Andrew Cuomo's Education Philosophy

Governor Cuomo visited Queens, gave a teacher an award, and made an announcement. Here it is, word for word:

“Education always comes down to one factor and that one factor is the teacher,” Cuomo said. “And that’s what makes education work or not work.”

This is very convenient for our esteemed governor. After all, he's failed to fund schools adequately since he's gotten the job, owes millions upon millions to our schools due to his failure to fund as the CFE lawsuit mandated, and now that the only factor is the teacher, he's completely off the hook.

It's kind of amazing that, even as he's ostensibly praising a teacher, he manages to vilify us. The fact that over half of our students live in poverty is neither here nor there. Andrew Cuomo can't bother himself with that. Governor Cuomo is more concerned with saving millionaires from the inconvenience of paying taxes, even when millionaires write and ask him not to. Evidently the folks who contribute to his campaign coffers are not of that persuasion.

It is pretty incredible Andrew Cuomo made it this far as a Democrat. Of course, he's one of those "New" Democrats. In fact, he ran first term on a platform vowing to go after unions. As a lifelong Democrat, I couldn't believe that this was who was representing us. I mean, if Democrats are going to do that, who needs Republicans?

Cuomo has been quiet about teachers for a few months. After all, he's already managed to take the worst evaluation system I've ever seen, at the lowest point of his popularity, and make it even worse. I shudder to think of what ridiculous "authentic" assessments our union will negotiate. I fear it will make us spend time doing pointless busy work so as to fill portfolios with crap to meet some arbitrary standard or other. I fear it will take time away from the important work of teaching children. I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen no evidence anywhere to suggest Mulgrew's ideas have merit, just as there was none that the "growth model" worked, and there was none that VAM worked.

But every now and then Bill Gates pulls yet another golden egg from his fruitful hind quarters, and the entire country must follow. After all, he's an education expert, like Whoopie Goldberg, Campbell Brown, Pitbull, and whoever that famous guy is who started another charter school in Harlem. Bill's got money to burn and once he makes a mistake, everyone else has to make the same one. It's certainly paid off for Andy Cuomo, Eva Moskowitz's favorite pawn now that she hasn't got Joel Klein to kick around anymore

I cannot find words to adequately express the depths of Andrew Cuomo's ignorance. When I get little girls falling asleep at 9 AM because they've been up all night delivering Newsday with their grandmothers I want to take pictures and send them to Cuomo's house, you know, the one in which he won't permit local inspectors because as governor,  why the hell should he have to pay taxes? Why, to support public schools in which money plays no role, since the sole factor in education is the teacher?

I guess I'm a miserable failure. My students, having been here only weeks or months, don't tend to speak a whole lot of English. That's my fault for not running over to China and El Salvador and Korea and Afghanistan to teach them. I was preoccupied with going to my job in Queens to support my family and failed to pay attention to those obligations.

That's about the level of logic utilized by our esteemed governor. You know, we're New Yorkers. We have reps as being nobody's fool.

How the hell did we elect this guy?

Even the Rat Squad Doesn't Know Everything

Yesterday I heard about a teacher who was terminated. I'm always sad when I hear that happens, but I guess it means the system, designed to fire teachers, actually works the way it's supposed to. Maybe I should alert Andrew Cuomo, but I'm pretty sure he won't read my message unless I enclose it in a suitcase full of cash.

Of course it doesn't matter, because Cuomo decided the system was "baloney," and he did so well before we got to examine its results in the largest school district in the state. After all, we're a little less than a third of the entire state population, so why bother with us? What does it matter that we picked up the junk science system a year later than everyone else? Why not just move ahead and condemn your own signature system, making it even more unreasonable while taking absolutely no responsibility whatsoever?

UFT President Michael Mulgrew is very proud of this system. He says it's a model for the state. However, in this model, the UFT Rat Squad, designed as a check on the system, rates 70% of those it observes ineffective. This means you have a very large chance of having the burden of proof on your shoulders, rather than those of the city. It would be on you to prove you are not ineffective. I've seen UFT Unity members defend this, saying the teacher should control the process. However, people who actually understand burden of proof will tell you that it's extremely difficult to prove a negative.

It's easier to prove a positive. That's why this person, despite having not been rated ineffective by the Rat Squad, is now unemployed. I can't go into specifics for a few reasons. For one, I'd be betraying a confidence if I were to give details to which I were privy. For another, I haven't actually got any details beyond those I've shared anyway.

Here's what I do know. Even with that miserable 30% Rat Squad save rating, if you're facing 3020a, you're guaranteed absolutely nothing. The only thing they win for you is the right to face the same 3020a people have faced over the years previous to the new APPR law. I hear you can appeal, but that appeals are rarely successful. I suppose when you're fighting for your life you do what you have to, and I suppose you have nothing to lose by fighting to the end.

Still, I question this system. It's tailor made to fire teachers, hardly a worthwhile goal. If indeed there is a zombie plague of bad teachers, which there is not, who gave tenure to all the zombies? In fact, even if there are some incompetents, which there are in absolutely every field, who gave them tenure? With years to observe people, how could you overlook something as fundamental as incompetence? Why are there no consequences for people who don't see it? Doesn't that mean they are incompetent? And aren't they the very same people judging whether or not we are competent?

I don't know enough to judge this particular verdict, and as I said, I have no notion on what it was based. But I don't believe people pretend to be good teachers for a few years and then just do whatever when they get tenure. I do the best I can in the classroom, and it's hard for me to understand why anyone wouldn't. There's nothing quite as miserable as running bad classes, which I did pretty frequently my first year or two. It's absolutely imperative to get support in the beginning.

What happened here? Were administrators giving away tenure like candy because they were too lazy to do their jobs? If so, why do they still have their jobs? If not, how did people slip through the cracks? Is the system working, or are incompetent administrators working the system?

UFT Unity and the Vision Thing

Over at Ednotes Online, a bold Unity Caucus member is making anonymous comments to the effect that CTU has been assimilated and resistance is futile. CTU voted as a bloc, and therefore, with no evidence whatsoever, this commenter declares that we are stranded, alone, and that things are hopeless. That's a wholly ironic vision because a whole lot of teachers in NYC feel the same way.

They feel this way because they're caught in a vindictive and unreasonable system. UFT Unity would like you to forget that the new rating system was ushered in by a law their leader, Michael Mulgrew, proclaimed he had a hand in writing. This law made junk science 40% of teacher ratings. Andrew Cuomo loved this, until not enough teachers got fired. He then pushed another law that made junk science 50% of teacher rating. Mulgrew likes this because, he says, this gives less power to administrators.

When we in MORE openly oppose junk science, Mulgrew's people make up nonsense, saying that we want principals to have 100% discretion over evaluations. That's what's called a strawman fallacy. When you can't address your opponent's argument, you just change it, and try to make your opponent address the argument you just invented. It's ridiculous. What we say is that teachers ought not to be evaluated by invalid criteria. In fact, a vindictive administrator could make stuff up and sink a teacher based on observation alone. I have seen video evidence of administrators simply fabricating what happened in classrooms.

Mulgrew argues that more teachers have their ratings brought up by test scores than brought down. That's fine if you fall into that category. But I personally know someone whose rating was brought down to ineffective via test scores alone. If I know one person, there are plenty more. There's an old tenet of English law called Blackstone's Formulation, that says:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

In American parlance, that means you are innocent until proven guilty, and that is the bedrock of American justice.  Another portion of the Mulgrew-endorsed agreement is that teachers, twice judged ineffective and confirmed so by the UFT Rat Squad, are guilty until proven innocent. I have actually seen UFT Unity people defend this, saying teachers should own the process. What this tells me is that those people will say any damn thing to defend their actions, whether or not said actions are beneficial to UFT members. When your core value is justifying what your caucus has done rather than representing members to the best of your ability, there's something very very wrong.

UFT Unity has no problem smearing opt-out based on outright lies to justify their position. They'd
would like to portray us as a bunch of lunatics who run around screaming for no reason. Now anyone who knows me, including my students, will tell you that I don't do that. I scream for effect, to grab or focus attention. My tendency when angry in the classroom is to be very quiet and think about how to fix things. I let the children scream while I figure out the best way of dealing with it. My default is certainly not screaming mode. 

I was elected by the high school teachers of NYC to represent them, and that I will do. What I see is a lot of uncertainly and misery, and that is fostered by ridiculous policies that benefit no one but reformies who hate union and wish to see it eradicated. What I see is a leadership that supports mayoral control, charter schools, colocation, and an erosion of seniority benefits. I see a leadership content to offer 20,000 high school teachers no representation whatsoever in NYSUT, NEA or AFT. I see a leadership that offers ATRs no representation anywhere at all.

I see a leadership that lives in a virtual fishbowl, communication only with people who've signed oaths to support them. I see a leadership that fails to engage rank and file. I see a President who shuns social media but musters the audacity to urge the rest of us to use it as he instructs us. I see a top-down model that criticizes top-down models and perceives no irony whatsoever in doing so.

And now I see seven voices on an Executive Board of 102 who will speak truth to bureaucracy, to reforminess. I'm proud to be part of this long overdue breath of fresh air in Dracula's castle over at 52 Broadway. They can continue to raise petty objections and indulge in juvenile nonsense behind our backs, but they will find the truth in their faces at the Executive Board and elsewhere.

To maintain that we do this simply to be contrary is another strawman. It would be so much easier to simply join Unity, go on free trips, and get some cool union gig in some office somewhere. But someone has to represent the people in the trenches, the people subject to the APPR endorsed by Michael Mulgrew. If he says this is the best of all possible worlds, every single one of his loyalty oath signers is bound to say, "Yes Mike that's absolutely correct.

In fact it's absolutely wrong, and the misery of people doing the work is palpable. Someone needs to be the voice of these people. Right now we are that voice. I'm very proud to represent my long-neglected brothers and sisters, and I will try to work with UFT Unity to do that. If they wish to move forward rather than indulge in petty nonsensical squabbles, I'm happy to do that too.

Time will tell whether or not they are up to the task.

The Shocking Teacher Shortage

It looks like Governor Cuomo's plan of painting targets on the backs of all teachers has not worked out as well as planned in NY State. Evidently there is a shortage, and to ease it, the geniuses in Albany are relaxing standards. Their thinking, evidently, is people from other states will be anxious for the chance to judged by Governor Cuomo's matrix, and potentially be guilty until proven innocent. After all, there aren't many opportunities like that in the United States.

Another point of view, of course, is that Governor Cuomo is bought and paid for by Eva Moskowitz's BFFs at Families for Excellent Schools, and that he pretty much jumps at their beck and call. Maybe that's why he was so happy to appear at Ms. Moskowitz's field trip, you know, the one where she boarded all her students on buses and dragged them to Albany to lobby for her own political cause. If you or I did that, we'd be fired. But of course we didn't, so that's not why there's a teacher shortage.

There's a teacher shortage because we're tired of being used as punching bags. We're tired of being vilified in the press, and by every tinhorn politician that takes suitcases of cash from DFER and FES. We're tired of hearing people like Cuomo enact rating plans to fire teachers, call them "baloney" when they fail to fire enough teachers, and revise them for the express purpose of firing more. We're tired of being judged by test scores which the American Statistical Association correctly asserts have little or no validity.

We're tired of being told the only way to teach is like this, like that, or like whatever Bill Gates wakes up and decides children other than his own must be taught. We're tired of endless testing and being forced to teach nonsense that does not help our children. We're tired of underlying assumptions by people with no credentials or credibility that the children we serve lack "grit" and must be treated with "rigor."

I'm particularly tired of so-called leaders who create problems and then try to solve them in ways that don't address the problems at all. When I started teaching, pay was particularly low. The city didn't bother addressing the huge disparity in pay between the city and surrounding suburbs. Instead, there were ads in the subways and on buses to try to attract teachers. There were intergalactic recruiting campaigns. It turned out, though, that people from other countries and universes just couldn't afford to live in NYC.

And then, of course, there is the issue of quality. I was one of the people who saw a subway ad and took a teaching gig. I had no idea what I was doing. On my ninth day of teaching, my supervisor wrote me up and said I had no idea what I was doing. But I had told her I had no idea what I was doing when she hired me. To this day I wonder why she expected more. She wrote that I should try to be more "heuristic" when I taught. Naturally that cleared up everything for me. Doubtless with excellent advice like that every teacher will become instantly excellent, no matter how much they raise or lower the standards.

Cuomo is an empty suit, with loyalty to no one but Cuomo. He just said he won't support his party in its effort to retake the State Senate. This is they guy Hillary's people have representing the DNC for New York. He has no moral center whatsoever, does whatever the people who pay him say, and happily supports whatever the privatizers tell him to. And, oh, if the people rise up and say screw your ridiculous tests, he can always make some empty gesture, like a partial moratorium, and say, "See? I care what you think, sort of."

This is step one in addressing a teacher shortage created by Albany. There will be more. But until they start listening to teachers and learning why people no longer pursue this job, they will be empty gesture after empty gesture, likely helping no one but those who see education as an opportunity for profit.

Chalkbeat NY Stands Up for the Gates-Funded Little Guy

I was pretty surprised to read that the NY Regents are passing policy without the input of the public. I mean, that's a pretty serious breach of basic democracy, isn't it? On the other hand, I've been to a whole lot of public hearings about schools and school closings, and I've spoken at them too. Several were at Jamaica High School, closed based on false statistics, according to this piece in Chalkbeat.

The thing about public hearings is this--yes, members of the public get to speak. In fact, at Jamaica and several other school closing hearings, I don't remember a single person getting up to speak in favor of school closings. I've also been to multiple meetings of the PEP under Bloomberg where the public was roundly ignored. In fact, Bloomberg fired anyone who contemplated voting against doing whatever they were told. While he didn't make them sign loyalty oaths, the effect was precisely the same.

State hearings are different, of course. When former NY Education Commissioner Reformy John King decided to explain to NY that Common Core was the best thing since sliced bread, he planned a series of public forums. However, after the public said in no uncertain terms they disagreed, he canceled them, saying they'd been taken over by "special interests." The special interests, of course, were parents and teachers. He may have implied they were controlled by the unions, but of course the union leadership actually supported the same nonsense he was espousing.

In fact, the only meeting King went to where he found support actually was taken over by special interests, to wit, Students First NY. Only one non-special interest actually got to speak, and that was my friend Katie Lapham. Other than that it was a pro-high-stakes testing party. Doubtless this was King's view of a worthy public forum, and given that it's taken until now for Chalkbeat to stand up to the lack of forums, I have to question whether it's theirs too.

The big change Chalkbeat points to is a link claiming that the Regents "wiped out" main elements of the teacher evaluation law. If you bother to follow the link, you learn that this is a reference to the fake moratorium on high stakes testing, which the article itself later admits to be limited to the use of Common Core testing in grades 3-8. The fact that junk science rules absolutely everywhere else, and will in fact be increased in importance next year, is evidently of no relevance whatsoever.

While Chalkbeat acknowledges these changes were urged on by Governor Cuomo's task force, it fails utterly to make connections as to what forced Cuomo to start a task force, let alone pretend he gives a crap about education or public school teachers. This, of course, was a massive opt-out, in which over 20% of New York's parents told their children not to sit for tests that Cuomo himself referred to as meaningless. But rather than speak to any of its leaders, Chalkbeat seeks comment from a Gates-funded group I've never heard of called Committee on Open Government.

After all, why go to Jeanette Deutermann, or Leonie Haimson, or Jia Lee, or Beth Dimino, or Katie Lapham, when you can get someone who's taken Gates money? And just to round out the forum, Chalkbeat goes to Reformy John King's successor, MaryEllen Elia, who's taken boatloads of Gates money and is therefore an expert on pretty much whatever.

Chalkbeat also makes the preposterous assertion that the Regents allowing children of special needs a route to graduation should have been more gradual because schools were prepping them for tests they didn't need. While that may be true, this did not remove their option of taking those tests. Announcing the allowance this year and enabling it, say, next year, would've helped absolutely no one. You don't need to go to a Gates-funded expert to figure that out.

While it may have been nice to have public hearings, the fact is the public has gotten up and spoken, and without that, none of these changes would have occurred. It's remarkable that Chalkbeat NY doesn't know that.

A Message from Governor Andy on Why You Have to Register Your Certification

Hi, it's me, your old pal Andy Cuomo. I just want you to know that a lot of you may think I hate teachers, but that's not the case. In fact, my mother was a teacher. So that should be proof enough. But no, all you Gloomy Guses are all, "Well, why did you have to judge us by test scores?" and "Why did you say your own system was baloney and then up the test scores?"

Well, I hear you, and I hear all those folks who opted their kids out of the tests. It made me look so bad that I agreed not to count Common Core tests in math and English from grades 3-8. Now a lot of you are saying that implies those of you with other Common Core tests can go screw yourselves and let me say, right at the outset, that I am a great believer in individual freedom. So of course you can go screw yourselves! That's your right and I shall defend your rights to the bitter end.

But a lot of you are complaining about why you have to register with the state. Now that's an important consideration, and I want to be absolutely up front with my response. Now Sandra and I don't get a whole lot of time off, but after eating one of her delicious Kwanzaa cakes, there's nothing we like better than watching a little television in our house. In fact, we've got a whole TV room there that we built, and those county home inspectors will get in to see it over my dead body. No way are we gonna pay taxes on that! But I digress.

One of our favorite shows is The Walking Dead. I don't know if you watch it, but it's pretty terrifying. I mean, all the good people are united against those brain-eating zombies. My gosh, they are just awful. They just run around killing everyone and eating brains. As you surely know, I am the student lobbyist, and I just cannot allow zombies to victimize school children. I have observed the zombies very carefully, and we think having teachers register online is the best precaution. I mean, how many zombies are gonna register? So most registered teachers will not be zombies. And should they become zombies over the next five years, once their registration dates come up, they will not register. Or at least they probably won't. You can never be too sure with zombies. But we're gonna try to fix that.

In fact, while we've neglected this question up to now, preferring to focus on whether those who register are facing disciplinary or criminal charges, our next revision will ask people, under penalty of perjury, "Are you a brain-eating zombie?" Now there was a lot of debate at the most recent gala luncheon where it came up. Will zombies tell the truth? Honestly, I can't guarantee you they will. But nonetheless, if they lie they will be up on perjury charges. One thing Andrew Cuomo will not tolerate is some lying zombie. 

You see, this proves I love public schools, because charter school teachers don't need certification and therefore will not have this protection. Of course, if individual charter schools decide to pass anti-zombie rules they're free to do that. In fact, when Eva Moskowitz calls me today I'm gonna make a very strong suggestion that she carefully screen all new teaching candidates, and that she not hire zombies unless there's really no one else they can get. But Eva is a great gal, and if anyone can handle zombie teachers she can, so hey, if she's good with it I'm good with it.

Now sure, a lot of my critics are on my ass because we haven't really fired the volume of unionized teachers we'd been aiming for. But we're working on it. And please, just because I want to fire a lot of teachers doesn't mean that I don't like teachers. I'm just trying to economize, and that's why I'm only targeting those who are unionized. And if there are any zombie advocates out there, let me say that while it's true I'm preventing zombies from working in public schools, there may still be golden opportunities in charters.

After all, who the hell else really wants to teach in places like those?

Mr. Mulgrew Writes Me a Letter About Certification

Because I'm a very important guy, Michael Mulgrew, UFT president, wrote me a letter. OK, actually he sent me the same email he sent tens of thousands of other UFT members. But that's not the point. What's the point? Well, the point is more what he didn't say than what he did.

When my students show unwillingness to get up and ask questions, or move into groups, I tell them that I'm an old man with one foot in the grave, and if I can do it, they can too. So maybe that explains why I'm in the situation I'm in.

What exactly is that situation?  I hold permanent certification, and in three areas. I used to use only one, but now that Part 154 demands dual-certified teachers, I use two. Anyway, in August I'm gonna be even older than I am now, and that means I'm gonna have to register. After all, how will NY State know that I exist unless I let them know? There are excellent reasons for this. For example, if a piano were to fall on my head this afternoon, they'd need to make sure I didn't come back as a brain-eating zombie and endanger those with whom I teach and work. But do I have to register three times? President Mulgrew didn't tell me, and no matter how important I deem myself, he can't be bothered answering my email.

Now if I were a more recent teacher, I'd also need to register. But those with more recent licenses also have to count PD hours. What we still don't know is what PD hours actually are. I mean, it's great that we can start the count from zero and not worry about the last few years. Nonetheless, we have no idea what will be counted as PD in the future. Will the school PD, the ones so adored by Carmen Fariña, the ones memorialized into the Memorandum of Agreement, count toward the 20 hours? Will some of them? Will newer teachers have to take online courses? Go to approved PDs? Write a paper on the History of Cement? Who knows?

And while we're at it, how the hell are we going to be evaluated next year? Chalkbeat NY reported that we need not even come to an agreement until December 31st. This is really troublesome. For example, who, if anyone, is going to observe classes? Will it be our supervisors? Outside observers? Will Andrew Cuomo observe the classes himself to ensure they aren't "baloney?" What if Preet gets his ducks in a row and puts Governor Andy in a cell with his pals Dean and Shelley? Will they observe us via remote? Who knows?

It's nice that Mr. Mulgrew takes his valuable time and writes us a letter. I know he's got many other important things to do. But the letter answers one question while leaving many unanswered. A defect I see all too often in UFT leadership is a fervent unwillingness to say, "I don't know." But that's actually the best answer you can give when you don't know. A lot of people have issues admitting that. Maybe it's worse with teachers, as we're expected to know everything.

But I get questions about this stuff every day. I do indeed say, "I don't know." It must be a great burden to have to pretend to know everything all the time. I'm really glad not to have that problem.

Actually, I'm a lot more impressed with people who tell me when they don't know something. While Mulgrew has simply avoided the topic, I've been at meetings with UFT employees where they seem to make stuff up. It's very inconvenient. My default mode is to trust people until they give me reason not to. Maybe I'm naive.

But once I get burned by someone, I don't make the same mistake twice. 

Mayoral Control, but What About Evaluation?

Every year is a carnival. What new and more convoluted ways will the government find to catch us in the act of doing our jobs and fire us? Will it be another rubric for supervisors to follow, or the same one? Will it be the same parts of the rubric? Are we assumed to be so stupid that we believe every supervisor follows the same rubric in the same way?

Are we gonna get surprise visits from people who don't know us, don't know our students, and don't know anything about our schools so as to make things fair, as defined by NY Governor Andrew Cuomo? Will he then look at said program, declare it "baloney," and set about constructing a new one that will fire more teachers? No one really knows.

Because Albany deems Bill de Blasio to be a hippie commie weirdo, perhaps due to his opposition to charter schools, he's only gotten a one-year extension of mayoral control. This places him in the position of having to renegotiate it next year as he runs for re-election. That will be convenient for whichever pawn Eva Moskowitz selects to run against him. After all, if there were a mayor who'd rubber stamp whatever she wanted, like Mike Bloomberg did, Albany would have no issue granting a multi-year extension. (And if he'd pull a million dollars in loose change our of his pocket to keep the Senate's GOP majority, like Bloomberg did, that wouldn't hurt either.)

It looks like there are some goodies in there for those with the corporate driven agenda UFT Unity criticizes MORE for fighting.

The deal also will allow charter schools to more easily switch between authorizers. That could mean the city’s education department, which oversees a number of charter schools but no longer accepts oversight of new schools, could see some of those schools depart for the State University of New York or the state’s education department.

After all, charters need more freedom to do whatever the hell they see fit, and be authorized by whoever the hell they see fit, in case more restrictive authorizers say, hey, you can't do whatever the hell you see fit. Because whatever Eva wants, Eva gets. After all, charters don't need no stinking rules, and the Times offers this:

Charter schools can be authorized by three agencies — the State Education Department, the city’s Education Department and SUNY — but all operate according to the same state law. Although the announcement of the agreement did not offer details, the Senate’s proposal would exempt SUNY schools from the usual state standards and free to set their own rules, two officials with direct knowledge of the negotiations said.

But here's where, as a public school teacher subject to all those rating regulations charters can't be bothered with, I really wonder what the hell is going on here:

Lawmakers also agreed to give districts until the end of the year to negotiate the details of new evaluation systems for teachers and principals. according to Assembly spokesman Michael Whyland. Districts, including New York City, have been facing a Sept. 1 deadline to develop systems that complied with an unpopular 2015 law.

So let's see-- we have until the end of December to negotiate a new evaluation system. Therefore, we could conceivably start with one system in September only to find it completely revamped in January. We could, for example, then train teachers in January to prepare them for what was expected of them in September. That makes sense, doesn't it?

Well, it seems to have passed muster with the Heavy Hearts Assembly that passed the draconian evaluation law demanded by Andrew Cuomo. Of course that law was passed before Tough Andy became the Softer, Gentler Andy, worn down by the opt-out movement so reviled by UFT Unity. This notwithstanding, UFT Unity had no problem taking credit for the superficial changes in tone, and has no problem treating a partial moratorium on Common Core tests and Yet Another Great Victory.

And where does that leave those of us who actually have to go to work every day in New York City's public schools? I'd say pretty much rudderless and confused. After all, UFT Unity is led by Michael Mulgrew, who boasted of helping write the APPR law that brought junk science to teacher ratings. Mulgrew just boasted at the DA that junk science would count even more in our ratings.

Now Mulgrew may say that the junk science ratings help teachers more than they hurt them, and for all I know, he may be right. After all, some people are luckier than others. But I happen to know a very smart teacher who got an ineffective rating solely because of her MOSL scores. I have to think if I know one, there must be many more. But regardless of this, one is too many.

If the judgment of principals and assistant principals is so bad that the quality of their ratings is improved by a virtual coin toss the issue is not how much authority they do or do not have. The issue is not the optimal percentage of junk science we blend in to ameliorate that. The issue is the competence, or lack thereof, of those in positions to supervise us.

Until and unless the United Federation of Teachers faces up to that, there will be no system worth looking at. I've said it before and I'll say it again--the optimal percentage of junk science in a teacher evaluation is zero. If anyone wants to dispute that, I'm all ears.

NY State Senate Thinks Mayoral Control Is Gubernatorial Control

I'm really pretty gobstruck by this story. For the 12 longest years of my life, Michael Bloomberg had mayoral control. This basically meant Michael Bloomberg could do what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and as much as he wanted. The three-year-old child in him must have been thrilled. No more of that ridiculous democracy impeding him getting things his way, and no more communities voting in people who thought they should have control over the schools in their communities.

But then, after Bloomberg bought himself a third term against the twice-voiced will of the people, he couldn't or wouldn't purchase a fourth. And the people of New York rose up and voted for a mayor who was against charter schools. Of course, Andy Cuomo, who took tons of cash from charter schools, wasn't having any of it, so he passed a law, applicable only in New York City, that said we had to pay rent for the charters we didn't want. This, of course, was after they tried to pass a bill killing seniority rights for teachers in New York City only.

Anyway, Governor Andy's BFFs in the State Senate decided they'd offer mayoral control to de Blasio, that hippie commie weirdo, for only one year. But it was important that he have an "inspector" so that Cuomo could question every move he made in case it weren't reformy enough. And waddya know, this bill would sunset in a year so that Bill de Blasio could interrupt campaigning to beg Andy, who hates his guts, to renew it again.

You know it's funny how little faith people have in all the We, the People stuff nowadays. I mean, Bill de Blasio could stand up and say that the people who, you know, actually patronize the schools ought to have a voice in how they're run. That's what I think, and that's why I oppose mayoral control. Of course I also oppose it because it's really designed to circumvent democracy and allow the reformies to do Whatever They Damn Well Please with our students. That's why I really wish de Blasio would let it go.

But Andy Cuomo wants to make it worse. You see, what with all that money Andy takes from Moskowitz BFFs, he wants to make sure that de Blasio, who was overwhelmingly elected, doesn't get to actually do what he promised he would when elected. Essentially mayoral control is absolute. The mayor gets the last word and that's it, no questions asked. Unless the mayor doesn't do what Eva Moskowitz wants in which case Daddy comes to the classroom and embarrasses you every time you make a decision.

Now if Andrew Cuomo gave a golly gosh darn about We, the People, he'd create something other than the ridiculous PEP, where the public gets to say a few words and the fake school board then does whatever the mayor has told it to. But what Andrew Cuomo cares about is Andrew Cuomo, and he wants everyone under his thumb, not just We, the People, but also He, Bill de Blasio.

As far as Andrew Cuomo is concerned, We, the People, can go straight to hell. And frankly, it serves us right for allowing such a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, self-serving, self-centered, grasping, juvenile windbag to be our governor. Mayoral control was always a mistake, and the best outcome here would be its expiration. I won't mourn it.

Kick Him While He's Down

It's not the best of weeks for Andy Cuomo. After all, Preet is dropping clues all over the place that Silver and Skelos weren't the only crooks under his watchful eye. And there are really few individuals so morally bankrupt as the Governor of our great state, obviously on sale to the highest bidder. For a few million, he'll stand with Eva Moskowitz and pretend she serves all children (while we really do, and are regularly vilified for our trouble). He'll call himself the "student lobbyist" but fail to seek the billions NY State owes city children in the CFE lawsuit.

You may recall that the great minds of Revive NYSUT overthrew leadership, specifically claiming to oppose Cuomo. They failed to do so in the Working Families primary, when pro-teacher Zephyr Teachout ran against him. They failed to do so in the Democratic primary, when Zephyr Teachout ran against him again. They also failed to do so in the general election, when the Green Party's Howie Hawkins provided an alternative considerably better than shooting ourselves in the foot.

But alas, the leadership of NYSUT and UFT was having none of it. After all, it's scary to endorse newcomers. It's frightening to oppose a governor like Andy Cuomo. He might get mad if you do that, and that's an unacceptable risk. I mean, what if he gets up on his hind legs and demands a teacher evaluation system even worse than the one we already have? So it's best to slink away and mumble ridiculous excuses when members demand you stand by your explicitly stated principles.

On the other hand, Cuomo actually did demand an evaluation system worse than the one actually on the books. Not only that, but he won it as the spineless Democrats voted for it with "heavy hearts." I don't remember the reaction of NYSUT, but it's hard for me to forget an email I got from UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanking the Assembly for passing this atrocity.

Of course, Cuomo has since backed up a bit, what with hundreds of thousands of New York children opting out of his ridiculous tests. And everywhere I read of a "moratorium" on using test scores to rate children or teachers, even though a very limited number of tests are actually not counted. For example, all high school teachers are still judged on the same junk science as last year, and will have to await the "matrix" before we get a new variety of junk science.

But now that Cuomo is pretending to back down on his insane demands, and now that everyone is talking about having him frogmarched into a cell with Silver and Skelos, this might be a good time for NYSUT and UFT to get ahead of the curve. Why not start trashing the governor right now, so that when he finally goes down, they can genuinely take some credit for it?

When Michael Mulgrew, who was gonna punch us in the face and push our faces in the dirt if we didn't support his beloved Common Core, stands up and takes credit for its few and inconsequential reversals, he looks ridiculous. To avoid that in the future, all he has to do is threaten to punch Cuomo's face instead of ours. Maybe then when Cuomo goes down, he can say, "You see? I boldly threatened to brutalize the guy and now he's in prison so I don't have to."

So let's get in there now, UFT and NYSUT leadership. Because once the guy goes down, you know you're gonna take credit for it anyway. So let's make it look good, and begin making some noise. As an added benefit, all those irritating bloggers won't be calling you out all the time.

It's all about looking ahead, for once, and just a little bit. Let's try doing the right thing, just as an experiment, and seeing how it works out. If it does, who knows? Maybe we could make it a regular thing.

Lederman Wins, Unions Pay Valuable Lip Service

It's kind of amazing that Shari Lederman won her case challenging her junk science rating. I mean, junk science is the thing that Bill Gates staked his reputation as a self-appointed expert on. Not only that, but President Barack Obama and his Education Stooge Arne Duncan tied junk science rating to Race to the Top, and forced it down the throats of cash-starved states.

I mean, sure, the American Statistical Association says teachers are responsible for 1-14% of student test scores, and sure, we do more than show kids how to pass tests, but when DFER gives all that money to a candidate, they expect results. And they certainly got them, along with Common Core and charter schools and all that other great stuff.

The question, really, is why Shari Lederman had to do this on her own dime. I mean, why didn't NYSUT stake her? Why did her husband have to do the whole case pro bono? What about all the other teachers rated by this nonsense who suffered for no reason? I know a teacher who was rated ineffective only because of test scores, but she hasn't got a lawyer for a husband. Is NYSUT or UFT going to jump to her aid?

Well, not hardly. Michael Mulgrew boasted of having helped write the law that enabled this junk science. Did he really do it? Who knows? And what difference does it really make? He was proud of it. And he still boasts about the 700 teachers who got ineffective ratings last year. I can tell you for a fact that not one of them shares his joy, and that the consequences of this rating are far more severe than that of the unsatisfactory rating. After all, in 70% of the cases, the state no longer has to prove these teachers are incompetent. These teachers have to prove they are not incompetent, and how the hell they do that I have no idea.

And even as Mulgrew boasts of how few teachers are being rated ineffective, he thanked Cuomo's Heavy Hearted Assembly for passing a new APPR designed to rate even more teachers ineffective. And what has NYSUT and UFT done to help teachers like Shari Lederman?

Nada. Zip. Diddly squat. Why the hell aren't our leaders footing the bills of teachers wishing to challenge these ratings?

Well, they have other priorities. The UFT has to pay millions to transfer 800 living rubber stamps to conventions several times a year. I think they're going to Minneapolis this year. I don't suppose they'll have Bill Gates as keynote again, as he lives pretty far away and probably doesn't want to strain himself.

But honestly, why shouldn't UFT get in the business of helping poorly rated teachers lawyer up? I mean, sure they supported junk science, and it was a great victory, but why not oppose junk science and make that a great victory too? I remember well when that mean old Michael Bloomberg wanted to judge us by only 7 components of Danielson but we held out for all 22. I remember the subsequent great victory when we got it reduced to 8. There was the great victory when UFT demanded artifacts, and another when we didn't have them anymore.

Then there was the great victory of the UFT transfer plan, and the subsequent great victory when excessed UFT members became ATRs. There was the great victory when we won Common Core, and the great victory when we were suddenly against it and no longer threatening to beat the crap out of those who opposed it.

So let's get with the program and get on the right side of things. Most teachers can't afford the prolonged and costly lawsuits it will take to bring sanity to New York State law. Randi Weingarten is praising the Lederman decision. She's the big cheese, right? So let's put our money where her mouth is and back up working teachers.

Problem is, at every DA I go to, Mulgrew defends junk science, saying it subtracts from the judgment of principals. But if the judgment of principals is so bad that a crap shoot improves it, the problem is the principals. Let's stop pussyfooting around, lobby for principals who are not insane, and get off the junk science train once and for all.

UFT No Longer Supports Working Families

Our union backed the Working Families Party for a long time, but those days are over. The Working Families party supported Bernie Sanders, and the United Federation of Teachers has no use for anyone who doesn't do what they say. That's why every single person who represents us in NYSUT and AFT has to sign a loyalty oath. 

I was very upset with the Working Families Party in the past because they endorsed Andrew Cuomo. This was really a terrible move as far as I'm concerned, because I'm a working person and Andrew Cuomo hates me and everything I stand for. I mean, what the hell is the point of a party that declines to support someone like Zephyr Teachout against Andrew Cuomo? In fact, what the hell is the point of a union leadership that can't see the value of someone like Teachout?

In fact, UFT failed to support Teachout in her bold challenge to Cuomo in the Democratic primary. Perhaps they thought this would make Cuomo like us or something. Far from that, Cuomo went and pushed the most anti-teacher legislation I've ever seen, raising the percentage of junk science, adding strangers as observers, and placing schools under the threat of receivership. For this, UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanked the Heavy Hearted Assembly. 

Of course Randi Weingarten endorsed Hillary. This happened early, and it was based on what the AFT called a "scientific" poll. I haven't got the faintest idea what that means, and I've never seen the questions they asked. It was entirely predictable that AFT would endorse Hillary, and New York education bloggers were universally not surprised. I got onto an AFT call regarding the endorsement, and the very fist speaker happened to be a NYS Unity propagandist who'd written a really nasty article about me. Randi tweeted the piece, which was how I saw it. It called me a part-time teacher and a part-time union rep. Randi was OK with that until I pointed out it offended not only me, but each and every working chapter leader in the city.

Perhaps it was a coincidence this guy got called on first, and perhaps there was indeed a scientific survey randomly asking people their opinions. All I know is I work in the largest school in Queens, and no one ever asks me or anyone I know any of these questions. When teachers are polled and come out in support of Common Core, I can never find any teachers who agree. But what do I know? I talk to teachers all day long, and I guess the only way you can really be in touch with what's going on is sitting in an office in 52 Broadway.

But here's what's clear--UFT leadership cannot abide dissenting opinion. When Working Families decided to endorse a candidate that actually supported working families, that was the last straw for Michael Mulgrew and company. And while it's a great honor to financially support the Hillary Clinton office at 52 Broadway, a whole lot of politically active teachers I know do not support her. I don't know whether that office is paid for exclusively by COPE, but I do know my union dues keep the lights on over at 52.

It's a disgrace that once the Working Families Party takes a clear stand for working families Michael Mulgrew takes his ball and goes home.

Why Not Opt Out of Midterms?

That's the question the Daily News asks. After all, the stakes are pretty low, as the state has agreed not to count the results for a few years. This is true for students and in many cases for teacher ratings as well. So what's the big hooplah, the News wants to know. Why don't these goshdarn kids just sit down and take their tests?

That's a much more reasoned approach than that taken over at the Post, where they concoct a ridiculous strawman argument suggesting that parents who opt out are simply petulant, over-privileged, self-serving lunatics who don't want their kids to fail. At the same time, they are helicopter parents making ridiculous demands for their pampered children. Patrick Walsh had a great piece on his blog in response: 

Its always a good sign when shills for those who are systemically attempting to undermine public education, the better to privatize it, are reduced to making public arguments that read like they are written by a person on a six day drunk.

Read the whole piece.  I'll just address the piece at the News, which makes a more reasonable argument. There's actually a pretty reasonable answer, too.

Midterms are usually written by teachers. They’re usually graded and returned to the students, so the students can see how they did and what they may have done wrong. That’s not the case with these tests, whatever the stakes. And if the stakes are so ridiculously low anyway, a better argument might be that they ought to simply be canceled.

A lot of us are labeled as anti-testing, when that's not precisely the case. We are against high-stakes tests that don't really help our children. And while it's true that there is a temporary reduction in the stakes, the tests still don't help our children. I don't know much about these tests, but from what I'm reading, even disregarding the fact that our kids will never get them back or learn anything from them, they don't appear to be of very good quality.

They don't necessarily test what kids need. They aren't necessarily developmentally appropriate. And the notion of kids sitting indefinitely to take these tests appears not so much a concession as an implement of torture. 

But even more important is the fact that we won't be fooled. You can't just tell us, hey, we won't count it for a few years. Please drop your organizing and go away. Maybe that's not what the Daily News editorial board had in mind. But it certainly appears to be what Cuomo had in mind.

And to Governor Cuomo, I have just this to say. We did not just fall off the tomato truck from New Jersey.

And we are not going away.

Who Should Run the United Federation of Teachers?

If you're happy with how things have been going, you can vote for Michael Mulgrew and his gang of 800 loyalty oath signers. You can let them know you love being under a microscope. You can tell them you love being judged by a rubric, and it makes no difference to you whether or not supervisors even understand it. You can tell them it's swell that you can't address supervisory fabrication in observations until and unless you receive an ineffective rating.

You can tell them you're pleased they failed not once, but twice to oppose autocratic billionaire Michael Bloomberg as he bought Gracie mansion. You can pat them on the back for supporting his mayoral control not only at its inception, but also after it was proven to be an abject disaster. You can thank them for not only supporting charter schools, but also for creating and even co-locating them.

You can let UFT Unity and Michael Mulgrew know that you have no problem with their sitting on their hands as Joel Klein established a Leadership Academy and trained a small army of administrators to paint targets on the backs of working teachers. You can tell them you approve of being judged by test scores of students you may or may not even teach. You can let them know that you think it's a great idea to be judged on what Diane Ravitch and the American Statistical Assiciation regard as junk science.

You can pat UFT Unity on the back for having handed you a contract that ushered in second tier due process for ATR teachers, the most vulnerable among us. You can tell them you're pleased to wait until 2020 for the raise that NYPD, FDNY and most city workers got in 2009. You can say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" as they make teachers on leave wait at least two years to get the small portion of retro pay we received a few months ago.

In fact, you can thank them for their failure to actively support or promote opt-out. You can listen to Mulgrew take credit for the cosmetic changes Cuomo proposed, the ones that were actually inspired by opt-out activists like those in this video, Jia Lee, Lauren Cohen, and Kristin Taylor. You can pretend that Cuomo is afraid of Mulgrew instead of the vibrant grassroots opt-out movement that has tabloids all over the state in a frenzy.

On the other hand, you may wish to support the future, and you may wish to repudiate the reforminess that has infected and degraded not only our profession, but also the education of our children. That's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do so by voting for not only Jia Lee for UFT President, but also the entire coalition of MORE/ New Action. I'm tired of being told that black is white, that hot is cold, that day is night.

If you are too, you will join me in demanding fundamental change in our union. MORE/ New Action has a slate of hundreds of activists who will stand up for what we know to be right. That's why I'm proud to be running with them. Vote for them, vote for me, and vote for a long-needed new direction in our union, the United Federation of Teachers. 

The Magic Formula

Sue Edelman has a piece in the Post about how several schools have avoided takeover. Evidently whether or not a school gets taken over entails graduation rates, Regents passing rates, and whether or not you are in the bottom 5% of schools. So these schools dodged a bullet, but the article suggests they are still not doing that well.

I wonder what the difference is between a school in the bottom 5%, which appears to be bad, and the bottom 6%, which somehow is not. What makes schools only in the bottom 7% so much better? I can't really say, but I guess if you live by the numbers, you die by the numbers.

When you reaize that test scores pretty much all coincide with income or lack thereof, you might determine we should simply close all schools that poor people attend. Under that model, which is pretty much status quo anyway, we could judge the students by income. For example, we could find out how many students qualified for free lunch and simply expel them. That'll get those test scores up in a hurry.

Of course the solution to so-called failing schools, according to Governor Cuomo, is to place them under receivership. Let the state run them. That's worked out fabulously in Roosevelt New York, just a few miles north of my home in Freeport. A young woman who took my blood pressure at a doctor's office went there, and told me many stories of what the high school was like under state control. I'm surprised my blood pressure didn't spike right then and there.

Now the state does not necessarily have to take over these schools with high percentages of poor people. Perhaps we could let Eva Moskowitz in to work her magic. Of course, a lot of charters have not done so well under that particular paradigm. Locke High School was taken over by Green Dot, Randi Weingarten's favorite charter chain (UFT partnered with them to bring them to NYC), and they didn't fare all that well.

But the important thing is to take these schools away from their communities, which are too poor to have or run their own schools. And once we get rid of that bottom 5%, there'll be another bottom 5% to worry about. Maybe if we keep attacking public schools 5% at a time, eventually there'll be so few left that the hedge funders will be able to drown union in a bathtub or something. That's something folks like Broad, Gates, and the Walmart heirs have wet dreams about.

Until and unless we attack poverty, like Finland did, there are going to be a whole lot of schools our insane system deems failing on the basis of tests that may or may not measure what's important.

It's too bad we've been vilified and libeled so widely and for so long. I'm no genius, but I can write tests for my kids a whole lot better than the companies getting paid millions to assess them.

Fewer Teachers? Lapsed Morale? Mulgrew Says Everything's Coming Up Roses

Lohud reports there are 13,000 fewer teachers in NY State than there were five years ago.  I know there are thousands fewer teachers in NYC alone, though I can't say offhand just how much of that figure it represents. We know that in NYC, Emperor Bloomberg had a habit of allowing teacher ranks to drop through attrition. Retiring? Fine. One more person I don't have to pay, figured Emperor Mike, and screw the inevitable larger class sizes they'd cause.

For the rest of the state, there is the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which Cuomo now proposes to end, but which has still cut state aid for drastically for many districts since 2009. Couple that with the Cuomo's tax cap of 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower (a measly .12% this year, if I recall correctly), and districts all over the state are strung out for cash. Cuomo, who fancies himself a "student lobbyist" has set it up so districts need a super-majority to aid their children. This, in fact, gives more power to those who'd deny students than those who'd support them, let alone "lobby" for them.

Cuomo gives lip service to moves he's made toward a less insane system, like his so-called moratorium on Common Core testing. This is much ballyhooed not only by Cuomo, but also by UFT leadership, which placed it on the cover of the most recent copy of NY Teacher. In fact, this affects only the scores on state ELA and math tests in grades 3-8, so for most of us, it's meaningless. In fact, it's not even clear whether these scores are entirely not going to be counted in future years.

With all teachers about to be rated 50% via test scores, an entirely invalid measure, it's getting harder to encourage newcomers to go for this job. We now know that we are to be observed by "independent" observers, since of course school supervisors may be prejudiced in favor of the people with whom they work. What an outrage. This follows, of course, the state's brilliant move not to allow teachers to grade their own students. After all, we're just a bunch of thieving, unscrupulous, self-serving bottom feeders who will do anything to look good. We'll never be paragons of integrity like Andrew Cuomo.

We're looking at an insane law, a law for which UFT President Michael Mulgrew thanked our Heavy Hearted Legislature, and a law which neither UFT nor NYSUT appears poised to reform. Mulgrew told us that he'd decided to focus on funding rather than reasonable evaluation. Doubtless, as he always says, he has very smart people with very smart reasons why we should not fight the increase in junk science evaluation for working teachers.

So while UFT declares victory on the cover of NY Teacher, we're looking at yet another evaluation system. This is becoming an annual event in NYC. Once you get a little bit used to the nonsense used to rate you, Cuomo decides not enough of us are being fired and makes up some new and more draconian BS for the teacher-hating charter school enthusiasts who give him so much money. To try and appease the opt-out people who frighten the crap out of him, he proposes a few changes, including the "moratorium" and nebulous promises to adjust Common Core.

UFT leadership declares victory, as it always does no matter what, and opt-out promises to keep up the fight. Again, we are on the wrong side doing the wrong thing, just as we were when Mulgrew promised to punch our faces out if we touched his precious Common Core. Of course, now it's a victory that Cuomo is doing just that, and he spend $1.4 million on a commercial telling NY State what a great guy we thing Cuomo is.

It's hard for me to believe these words as I write them, but that's pretty much the way it is. It's time for our union to get on the right side of history, whether Michael Mulgrew likes it or not. Fortunately, there are teacher groups who notice this and are urging leadership toward sanity.

It makes me kind of wish the UFT election were not rigged, so that it weren't dominated by retirees, so that high school teachers could select their own VP, and so that the winner take all system didn't mean absolutely every delegate to NYSUT and AFT were a loyalty oath signer bound do do Any Damn Thing Leroy Barr Says.

But I'm a dreamer. I'm a teacher and it's my job to see potential and act on it.

Whatever Eva Wants, Eva Gets

The big story in reformy Chalkbeat NY's Rise and Shine, of course, is Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz is under fire for the documented cruelty of one of her teachers. Alan Singer points out that this teacher is not actually certified but a Moskowitz mentor teacher nonetheless. Moskowitz, who refuses to sign the standard agreement for her pre-K program, can apparently certify anyone she wants however she pleases.

Chalkbeat links to a number of stories stating that this sort of behavior would not be acceptable in wealthier schools. Doubtless that's true. I certainly would not want my child in this teacher's class, and it's hard to imagine parents who feel otherwise. In fact, the NY Times report suggesting students regularly pee their pants rather than asking for a moment less test prep leads me to believe this behavior is not, as Moskowitz claimed, an anomaly.

The fact is Chancellor's Regulation A-421, against verbal abuse, would have landed this teacher in a ton of hot water. In NYC public schools, you simply are not permitted to address children in an abusive or hostile manner. In fact, the wording is such that pretty much anything that makes a kid feel uneasy can be construed as abuse. If you say, "hello," and it makes the kid feel bad somehow, a crazy principal could bring you up on charges.

Nonetheless, I do not condone what this teacher did to this first grader. A teacher ought to be supportive rather than abusive, and anyone watching the video can see what's going on here. Children make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes all the time. We are human and ought to allow for children being human too. In fact, being children, they have a much better excuse than we do for mistakes. It isn't just private schools of the well-to-do that wouldn't put up with this nonsense. No public school principals worth their salt would accept this behavior.

Here's the thing--charter schools are not subject to chancellor's regs. Abusive to children? Well, if it helps you get high test scores that's fine. Traumatized kids? Too bad. As long as Eva gets her test scores it doesn't matter. Does Eva have to follow the rules we do, the ones that say we can't grade standardized tests of our own students? Who knows? Rules don't apply to revolutionaries. After all, she's on a mission to privatize education and get it out of the hands of those nasty unionized career teachers. Certification? Bah humbug. Trained teachers might not know how to terrorize kids into high test scores with all that touchy feely stuff they learned at "college."

At the end of the day, Eva says she's sick of apologizing. Sick of apologizing for her "got to go" list, sick of apologizing for the kids who pee their pants, and sick of apologizing for the downright abusiveness of her staff. Of course she hasn't apologized for her failure to sign the pre-K agreement.

And why should she? Under a law her BFF Andy Cuomo passed, the city has to subsidize her schools whether or not they want them. She didn't get where she was by following rules, and if she has to abuse and terrorize kids to get what she wants, that ought to be good enough for anyone.

Charters Outspend Us, While We Spend Millions Praising Cuomo

It kind of freaks me out to read that Eva Moskowitz and her reformy BFFs have outspent union on lobbying. And by quite a bit, too:

In all, labor groups and their key allies on education issues spent $8.3 million on political activity in 2015. Charter schools and their influential lobbying arms spent a little over $9 million, and tax credit advocates, $5.7 million, according to the lobbying and campaign finance reports.

So they're outspending us on two fronts. First, on charters, which is a great way of getting public money into private hands. They have great commercials, telling us to support the noble and principled Andrew Cuomo as he struggles to fire all those crappy unionized public school teachers. After all, the test scores are down, and that's what matters. Who cares if the tests are all new and we've set the cut scores to make everyone fail? That's not in the commercial, so no one knows it anyway.

The second front, of course, is the tax credits that will pay for John King to send his kids to a Montessori school, thus sidestepping the awful programs and tests he's imposed on everyone else. And if you want to send your kid to that school, well, that's fine as long as you can pony up the difference. This is another great way to help rich people have more money to invest, always a priority for the politicians they've bought, like Cuomo and King.

Now I've watched NYSUT and UFT celebrate for the last two year that we didn't get this tax credit/ back door voucher program. While they didn't achieve anything good, at least they've put off one bad thing for another year. Problem, of course, is that every time you cut off one reformy head, another grows in its place. Last year, for example, they didn't get the tax credits, but they did get a teacher evaluation system that's even worse than the one we have now, and we did take away the right of unions to negotiate much of it. Now that we have that, and Michael Mulgrew has thanked the Heavy Hearts Assembly for it, they can push even harder for the tax credit.

What really bothers me, though, considering that unions have spent all those millions, is that we've spent two or three of them on glitzy commercials congratulation Andrew Cuomo for coming to his senses on education. Unfortunately, it's plain that while Cuomo gives lip service to change, things are fundamentally the same. If you teach above grade 8, things haven't changed at all. And giving kids unlimited time to torture themselves with developmentally inappropriate tests was not precisely a victory either.

If you think Cuomo is a friend of education, you need look no further than his insistence that his idiotic tax cap be adhered to. Schools are allowed to raise their budgets by a whopping 0.12% this year, and no matter how high inflation gets it's capped at 2%. This comes from a man who musters the audacity to label himself a "student lobbyist." I listened to current NYSUT leaders discuss all the clever ways they'd get around the cap, and thus far they've failed to deliver, instead opting to spend member dollars telling the world what a swell guy Andy Cuomo turned out to be.

It's time for UFT and NYSUT leadership to get out of the ass-kissing, seat-at-the-table, Cuomo-praising business and start advocating for not only those of us who they ostensibly represent, but our students as well.

Eva Doesn't Need No Stinking Rules

Eva Moskowitz is pissed off that mean old NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is demanding she sign a contract over her pre-K classes. So what if 277 other pre-K programs have signed it? She's Eva Moskowitz, dammit, and rules don't apply to her. If you, a lowly public school teacher, made kids sit in chairs until they peed their pants, you'd be subject to CR A-420, corporal punishment, and if you kept treating kids like that you'd find yourself fired.

But those rules don't apply to Eva. In fact, chancellor's regs don't apply to any charters. They can make their own rules. Verbal abuse? No problem. Harass families until they withdraw their inconvenient low-scoring kids? That's fine, and an added bonus is their low scores can be counted against those awful public schools. You know, the ones with unions and stuff.

So now Eva is reaching out to reformy MaryEllen Elia, our esteemed education commissioner, and letting her know she's had it with all these stinking rules. Now it's one thing to apply them to public schools, but quite another when they come to her and her BFFs. For example, mayoral control was a fantastic thing when Michael Bloomberg was in charge. Eva had a hotline to Joel Klein, and could push for whatever she needed back then.

When that Bill de Blasio came in, though, things got ridiculous. First of all, he was elected. That sucked, because Joel Klein was appointed by Mike Bloomberg, who pretty much gave Eva carte blanche. Second, he ran on a platform of support for public schools and opposition to charters, and those stupid NYC voters actually chose him overwhelmingly. Who the hell do those people think they are?

Eva was having none of that, so she went to Governor Cuomo, who had taken millions from her reformy BFFs and had had it up to here with that "democracy" nonsense. Cuomo pushed a state law saying that de Blasio would have to either approve Eva's schools or pay rent for them. Now the whole mayoral control thing was no problem. De Blasio could make decisions one way or the other, but they made no difference to Eva, the only person in New York who mattered.

But then there were those troublesome regulations, and that nasty de Blasio didn't even ask Eva before making them. A contract? Now how in the hell can Eva Moskowitz do what she wants, how she wants, when she wants, with whomever she wants if she has to sign some flipping contract?

Fortunately, MaryEllen Elia is a pawn of Governor Cuomo, who's clearly beholden to Eva and her reformy BFFs. Things are looking up.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

I don't  know much about the writer of the quote at left. Oddly, I found it on Facebook, posted by the writer himself. I'm wary of people who quote themselves, but I love this sentiment. Look at Andrew Cuomo, with no moral center, doing any damn thing his contributors want. He only rolls it back when his popularity is swirling the bowl, and even then, not nearly enough to change much of anything. NYSUT and UFT leadership appear not to notice, and spend millions of our dues dollars on what appear to be pro-Cuomo commercials.

Thinking teachers and parents are paying close attention, though, and don't buy the "moratorium" nonsense that rolls back just a little bit of the test-based drek that passes for teacher evaluation in New York State. Our kids are still taking the same number of tests, including the ones that now seem to count for nothing whatsoever.

It's surreal that we live in a country where Bill Gates can dictate that test scores dictate the life and death of schools (not to mention the careers of teachers). Yet Gates sends his own kids to schools that aren't subject to his whims and caprices. Reformy folk like Gates, Rhee, King, Obama, Cuomo and Bloomberg opt their kids out of programs they impose by opening their wallets. When we do the same by declining to allow our children to take the tests, it's an outrage. The taxes we pay for our children's schools can be withheld, they say. Our children will suffer, they say, because we didn't conform. That's not taking care of those in their charge.

Of course, the folks above appear interested in taking care of only their own children. Otherwise, why would they impose a system they deem unfit for their own children on our kids? Of course there is hope for our kids. Opt-out is burgeoning in New York State, despite the druthers of test-happy zillionaires and the politicians crawling through their pockets. Parents and teachers aren't blindly accepting this nonsense anymore.

Classrooms don't need to be test-prep factories. Classrooms can be windows of kindness and encouragement in a tough world. A test-obsessed America makes that tougher each and every day. How can you be kind to children when you're gonna lose your job if they fail that test? It's an awkward balancing act, and every thinking teacher I know feels that pressure pretty much every moment.

Despite that, most of the kids know whether or not we care about them. Most of the kids know whether or not we have their interests at heart. It's harder for us, of course, because we're subject to all sorts of external pressures that have little to do with their welfare (not to mention ours). I can't imagine being a new teacher today, and trying not only to learn a very complex job, but concurrently dealing with all the red tape and nonsense that make actually doing the job a near impossible dream.

It's a balancing act, a juggling act, and it's really getting tougher to maneuver every single day. It's too bad we can't just do our jobs, help our students and give them that little bit of guidance they need. It's too bad these kids will lose so many people who could help them due to myopic to outright hostile leadership.

But we stand, we stay, and we care. How we broadcast that message over the Gates-propagated noise machine is just one more issue for us.