/TJC totals of 2010 in every single division and outpolled New Action in every division except retirees.

I haven't seen the breakdown in functionary numbers from 2010-2013, but I can tell you that Unity lost support in every other division from 2010 to 2013.

As Norm notes, Unity had 3,000 fewer retiree votes.

Unity and New Action support is down in both the middle schools and the high schools.

MORE support is up slightly from the 2010 ICE-TJC totals.

MORE received about 60 more votes than ICE-TJC last time around in the high schools and received 150 more votes in the middle schools than ICE-TJC last time around.

Unity, on the other hand, lost 1000 votes from the 2010 vote count in high schools while New Action lost about 225. In the middle schools, Unity lost almost 800 votes from the last time around while New Action lost 260.

And remember, there were 10,000 fewer ballots returned this year compared to 2010.

So MORE increased the totals over ICE-TJC in 2010 even though the pool of votes cast was significantly smaller.

Unity support dropped significantly while New Action's tepid vote support exposes it as the Unity shell it really is.

This is no victory for MORE, that is clear.

But it surely cannot be spun as a victory for Mulgrew and the leadership either.

People will try and spin these numbers any way they can - but the loss of support for the Unity and New Action slates is plain to see.

The much lower participation rate is plain to see.

There are many dissatisfied teachers out there.

The MORE caucus has its work cut out to try and win over the vast majority of dissatisfied active UFT members next time around - especially with the inherent advantages Unity has with incumbency.

And even if they were to win over the vast majority of active members, Unity STILL has the functionaries and the retirees in its pockets.

That said, you can bet the Unity people are not celebrating these election results behind the scenes.

The headline number of 82% - the percentage of votes cast that Mulgrew won - looks good at first glance.

But underneath, the numbers for Unity are terrible.

A dramatic drop in support from 2010, an increase in support for MORE over ICE-TJC and voter apathy winning the day over everything.

With Danieslon and APPR coming at us next year, you can bet that the Unity hacks are going to have a hard time holding onto the support they had this year.

Let's see in a year's time, after the first mass of "ineffective" ratings sweeps through the system and the Danielson rubric turns everybody's work lives into nightmares what people are saying about Mulgrew and the UFT leadership.

And then let's see what people are saying about Mulgrew and the UFT leadership after the second year of Danielson and APPR when the second wave of mass "ineffective" ratings sweeps the system and Mulgrew's pal, John King, forces whoever runs the system at that time to fire teachers whether they want to or not - just as King is doing now in Buffalo and Rome.

Remember, Mulgrew and the UFT leadership are on record saying Danielson is the swellest thing since oxygen.

Remember too that Mulgrew and the UFT leadership are pushing growth models as an excellent way to evaluate teachers.

Remember as well that Mulgrew is happy that John King gets to impose an evaluation system on June 1.

The soil will be ripe for MORE in three years after the Danielson and APPR train wrecks run roughshod over people.

Again, there is no MORE victory here - certainly not a real victory and not a moral victory either.

There are no moral victories in elections.

But there is plenty of hope for the future when you look at these numbers and realize just how badly the Unity people are positioned for next time around.

They've promoted the very reforms - APPR, Danielson, growth models - that are going to be used to destroy teachers.

They will have to defend that next time around.

Good luck at that.

Quinn Hammered Over Killing Vallone Scholarship

I used to love the Vallone scholarship.

Over the years, I taught a few students who were undocumented and couldn't get any financial aid other than the Vallone scholarship.

It was the difference between being able to pay for college or not being able to pay for it.

In the beginning, it was quite a generous award, although it got whittled down over the years.

And then Christine Quinn, pissed off at Peter Vallone Jr. for an alleged slight, killed the scholarship completely:

Queens City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., three mayoral hopefuls and a host of council members banded together to slam Speaker Christine Quinn for cutting a scholarship named for Vallone's father in what they charge was an act of political retaliation.

The $6 million-a-year Vallone scholarship, which went to CUNY students who graduated from a public city high school, regardless of immigration status, was eliminated in 2011 -- the same year Vallone’s member item funding got slashed by 40% after he angered Quinn by speaking out against renaming the Queensboro Bridge for ex-Mayor Ed Koch.

The scholarship honored former Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr.; the current elected officials and candidates want it restored.

“It was a promise to our kids... that promise was then broken by the mayor and the speaker when they eliminated the scholarship,” the younger Vallone said. “If you don't believe this was retribution, then I have another bridge to sell you which you can rename."

The dispute over the scholarship provided an opportunity for Quinn’s rivals to pile on her for what they call her heavy-handed management of the Council, where political allies are rewarded and foes punished via the meting out of taxpayer cash.

“It isn’t about political disagreements; this is about providing for the future of our young people regardless of immigration status. The fact that this money was taken out, by and large by the speaker, in what was viewed as an act of political retaliation, is just wrong,” said former City Comptroller Bill Thompson.

"It is the misuse of office, the misuse of authority and it just should not be allowed. … Punishing our young people, punishing communities, taking money away from them because somebody didn’t toe the line, is wrong.”

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said: “It’s classic Christine Quinn. She had a disagreement with a councilmember so she cut the funding, and didn’t think for a moment about what it meant for the young people involved. When I was in the Council, what we always felt about the Vallone scholarship was it was reaching a lot of young people who wouldn’t get a higher education without it...It needs to be honored and supported, not cut for political reasons.”

Lesser-known Democratic mayoral candidate Erick Salgado, five Council members, and a group of CUNY students also joined Vallone in calling for the funding to be restored.

 Just another example of why Christine Quinn is unfit to be mayor.

Mulgrew's Re-Election Victory Speech

Sure his Unity caucus lost lots of support in high schools and middle schools.  

Sure MORE garnered 40% of the votes in the high schools.

Sure voter returns in the election fell 10,000 from the last time around.

Sure more retirees voted than active members.

But the important thing is, Mike Mulgrew won re-election with 84% and now it's time to party.

Mulgrew issued a victory statement on ICE-UFT blog via his spokesperson, Raving Lunatic.

Here it is:

What's important here is we win, you lose. 40% of high school votes yields you nothing, yet earns me another three years at 52 Broadway. Tomorrow, while you're all teaching five classes, I'll be going out to lunch. I will remain out to lunch until you vote us out, at which time I shall retire, collect two pensions, move to Boca, and continue voting for Unity.

Actually this was his real victory statement:

 “I’m honored that thousands of UFT members have supported my reelection,” Mulgrew said in a statement. “I look forward to working with them for the next three years as we continue to fight for the best for our students, their families, and our schools.”

Those of us who teach our five classes and do our hall patrols and bathroom watches and sit through weekly Common Core PD's and have our preps taken for "common planning time" and worry about Danielson and APPR and getting VAMMED know that Raving Lunatic's victory speech, while not the factual one Mulgrew gave, is actually the more accurate one.

UFT: Not A Union - A Benefits Collective For Retired Teachers

Pissed Off Teacher in comments:

Many UFT retirees have no idea what is going on. I mentioned MORE at a meeting and told them not to vote for UNITY as Mulgrew was selling out rank and file. Some asked who Mulgrew was.  Retirees, including me, have no business voting.

Love it - someone at the retiree meeting, someone who got to vote in the election, asked who Mulgrew was.

Don't worry, I'm sure they told him/her, just put an X on the Unity box on the ballot and all will be well.  Are you enjoying the free buffet?

Another commenter wrote this:

If the UFT represents the needs of retired employees, then isn't the UFT a benefits cooperative?

It is if that's all the UFT does, and given how they have sold active members down the river on APPR, on Danielson, on ATR's and closures, on Teacher Data Reports and the whole education reform juggernaut, I think you can certainly argue that about all they are these days is a benefits collective for retired teachers.

UFT Elections - Unity And New Action Support Drops Significantly From 2010 In Middle Schools And High Schools

James Eterno at Ice-UFT blog:

We have initial slate only numbers for the high schools and the middle schools in the UFT election and although Unity and New Action will hold onto their monopoly on power, the new Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) established itself as the main opposition group in the secondary schools by a wide margin.

Here are the slate numbers for the 2013 and 2010 elections in the secondary schools.

2013  High Schools   Ballots Returned: 3808   Votes Counted: 3595    
MORE: 1430 (40%)   NEW ACTION: 452 (13%)  UNITY: 1592 (45%)

The remainder are people who split their ballot.

2010 High Schools    Votes Counted: 5203
ICE-TJC: 1369                 NEW ACTION: 774             UNITY: 2595

2013 Middle Schools   Ballots Returned: 1879      Votes Counted: 17886
MORE: 398                NEW ACTION: 161                 UNITY:1185

The remainder are people who split their ballot.

2010 Middle Schools: Slate Votes Counted: 2881
ICE-TJC: 248                NEW ACTION: 421              UNITY: 1981  

2013 Functionals (non teachers)   Ballots Returned: 7704   Ballots Counted: 7113
MORE: 951                   NEW ACTION: 754              UNITY: 5167

The remainder are people who split their ballot

The retirees and elementary schools - reliable Unity voting blocs - have yet to be counted and Unity will win by a wide margin as usual.

But if you look at the returns from the high schools and middle schools, you see New Action and Unity losing a lot of support and MORE gaining a little more support in the high schools and a lot more support in the middle schools.

Not enough to win, of course, but enough to make it clear that many in the middle and high schools think something is rotten with the current leadership.

As James wrote:

In addition, Mulgrew's vote will more than likely drop in a major way compared to 2010 among active UFT members.  It appears many members did not vote for the opposition but they certainly didn't vote for the incumbent.  For the next election, those members need to be persuaded to vote.

He also wonders how it is that New Action can get 13% of the vote and get three executive board seats while MORE can win 40% of the vote and get none.

Of course that's a rhetorical question from Mr. Eterno.

The answer is obvious - because Mulgrew and the Unity/New Action leadership have the fix in.

UFT: A Union Of Retirees

Been busy most of the day, but did glance during my lunch at the ballot returns and read that the numbers of returned ballots from active members was the lowest in memory.

There was a teacher in my school who didn't receive a ballot.

She called the UFT to say she hadn't received one and they said they would send it right out.

She received it yesterday, after the deadline for voting.

Ah, but they made sure all the retirees - a bloc of reliable Unity votes - got their ballots, didn't they?

Just anecdotal, but it says a lot about this union that biggest bloc of voters was the retirees - the people who do not have to work under Danielson or under APPR.

The leadership does not want a membership that is active in the union.

They want a membership that is apathetic, disconnected, isolated, and demoralized.

And that's exactly what they've got.

We are a union of retirees.

Mulgrew is the president of the United Federation of Retired Teachers.

I'll have more on this when the results are in.

Weiner: Forget The Texting Stuff, Tell Me About Schools

That's how Anthony Weiner described how New Yorkers will react to his running for mayor despite the news that he had been sexting with women for years before he was exposed by an errant Tweet and so more photos of him and/or his penis may be out there.

How can he seriously consider running for mayor with the knowledge that more overexposed Weiner photos exist and may/can be used against him in a campaign?

With his negatives already very high, does he really think he can win if and when the photos are revealed and used against him in a campaign?

He may think New Yorkers will forget about the sexting stuff and care more about his education or economic policies, but it is going to be difficult for him to talk about that stuff if an opposition candidate (like Joe Lhota) is running ads of his penis on the TV 24/7 during the election season.

And you can bet that Lhota or any other opponent will do just that.

If You Needed Another Reason To NOT Support Bill Thompson For Mayor...

...Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch just gave it to you:

New York Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, who helps set education policy statewide and explored her own bid for mayor last year, plans to serve as chairwoman of former Comptroller William Thompson's mayoral campaign.

By signing on to Mr. Thompson's campaign, Ms. Tisch bolsters the former comptroller in a few key areas. As one of the state's most prominent voices on education, her imprimatur could help Mr. Thompson among voters concerned about city schools. And through her family's ties to business and the city's social elite—her husband is the chief executive of Loews Corp.—she could help Mr. Thompson raise money and allay fears voiced by many supporters of Mayor Michael Bloomberg about the city's economy under the next administration.

The relationship between Mr. Thompson and Ms. Tisch, both Democrats, stretches back to the late 1990s, when she served on the state Board of Regents and he was the president of the city Board of Education.

Ms. Tisch said she worked with Mr. Thompson at the time, as officials and lawmakers weighed putting the mayor in charge of city schools.

"Bill has a lot of integrity," Ms. Tisch said. "Everything that he always told me—although not what I always wanted to hear—I knew was 100% accurate and truthful."

Ms. Tisch has generally been supportive of Mr. Bloomberg, though the two have sometimes clashed on particular pieces of education policy. She didn't support Mr. Thompson when he challenged Mr. Bloomberg in 2009. She said she supported the work Mr. Bloomberg was doing but often agrees with Mr. Thompson, especially on issues of education and social services.

Ms. Tisch said she didn't see any conflict between her state-level role and involvement in city politics. She consulted with campaign lawyers, she said, who didn't either.

"Whoever wins this election, my role is at the state level," she said, referencing her relationship with Mr. Bloomberg, whom she calls a good friend.

Ms. Tisch, who has served on the board since 1996 and as its chancellor since 2009, has been a firm supporter of the state's push to raise standards, making it tougher for students to graduate and supporting the move to new academic standards known as the Common Core. Yet she has sided with the teachers union on some issues. She supported a state law that shielded teachers' evaluation from widespread public view.

Campaign chairs generally aren't responsible for many day-to-day responsibilities. But they often serve as high-profile ambassadors and fundraisers—both roles Ms. Tisch and the Thompson campaign say she will play.

Mr. Thompson has been hovering around the middle of the pack in the crowded Democratic primary for mayor, according to recent polls. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been leading the field, while Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Mr. Thompson trail her.

But the mathematical case for Mr. Thompson is strong. He is the only African-American in the race. Black candidates in the city have traditionally won large majorities among black voters, who make up a significant part of the primary electorate.

Representatives for Mr. Thompson's main Democratic rivals either declined to comment or didn't respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Thompson has been positioning himself as a more business-friendly Democrat than some of his competitors. Ms. Tisch could help boost Mr. Thompson's credentials in the city's prominent real estate, business and financial circles, a crucial group for fundraising. Many have already signaled their support for Ms. Quinn and donated to her campaign, but others have expressed anxiety about the field and remain undecided.

"It sends a very clear message that we are fighting for every community in the city, to expand opportunity, to improve education," said Jonathan Prince, Mr. Thompson's campaign manager.
"As people look at this field of candidates, they want someone who is ready to be mayor from the beginning," he said.

Ms. Tisch said Mr. Thompson's experience and steady demeanor were key factors in her decision, indirectly addressing often-voiced criticism that he is too laid-back to run a high-octane city.

"There will be days when people will agree with him and there will be days when people will disagree with him," she said. "But I don't think there will be many days when people will say they were treated harshly, they were treated unfairly, they were treated in anything but an honorable manner."

This is meant to send a message out to the business community and the hedge fundies and Wall Street criminals who are afraid of life post-Bloomberg - don't worry, Thompson has been bought and he can be your guy.

I'm going to deal later with the outrageous news that Tisch is serving as someone's campaign manager in the race.

But for now, just know that if Tisch backs Thompson, you shouldn't - nor should the UFT.

UFT Election Vote Count Today

Norm at Ednotes writes that he will be an observer at the vote count today.

The count is just a formality, since the UFT leadership has never lost an election and has worked very hard over the past few years to ensure they never lose one in the future.

That's why they gave the retirees additional votes (they're a reliable Unity voting bloc) and that's why they made a deal with the former opposition party, New Action, to join in their coalition (a vote for New Action is actually a vote for Unity, as Norm notes.)

All of that said, I can tell you this about how the election played out in my school.

In past years, very few people even knew there was an election, even fewer people ever discussed the parties running in that election, and even fewer people than that ever disclosed that they had voted against Randi/Mulgrew.

This year has been quite different.

People were talking about the election, expressing dismay at the inability of the UFT to protect them from the ravages of the education reform movement/Bloomberg/NYCDOE, and asking just who and what these MORE people were about.

People who in the past would make excuses for Randi and her sell-outs criticized Mulgrew and his leadership for failing to take on Bloomberg/NYCDOE and said they were open to voting MORE.

People who in the past shrugged with cynicism about voting said this time they sent their ballots in early in order to vote MORE.

Teachers at my school have learned the full truth about Danielson over the past week as the DOE sent its talent coach to explain the process and when they heard that the UFT was pushing Danieslon hard and heavy as the bestest thing in education since chalk, some said "I'm glad I voted against these people."

I am not expecting MORE to beat Unity/New Action, nor even come close to beating them.

The functionaries running the UFT have been in power since the beginning of the union and they have remained in power by knowing how to turn out their own hacks and cronies and make sure as few people who aren't their hacks and cronies vote in the election as possible.

That said, I do see hope for the future in this election season.

Many teachers at my school are fed up with the way the UFT leadership are representing them.

Many teachers at my school know they have been sold out by the UFT leadership in the evaluation negotiations.

Many teachers at my school know that the people running the UFT talk out of both sides of their mouths, issuing jive to teachers to make it sound like they're doing something to protect them while taking actions (or not taking actions) that clearly show they are doing nothing to protect them.

The UFT leadership, an arrogant bunch who are used to jiving and shucking and bullying and blustering their way through the membership, perhaps think they can continue business as usual after their re-election.

But with APPR and Danielson and Common Core tests and all the other ravages of education reform about to be used as bludgeons against teachers, they should understand that they cannot continue business as usual after their re-election.

The ground is fertile for some real change and the UFT leadership, by ignoring the concerns of the membership, by selling them out time and time again, by failing to protect teachers from the systemic bullying by the state and the city, are sowing the seeds of their demise.

Those seeds may never grow - as I said earlier, the UFT leadership has been in power for a long, long time and while they may not know how to protect teachers, they surely know how to maintain power.

But given the extraordinary changes teachers are about to experience over the next few years with Danielson (which the UFT pushed), growth models for Student Learning Objectives (which Mulgrew himself praised) and APPR (which the UFT agreed to), those seeds just may be nurtured into something the UFT leadership didn't forsee coming.

What Bloomberg's Billionaire Friends Should Spend Their Money On

The propaganda-fest for "raising standards" is in high gear.

I saw the latest example of that when I glimpsed a piece of Common Core propaganda on the subway, paid for by some anonymous donor pal of the mayor's.

But how come none of these billionaires willing to pony up the dough to fund education reform propaganda campaigns wants to give schools the resources they need to reach these goals of "increased standards"?

The budgets at individual schools have been cut by about 20% over the past few years even as the feds and the state and the city pass down more and more mandates that schools must meet.

Guidance counselors are so busy with the "College and Career Readiness" programs that they no longer have the time to, you know, actually counsel.

Class sizes are up all over the city.

There is little money for after school activities because so much of it has been consumed for test prep-related materials and activities.

Meanwhile some nameless billionaire has money to drop on Common Core posters for the subways.

Wouldn't it be nice if that nameless billionaire took the money from the Common Core propaganda ad buy and spent it on something, I dunno, like hiring guidance counselors?

Or helping to lower class sizes?

It seems the edu-philanthropic class only believes in giving money for testing and testing-related activities.
 
It's a problem that we as a society have decided that we are going to allow the billionaires to drive education policy and education spending because these guys just don't care about anything other than what can be quantified and controlled.

There Is No STEM Worker Shortage

One of the memes you hear in education circles is that there is a terrible shortage of trained workers in STEM fields and we simply MUST graduate more STEM students or import them from foreign shores before the Russians or the Chinese or the Venetians overtake us in this highly competitive, globalized economy.

Like so many memes in education these days, that STEM meme turns out not to be true:

A study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reinforces what a number of researchers have come to believe: that the STEM worker shortage is a myth.

The EPI study finds that the United States has “more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.” Basic dynamics of supply and demand would dictate that if there were a domestic labor shortage, wages should have risen. Instead, researchers found, they’ve been flat, with many Americans holding STEM degrees unable to enter the field and a sharply higher share of foreign workers taking jobs in the IT industry. (IT jobs make up 59 percent of the STEM workforce, according to the study.)

The answer to whether there is a shortage of such workers has important ramifications for the immigration bill. If it exists, then there’s an urgency that justifies allowing companies to bring more foreign workers into the country, usually on a short-term H-1B visa. But those who oppose such a policy argue that companies want more of these visas mainly because H-1B workers are paid an estimated 20 percent less than their American counterparts. Why allow these companies to hire more foreign workers for less, the critics argue, when there are plenty of Americans who are ready to work?

The EPI study says that while the overall number of the U.S. students who go on to earn STEM degrees is small — a fact that many lawmakers and the media have seized on — it’s more important to focus on what happens to these students after they graduate. According to the study, that they have a surprisingly hard time finding work. Only half of the students graduating from college with a STEM degree are hired into a STEM job, the study says.

“Even in engineering,” the authors say, “U.S. colleges have historically produced about 50 percent more graduates than are hired into engineering jobs each year.”

The picture is not that bright for computer science students, either. “For computer science graduates employed one year after graduation . . . about half of those who took a job outside of IT say they did so because the career prospects were better elsewhere, and roughly a third because they couldn’t find a job in IT,” the study says.

Whereas those with liberal arts degrees might be used to having to look for jobs with only tenuous connections to their majors, the researchers say this shouldn’t be the case for graduates with degrees attached to specific skills such as engineering.

The tech industry has said that it needs more H-1B visas in order to hire the “best and the brightest,” regardless of their citizenship. Yet the IT industry seems to have a surprisingly low bar for education. The study found that among IT workers, 36 percent do not have a four-year college degree. Among these, only 38 percent have a computer science or math degree.

The bipartisan immigration plan introduced last week by the so-called Gang of Eight senators would raise the number of H-1B visas, though it would limit the ability of outsourcing firms to have access to them. Tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft have fought hard to distinguish themselves from these outsourcing companies, arguing that unlike firms such as Wipro, they’re looking for the best people, not just ones who will work for less.

But some worry that the more H-1Bs allowed into the system, the more domestic workers get crowded out, resulting in what no one appears to want: fewer American students seeing much promise in entering STEM fields. 

There is no shortage of STEM workers.

Americans with STEM degrees having problems getting work in STEM fields.

Companies are looking to import foreign workers so they can pay them 20% less in wages and drive down wages in STEM fields even more.

That's the takeaway here.

As one commenter at the Washington Post article puts it:

We who work in STEM, which I have done all life, including in the Army, know that if there was a STEM shortage the answer is granting full citizenship to foreign immigrants with a working knowledge of English and an advanced degree from a US university.

H1-B is just a way to suppress wages and line the pockets of the 1% that Congress works for, at the expense of almost all US citizens.

 Another one writes:

We have known this for quite a while. Next breaking story: there is really no shortage of American construction workers.

What we have a big surplus of are big businessmen and politicians who are globalists, not nationalists. People who will sell out Americans for a few bucks. To put things in old-fashioned words, we are talking about those willing to engage in economic treason.

Remember this STEM meme is a myth the next time you hear Arne Duncan or his boss, Barack Obama trot it out as another excuse to bludgeon teachers and schools.

Anthony Weiner To Dominic Carter: Still May Run For Mayor, Even With Possibility Of Additional Twitter Photos

You have to love this - disgraced former politician Anthony Weiner talking to disgraced former journalist Dominic Carter:

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who resigned after accidentally tweeting a lewd photo of himself, says that he “can’t say” if there are more pictures out there, or more women willing to come forward.

“If reporters want to go try to find more, I can’t say that they’re not going to be able to find another picture, or find another person who may want to come out on their own, but I’m not going to contribute to that. The basics of the story are not gonna change,” Weiner said, speaking to RNN-TV’s Dominic Carter.

Weiner has recently been making the media rounds, possibly in the hopes of running for mayor of New York City this year. A recent poll put him in second place behind Christine Quinn in the primary, though trailing 26-15 percent, with 50 percent of Democrats saying they would not vote for him.

Go away, Anthony.

Seriously.

John Liu: Too Much Emphasis On High Stakes Testing in New York City Schools

He penned this for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

This week New York City students in grades 3 through 8, with their No. 2 Ticonderoga pencils nervously in hand, are struggling through the math portion of the annual New York state tests. Once again, these scores — along with their English Language Test results from last week — will determine crucial educational outcomes in their lives.

In this elementary and middle school equivalent of “who will live and who will die,” these tests often decide whether a child can advance to the next grade, be held back or be required to attend summer school.

But this high-stakes testing has enormous implications for teachers and entire school communities as well. Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly and publicly called for teachers to be evaluated based on these test scores. And his Department of Education has closed down more than 100 New York City public schools predominantly because their students did not perform well on the high-stakes tests.

All this, despite the fact that high-stakes testing results have been criticized as unreliable.

Tests are an important measure of student knowledge and the success that a teacher has had in getting concepts across to his or her class. But they are by no means the only way to measure teacher performance. Report cards that cover an entire quarter’s performance and several months’ worth of teacher commentary are also good evaluators.

High-stakes tests have become problematic because they now hold such a heavy sway in determining a child’s, a teacher’s and even a school’s future. Yet they occur so infrequently as to be obviously susceptible to a bad day, a stomachache or getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

The New York state tests in Math and English Language Arts are given over a two-week period once a year. The New York City Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHAT), which determines which students get selected to attend one of the city’s elite public high schools, is given on one day every winter.

The SATs have taken on too big a role in deciding whether a student will attend a good college. Too much power is invested in these tests and the price that our students, educators, and school communities pay because of their outsized influence is embarrassingly high.

I favor more frequent, low-stakes testing: the Friday spelling test with papers folded in half and a list of 10 words, five on each side, that are put on the blackboard the previous Monday; the history pop quiz that gets handed out as the high-schoolers walk into their classroom. How about the impossible math problem up on the board that takes an entire period to unravel? These are all good methods for discovering how much our students know and whether their teachers are effective.

We need to remember that tests are merely tools, tools that are best utilized by educators to get a handle on how to do their jobs better, on a day-to-day, week-by-week basis.

High-stakes tests should not shape the destiny: for students, teachers or for entire school communities.

It is high time we break the yoke of high-stakes testing and broaden the conversation on public education in our city.

No wonder they have tried to destroy Liu with a jive campaign finance fraud "investigation."

Liu's politics are too outside the oligarchical mainstream views.

So they went after him for campaign finance fraud on $7000 donations.

Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg, who according to the NY Daily News bribed his way onto the Independence Party line through three elections - two of which were won by the margin of votes he garnered on the Independence Party ballot line - somehow isn't under investigation for bribery and campaign finance fraud even after he admitted to laundering money to the Independence Party during the Haggerty trial.