Friday, February 13, 2015

Fiorillo and RBE on UFT Leadership/Unity Caucus Position on Testing

The fact is, the war between the unions and Cuomo was NEVER on because these people running the unions don't want a war. They like testing, they like Common Core and they like reform. They're simply negotiating the terms of exploitation and surrender while sucking up their double pensions and other union perks and putting on a show for the rest of us... RBE points out that the ed deform supporting union leadership (AFT/UFT/NYSUT) UFT Continues To Put On Dog And Pony Show Against Cuomo, But Signals They Expect Defeat - 
Michael Fiorillo left this comment below on the Perdido Street School blog where Reality-Based Educator talked about the resolution at the DA:  UFT President Michael Mulgrew Discovers Nixon's Silent Testing Majority which is a must-read. 

Michael Fiorillo
February 12, 2015 at 1:39 PM
Do I really need to pay over a thousand dollars a year to listen to someone who misrepresents me and acts like a ventriloquist's doll for Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg and all the other so-called reform privateers? To say that tests should drive instruction, as Mr. Robeson did, is to repeat their phrasing word for word.

The needs of children, not tests, should drive instruction.

The reviving of democracy, not tests, should drive instruction.

Education as a means of providing choices, and the ability to rationally judge them, not tests, should drive instruction.

Yesterday's DA provided yet more proof, as if it was necessary, that the Weingrew regime fully accepts the premises of the so-called reformers, which pivot on high stakes testing. These people are there to manage and pacify us while the deal goes down.

How these folks think they can maintain their dues machine once the union is so weakened and discredited (and make no mistake, any union where 80% of the active membership doesn't vote, where archipelagos of schools have no Chapter Leader, and where the contract is ignored with impunity, is racing there) that it can be drowned in the bathtub.

That is exactly what Gates and company will do when Weingrew have outlived their usefulness: stop taking their phone calls and send them on their way to their double pensions.

Apparently, they've signed a loyalty oath to Bill Gates, not that it will help when he's used them up.

Perhaps they're operating under the assumption of the crooked bankers and mortgage brokers leading up to the financial crisis of 2008: IBGYBG, or "I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone."

1 comment:

Michael Fiorillo said...

Thanks for posting this, Norm, but I only realized after I sent it that I'd made an error: the sixth patagraph should read, "How these folks think they can maintain... that it can be drowned in the bathtub, is beyond me."