Let me say that again: Schols have been rated in part on their success at increasing the proficiency rate of their students. But those rates have been increasing statewide because of the score inflation that has occurred over time. And so, any system that gave schools credit for increasing scores or proficiency rates is one based on (partly) imaginary gains.

Thank you for your input. It is always welcomed.

In one form or another the majority of the members have always shown union loyalty regarding education policies and reforms. As for my statement, I meant to bring attention to the displacement of independent thinking/reasoning from the members and the union’s way of misguiding the members into thinking that the union’s strategy is best. Good ideas, suggestions and strategies don’t always come from the top, but from those within the rank and file that want reforms that will benefit everyone in the school system. I truly feel it’s time for the union to listen and to take to heart the members’ concerns and moreover, the suggestions/strategies/reforms that are brought up at every meeting.

“It seems to me that it is more of a headache, cost outweighing benefit, to implement all this stuff… except for removing the “dead wood” (See: veteran teachers) from the payrolls and accelerating the model of pay cheap for newcomers… do you think that is really what this is really all about, at bottom?”

ABSOLUTELY! You can also include, breaking the unions, and an important weapon to prosecute the war on the middle class.

Now I have to ask, can someone, anyone, please tell me how this works? I would have thought that the UFT would have had to present this HUGE change to teachers first… it has such impact on them! I am completely floored and rendered a Gaga (no connection to the the Mayor’s recent comment on “The Lady!”) that this just got handed over by Mulgrew. It was just the union, it seems, that kept the Dems from capitulating and changing the law, so this union, with how many members… combined with NYSUT, with how many members… has this stripped away from them with a nod from a few at the top? It seriously just doesnt compute…

As for sell outs, yeah, it’s a full menu of sell outs: Obama (et al in cabinet, Duncan as pertains to ed fiefdom), those Dem legislators who were so eager to vote it in (ugh, I got a mailer from one of those clowns, crowing about his “help” with charters and his love of RttT – a Dem), the Dem governor, so eager to sign it (Charlie Crist, for Crist’s sake – who’d a known we’d a done better with him?) and then … Mulgrew.

I am sickened.

Btw, does anyone have a clear understanding of exactly what the RttT money can be spent on within those 4 main goals? Or not? What do you think it will be spent on if NY gets it.

It seems to me that it is more of a headache, cost outweighing benefit, to implement all this stuff… except for removing the “dead wood” (See: veteran teachers) from the payrolls and accelerating the model of pay cheap for newcomers… do you think that is really what this is really all about, at bottom?

Michael… That saying has always stayed with me… I love the bit about having the face you deserve at 50, only I hadnt caught the first part about having the face you were born with at 20. Lol. Unfortunately, I dont think there has been much change for Klein… maybe at 10 he looked a little different… but just a little.

A quibble: my participation on the UFT governance committee, the minority report I co-authored and spoke for at the Delegate Assembly and my criticisms of union policy regarding mayoral control (among others) have all been based on union loyalty.

What the Unity Caucus members on that committee and elsewhere should have set aside was their blind obedience (based on the loyalty oaths they sign as a condition of membership) to a misguided leadership. By doing so they would have reinstated their independence and personal autonomy, and served the membership far better.

Michael_F is correct regarding the school governance committee. At these meetings, he brought out good points if mayoral control was allowed again. In hind sight, I feel that some of the members in the committe should have set aside their union loyalty and listened to members like Michael.

Why should “parents and political organizations’” trust the UFT leadership to undo the ongoing train wreck of public education in the city when it is complicit in it?

Randi Weingarten betrayed parents and her members by unilaterally ignoring the recommendations of her own governance committee and supporting the continuation of the Mayor’s dictatorship of the schools. This continues to be the policy of the UFT.

Weingarten and Mulgrew have helped institutionalize all test prep all the time by agreeing to merit pay and teacher evaluations based on these fraudulent exams.

Weingarten and Mulgrew (with the exception of the brief period when he was running for election, and pretended to strike a more militant pose) boast of their “collaboration” with a Chancellor and Mayor who have made it painfully clear that they intend to neutralize if not destroy the union, and privatize the schools.

At the AFT convention, Weingarten had the audacity to invite the man who is almost single-handedly privatizing the urban schools to address the membership; he thanked her by attacking teacher pensions a few days later.

As of now, the only thing holding back armageddon for NYC teachers is the loyalty of Assembly Speaker Silver, since the current (and likely next) Governor and State Senate have become sympathetic to our antagonists. Should Silver’s political cost-benefit analysis lead him to decide that supporting the UFT is more trouble than it’s worth, then the floodgates will open.

At that point we’ll really be alone, and it will be our leadership that will have put us there.

The only way teachers will become radicalized is when they start losing their jobs.
Once these new “reform” inspired evaluations result in mass firings of public schools teachers, then teachers will become very active politically. Look at Washington DC. The union president down there is refusing to hold elections. I’m sure if elections were held, he would lose, since the new contract is costing so many teachers their jobs.

Klein’s face is not one of constipation. Rather it is a look of knowing that the jig is up.

Grade 3
Raw score (Reading)

1-22 correct = Level 1
23-28 correct= Level 2
29-31 correct = Level 3
32-33 correct = Level 4

Grade 3 ( Math)
1-23 correct= level1
24-33 correct = Level 2
34-37 correct = Level 3
38-30 correct = Level 4

Can we honestly expect any serious overthrow of the status quo without marshaling the force of labor?

Hello- where are the teachers, the principals, the custodians and service workers?

Parents – sure but they are not an easily organized force, given their disparate demographics, needs, perspectives, etc.

How about the union members push their union leadership to stand up and make a difference, speak truth to power and hold the Bloomberg Klien autocracy accountable!