Times Refuses To Call Cathie Black On Her Lie

Cathie Black stated emphatically that she has visited schools that have received an A, a B, a C, a D and an F on their report cards.

She actually has only visited schools with A, B, or C grades.

Gotham Schools called her on this yesterday:

She also tells reporters that by now she’s visited schools that run the full gamut: from A-ranking schools to F schools. As of mid-December she’d only been to schools getting A’s, B’s, or C’s.

...

Maura asked DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz which D and F graded schools Black has visited. Ravitz says Black has visited a “a mix so far in terms of progress report grades, mostly A’s, B’s, and C’s I believe.”

All the reporters along for the tour say they heard Black say that she’s visited schools at every grade level. Ravitz denies this and says she’ll check the transcript.

They didn't say Black had lied, but they pointed out quite specifically what she had stated and that she was wrong about it.

For some reason, the Times was much more subtle than Gotham Schools:

Of the schools she has visited in the past few weeks, the worst received a C in their progress reports, which are mostly based on how the students fare on standardized tests. A spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, said that Ms. Black had visits scheduled to schools that got D’s and F’s.

The Times editors seem to have taken out what MUST have been, given the reality of the Black visits, the next few sentences in that paragraph. Let me finish them:

Ms. Ravitz, as she usually is, was full of shit in this statement. Ms. Black has ONLY visited schools that received an A, a B, or a C on their report cards. The first time Black visits a school that has received a D or an F on its report card will be when she's closing it down and throwing students and teachers out onto the street.

There - I fixed the Times article so that it reads the way it should.

Silly Times editors - taking out the truth and making reality seem like the Twilight Zone!

And once again, Cathie Black opens her mouth and out comes something stupid.

Nader: Andrew Cuomo, Barack Obama and Oligarchic Manipulation

Ralph Nader says so much here

“The left has nowhere to go,” Nader said. “Obama knows it. The corporate Democrats know it. There will be criticism by the left of Obama this year and then next year they will all close ranks and say ‘Do you want Mitt Romney? Do you want Sarah Palin? Do you want Newt Gingrich?’ It’s very predictable. There will be a year of criticism and then it will all be muted. They don’t understand that even if they do not have any place to go, they ought to fake it. They should fake going somewhere else or staying home to increase the receptivity to their demands. But because they do not make any demands, they are complicit with corporate power.

“Corporate power makes demands all the time,” Nader went on. “It pulls on the Democrats and the Republicans in one direction. By having this nowhere-to-go mentality and without insisting on demands as the price of your vote, or energy to get out the vote, they have reduced themselves to a cipher. They vote. The vote totals up. But it means nothing.”

There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.

Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.

...

“The left has disemboweled itself,” Nader said. “It doesn’t even have a strategy every four years like a good poker player. The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn’t even made Obama’s campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing. And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation. It will start playing out big time in New York State with Andrew Cuomo and others. They will start saying, ‘Why are you getting this? Most workers who pay the taxes, who pay your salaries, are not getting this.’ This plays.”

The banishment from the corporate media, Nader argues, has been one of the major contributors to the demoralization and weakening of the left. Protests by the left, which get little national or local coverage, have steadily dwindled in strength across the country. The first protest gets little or no coverage and this leads to movements, as well as the voices of activists, being diminished and finally suffocated.

...

The timidity and silencing of the left fuels the steady impoverishment of a dispossessed working class and a beleaguered middle class. It solidifies a corporate oligarchy that is dismantling the anemic regulatory agencies that once protected citizens from predatory corporations. The economic system is designed to bail out Wall Street rather than replace the trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost by workers. And the only hope left, Nader argues, is if the conservatives in the right-wing movement break from the corporatists. If the big banks again start going to the cliff and calling for new bailouts, Nader says, this may provoke a schism between conservative groups embodied by figures such as Ron Paul, and corporate lackeys.

“Every major movement starts with field organizers, the farmers, unions, and the civil rights movement,” Nader said. “But there is nothing out there. We need to start learning from what was done in the past. All over the country people are pissed off. They hate Wall Street. They know they are being gouged. They know they are slipping behind. They know their kids will not be as well off as they were, and they were not that well off. But no one is putting it together. Who could put a thousand organizers in the field, besides George Soros? The labor unions. They have the money. They have a lot of cash. These idiots are going down. The UAW is a paradigm of a suicidal, supplicant labor union. It is disgusting. They are a puppy dog of GM, Ford and Chrysler. They have huge reserves. The labor unions could organize the country, but they are into their own emoluments and high salaries. The union leadership has so distanced itself from the rank and file that it is ashamed to do anything controversial. These union leaders will not go on TV on Labor Day because they do not want someone saying ‘Why are you making $500,000 a year with a pension that is six times your rank and file?’ There is corruption at the top. The only way the union leaders can continue is to be in the shadows. And you don’t build a strong movement in the shadows.

“The black swan question is whether something will erupt that is rare, extreme and unpredictable,” Nader said. “It is amazing that it hasn’t happened in any pockets of the country. How much more can the oppressed take before they revolt? And can they revolt without organizers? These are the two important questions. You have got to have organizers, and as of now we don’t.”

Switch the AFL-CIO for the AFT and the NEA and the point is the same - a corrupt union leadership brings about the destruction of its own membership while collecting six figure salaries, double pensions and the rest of the perks.

These idiots are going down indeed.

Or maybe we're the idiots for not throwing Weingarten, Mulgrew and the rest of the teachers union sell-outs on their corrupt asses and putting leaders in charge who would really protect the membership

Obama Hires Reagan Advisers

Not a surprise that our "liberal" president is hiring two guys who advised Reagan and helped Clinton move even more to the right post-1994 midterms:

We already knew President Obama was reading Lou Cannon's widely-praised biography of Ronald Reagan, The Role of a Lifetime.

Now Bloomberg reports that before leaving for his vacation, Obama also "sought advice from Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein and David Gergen, an image adviser to both Reagan and Clinton.

Great - how much you want to bet a lot of Obama's triangulating gets done on the backs of union members, especially teachers?

Cathie Black Caught In Lie

Gotham Schools caught our illustrious chancellor in a lie today, her first official day on the job:

Asked what her number one challenge will be, Black responds: “Budget.” She says she’s going to spend the next one to two months figuring out what her priorities are and that she expects the coming years to be a “hard slog” financially. ”Most important is to keep progress and reform going as aggressively as possible,” she says.

She also tells reporters that by now she’s visited schools that run the full gamut: from A-ranking schools to F schools. As of mid-December she’d only been to schools getting A’s, B’s, or C’s.

...

Maura asked DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz which D and F graded schools Black has visited. Ravitz says Black has visited a “a mix so far in terms of progress report grades, mostly A’s, B’s, and C’s I believe.”

All the reporters along for the tour say they heard Black say that she’s visited schools at every grade level. Ravitz denies this and says she’ll check the transcript.

Why shouldn't she lie? Her boss also lies through his teeth. In fact, he also got caught in a lie today by Gotham Schools:

Maura notes that Bloomberg is still claiming to have narrowed the city’s racial achievement gap. Though it appeared as though there had been progress on this front over the last several years, when the state recalibrated its exams last year, many of the gains were erased. Students who seemed to be meeting standards were actually ill-equipped to move onto the next grade, though the too-easy tests showed they were competent.

Currently, the racial achievement gap is still formidable. Last year, about 40 percent black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students in grades three through eight met the state’s proficiency standards in math, compared to 75 percent of white students. On the reading test, the gap was similarly large. About 33 percent of black students and 34 percent of Hispanic students were deemed competent, whereas 64 percent of white and Asian students met this bar.

Yeah, the achievement gap has been closed by Kleinberg - and all the Bloomberg Blizzard snow was plowed off outer borough streets by last Tuesday.

Like mayor, like chancellor - all jive, all lies, all smoke and mirrors.

Cuomo Demands State Worker Wage Freeze

From our new "Democratic in Name Only" governor:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will seek a one-year salary freeze for state workers as part of an emergency financial plan he will lay out in his State of the State address on Wednesday, senior administration officials said.

The move will signal the opening of what is expected to be a grueling fight between the new governor and the public-sector unions that have traditionally dominated the state’s political establishment.

It will also come days after the New Year’s Eve layoffs of more than 900 state workers, an event that union representatives marked with a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Capitol and outside government offices in five other cities.

“The governor said during his campaign that the difficult financial times call for shared sacrifice,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the governor’s address. “A salary freeze is obviously a difficult thing for many government workers, but it’s necessary if the state is going to live within its means.”

While the immediate budget savings from the freeze would be relatively modest — between $200 million and $400 million against a projected deficit in excess of $9 billion — achieving it would be politically meaningful.

And because such a step would not require legislative approval, Mr. Cuomo could achieve it while bypassing the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Democratic-controlled State Assembly, labor’s most powerful allies in Albany.

...

After his landslide victory in November, he kept a substantial campaign war chest on reserve to run his own ads to counter any union-backed television campaigns and is now deploying outside advisers to organize business interests into what he hopes will become a counterweight to labor: a new group known as the Committee to Save New York.

Mr. Cuomo on Sunday attended Mass with his girlfriend, Sandra Lee, and his three daughters at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, down the street from the Executive Mansion. Shortly after that, he returned to work at the Capitol, where aides were huddled to help draft Wednesday’s speech and attend to other issues.

“We’re going to be getting back to work,” he told reporters after the service.

Shared sacrifice to Cuomo means tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, wage freezes and layoffs for people making under $200,000 a year.

Notice the connection to The Godfather - Cuomo went to mass while his administration whacked 900 state workers and the entire labor movement.

Don Cuomo, head of the five hedge fund families of New York, says hello.

Back To School With A Data Meeting

Oh, boy - a data meeting to start the new year off right!

How exciting!

An hour and a half of it after school - until four o'clock!

Kill me.

Cathie Black Comes To Visit

Nursing a hangover the size of Mayor Bloomberg's wounded post-snow storm ego, Cathie Black starts her first official day as NYC schools chancellor by visiting five schools around the city.

After the p.r. is taken care of, she plans to move forward on the following:

Black is facing myriad challenges as she replaces Joel Klein, who served for eight years under Bloomberg. Schools that have been hit with several years of budget cuts are facing more austerity, and the mayor has promised to get rid of 4,000 teachers by next year.

The Education Department is also seeking to shut down dozens of poor-performing schools and is battling a lawsuit filed to block the release of teachers' names and their ratings based on state test scores.

Klein is gone to greener (as in dollars) pastures, but the policies remain the same:

Fire teachers.

Close schools.

Hold teachers "accountable" using data.

Publish the teacher rankings in the papers.

Cut school budgets.

Don't cut Tweed's budget.

Meet the new (hungover) boss - same as the old boss.

Poll Results

The Daily News was running a poll this morning that asked how readers think Cathie Black will do in her job as schools chancellor.

The responses were:

Optimistic. She brings in a strong track record of leadership. Pessimistic. She doesn't know enough about education. I don't know yet.

As of 5:17 AM this morning (when I was writing this post), the responses were 86% - "Pessimistic. She doesn't know enough about education" to 14% "Don't know yet."

Not one "Optimistic. She brings in a strong track record of leadership."

Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg wasn't awake yet to register his vote?

Or Wolfson?

Or Black?

Or Shael?

Even so, that's some pretty harsh poll data for Ms. Black.

86% say she sucks, 14% aren't sure.

Welcome to the job, Chancellor Black.

Would you like a little Jameson's in your coffee to cut the hair of the dog from the weekend?

Some New Year's Wishes For The UFT/AFT

Chaz has a great wish list for how the UFT should approach 2011:

1. A contract that includes the "City pattern" with no givebacks!.
2. No ATR time limit, ever!
3. No changing the "last in, first out" layoff list.
4. No weakening of our "due process" rights.
5. The right to a fair and independent investigation for alleged misconduct.
6. Elimination of the PIP+ termination program.
7. Teacher input into the teacher evaluation program.

I would add a few more items to the list and I'm going to expand the wish list to the AFT as well:

1. Learn how to frame issues in a winning way (For example, the UFT has framed the TDR fight as "These reports are loaded with errors, so they shouldn't be published." WRONG! That allows the DOE to correct the mistakes and then publish the reports. The CORRECT WAY to frame this issue is: "These reports have 35% margins of error when using just a couple of years of data, a 25% margin of error when using five years of data and a 12% margin of error when using ten years of data. Value Added Teacher Data Reports are WORSE than useless - they are harmful to both teachers and students, will unfairly end the careers of many good teachers and will not improve education in any way.")

2. Don't trust Bloomberg/Black/Obama/Duncan/Gates/Broad on ANYTHING. How many times do you have to have Bloomberg go back on deals you've made with him before you realize his word is about as valuable and trustworthy as his weather sense? How often do you have to to have Obama screw teachers on policy before you realize you should be fighting him, not supporting him? How many times do you have to hear Gates say teachers are paid too much, should be fired at will and suck before you stop inviting him to conventions and doing joint interviews at NEWSWEEK with him?)

3. Promote a positive agenda of progressive, humanistic education that teaches the WHOLE CHILD, not just the part that works at standardized test scores. Say how damaging a test-based public education system that bases teacher pay, teacher evaluations and school ratings ONLY on test scores is.

Those are the three I can think of off the top of my head. Please add to the list with other suggestions in the comment thread.

Not that the UFT or AFT will follow any of these as they sell members down the river on test scores, TDR's, school closures, merit pay, and the rest.

But at least we can offer some alternatives to the current jive the UFT and AFT offer.

The Wisdom Of Mark Sanford

From Political Wire:

"You do a whole lot more soul searching on the way down, I think, than on the way up. The irony is, as a human being, I probably have more to offer than I ever had in my whole life, just based on prospective, wisdom that comes with pain. But I probably have a smaller canvas on which to paint than I've had at any point in a long time. It is what it is."

-- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), in an interview with the Charleston Post & Courier, on leaving politics.

Indeed, emotional pain CAN bring wisdom, humility, and perspective.

So often I think that the people in charge of countries, states, cities, companies and school systems have so little of the wisdom, humility and perspective that comes with working through emotional pain.

And then, when they do learn some of that (as perhaps Mark Sanford has), society has already discarded them as "losers" because in American society one can never admit defeat or
acknowledge pain or setbacks.

As the corporate-funded and corporate-souled education reform movement folks are so fond of saying "No excuses! No time to waste! We must have action and have action NOW!!!!"

Never mind that the actions we have taken over the last ten years regarding public education policy have made circumstances WORSE, we're going to take more speedy actions NOW!

And the hell with wisdom, humility and perspective.

The hell with learning from our mistakes.

The hell with figuring out if what we're doing is right.

The only thing that matters is ACTION!

Why Don't Unions Frame Benefits This Way?

From Firedoglake:

Instead of looking at public pensions, for example, and thinking “Why do they get that?” shouldn’t the response be “Why don’t I get that?” Especially considering the record profits workers are generating for corporations at this time.

Indeed - the problem is NOT union and/or government worker wages and benefits.

The problem is the disparity in income and wealth between the really, really rich and everybody else and the refusal of the hedge fund criminal class, the corporate criminal class, and the Wall Street criminal class from paying their fair share of taxes or a living wage to the working and middle classes.

The problem is corporate greed and exploitation.

For some reason, Americans refuse to see this

Instead they look at a teacher's health care benefits and pension and say "Let's take that from those people!"

Meanwhile the hedge fundies, Wall Streeters and corporate CEO's are laughing all the way to their tax-free Cayman Island havens.

King Mike Hears It From A Press Constituent

The wingnutty Michael Goodwin lets Bloomberg have it in the Murdoch Post:

It is said that once a man be comes a bishop, he never again hears the truth or eats a bad meal. Imagine, then, the pampered life of the Emperor of Bloomstan.

To understand how King Mike could deny the snow truth that all New Yorkers could see, you first must understand his golden bubble. It's not just the weekend trips to warmer climes, or the routine comforts of a multibillionaire with homes here and there.

It's that he surrounds himself with yes men and women. They don't dare bring him bad news. They know he doesn't want to hear it.

We can call them cowards, and they are, but that misses the point. The corruption of power multiplies over time, and few inconvenient facts penetrate the walls of his bubble these days, especially now that he is focused on winning the White House.

The mayor himself is the problem, and it won't be fixed until he decides to fix it. To save the city and his reputation, he's got to get his head back into the job.

So far, there is zero evidence he will. His performance last week was distressingly shoddy. The failure to competently manage the Sanitation Department was only the tip of the blizzard.

The greater failure was to understand and manage public expectations. His reaction to the criticism was a microcosm of the worst moments of his tenure. The tone-deaf elitist, the haughty rich guy who oozes contempt for anybody who challenges him -- all of it captured on the X-ray cameras of television.

"I regret everything in the world," he snapped at one press conference, secure in his screw-you attitude. He insisted the sanitation commissioner was "the best sanitation commissioner the city has ever had."

In his bubble, that's self-evident. If the sanit man weren't the best, the self-declared best mayor would not have appointed him.

Imagine being the deputy mayor or lesser aide who knows that New Yorkers are rightfully furious. After the mayor's public lashing of critics, few are the brave souls willing to tell him the truth and risk a blow-up or banishment.

Ah, but perhaps the King didn't know, didn't realize the life-and-death implications of ambulances stuck in the snow.

Perhaps, but then it was his choice not to know or to care. All roads lead to the leader.

He bought the third term not because he wanted it, but because it was the best job on the market. He wanted to run for president but didn't have the courage to try.

Now he and New York are stuck with each other, but we're not really in it together. Emotionally and mentally, he has checked out. The job is beneath him now.

So New York burns while he fiddles. The signs of imperiousness are everywhere.

The CityTime scandal, an $80 million rip-off, was just another day at the office for him. Bike lanes proliferate even though nobody except a few zealots want them.

Commissioners in health and transportation brazenly fudge facts to sell his pet projects. Land-use rules are manipulated to justify sweetheart deals to favored contractors, such as the whopping homeless shelter on West 25th Street.

It's a rotten time to have a disengaged mayor. If Andrew Cuomo is the reform governor he promises to be, revenues from the state will be slashed. That will make City Hall's job tougher.

The Sanitation budget shows the hard times are just beginning. Spending has gone up 20 percent since 2006, even as its uniformed work force has fallen by nearly 10 percent. So we're paying more, and as we saw last week, getting less. That can't go on.

The only hope is for a course correction at the top. And New Year's is the perfect time for a new beginning. But even kings can't merely wish a change. They must commit to it and work at it, all day and every day.

So which is it, Mayor Mike? Are you in or out?

Goodwin hits it EXACTLY - Bloomberg doesn't want to hear ANYTHING that doesn't conform to his expectations or world view.

With the curtain coming down on The Wizard of Accountability and people getting a good glimpse of the petulant, self-absorbed, clueless Bloomberg last week during the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010 and last month during the CityTime scandal, perhaps the press will take a closer look at all the data and stats Bloomberg's administration throws out to show what a success they have been.

The crime rates, the fire fatalities, the homeless population stats, the grad rates and test scores in the schools - all phonied up by Bloomberg's managers because they KNOW the Wizard of Accountability doesn't want to hear bad news.

But you know what?

New Yorkers need to know this stuff.

And the press needs to start publishing these stories.

Up until now, Bloomberg has gotten pretty much a free ride from the press.

Little scrutiny has been paid to his "accomplishments" in policing, education and other areas.

That time must now end.

The Mayor of Accountability MUST face some accountability of his own.

New Yorkers and the press must NO LONGER assume Bloomberg knows what he is talking about on any issue.

After CityTime and the Bloomberg Blizzard, it is Bloomberg's job to prove to us he knows what he is talking about, not the other way around.

Some Principals Give Cathie Black Advice

From the NY Times:

Please try to focus the citywide discussion on learning and teaching rather than on data and accountability. Our attention needs to be on improving schools rather than on improving systems. Ask us to answer the tough questions: “How we can teach better and what we should teach?” Our concentration on statistical outcomes has caused us to be less effective educators than we might have been. It distracts us from the truly important questions of what, and how, young people learn.

Help us unlearn shorthand such as, “That school’s an A” or, “New York City’s test scores rose by X percent” because such language obscures the real question of whether or not kids are learning well. Instead, try to engender an honest dialogue about the best ways to get kids to think for themselves and the best ways to help young people develop the skills and the habits of mind necessary to become good citizens.

Please ensure that the public discourse is not about demonizing teachers or their union. A leader can effect change without manufacturing an enemy.

...

She’s going to have to bend over backwards to make people feel like they can take a risk and tell her things that she may not want to hear. I think overall, systemwide morale is really low. I am absolutely all for the idea that children are first, but there’s a way to treat the adults who work in a school with the kind of respect you want them to show the children, and that kind of respect has not been effectively shown.

One of the biggest issues right now is that there are legitimate problems around school planning and placement of schools — multiple schools inside of schools, sometimes where the previous school didn’t want the other school.

These are very difficult issues, challenging politically on multiple levels. But there has to be a better sense of engagement with the community. This is what makes public schools different from other schooling options: This is really schooling for the public. You want the parents, you want the public, to come to the table and be participatory.

...

Class size should be smaller. I don’t think there should be more than 20 students per class.

...

I would love to see an overhaul of writing across the curriculum. I think she should have a deputy chancellor solely devoted to developmental writing. A huge percentage of our students require remedial writing courses at CUNY. She should ensure that writing is fostered in the early grades and evolved yearly, so that students can eventually handle the rigors of academic college writing. Writing requires thinking skills. If you can’t think you can’t write, and if you can’t write you can’t be successful in college.

...

Minimize the budget cuts that filter down to the school level. Look harder and deeper at central staffing to see if there’s more fat to cut, if there are middle-manager positions — assistant directors, deputy directors — that can be phased out.

You can be sure that Bloomberg and Black will take NONE of the above suggestions.

Adam Lisberg suggested Bloomberg talk less and listen more in his Daily News column today.

He pointed to the appointment of Black as chancellor as another example of Bloomberg listening to nobody but himself and ignoring parents, teachers, and other political leaders.

The furor over Bloomberg's handling of the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 has been a humbling experience for The Little Mayor Who Couldn't, but you can be sure that humility will be short lived.

It is incumbent upon all of us in this city to continually remind Mr. Mayor that post-CityTime and post-Bloomberg Blizzard 2010, he NO LONGER GETS THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT on policy.

In the past, the press and many New Yorkers have assumed he knows what he's talking about on various issues because he SOUNDS like he knows what he's talking about.

But both CityTime and the Bloomberg Blizzard Response have exposed the Little Mayor Who Couldn't for the charlatan he is.

He is a middling manager with awful people skills who rules by fear. He privileges data and stats above all else, so the data and stats have all "improved" during his mayoral tenure - from the test scores to the graduation rates to the crime rates to fire fatalities.

But as we know after the test scores were exposed as fraudulent, much of this "improvement" is based upon manipulated data.

When you threaten to fire any city manager - from a principal to a precinct captain - who doesn't show improved data, then you get improved data - even if there is no real improvement.

And make no mistake, Bloomberg rules by fear much more so than even Saint Rudy of 9/11.

The Times article points out that most NYC principals didn't want to go on record and give suggestions to Cathie Black for fear they would lose their jobs or suffer some kind of retribution:

MONDAY is Cathleen P. Black’s first day of school — running them, that is. As Ms. Black, a longtime magazine executive, takes over as chancellor of the New York City school system, we asked some of the city’s most respected principals to give her some advice.

Many of those interviewed were sharply critical of the city’s formula for grading schools on a scale of A through F, and expressed hope that Ms. Black might steer the focus away from standardized tests. Others begged her to do more listening to parents, teachers and principals. One warning sign: several principals said they were afraid to be quoted. “She’s going to be my boss,” one said. “I just found out my Q.R. is at the end of January,” another said, using educrat-ese for the school evaluation process called a Quality Review. “I need her to give me advice.”

Therein lies the problem with Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, Klein's tenure as chancellor, and mayoral control in particular.

Fear and fear alone rule the day.

Cuomo Cuts Taxes On Millionaires, Lays Off 900 Gov't Workers

NYC Educator points out that Little Andy Cuomo didn't waste any time in taking on the "special interests" - working people who are part of a union - or paying back those who aren't "special interests" - rich people who donated a lot of money to his campaign.

And this was just the first day of the Cuomo administration.

Next up on the list?

Breaking teachers unions, slashing state school aid so that tens of thousands of teachers will be laid off, and promoting more education policies that enrich his hedge fund/ed deform/test prep/education management organization buddies.

Because the hedge fund managers who met Cuomo in a back room and handed him a suitcase full of cash to promote their ed deform policies aren't "special interests."

But the teachers Cuomo plans to take on and break - they are.

The Wrath of Klein

Nice to see the censuring of the Antigone/School Closure play story make it to the Daily News:

Queens school officials banned a student play this month out of fear that it was too critical of outgoing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg.

The Jamaica High School and Queens Collegiate students wrote the play after reading the Greek tragedy "Antigone" in a course called "The Actors Studio," taught at Queensborough Community College.

The play paints a picture of unequal treatment at the two schools, which share one building. Collegiate is a new and growing school, while the Education Department is trying to close Jamaica for poor performance.

Instructor Brian Pickett received an email the day before the performance that principals at both schools had decided to ban it.

"They both had issues with the script and are concerned about implications and negative references to the [Education Department] as well as the chancellor and mayor," the email stated.

...

Neither principal could be reached during the holiday week, and the Education Department declined to comment.

In a letter to Klein and Bloomberg last week, Student Press Law Center director Frank LoMonte wrote, "It is difficult to think of a more educationally and civically unsound action that a principal could take than to order students to refrain from speaking out on a matter of public concern regarding the quality of education they are receiving."

"I felt it was discriminatory," said Jamaica senior Afsan Quayyum, 18. "I had a lot of hope about this play. I wanted everyone to know what we face in the school every day. It was our story."

If the students had written a play that bashed teachers and unions, exalted Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, and payed homage to Mayor Bloomberg, everything would have been fine.

Silly high school students - say the right things about the right people and get paid a billion-fold...say the wrong things about the right people and get censured.

Therein lies the REAL life lesson of the Wrath of Klein.

It's All The Fault Of Public Employees

It's interesting how the hedge fund managers, bank CEO's, real estate people and other crooks who built the real estate and credit bubbles, then profited off the bailouts, aren't the ones taken to task for government budget woes.

It's the public employees unions instead.

Cuz' the NJEA brought about the real estate crisis, you know?

Not Countrywide Financial.

Not JP Morgan Chase.

Not Citigroup and BoA.

Not Goldman Sachs.

The NJEA.

Let's kill those bastard teachers who dare to tell Chris Christie he's full of shit.

As for the hedge fundies and Wall Street Masters of the Universe?

Let's make sure we keep their taxes extra low and all bow down to their greatness.

Socio-Emotional Skills And Education

I don't know if a lot of people caught this article about a different kind of eduction reform in the Times from before Christmas. To my mind, it is a very important article, so I wanted to post it here in full:

J. B. Pritzker, a prominent Chicago businessman, says he wakes up each day mulling the best way to get a return on his investments. The most valuable resource he can find is “smart people with character.”

It explains why, last week, Mr. Pritzker, a liberal Democrat, introduced a person he described as a University of Chicago supply-side economist at a gathering that might have benefited mayoral candidates concerned about Chicago’s public schools performance.

At the gathering, James J. Heckman, who has won the Nobel in economic science, offered a provocative idea for reducing spiraling budget deficits and strengthening the economy: investing in early childhood development.

Mr. Heckman marshals ample data to suggest that better teaching, higher standards, smaller classrooms and more Internet access “have less impact than we think,” as he put it at the Spertus Institute. To focus as intently as we do on the kindergarten to high school years misses how “the accident of birth is the greatest source of inequality,” he said.

He urges more effectively educating children before they step into a classroom where, as Chicago teachers tell me, they often are clueless about letters, numbers and colors — and lack the attentiveness and persistence to ever catch up. Matters are as bleak with many students entering the City Colleges system.

Mr. Heckman is not really a supply-sider, but he is big on return on investment, just like Mr. Pritzker, who sponsored the Spertus event with the McCormick Foundation and is also a contributor to my wife’s nonprofit group.

He contends that high-quality programs focused on birth to age 5 produce a higher per-dollar return than K-12 schooling and later job training. They reduce deficits by reducing the need for special education and remediation, and by cutting juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy and dropout rates.

With charts and references to long-term studies, Mr. Heckman underscored why families matter and attributed the widening gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged to deficits in skills and abilities that begin with inadequate early childhood development.

One slide juxtaposed achievement test scores with a mother’s education. If you come from a single-parent home with a mother who dropped out of school, your scores lag far behind throughout your academic life.

Test scores may measure smarts, not the character that turns knowledge into know-how. “Socio-emotional skills” or “character,” which we don’t often measure, are critical, and include motivation, the ability to work with others, attention, self-regulation, self-esteem and the ability to defer gratification.

There are few more influential thinkers than Mr. Heckman on the impact of social programs and methods used to assess them.

“He’s one of the great labor economists of all time, a pioneer of empirical analysis of labor markets, human capital and education,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and a University of Chicago colleague.

In the mayoral race, only the freshly certified (to run) Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico offer extensive plans for education reform. Mr. Emanuel’s ideas strike some nonpartisan folks as more innovative, but Mr. Chico puts early learning front and center.

To their credit, both encourage parental participation, though that’s a complex topic. It’s especially knotty for poor parents who don’t have computers, easy transportation or time to be involved in their child’s school.

Finally, each seems more tactical than strategic, with neither arguably offering a compelling answer to a simple question: What exactly is the purpose of a Chicago public school education?

Many politicians jabber about “preparing our children for a global high-tech economy.” That’s a projection of the present onto a future we stumble to imagine, let alone predict.

But if Mr. Heckman is correct, the purpose of education is what it has always been: to develop a well-rounded, knowledgeable and adaptable person; to create upward mobility through smarts and character.

Imagine more young adults going off into the world to make it better — and fewer coming home to sleep on the couch. If a candidate forced a real debate on such a vision, and a plan to pay for it, parents might pony up even in tough times.

I disagree with writer Warren that Rahm's education plans put parents front and center - just like his boss Obama has done in Washington, Rahm's "innovative ideas" about education mean blowing up the current system, blaming teachers for all the ills in the system, and creating a punitive education system that lets parents skate and puts all the onus on teachers and schools.

But I do agree that developing socio-emotional skills is a most important piece to developing well-rounded, knowledgeable and adaptable people.

Right now in NYC, we teach "skills" - in my high school, this mostly means how to score well on multiple choice tests, how to write an MLA-style research paper and how to write formulaic essays for the U.S. History, Global or ELA Regents exams.

In my opinion, this is not education. This does not help develop well-rounded, knowledgeable and adaptable people.

This develops test takers who can take one or two specific tests, but need direction to do anything else.

The politicians, the corporate types and their shills in the corporate media blame teachers for the problems many public school systems have in developing well-rounded, knowledgeable and adaptable people as opposed to test taking automatons who can't do much else.

It burns me up that so many of these people cannot see that the very policies they promote are creating the very problems they claim they want to alleviate.

Or perhaps these people DO know EXACTLY what it is their policies are doing and are just using teachers and the public school system as scapegoats for their planned dumbing down of the majority of America.

After all, a dumbed down America just smart enough to do the shitty jobs corporate America gives them but too dumb to see how badly they're getting screwed in the global economy is in the long term interests of the politicians, the corporate types and their shills in the corporate media.

Cuomo: People Can't Afford Any More Taxes

Little Andy today:

“People can’t afford to pay any more taxes, period,” Mr. Cuomo said. “In the real world, taxes are going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s income is going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s bank account is going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s home value is going up 5, 6, 7 percent.”

Actually there is a group of people who are experiencing income growth of 5, 6, 7 percent.

That would be these guys.

And these guys.

But Cuomo doesn't want to raise taxes on either the hedge fund industry or Wall Street.

So instead we will get budget cuts, layoffs and pension cuts.

We will get the very same plan Bloomberg has brought to New York City.

Cuomo will lay off state workers, slash school aid, bust the public employees union and take away pensions from current and future government worker retirees.

He says we all have to sacrifice to make New York work.

But you know who doesn't seem to have to sacrifice?

These guys and these guys.

Not even the ones that helped bring about the 2007-2008 financial collapse.

Nope - it's the cops and firemen and teachers and sanitation personnel and government workers who Cuomo thinks should sacrifice.

As usual in the new Feudal America.

Christie Blames Local Mayors For Snow Removal Problems

Governor Christie flew to Florida last Sunday at the start of the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010, leaving the state of New Jersey in the hands of an acting governor.

Christie defended those actions yesterday and blamed local mayors for all the snow removal problems in the state:

Gov. Chris Christie praised his administration and defended his decision to remain in Florida during this week’s blizzard at his first public appearance since nearly 3 feet of snow fell in some parts of the state.

He deflected blame for unpaved local roads to the mayors and called criticism of his decision not to return home sooner partisan, saying it came from Democrats looking for any line of attack — and the media with nothing else to report during a slow news week.

As plows removed snow from the sidewalk outside Freehold’s Hall of Records Friday morning, inside Christie signed an application officially requesting aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Christie said he toured Monmouth County earlier in the morning, calling it the "epicenter" of the storm.

"I would give the folks in New Jersey state government and the county government an A for the effort we put in," Christie said. "We probably get a B for results."

As for all the people who were trapped in their homes and the local streets that remain white just a few blocks away, Christie called on mayors to "buck up and take responsibility for the fact that they didn’t do their job."

"If someone is snowed into their house, that’s not our responsibility," Christie said, adding an exception for residents of state roads.

By Friday 95 percent of state roads were cleared and the state Department of Transportation received no requests from mayors to help clear local roads, Christie said.

"I don’t know whether we’re supposed to have ESP when we have 566 municipalities," Christie said.

Christie said it was "not true" some municipalities had worked to clear state roads before tackling their own. He was responding to mayors who said it added to the time it took them to clear their local roads.

You have to love the hypocrisy of this guy -gives himself an A for snow removal efforts that he had nothing to do with coordinating because he was riding "It's A Small World" with his children at Disneyworld while calling for others in the government to take responsibility for their failures.

As I have written over and over, this hypocrisy is emblematic of who Christie is.

It is emblematic of many in government and members of the GOP and corporate Dems in particular.

We will hold OTHERS accountable, but not ourselves.

All problems that occur are the fault of OTHER people who should have solved them while we ate fudge on Main Street at Disneyworld.

When the going gets tough, the accountability movement blames others.

In Chris Christie's case, when the going gets tough, the tough go to Disneyworld.

The Consequences of the Pervasive Tax-Cut/Budget Cut Ideology

Piles of garbage and snow still litter the streets of New York:



The Daily News finds the city's snow plow records show that the city ignored many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens:

Mayor Bloomberg scoffed at claims that city snowplows favored Manhattan - where he lives - over the outer boroughs.

"I care about all parts of this city," he said.

But a Daily News review of Department of Sanitation records shows a stark disparity in the time it took to clear Manhattan streets and the time it took to plow out much of Brooklyn and Queens.

The records show south Brooklyn neighborhoods - Carroll Gardens, Bay Ridge, Midwood, Flatbush, Mill Basin, Coney Island and Flatlands - were left largely untouched long after Manhattan was plowed nearly top to bottom.

By 4 a.m. Monday, all of Manhattan's primary routes and 92% of its secondary routes from Inwood to Wall St. were checked off as plowed.

That means a plow made at least one pass over all the streets within the route, with the exception of streets blocked by abandoned vehicles, said Keith Mellis, a department spokesman.

Meanwhile in south Brooklyn, only 67% of the main routes and a scant 27% of its secondary routes had been plowed.

North Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick and Crown Heights didn't fare much better. There, all primary routes had been plowed but only half the secondary routes were cleared as of 4 a.m. Tuesday.

A similar disparity emerged in western Queens, which includes Astoria, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Flushing, Forest Hills, Elmhurst, Woodhaven and Kew Gardens.

There, 100% of the primary roads were cleared by 4 a.m. Tuesday, but only 47% of the secondary roads got plowed.

Mellis said that may be because abandoned vehicles blocked more streets in the boroughs. "We know that there were a lot of buses and cars stuck on certain blocks," he said.

The tale of two cities continued well into Tuesday. By 5 p.m., all of Manhattan was deemed plowed, but only 46% of south Brooklyn's secondary streets had been cleared, and 10% of its main roadways had yet to see a plow.

Western Queens was slightly better; 66% of the secondary streets had been cleared.

By noon Wednesday - three days after the storm hit - more than a quarter of south Brooklyn's routes remained uncleared. Less than half its tertiary streets were plowed. By then, most of the primary and secondary roads elsewhere in the city had been checked off as cleared.

The last road in Manhattan was declared plowed as of 5 p.m. Tuesday. The last roads in Brooklyn and Queens were deemed plowed 9 a.m. Thursday - nearly two days later.

City residents remain enraged over the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010:

It's not just the snow cleanup that's rotten in the city: A week's worth of last year's garbage is stinking things up for the start of 2011.

The good news is that citywide trash pickup, absent since Sunday's 20-inch blizzard, will resume Monday in areas scheduled for collection that day.

The bad news: Only if your street is clear.

"We have to get back to a normal schedule," said Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty.

It can't come soon enough for outer borough residents still struggling with ice-covered streets, snowed-in cars and pent-up anger.

"This is unacceptable," said Alan Baum, whose mother, Daisy, remained stranded on a Jamaica street coated with several inches of snow and growing mounds of garbage. "This is not the first time New York City had a snowstorm. You could say this is Bloomberg's Katrina."

Lisa Rabito, 49, said her block of 76th St. was "an atrocious mess," with 4 inches of packed snow still on the street.

At one point, her neighbors took to the streets with snowblowers in an effort to do what the city had not in the five days since the blizzard began Sunday.

The announcement that garbage will be collected only on streets cleared of snow was bad news for those Brooklyn residents struggling yesterday with still-blocked roadways.

In East New York, cars kept getting stuck in the ice and snow of unplowed Blake Ave. An irate Deborah Maxwell spent 45 minutes with her trapped 2000 BMW before neighbors freed her car.

"Do they care about the citizens or do they care about themselves?" asked Maxwell, 40, an unemployed finance worker. "Five days later and I'm still getting stuck? What's the problem?"

Vinny Singh, 24, helped free a city Access-A-Ride vehicle trapped for 90 minutes yesterday on Blake Ave. The unplowed streets kept the electrician from moving his car, and cost him a week's worth of work.

"Somebody should throw a snowball at Bloomberg," he said. "Let him wait for a bus for five hours and see how it feels. ...This can't happen again. I can't afford it."

Sanitation workers hope to begin garbage collection this weekend by emptying containers at some large apartment buildings, a department spokesman said.

They will also begin emptying litter baskets across the city this weekend. More details on next week's plans are expected tomorrow.

The commissioner, in an end-of-year note to his troops, thanked them for "your dedication and endless hours of work during the recent blizzard."

Cleanup costs for the blizzard, the first storm of the season, were expected to climb above $20.5 million - more than half the city's snow removal budget of $38.5 million for the season.

Bloomberg's Katrina. An atrocious mess. Five days later and I'm still getting stuck.

That's what people are saying about Bloomberg - the Mayor of Accountability.

It's 47 degrees as of 11:00 AM this morning, so the temperature should start to remove the snow that Bloomberg couldn't.

But be aware of two things going forward - with over half the NYC snow removal budget blown on this one storm, you can be sure Bloomberg will tie future snow removal to additional cuts to city agencies and layoffs of city employees.

The Daily News has already tied the Bloomberg Blizzard failure of 2010 to public employee pensions.

But this is jive.

The fact is, Bloomberg refuses to raise taxes on rich people or corporations and prefers cuts to services and public employees - just as Obama and other politicians around the country have promoted the same policies.

As David Sirota noted, these policies have consequences:

Like so many wealth-worshiping politicians across the land, Bloomberg spent the last few years focused on two priorities: He campaigned against proposals to replenish depleted public coffers via slightly higher taxes on Wall Streeters, all while citing those depleted coffers as a rationale for massive municipal layoffs. Those job cuts, which were particularly acute at New York's snow-removing sanitation department, have now predictably translated into an immobilized metropolis.

Bloomberg and other politicians who champion this pervasive tax-cut/budget-cut ideology will certainly employ rhetorical spin to distract from this cause-and-effect story. But with New York still resembling the ice planet Hoth, it's clear Mother Nature can't be spun, and even more clear that conservative economic ideology will probably deliver similar results all over America during future weather-related catastrophes.

But, then, how can such a bankrupt ideology persist in the face of such terrible consequences? Welcome to the third problem highlighted by the New York snowstorm: plutocracy.

We all know that American politics is dominated by money. The U.S. Senate is a millionaires' club, and the politicians who aren't personally rich are typically bankrolled by corporate interests. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg personifies this plutocratic order - and his declaration that "the city is going fine" during the blizzard because "Broadway shows were full" demonstrates what plutocracy means in practice. It means that when an emergency does not hurt the Blooombergs of the world, our government does not see any emergency at all.

Yes, as long as the Bloombergs' streets are plowed (as the mayor's was), as long as the all-important rich are enjoying their theater engagements, the plutocrats think everything is A-OK. They don't care that, say, an outer-borough newborn died because EMTs couldn't get to the baby's home for nine hours. They don't care that another outer-borough woman had to wait 30 hours for an ambulance after breaking her ankle. And those plutocrats certainly aren't about to change the conservative economic policies that help make these crises so horrific for the non-rich.

Again, this triple threat of climate change, economic conservatism and plutocracy is not limited to New York. It's the new ubiquitous normal in America, which is why the Big Apple's blizzard experience is so significant.

A real-time counter to demagogues' more sensational predictions of our doomsday, New York's winter trouble presents the nation's gloomy future in more banal - but equally troubling - terms. The blizzard suggests that America's decline will not look like an Armageddon-ish explosion in Washington. It will look like a traffic-snarling snowdrift in Queens.

You can be sure that the corporate media will begin to target the WRONG purveyors of this mess.

Indeed, they already have, with the Daily News blaming pubic employee pensions and the NY Post blaming unionized sanitation workers for an alleged official union citywide snow removal slowdown that they have yet to provide any proof for outside of hearsay.

The reality is, Bloomberg and other politicians around the country - fully supported by many people at the election polls and in the public opinion polls - have cut taxes to the bare bone so that government is forced to do so much more than ever before with so much less in the coffers.

This storm - Bloomberg's Katrina, as one man put it - is the consequence of those policies.

And given the realities of the bare government coffers (as opposed to the full Wall Street coffers), we will see more and more of this in the future.

And of course it will be the fault of public employees and government workers.

Anybody want to bet that there will be calls to privatize the sanitation department after this?

Because we can't, you know, raise taxes on hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson or the Wall Street Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs.

So we'll just have to make do with what we have.

That means more with less, that means privatizing everything in sight - from the public school system to the sanitation department - and making sure that profits are flowing in on Wall Street and the streets are plowed on Bloomberg's street.

And everybody else in the city can just go without.