Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Whither the UFT and a GEM of an Idea


Imagine if every school in the NYC turned into non-unionized charter schools? What would become of the UFT/Unity Caucus machine as it hemorrhaged dues? Well, they have a simple plan. Just organize charter schools into the union.

Not so simple kemosabe. From Gotham Schools - a suggestion that all New York teachers should be able to decertify the union. Of course, these are the two much talked about KIPP schools (KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx and the KIPP Infinity Charter School in Manhattan) as the KIPP empire strikes back for the UFT daring to try to organize a Brooklyn KIPP school, efforts that may be floundering.

On the surface, one would think the massive, dues soaked UFT holds all the cards. Many of us lined up as internal critics think not.

Any charter school teacher who takes a peek at the most sophisticated teacher blogs will see what's in store for them as the level of hostility directed at the UFT leaderships is barely a smidgen less than that aimed at BloomKlein. So why would they step into the muck of the UFT?

Many of the union missteps occur because of the fundamental lack of democracy, the complete top-down management and the gap between the leadership and the members. With an absolute almost 50 year lock on control, including the buying off of New Action, the former opposition party, there is no hope of reform. Some people may be fooled into believing changes are coming because they think Randi Weingarten is walking into the sunset of the AFT, but that is not a sure bet and whatever happens, there will be no loosening of the reigns because Unity has built such a tight, foolproof structure.

Over the years, I have heard many opposition voices raised in frustration calling for starting a de-certification campaign in the public schools to create a real threat to the UFT leadership and force them into reform. Imagine if another union did come in and try that? At one time in the 70's the NEA actually tried to put its foot in the door – they took about 20 opposition people out to eat at Gaylord's, a fancy Indian restaurant. We had a nice expensive meal at their expense and said, "No thanks!"

I've been against these efforts, taking the position that if UFT internal critics cannot grow enough to organize an effective force, then bringing in another union would replace the old boss with the new boss.

Thus, it was gratifying to see all sorts of groups and people involved in the UFT informally gather for lunch at the Labor Notes Troublemakers School this past Saturday.

Members of ICE (Independent Community of Educators,) NYCORE (NY Collective of Radical Educators,) TJC (Teachers for a Just Contract,) ISO (International Socialists,) Teachers Unite and independents joined Puerto Rico's teachers union president Rafael Feliciano in a conversation about democratic unions (the FMPR is one) educating members on the issues and organizing and mobilizing them into a force that can counter the collaboration of the UFT by building a grass roots movement that could not be stifled by the union institutions.

Thus, while the lock on power would remain in the hands of people at the top, the rank and file teachers in the schools they have abandoned could start to move in a more militant direction.

If such a movement actually occurs, it may transcend caucuses like ICE and TJC and pay less attention to the rigged institutions of UFT power like the Delegate Assembly and certainly the total Unity dominated Executive Board (81 members out of 89 with the other 8 handed to New Action through Unity endorsement.)

Meanwhile, today is the March Delegate Assembly and we will all still be there to do our thing.
We will be joining Justice Not Just Tests in getting petitions on high stakes testing – the root of all evil – signed.

A resolution on closing schools – the 3rd time the UFT will take a position calling for a moratorium on closing schools – had a provision calling for a mass meeting of teachers from every announced closing school. The UFT leadership took it out. They will take potshots at rallies at individual schools to allow teachers to vent, but will not take concerted action to stop them. Why? Because the UFT believes in the policy of closing schools even though it creates ATRs - over 1700 and counting.

We will be handing out our flyer for this Saturday's conference at John Jay College (starting at 12 pm) which we hope will turn out to be a first strike in building a Grassroots Educators Movement - GEM. (Angel Gonzalez came up with the idea this morning, not bad for one of us oldies but goodies.)

Consider attending or encouraging someone from your school to attend, in particular if you are in a closing or soon to be closed school. If the UFT won't get people together, we will.

COMING SOON: VIDEO I TOOK AT THE HARLEM SUCCESS CHARTER SCHOOL RALLY LAST WEEK. THAT ALONE SHOULD GET YOU TO GIVE UP YOUR SATURDAY

Related:
This Saturday! Education Notes Joins the fightback to save public education -
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    This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

    Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

    This chapter looks interesting:

    Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

    “The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.
    Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

    Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon


    Effective Union Organizing

    A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

    The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
    http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
    I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

    The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

    You can sign up for this free series at :
    http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

    Total Pageviews Since July 2009

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    Reforming the UFT is the Prime Directive
    Visit the new SOTU blog http://sotuuft.blogspot.com

    Must read: The Case for Large High Schools

    Susan Crawford turns the parent choice argument on its ear at Schoolbook.

    Diane Ravitch: Great new site (warning: satire)

    A DC teacher's story:

    Why the DC Impact system Bloomberg wants NYC schools to emulate caused me to leave teaching -

    http://t.co/Wy5wSPgw

    Oldie but goodie; Norm mentioned on FAIR Re; Education Nation

    You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

    The Best Among Us: Join the Revolt On Wall Street or Stand On The Wrong Side of History
    Chris Hedges

    2011-10-02
    http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=976

    Hedges says, There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history.

    GEM Teachers and parents OCCUPY DOE- VIDEO FROM OCT 5, 2011
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1cuFUC9iSE&feature=player_embedded

    Norm's Message from the Trenches: A Little Bit of Personal History on School Organizing - Part I

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    Don't sneeze at this one: 8 million copies in print.
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    Amazing piece by Leonie Haimson.

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    Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

    I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

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    “Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

    Timothy Tyson
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    Full article with charts here.

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    Rare, undercover footage from a principals’ retreat in Omaha

    Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping by Norm Scott

    The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

    On standardized testing in our schools

    A must read article about the standardized test industry.
    Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

    http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

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    Notice the balding guy in Odd Couple. Not Laurence Olivier.

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    Moskowitz Aims Charters at Wealthy- So Much for Closing the Achievement Gap

    You know, let's close that gap for rich kids. Why should their parents pay 30 grand for a private school when the public can foot the bill?

    See Gotham Schools report

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    Something passed along to me by D. Ravitch.

    http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-tangled-web-we-weave.html?spref=tw

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    "Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

    The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

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    Pissed Off Teacher nails the ed deformers

    A Howl of a video as our friendly robots talk education

    Now playing at Seattle Education
    http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/aunty-broad-says-no-on-the-levy/

    Thanks to Sharron Higgins

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    If you have five minutes to spare, this short cartoon film, "So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities?" is both very funny and scary at the same time.

    http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7451115/?ref=nf%C2%A0

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    "Charter Starter": a video spoof

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    Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

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    Harlem Success Academy Vs. Mosiac Prep - Voices of Parents and Teachers

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    FIRST PERSON: Teaching Under Assault: Two visions of education clash as Bloomberg prepares to lay off 6,400 teachers

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    After teaching elementary education for 27 years at PS 147 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I was offered a technology job at the district level in 1998.

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    Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

    SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

    Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

    I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."


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    Ravitch Debates Charter School Shill James Merriman

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    Washington Post Class Struggle
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    http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9289

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    Labor Beat video hosted at:
    The video is hosted on blip.tv: http://blip.tv/file/2428857

    Great Post on Teacher Quality at the Morton School

    I'm very tired of the myth that schools are bursting at the seams with apathetic, unskilled, surly, child-hating losers who can't get jobs doing anything else. I recently figured that, counting high school and college where one encounters many teachers in the course of a year, I had well over 100 teachers in my lifetime, and I can only say that one or two truly had no place being in a classroom.

    More at: http://themortonschool.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-teachers-stupidright.html

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