Category: General

Weekend Reading

A few good reads to check out before Monday rolls around…

Shaun Richman discusses how a loss in the Friedrichs case could make make strikes constitutionally protected free speech and thus nullify the Taylor Law in New York State… How ‘Friedrichs’ Could Actually Unleash Unions from Decades of Free Speech Restrictions

The Gadflyonthewallblog has a post on what unions used to be, what they are now, and how we can get back to reclaiming power… Unions Can’t Just Be About What We’re Allowed to Do: Social Justice Unionism

A few other blogs joined us with tribute posts to the now former blogger Reality-Based Educator…

Ed Notes Online… RBE at Perdido Street School Blog Endorses MORE in, Sadly, Final Blog Post

ICEUFT Blog… REALITY BASED EDUCATOR SAYS GOODBYE TO BLOGGING WHILE ENDORSING MORE

B-LoEdScene… Perdido St. School Blog Signs Off– Wonder Why?

 

My Union IS My Business

Recently somebody from NYSUT was kind enough to recommend that I share questions and concerns that I had been tweeting about, with the NYSUT officers, with the idea that answers from them might comfort me and perhaps quell the negative feelings I have had about our parent union.  So on Friday I sat down and wrote out the following questions…

1. What are our strategies for deep organizing around having the Ed Transformation Act repealed?
2. In light of the increasingly stronger and successful actions taken by teachers not only nationally but globally, what are NYSUT’s plans for escalating statewide acts of civil disobedience and what is the plan to organize for actions of that magnitude?
3. What are the major cost cutting efforts underway in preparation of Friedrichs?…  Will metro funding be reduced?  Will it be proposed that we reduce the number of officers?  What percentage of a pay cut can we expect the officers and board of directors to take?  Will staff be cut?  How will field services be impacted?  What lines of communication are you opening with the rank and file to be sure that they have say in regards to what expenses are cut?

4. What is NYSUT doing to move from a top down, business unionism model to a union that is driven by it’s membership?
5. What suggestions does our leadership suggest for creating a more democratic union that is more representative of the rank and file’s voice?
6. How does a rank and file member go about seeing how VOTE-COPE funds have been spent?

To her credit, NYSUT President Karen Magee was quick to get back to me.  Here were her answers…

Thanks for writing. While we are always interested in engaging our members in the substantive issues that you raise in your email, I’m sure you also understand from your position as a union officer that much of what you raise here is subject to high-level negotiations. In any negotiating scenario, it’s imperative for the officers to let the members know that they are fighting on their behalf, as we have done, but just as crucial that the ebb and flow of the actual negotiations remain at the bargaining table.
The questions you raise in your third bullet point, in particular, are topics that are the purview of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, and certainly not topics of general discussion.
I flatly reject the premise of your fourth and fifth questions, in which you suggest that NYSUT is neither “driven by it’s [sic] membership,” nor “representative of the rank and file’s voice.”
I’m confused by your question about VOTE-COPE funds; a check of our records indicate that you are not a contributor to VOTE-COPE, so I’m not sure about the nature of your concern. Should you wish to see how VOTE-COPE contributions are being used, you can seek an appointment with Executive Vice President Pallotta to discuss.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any further questions.

Ms. Magee’s response, unfortunately, was exactly what I expected.  In essence what I was told was, “We are member driven and representative of the rank and file’s voice because I say we are.  Also none of what we do is any of your damn business… and if you want to know how we spend VOTE-COPE money then you can come up to Albany!”

I am not sure why organizing strategies to repeal the Ed Transformation Act of 2015 would be considered “subject to high-level negotiations” at this point in time.  We are well into budget season and there has been no apparent strategy to repeal the act, likely because NYSUT is choosing not to advocate for the repeal of the single most damaging piece of legislation that New York teachers have seen.  Unfortunately Ms. Magee’s assurance that the officers are fighting on my behalf does little to instill confidence in me.

I find her response to be equally unacceptable when it comes to my questions regarding potential cost cutting efforts.  There is a very good possibility that the ruling on the Friedrichs case will do tremendous financial damage to the union.  As a result one would think that members had the right to know what cost cutting measures are being submitted.  At the very least you’d believe that the rank and file’s input would, in some way, be encouraged as part of the process to develop a budget that makes necessary cuts.  The problem is that the officers might not hear what they want to if they communicated with members over those issues.

It is important to remember that at last year’s NYSUT RA, Unity Caucus lead the fight to add an additional officer position.  It’s also important to know that each NYSUT officer has a salary in the $250,000-$300,000 range with benefit packages that make the price tag soar even further.  You’ll want to recall the current officers voted themselves a 2% raise only months after their election.  Those are important considerations when it comes to where cost cutting measures should start.

At every NYSUT event I have attended I have gotten some sort of NYSUT tote bag.  Within days those bags typically ended up in the garbage or buried in the back of a closet.  Typically filling those bags have been materials printed on thick, glossy paper that I may have casually scanned before they ended up in the garbage or buried in the back of the aforementioned closet.  My point is that there are many places to shave considerable money off of before valued field services are impacted.  I believe the leadership has an obligation to engage the membership in discussion about what we view as the most important uses of our dues money.

As I have shared on this blog before, at one time I gave about $200 per year to VOTE-COPE.  The decision not to oppose Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic Primary when a worthy opponent in Zephyr Teachout was running was the final straw for me.  After that I reduce my VOTE-COPE contribution to $0.  In the year and a half since that time I have listened to NYSUT operatives stress time and again the need for increased VOTE-COPE contributions.  Were I ever to reconsider my decision not to contribute, you can bet I’d want to see how that money is being spent.  I don’t think that is an unreasonable expectation at all.  What I did find unreasonable, was Magee’s “confusion” over my question and her suggestion of having to seek an appointment with Andy Pallotta if I wanted that information.  Mind you, Mr. Pallotta’s office is at NYSUT headquarters in Albany.

All of this brings me to my biggest point.  Ms. Magee stated, “I flatly reject the premise of your fourth and fifth questions, in which you suggest that NYSUT is neither ‘driven by it’s [sic] membership,’ nor ‘representative of the rank and file’s voice.'”  This statement conflicts with nearly every aspect of the rest of her message.  Other than my final question, which she answered with an unreasonable suggestion, she basically refused to answer any of my questions.  To me, the refusal to answer questions or engage membership about these important issues are the very essence of top-down unionism.  The decision not to organize around the repealing of the Ed Transformation Act is the very opposite of representing the voice of the rank and file, whose careers and students are being wrecked by the legislation.

It is still stunning to me that this is the sort of response we get from the union, despite the pending Friedrichs decision.  As long as there is an opportunity to be a part of a union, I will always choose to do that.  I firmly believe that belonging to an ineffective union is better than belonging to no union.  At the very least it gives you a structure to work within to bring change.  However, I know that there will be many who don’t opt to remain a part of NYSUT.  When that happens the union only has to look at the, “It’s none of your business how we operate the union” sort of mentality that has pervaded it for far too long.

 

 

A Blogging Hero Says Goodbye

rbe

There are an number of exceptional bloggers in the public education blogosphere and I thoroughly enjoy reading many of them.  However, as much as I enjoy a number of them, my absolute favorite has always been “Reality-Based Educator” from the Perdido Street School blog.  I enjoy his willingness to call it like it is and cut through the nonsense to get to the heart of issues.  Nobody’s voice has better represented that of the rank and file teacher than his.

So it is with tremendous disappointment that I read his goodbye post today.  He certainly has every right to stop blogging as the frequency of his posts and the research and reading behind those posts must take a tremendous amount of time.  However he will be greatly missed by many readers.  Here is to hoping he still keeps an active presence on Twitter.

Thank you RBE for being such a strong voice in favor of students, teachers, and communities!

Here is his Goodbye and Good Luck post…

Goodbye And Good Luck

This will be the last post at Perdido Street School blog.

I have been blogging for ten years at various sites.

For reasons that have been brewing for some time now, I have decided ten years is enough.

I can no longer give the blog the kind of attention I have given it in the past and so, I’ve decided it’s time to shut it down and move on.

Thanks to all the readers and commenters over the years.

Thanks especially to Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator, who got me started at this all those years ago, and thanks to my blogging buddies Norm Scott at Ed Notes Online, Sean Crowley at B-Lo Ed Scene, James Eterno at ICEUFT blog, Brian at Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association blog and Chaz at Chaz’s School Daze.

The battles in education these past ten years have been brutal and we have seen our profession transformed into something barely recognizable from when I first started teaching fifteen years ago.

Common Core, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, EngageNY scripts and drive-by Danielson observations have ensured that many of us are teaching by numbers if wish to remain in our jobs for any period of time.

If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that all the “change” we hear that is happening in education – from Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force “reforms” to the changes NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia says we’ll see out of the State Education Department, is just so much window dressing.

The instructional focus of the Common Core remains.

The bludgeon of the Endless Testing regime on individual schools remains.

For many teachers, teacher evaluations tied to test scores remain.

The unions have run ads lately touting change, but quite frankly, there is no change  – just more of the same with minor tweaks.

Thankfully there is a parent-led pushback movement in Opt Out that continues to terrify the politicians and educrats, that continues to keep them off balance and on the defensive.

I must admit, I don’t have a ton of optimism for any positive substantive change coming to public education in the near term, but if any does come, it will be as a result of the Opt Out movement and all the tireless folks there doing the work to end the Endless Testing regime.

When I first started blogging, the corporate education reform movement was in the ascendant, with no real pushback to them in the media or politics.

Despite the media narrative of the “powerful teachers unions,” the unions never really tried to counter the reformers – they instead  collaborated with them on teacher evaluations, Common Core, Danielson, streamlined contracts and the like.

But the Opt Out movement has become that pushback and therein lies the hope I have for the future of public education – that parents, along with teachers, will take back their schools from the corporate reformers, the educrats, the consultants, the edu-entrepreneurs and the bought-off politicians.

If there is any bright light in the maelstrom of deform that we inhabit these days, it is the advent of a parent-led movement against the powers that be and their corporate backers to transform schools into one size fits all factories and children into interchangeable widgets.

On the union side, there are many great folks pushing back against the union leaders in the AFT, NEA, NYSUT and UFT, trying to end top-down unionism and make the unions more representative of the views of the rank and file.

In NYC, that movement is led by the people at MORE and before I go from the blogging scene, I want to say that I fully support the MORE candidates in the coming UFT elections and hope that we can finally get some people into the UFT leadership who fight for teachers and the teaching profession rather than sell us and it out piece by piece.

And with that, I say goodbye and good luck.

Inept NYSUT Leadership Attacks Own Members

Yesterday  I came across a couple of tweets from the NYSUT Unity Caucus, the caucus that has been the controlling caucus of the statewide union since NYSUT’s inception.  The caucus of Randi Weingarten, Mike Mulgrew, Andy Pallotta, and the army of Unity hacks who vote however they are told to vote. The tweets were directed at MORE Caucus, the primary opposition to Unity at UFT level…

 

 

MORE’s response…

 

 

The second Unity tweet..

 

 

It’s simply unbelievable to me that Unity Caucus, synonymous with top down unionism, who over time has benefited from a disengaged and slumbering membership, would call out MORE for “all talk, no action”.  Especially given the fact that MORE has a well earned reputation for organizing and agitating with the best of them.  The very fact that they have built such a formidable opposition to Unity Caucus is an indication of how active they have been.  People like Mike Schirtzer, Jia Lee, Megan Moskop, Lauren Cohen, James Eterno, and so many others are the very definition of union activists.

This, of course, isn’t the first time we have seen NYSUT’s Unity caucus launch these sorts of nonsensical barbs.  Only two months ago they used the same tactics to smear PJSTA President Beth Dimino.   It’s just a shame that during the very week the Friedrichs case was heard in the Supreme Court our feckless and inept union leaders focus was on attacking their own members.

 

STCaucus Works to Restore Power to the Teacher

On January 9th, more than 140 people turned out on Long Island for the Restoring Power to the Teacher Conference hosted by STCaucus.  The conference focused on ways to organize and empower teachers so that they can not only fight for the schools our students deserve, but for the democratic unions that we deserve!

The morning began with a panel discussion featuring four activist women:

  • Beth Dimino, STCaucus Chairperson
  • Mel Holden, Buffalo Teachers Federation activist
  • Jia Lee, candidate for UFT President and teacher activist in MORE Caucus and STCaucus
  • Samantha Winslow, organizer and staff writer at Labor Notes

Among the common themes of the discussion were union democracy and organizing at the rank and file level. 

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Following the plenary, attendees broke up into different workshops.  During the first workshop, Melissa McMullan of the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association and Patricia Alberti of the Rocky Point Teachers Association facilitated a workshop titled Finding Your Voice: Supporting Children’s Rights to Fair and Accurate Standards and Assessments and Protecting Our Profession, in which they discussed the state of public education and how teachers could have their voices heard.  Samantha Winslow of Labor Notes facilitated The Caucus as a Vehicle for Positive Change in Our Union, which centered on where our power comes from (the membership) and how a caucus can help harness that power.  Ms. Winslow tied STCaucus’ work to what successful rank and file caucuses in places such as Chicago, Massachusetts, Seattle, and other places across the country have accomplished.  Jia Lee’s Teachers of Conscience- Teachers Refusing to comply and Opting Out workshop dealt with the courageous steps some teachers are taking in refusing to administer New York State assessemnts to their students.  Finally, Katie Kleinpeter of the PJSTA facilitated a “best practices” styled workshop titled Organizing at the Local Level.

The second round of workshops saw four more sessions for attendees to visit.  Geri-Ann McNamee of the PJSTA and Tracy Zamek of the Hauppauge Teachers Association facilitated a workshop titled Creating Change Through Local School Boards.  Both women are school board members in their home communities and, in one of the most promising developments of the day, at least one attendee to the workshop now appears intent on running for the board in her home district as well.  The Young Teachers Collective, who traveled all the way from New Jersey to be a part of the conference, facilitated the workshop The Personal, The Professional, and The Pedagogical: Organizing for New and Pre-service Teachers.  Their dedication to the profession that they are only now beginning is admirable.  They clearly are a bright part of the teaching profession going forward.  Ms. Winslow ran her second workshop of the day, The Friedrichs Case and Organizing in Right to Work States, dealing with the looming Supreme Court case and what it means for us.  Finally, I worked with Norm Scott from the UFT’s MORE Caucus to facilitate a workshop titled Unity Caucus: Thirst for Power and the Undemocratic Nature of Our Unions.  They helped to inform attendees to the workshop on how a small group of people within UFT leadership manages to control nearly every level of teacher unionism we have all while shutting out any opposing viewpoints.   

The day was a remarkable success as it brought passionate teachers from all parts of the state together to learn from each other and to network as to how we move forward as a caucus.  It was exciting, for a change, to see an event planned and carried out entirely by rank and file teachers, with the intent of having their voices shape the union, as opposed to the top down nature of NYSUT that we have all come to know.  The success of the event makes it increasingly likely that similar events around the state can be planned.

You may also want to check out UFT member James Eterno’s blog post on the event.
Here is Norm Scott’s post.

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The PJSTA’s Deniz Yildrim, Gail Ports, and Sue Hirner sell hot dogs at the STCaucus’ Restoring Power to the Teacher Conference.

Let’s End Top Down Unionism

I have to thank my friend Norm Scott over at Ed Notes Online for the piece he recently wrote on the demise of the UFT’s blog Edwize.  I’ll admit that I had never even heard of Edwize.  But then again I don’t typically spend time reading Unity Caucus propaganda, so maybe that explains it.

Anyways, tucked into Norm’s piece was a real gem that he had from Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts blog…

Back in 2002, three NEA staffers wrote an article for the Journal of Labor Research on the union’s experiments in cyberspace. They concluded, “With modern cyber software, in short, content creation can be decentralized and democratized. Members can be empowered. But first, of course, members need to be trusted. A top-down union, comfortable with command-and-control internal information-sharing processes, might be unnerved by this prospect. A top-down union, uncomfortable with anything but command-and-control, will likely never succeed in cyberspace.”

At the time, I felt this was an encouraging view, but didn’t go far enough.

Sigh. All NEA can think about is how cyberspace will help it get members to do something. Completely unexamined (perhaps even unimagined) is what if cyberspace helps members to get NEA to do something? What if members share internal information not previously filtered through the communications staff? What if they decide to support or reject legislation not included in the union’s legislative program? What if they become unhappy meeting once a year in a group of 9,000 and would prefer a different arrangement? A membership truly engaged in NEA’s workings might make it a stronger union, but it would be a fundamentally different union from the one that exists now, and in ways utterly unpredictable to those who hope to harness that power.

Even 13 years later we haven’t reached that point, but we’re closer to it than we have ever been.

That passage gets to the heart of what I think is the biggest problem with our unions and that is the top down nature of them in which our leaders insist on.  “Command-and-control” as Antonucci calls it.  For as long as I have been a teacher (14 years) I have seen the leadership of NYSUT/AFT/NEA decide on what we are supporting, what positions to take, what needs to be done and then simply command the membership to pledge support to those positions.  To some extent this also happens in individual locals, though I think that is less the case in smaller locals.  Like most people in power, union leaders often act with their own best interests in mind, with the goal being to retain power over all else.

The decentralizing and democratizing of unions that those NEA staffers saw as a possibility in 2002 has started to take place in many unions across the country, only it hasn’t been with the consent of the union leadership, but more as a thorn in the leadership’s side.  Rank and file members are found utilizing social media to organize everyday in support of causes that their unions haven’t supported.  Opt-out campaigns are the perfect example of this.  Classroom teachers were organizing around that long before NYSUT did.  It’s why every day classroom teachers like Beth Dimino, Jia Lee, Kevin Glynn, and dozens of others are viewed as the real teacher leaders while the likes of Andy Pallotta, Mike Mulgrew, and Randi Weingarten are looked upon with disdain.

In 2014, when NYSUT refused to oppose Governor Cuomo, the PJSTA harnessed the power of social media to endorse and support his primary challenger Zephyr Teachout.  Teachout was a guest at the PJSTA Conference Day and held a press conference at Comsewogue High School with hundreds of our members at her backs.  We recorded her speech and spread it via YouTube so that teachers across the state could hear her pro-public education stance, giving her a chance to illustrate just how different she was than the incumbent Cuomo.  While falling short, Teachout reached nearly 35% of the primary voters and left us wondering what would have happened if our parent unions had worked for her in the ways that we had.

In other places around the country caucuses favoring a more democratic brand of unionism have either won control of their unions (Chicago, LA) or are mounting serious challenges (Philadelphia).  Of course right here in New York, the MORE Caucus is mounting a growing threat to Unity Caucus at the UFT level and STCaucus is becoming a force to be reckoned with inside of NYSUT.

One thing that I have often claimed and believe deeply is that union leadership of UFT/NYSUT/AFT value power above all else and will stop at nothing to retain that power.  This is even more noticeable with the Friedrichs threat looming.  At a time when unions should be doing more than ever to empower their members and allow the voice of the rank and file to drive their agendas, our leadership’s strategy has been to ask for more VOTE-COPE money all while attacking classroom teachers, issuing and early endorsement for former WalMart board member Hillary Clinton, cavort with our enemies in support of #TeachStrong, and  celebrate “momentous” victories that aren’t actual victories.

There is a member driven movement for a more democratic union that is coming.  How much it transforms our union remains to be seen, but the more rank and file teachers get informed, become engaged, and take back their unions the better off our profession, our students, and our communities will be.

If you haven’t already registered for the “Restoring Power to the Teacher” conference hosted by STCaucus do so right now!  Be sure to bring a friend you work with or one from another district.  this is your opportunity to have your voice heard and move your union in the direction you want it to go!

Reaction to the Common Core Task Force Recommendations

Governor Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force released their recommendations Thursday and, at first glance, they were better than I was expecting.  There was a lot to like on the surface, so let’s take a look at the highlights from the governor’s press release…

To ensure that the State moves forward with high quality education standards the Task Force made 21 recommendations including:

  • Overhauling the Common Core and adopting locally-driven high quality New York education standards with input from local districts, educators, and parents through a transparent and open process that are age-appropriate and allow educators flexibility for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.
  • Establishing a transparent and open process by which New York standards are periodically reviewed by educators and content area experts, since educators know their schools and students best.
  • Providing educators and local school districts with the flexibility to develop and tailor curriculum to meet the needs of their individual students and requiring the State to create and release new and improved curriculum resources that educators can then adapt to meet the needs of their individual students.
  • Engaging New York educators, not a private corporation, to drive the review and creation of State standards-aligned tests in an open and transparent manner.
  • Minimizing student testing anxiety by reducing the number of test days and test questions and providing ongoing test transparency to parents, teachers and districts on test questions and student test scores.
  • Ensuring that State tests account for different types of learners, including Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

Additionally a four-year moratorium was placed using on Common Core state tests to evaluate teachers.   Predictably, NYSUT leadership and their Unity Caucus mouthpieces ran around proclaiming this to be a “momentous” victory.

The problem, however, is that this was not a momentous victory.  Nor was it close to being one.  These were, possibly, small steps in the right direction which will ultimately mean nothing if they are not followed up with much larger gains.  Here are my primary concerns…

  • There are a lot of things within the language of the recommendations that sound nice, but ultimately we don’t know what they mean.  I hear lots of “overhauling” and “input from educator” types of lines, but as we have seen in the past, the state’s definition of these things tends to vary greatly from the definition that normal people might have.  I have the sneaking suspicion that “overhauled” standards will look a lot like the current standards, just with a friendlier name and a few small changes.
  • There is no mention of how cut scores on state tests will be determined, meaning it will likely be in the same way they always have been.  The tests could end up being developmentally appropriate and not abusive in nature, however if the state is still arbitrarily deciding what is passing and what is failing, it will be just as simple to create the “Our schools are failing!!!!” narrative that the governor and his cronies like to claim.
  • Schools will still be placed in receivership over poor test scores, which means all the teachers in those schools can have their contracts torn up and can be fired due to poor scores.
  • The four-year moratorium on the APPR consequences is just that, a moratorium, not an elimination.  That means in a few years they will be reinstated and state test scores will be 50% of teacher evaluations.  This signifies the Task Force’s belief that high stakes testing should, when the “new” standards are implemented, be the centerpiece of public education in New York State.
  • The moratorium is a clear sign that the Task Force believes in test based teacher evaluations and believes in firing teachers over test scores.  In fact the press release stated that, “The Education Transformation Act of 2015 will remain in place and no new legislation is required to implement the recommendations of the report, including recommendations regarding the transition period for consequences for students and teachers.”  In other words, they fully support the most damaging piece of public education legislation that has ever been passed.

While there are a few nice steps in here, that ultimately may be nothing more than nice language, there really is not much to be excited over.  To me this simply seems to be an effort to quell the growing opt-out movement, get kids taking the tests in large numbers again, and then have the ability, without needing any legislative changes, to implement the rigged APPR system that has been thwarted by the opt-out movement.  Enjoy whatever sense of “victory” this may give you, but proceed with caution and continue to opt-out of state testing!

Finally, be sure to give Peter Greene’s write up of this situation, “NY: Cuomo’s Common Core Nothing Sundae” a good read over at the Curmudgucation blog.

 

Common Core Panel’s Recommendations

Politico New York is claiming that Governor Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force is ready to make recommendations now that it’s statewide “We’re not listening!” tour has concluded.

Via Keshia Clukey in Politico New York…

In its draft report of recommendations to the governor, the Common Core task force is calling for an overhaul of the state’s testing system, the creation of new state standards and transparency on those standards’ rollout, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO New York.

This is quite short on details.  There is no explanation for what an “overhaul of the state’s testing system” means.  Generally speaking, I find that my version of an overhaul (throw out all the tests completely)  and the state’s version often vary quite a bit from each other.  Keep in mind it is entirely possible that they can make the tests considerably easier and even developmentally appropriate, yet they would still have the power to use the cut scores to create whatever narrative they wish to.

As for the creation of new standards, again I am skeptical that this is anything meaningful.  New York wouldn’t be the first state to make minor and meaningless alterations to the Common Core and rebrand it as something new and better.  That’s exactly what I am anticipating here.

The draft also includes a space for the task force to weigh in on the impact of student test scores on teacher evaluations, and the panel will likely use that space to recommend up to a four-year moratorium, according to a source familiar with the task force’s plans.

This is an important piece of the article.  Notice that the task force will simply call for “up to a four-year moratorium” on test based teacher evaluations.  That doesn’t mean it will be a four-year moratorium, it just won’t be any more than four years.  More importantly, this is essentially a statement by the task force that they support test based evaluations because a moratorium is completely different than getting rid of such evaluations all together.  Having a moratorium sides with the notion that it’s not the reform agenda that stinks, it was just the implementation.  Be reminded that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that test based teacher evaluations improve student learning at all.  Yet the task force is, in essence, voting in favor of them.  Junk science will still be junk science in a few (less than four!) years.

Everything that I saw suggested in the article was either suspiciously short on details or not a real fix at all.  The task force is doing exactly what it was designed to do: Put a band aid on things to fool people into thinking real changes are being in order to put a halt to the growing opt-out movement.

This strategy is bound to fail for the simple reason that people pay too much attention to it.  The deformers were too cocky and aggressive in the early going of these reforms and they awoke the masses in doing so.  People are hyper vigilant to all of this now and will continue to be that way going forward in regards to public education.  Larger numbers of parents will opt their children out of the state tests until their is a full scale retreat on the reform agenda.  Those parents will recognize this is nothing of the sort.  As a matter of fact, one of my colleagues has already had 100% of their students opt-out of the 2016 ELA.  Those parents certainly won’t be reversing their decisions based on the band aid solutions the task force is recommending.

The bottom line is that there is far too much money behind the reform agenda and far too many elected officials lining up to do their bidding for these reforms to go quietly into the night.  The simplest solution is for the opt-out movement to flex it’s muscle by demonstrating that they can affect sweeping changes at the legislative level in next November’s elections.  They can start with the senate Republicans and the “heavy hearts” Democrats in the assembly who voted for the abusive state budget this past spring.

As for our unions, I completely expect the Unity Caucus mouthpieces in the UFT, NYSUT, and the AFT to begin claiming that this is a victory so great it scrapes the skies.  After all, as our friend Arthur Goldstein often mentions, they consider everything an incredible victory!  Fortunately, you’ll know better.