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There was an interesting Wall Street Journal article about cheating, based on long term psychological research, which may explain why Mayor Bloomberg, the UFT, the state legislature, and former Governor Spitzer, all theoretically dedicated to education, wrecked the schools with retroactive pension enhancements and lied about the deferred costs.

“Over the past decade or so, my colleagues and I have taken a close look at why people cheat, using a variety of experiments and looking at a panoply of unique data sets—from insurance claims to employment histories to the treatment records of doctors and dentists. What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats—just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society.”
 
No wonder there are some here who get so upset when the costs associated with their early retirement benefits are spoke of.  They want their extra benefits and the rationalization too.  The researchers also examined a variety of conditions to see if the extent of lying and cheating was affected – the size of the benefit from cheating, the chances of getting caught, etc.  Most didn’t matter.
 
“One thing that increased cheating in our experiments was making the prospect of a monetary payoff more ‘distant,’ in psychological terms. In one variation of the matrix task, we tempted students to cheat for tokens (which would immediately be traded in for cash). Subjects in this token condition cheated twice as much as those lying directly for money.  Another thing that boosted cheating: Having another student in the room who was clearly cheating.”
Well, the payoff from retroactive pension deals was distant.  So were the costs, so teachers would not have to see the schools gutted immediately after the deals, so they could pretend the two were unrelated.  And every other union was getting them too.  Plus, they could always say “what about Wall Street!”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304840904577422090013997320.html

Re: the headline on the Cobble Hill Success Academy lawsuit:  the judge absolutely did not “[find] merit” in suit.  Possibly you’re thinking of the judge’s decision to allow the petitioners to amend their petition?  The  legal standard for amending pleadings is liberal:  leave shall be “freely given” unless  proposed amended pleading either (1) is “clearly without merit” or (2) would cause unfair prejudice to the defendant.  In this case, the judge allowed the petitioners to amend their original petition because, in part, the claims were not “clearly without merit.”  By “clearly without merit,” the court meant that the petition (1) cited specific sections of the Education Law and (2) contained some factual allegations.  That’s a far cry from finding that the suit “had merit,” which of course explains why the court found in favor of Success Academy on the merits.

Or, if you like, saying that somebody is “not hideous” is not the same as saying they’re “attractive.”

NOT defending the press here, but at least two of these stories came because they were released by Tweed. The reports of the Westinghouse and Madison teachers were released yesterday (I actually read one of the reports off of a Twitter link yesterday).
I think the better question to ask, as suggested by Larry Litlefield, is why does the DOE want this information out there? I think they’d rather have the press talk about 2 or 3 teachers than to have the press talk about the job they’re doing. I think if you go back and read stories from the past month,.you’d find most of them (even from the Post) are about troubles the DOE is having with doing their job…a lawsuit, a principal who charged students too much money for uniforms, cuts to after school and child care programs…things like this are pretty embarrassing for the DOE. They’re much happier if the papers are talking about these types of teachers.
One thing the DOE may want to deflect attention from; they are announcing their budgets for the next school year. I’m sure from their perspective, it’s far better to have less people interested in that and more people reading about the video taped teacher in the park.

Right! And that all the information, from cases that occurred at different times, is being put out there at the same time is just a, you know, a coincidence .

Love the snark in the last part of your comment, but I felt the concern was too much press focus on just three teachers out of 70,000. i double checked and as I read the comments, the concern over safety for children was different from the comments and one we all share. For my party, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mix the two topics up.

Although I think GS is probably thinking of the one sentence where the court says that success academy “could have engaged in a more thorough-going canvas of the relevant neighborhoods in Brooklyn to surface concerns and opposition to BSA 3.” Of course in the next sentence the court says it doesn’t matter because the school didn’t have to do an an exhausitve exhaustive survey of support and opposition.”  To say that the judge found merit in the lawsuit is a stretch.

should be state assembly

Not true
You complain over and over every time you post your picking on the wrong people
You lost eight years ago and your still not winning. Your complaining to the wrong audience.
Being so consumed makes me actually feel sorry for you.

you should be consumed