If You Can’t Trust Your Union…

Several years back, when discussing the work of our local union I had a colleague say to me, “If you can’t trust your union, who can you trust?”  I, of course, agreed wholeheartedly.  Years later I can still agree with this statement in regards to my local union.  Over the course of my career the PJSTA has provided me with wonderful working conditions, a good living wage, and excellent benefits.  On top of that they have represented my voice well in matters regarding public education and legislative issues that impact our profession.  They have advocated for the students we teach and the community that we serve.  The PJSTA, over the course of my 13 years as a member has undoubtedly earned my trust.  Where things change, however, is with my other unions.  My parent unions.

There was a time when I would go to the polls with a list of NYSUT endorsed candidates in my pocket and vote accordingly, believing that they had made endorsements only to those who would be fighting for quality public education.  Additionally I would give generously from each pay check towards VOTE-COPE, with the belief that this money was going towards those candidates who would fight for the sort of public education system that I could be proud of.  The type that benefited our students and communities.  After all, if you can’t trust your union, who can you trust?

Unfortunately I have learned over the past couple of years that I can’t trust NYSUT and I can’t trust the AFT.  I say them separately, though the elements that make them untrustworthy tend to be one and the same (The UFT leadership’s Unity Caucus, which controls both NYSUT and the AFT).

As we sit here, a week into 2015, the public education landscape looks bleaker than ever.  We have clear adversaries regarding the attacks on our profession and what is perhaps most disturbing is the way in which our parent unions have, in many ways, been complicit in working with those adversaries.

For example, let’s look at Governor Cuomo.  Cuomo was a clear enemy of public education throughout his first term in office, even going so far as to say that schools whose test scores weren’t good enough should receive the “death penalty.”  By now we all know the litany of other offenses on Cuomo’s part.  It goes without saying that Cuomo should have been public enemy #1 for NYSUT.  If they were representing the voice of their membership he certainly would be.  Let’s take a look at the NYSUT timeline of events regarding Cuomo over the past year…

There was certainly more than one local president at the endorsement conference who asked for an endorsement of Teachout in the primary.  Our own Beth Dimino was one of them.  That brings me to another option for NYSUT.  Dimino suggested that if Teachout were to lose to Cuomo in the primary, NYSUT should support the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones for governor and lieutenant governor.  We covered their education platform back in May.  So NYSUT had two separate options to oppose Cuomo and they chose none.  Despite pleas from their membership and presidents from locals around the state, Magee, Pallotta, and the rest of NYSUT’s board of directors decided in their private meeting yesterday that they would not oppose Cuomo.

  • Summer- At around the same time NYSUT was failing to endorse and contribute to Teachout’s campaign, it was revealed that the NYSUT officers quickly and quietly worked out a double pension deal that Cuomo curiously signed off on very quickly.  (Norm Scott, who broke the story, wondered if the trade off for Cuomo’s support for their double pensions was remaining neutral in the campaign.)
  • September- Only days before the primary, AFT President Randi Weingarten (former UFT President and Unity Caucus member), made robo calls in support of Cuomo’s running mate Kathy Hochul, a back door endorsement for Cuomo if there ever was one.
  • September- At the Labor Day parade in Manhattan, UFT President, NYSUT Board of Director member, and the Unity Caucus’ Mulgrew marches with Cuomo.
  • September 9th- Cuomo and Hochul beat Teachout and her running mate Tim Wu in the primary.  Teachout garnered 34% of the vote, Wu 40% despite the fact that Cuomo spent 40 times (!) as much as Teachout.  NYSUT was busy throwing their VOTE-COPE money at ed deformers like John Flanagan, who is well funded by StudentsFirst, the pro-charter, pro-voucher Jeff Klein, and the indicted Thomas Libous.  They chose not to give a dime to Teachout who could have desperately used the funding to help combat Cuomo’s Wall Street funded campaign.  Teachout, of course, could have also benefited from an endorsement that would have gone out to NYUST’s 600,000 members (you’ll recall that Cuomo’s margin of victory was less than 150,000).
  • November- Cuomo wins re-election with only 53% of the vote.  Of particular note is the fact that he had the Working Families line on the ballot.  If Teachout had gotten that endorsement back in May and ran to the left of Cuomo she likely would have pulled a considerable number of Democratic voters with her and severely harmed Cuomo’s chances of winning the election.

The names of the organizations may have changed in the above scenarios, but the faces behind them are essentially the same.  Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew pull the strings more than any other.  In NYSUT, Executive Vice-President Andy Pallotta mostly does their bidding while the other officers fall in line.  Pallotta, Mulgrew, and Weingarten have all taken the Unity Caucus oath and have all benefited from it tremendously.  That’s why they won’t act in opposition to Cuomo.  They won’t act in opposition to the Common Core.  They will do very little to benefit the members (though Martin Messner may save you money on your car insurance!).  It’s only a matter of time before the statewide APPR sellout comes.  Unfortunately not many of our statewide members benefit from the work of Unity Caucus.  Most of us are actually hurt by it.  That’s why I can say that I don’t trust my union.

The only way for things to ever change within NYSUT is to defeat the statewide Unity Caucus and their “seat at the table” brand of unionism.  We need leadership who is driven by principle, by the desire to see our schools strengthened, and by the collective conscience of our rank and file membership.  Not by an oath that they took to vote along party lines.

We are getting pretty late into this game now.  Things are becoming more dire by the day.  Maybe the coming APPR sellout will be what finally galvanizes our members to stand up and take back their union.

A Message From Carol Burris

Via principal and public education advocate Carol Burris…

The Governor and Chancellor Tisch are proposing an overhaul of the already flawed APPR system. They propose that the system be designed to find MORE teachers and principals ineffective and developing, in order to be in better alignment with the high percentages of students who are below proficient on the Common Core exams.
 
Their plan would also strip away local school board, superintendent and principal input into evaluation systems, putting more power in Albany’s hands to determine the fate of our teachers and principals.
Please read and share Carol Burris’ Washington Post blog which describes Chancellor Tisch’s proposed changes.
There are other strategies that the Governor and Mrs. Tisch propose that would severely undermine public education, including the expansion of charter schools.  The New York State Allies for Public Education has now published sound, research-based and pro-public school responses.  You can read their letter here:
Please share this widely as well.
Now is the time to contact the Board of Regents, and your legislators, including your assembly member and senator to make it clear that you do not want 1) a state-wide APPR plan  imposed from Albany  2) that the doubling of test scores in APPR will cause this system to be even more unreliable and have terrible effects on your  students and your schools  3)that you oppose the lifting of the cap on charter schools and 4) you support the evidence based responses of NYSAPE to the governor’s questions – rather than those of the chancellor. Here is a link to a very easy way to do just that.  It allows you to easily personalize the beginning and end if you wish. 
 
We must all work together to help the members of the Board of Regents and the legislature understand that the Cuomo/Tisch agenda of more privatization and high stakes testing will harm kids and our public schools.
Thanks!

Looming Battles for 2015

Happy New Year to our PJSTA members along with any other readers of our blog.  Hopefully you had an enjoyable vacation and return to school well rested.  You’ll need it.  We have a number of developing  battles on our hands.

For those of you who may have missed it, New York State’s Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch sent a New Years Eve letter to Governor Cuomo’s aide Jim Malatras detailing what she sees as the necessary changes to the New York State APPR.  Carol Burris did a great job breaking it all down on Valerie Strauss’ blog.

Via The Washington Post (emphasis mine)…

New York Chancellor Merryl Tisch has announced her New Years resolution—revise the teacher evaluation system so that Common Core 3-8 test scores can trump all.

Yup.  Tisch’s response to the tremendous push back against the Common Core tests has been to add further weight to the test scores.

The short version of what she wants to do now is this—double down on test scores and strip away the power of local school boards to negotiate the majority of the evaluation plan. Tisch would get rid of the locally selected measures of achievement, which now comprise 20 percent of the evaluation, and double the state test score portion, to 40 percent. She also recommends that the score ranges for the observation process be taken out of the hands of local districts, and be determined by Albany instead. Dr. Lederman, start packing up. Merryl Tisch and Andrew Cuomo, whom you have never met, know your talents better than your local school board, your principal and the parents of the children you teach.

…

Although Tisch claims that this is about teacher improvement and mentoring, the letter discloses her true intent. She opines that if a teacher is ineffective in the growth score portion, as Sheri was, she should be rated ineffective overall.  In addition,if a teacher has two ineffective ratings they “should not return to the classroom.” Whether those ratings, which are based on a highly discredited model, are accurate or not is moot. They produce a bell curve.

You read that correctly.  Regardless of what 60% of your evaluation says, if the growth score says you are ineffective, your entire rating will be ineffective.  If you receive two ineffective ratings you will no longer be allowed to teach.

Meanwhile, the evidence has continued to accumulate that evaluating teachers by test scores simply does not work.

In April of 2014, the American Statistical Association, joined other research organizations, such as the American Education Research Association and the National Academy of Education, in cautioning against the use of student test scores, commonly referred to as VAM, in teacher evaluations. The ASA clearly outlined how unreliable this methodology is and noted that teachers’ impact on test scores is minimal–between 1 percent and 14 percent. Understand also that these VAM and “growth” ratings are all relative—pitting each teacher against all others. Even if every child scored in the mastery range on the test, there would still be a percentage of teachers rated Ineffective. It is a sorting mechanism based on an algorithm, which most researchers agree is flawed.

…

The Tisch plan is a power grab designed to snatch away the right of elected Boards of Education to determine what is quality teaching, by shifting it to a formula produced in Albany based on flawed tests. Ironically, these are the same tests which the Governor and legislature say, in law, should have no consequential effects on students. But there is no problem using those tests to boot Sheri Lederman and teachers like her out the door.

Be sure to read the entire article.  Burris is always a voice of reason and logic in a debate that all too often is filled with nonsensical attacks on us.

We know that Tisch’s APPR agenda is also Cuomo’s.  We know that Cuomo has the support of the Republican controlled, Wall Street funded senate.  That includes our local state senator John Flanagan, the chairman on K-12 education who is on the take from noted ed deformers Students First, his top campaign contributor.

Via Capital NY…

Senate education chair John Flanagan said lawmakers should consider limiting school districts’ control over their evaluation plans. “Maybe we should be having a discussion about a statewide protocol,” he said on “The Capitol Pressroom,” a public radio program. “Instead of having 700 disparate agreements, let’s have a menu where you have 10 or 12 options for school districts to get involved in, because all of these things have to be negotiated, and one of the things that the unions jealously guard, which I understand and respect, is the concept of local control. They want to be able to negotiate everything. And yet, I don’t really see anyone out there who is … jumping up and down and saying everything is working really well.”

Voters in the Comsewogue community should take note that their state senator, John Flanagan, supports stripping our district of local control over teacher evaluations and farming it out to Albany.

Our friend Reality Based Educator covered Flanagan on his Perdido Street School Blog on Christmas Eve.

Finally that brings us to this from Governor Cuomo…

 

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post followed up with this op-ed.  I am not sure that Cuomo has the juice to launch a pension attack, but it sure seems as though a warning shot’s been fired.

To say we didn’t see any of this coming would be wrong.  Much of this was entirely predictable, particularly the APPR stuff.  Unfortunately NYSUT leadership has not shown the willingness to fight any of this.  Nor will they in the coming weeks and months.  To be clear, the fight for public education will have to come from students, parents, and rank-and-file teachers.  We’ll have more on the role of NYSUT coming up.  In the meantime lace up your boots.  There’s a lot of work to be done in 2015.

Stronger Together Letter to Chancellor Tisch

Via the Stronger Together Caucus website…

December 22, 2014

Merryl H. Tisch, Chancellor
Regents Office
State Education Building
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12234

Beth Dimino, ST Caucus Chair
290 Norwood Avenue
Port Jefferson Station NY 11776

Dear Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents:

We are a group of education leaders from across the state that have shared concerns with the direction of education policy in this state and how it ultimately affects our students. On December 18th, 2014, the Governor’s office submitted an open letter to you that outlined questions to be discussed when developing the state’s educational policy in the coming year.

The questions the Governor’s office posed relied on the state’s testing data being valid and reliable. Since there have been many questions regarding the validity and reliability of the data, we believe it is important that SED make public responses to the following questions so any discussion that occurs will be transparent. Experience has shown that when policy is formed without the input of all stakeholders, chaos ensues; furthermore, we have seen how disastrous policy can be when predicated upon incomplete and erroneous data. We believe this disconnect has led to the turbulence between the practitioners and the policy-makers for the last several years.

We believe improvements need to be made for the state to move beyond the current problematic foundation: SED needs to make clear that its underlying assumptions parallel the actual experiences of all students of the state of New York. Could you answer the following questions in a timely manner?

No previous cohort of students (K-12) had ever received instruction so heavily tied to the Common Core or standardized tests. Could such experimentation on our children create significant and systemic unintended negative consequences?

These consequences could be more devastating as this is not a localized experiment where local professionals can modify it as they see fit. This is a statewide experiment where local control has been removed and subsequently, practitioners and parents feel powerless to adjust and adapt to meet the needs of their children. Given the consistent and pervasive anecdotal reports of students’ increased stress reactions, school phobias and medications being prescribed for anxiety (especially in our elementary population), has SED been monitoring the emotional and physical health effects of this curriculum/testing initiative on our students? What has SED found in its research? If SED has not been monitoring for unintended negative consequences, why not?

Much of the discussion about schools, teaching and student outcomes assumes that the results on the State’s ELA and Math assessments are both valid and reliable. In order for the label “College and Career Ready” to have any real meaning, the data that the state produces must parallel the experience of the actual students in the school districts upon entering the college educational system. For example, if a school sends 90% of its students to four-year schools and 80% of those students graduate in four years, yet the state assessments only put the percentages of college and career ready students at 40%, whose data is considered more valid? Has SED surveyed districts to examine this discrepancy? What has SED found in its research? If SED has not been monitoring for discrepancies, why not? Doing so would provide more accurate data about college and career readiness.

The initial study that established the State’s “College and Career Readiness” benchmarks was done on students from New York City schools who were attending two-year CUNY schools. This narrowed the pool by eliminating students that went on to four-year colleges. The smaller subgroup selected makes the data very specific. It also makes it harder to extrapolate generalizations regarding all the students of our state. What steps have been taken since then to make the “college and career readiness” benchmarks a more reliable and valid measure of all our students? What has SED found in its research?

In 2013, both you and Commissioner King stressed that the low test scores were “just a baseline” and should not be overemphasized, making the exams experimental. Has new information materialized in the last year to make SED more confident that the test scores are now a more accurate reflection of the deficits in student learning as a result of teacher ineffectiveness, and not just the continued fallout that exists with the Common Core roll out? What has SED found in its research?

Last year, you followed the feedback from the Commissioner’s Forums on Common Core. In fact, you attended some of the meetings. How would you try to synthesize the feedback from parents with the desires of the Governor? Would you be willing to take the questions from the Governor’s office to the people of the State in another listening tour? If not, why not?

Thank you for your time and consideration in these matters. We look forward to an open dialogue which will help us all ensure that our school children are in fact being prepared for the 21st century and beyond and ultimately to improve education in the state of New York.

Sincerely,

Beth Dimino, Port Jefferson Station TA, Suffolk County
Joseph Karb, Springville FA, Western NY
Michael Lillis, Lakeland Federation of Teachers, Hudson Valley
Michele Bushey, Saranac TA, North Country
Kevin Coyne, Brentwood TA, Suffolk County
Orlando Benzan, Brockport TA Rochester
Beth Chetney, Baldwinsville TA, Central NY
Megan DeLaRosa, Shenendehowa TA, Capital Region
Laura Finn- Spencer, Smithtown TA, Suffolk County
Lauren Cohen, UFT, New York City

So Long John King

As has been reported everywhere, NYSED Commissioner John King is stepping down from his position so that he can accept a job as one of President Obama’s underlings at the US DOE.  This seems to be a reward for King for sticking with his reformy plans despite a wave of students, parents, educators, and common sense that opposed virtually every decision he made.

No word on who the next commissioner will be, though you can expect it will be another reformy type who will bring more of the same.  It is important to note that the problem here in New York State never was John King.  King was merely a mouthpiece for Merryl Tisch and the other plutocrats seeking to profit off of the destruction of public education.

My lasting memory of John King will bewhen he was on the receiving end of this tirade last year…

 

Ratification Vote Reminder

Just a reminder that the ratification vote for PJSTA members is this afternoon in the Comsewogue High School auditorium.  The meeting will begin promptly at 4:00 pm.  This past Monday the Comsewogue school board approved the memorandum of agreement for the contract extension.  As a point of information, here are the PJSTA’s Ratification Meeting Guidelines.

Ratification Vote

The PJSTA Representative Council has unanimously approved a contract extension. There will be a ratification vote on Monday, December 1st at Comsewogue High School at 4:00 pm. There will be building meetings this week to discuss the extension and have your questions on the following dates:
Clinton Avenue- Tuesday 8:00 AM
Terryville/JFK (at JFK)- Tuesday 3:00 PM
Comsewogue High School- Wednesday 6:45 AM
Norwood- Wednesday 3:45 PM
JFK- Thursday 7:10 AM
Boyle- Thursday 2:45 PM

If you can not make your building’s meeting please make plans to attend another building’s.