Tag: nysut

APPR Rumors

Our friend Arthur Goldstein, who blogs at NYC Educator, has heard a few rumors regarding a new APPR plan.

Via NYC Educator…

I don’t have a lot of time right now, but several sources I trust tell me there is already a deal in place for a new APPR plan. They think it will either be a 40% junk science plan, or that it may be a statewide model based on the NYC plan. The NYC plan, while we in NYC don’t much like it, is a better one than those in a few upstate cities that were poorly negotiated. It is not nearly as good as those many small locals came up with.

However, a UFT source I also trust tells me that Mulgrew will indeed fight Cuomo’s APPR efforts. Hopefully we’ll know more after Wednesday’s DA. An agreement could be made to make an NYC-style evaluation statewide, or 40% junk science, and UFT could argue that Cuomo wanted 50% and we kept it down to 40.

The problem with UFT leadership is that everything they do is a victory. When we got the UFT transfer plan it was a victory. When we lost it and got the ATR instead that was a victory. Getting artifacts for ratings was a victory, and losing them was a victory. Getting the entire Danielson Framework was a victory and cutting it down to 8 domains was a victory.

So Mike Mulgrew can’t lose, no matter how miserable UFT and NYSUT teachers become. He is King Midas and everything he punches turns to gold.

Both options are better than Cuomo’s proposal.  The NYC-style evaluation would be preferable to a plan in which 40% relies upon state test scores.  Still, as Arthur notes, both are far worse than what the PJSTA currently uses.

Dimino Refuses to Administer State Tests

PJSTA President Beth Dimino has notified the Comsewogue School District that she is refusing to administer state tests this spring.

Via the Long Island Press…

“I find myself at a point in the progress of education reform in which clear acts of conscience will be necessary to preserve the integrity of public education,” she writes. “I can no longer implement policies that seek to transform the broad promises of public education into a narrow obsession with the ranking and sorting of children.

“I will not distort curriculum in order to encourage students to comply with bubble test thinking,” continues her letter. “I can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a state-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. I have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.”

Dimino hopes other local educators will follow her lead and oppose subjecting their students to the tests by refusing to administer them.

“The next logical step has to be the movement of conscientious objectors,” she tells the Press. “I believe, and I said this to [New York State Education Commissioner John] King and [state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl] Tisch and [state] Senator [John] Flanagan at the Three Village Rally [in November 2013], that this is child abuse. I believe that it is child abuse. I believe that giving these tests to my students makes me culpable in the abuse of children and I can no longer do that.”

Dr. Rella supports and respects her decision.

“I have known Beth for over 20 years,” he says. “This was not something she has done lightly. There was a lot of soul searching that went on and she said to me, as a matter of conscience, she cannot participate. She cannot proctor this test. And I support that.”

…

To help clarify this, she’s also putting forth a proposal before the New York State United Teachers Federation (NYSUT) asking that all teachers who have school age children refuse to let them take the exams.

This resolution, which Dimino co-authored, passed her union unanimously, she says, and will be brought to the NYSUT general assembly meeting in April, and aims to coordinate local teachers unions across the state in opting their children out of the tests in solidarity.

Be sure to read the full article at the Long Island Press.  More to come on this.

Stronger Together Letter to NYSUT

The Stronger Together Caucus has authored a letter to the NYSUT officers, Board of Directors, and members.  The letter addresses NYSUT’s seeming reluctance to push back against Governor Cuomo and Merryl Tisch regarding their APPR agenda.

Click here to view the letter.

 

Click here to contact the Stronger Together Caucus.

NYSUT, School Funding, and the Coming APPR Sellout

Yesterday NYSUT held a Moral Monday rally on the Million Dollar Staircase in the state Capitol.  Kudos to them for protesting funding inequities that rob our students of the education they deserve.

One thing I noticed in the coverage of yesterday’s events was that, deservedly so, there was lots of tough talk aimed at Governor Cuomo.  From Andy Pallotta to Mike Mulgrew to Randi Weingarten, Cuomo was being called to task for his record as an ed deformer.  What was unfortunate, however, is that none of this tough talk came last year when it mattered most.  When there was a viable alternative to Cuomo in the race for governor the three aforementioned “unionists” weren’t talking tough about Cuomo.  Instead Mulgrew was threatening the Working Families Party with dissolution if they didn’t endorse Cuomo and marching with the governor in the Labor Day Parade.  NYSUT was hiding under a rock and throwing their money at reformy John Flanagan and Randi Weingarten was making robo calls on behalf of Cuomo’s running mate.  So pardon me if their tough talk now rings a bit hollow to me.

Our friend Reality Based Educator had a good observation yesterday as well.  Lost in all of this talk about funding inequities has been the fact that there has been little if any talk about the Cuomo and Tisch APPR agenda.  As RBE points out on his Perdido Street School blog, it’s likely due to the fact that a big APPR sellout is on the way.

The union leadership puts together a rally with a message focused on the inequities between rich and poor districts.

Speaker Silver says education funding will be a “top priority” in this legislative session.

But there’s little-to-no pushback on the damages of test-based evaluations or redoing the evaluation system to make tests 40% of the entire rating (and really 100%, since if you come up “ineffective” on 40%, you’re ineffective overall.)

You can see how this will play out in negotiations, can’t you?

If you’ve been a teacher and have watched these kinds of fights for a while, I bet you can.

The unions and Assembly Dems will trade Cuomo’s evaluation, tenure, and 3020a “reforms” for more “education funding.”

And of course Cuomo will get his increase of the cap and funding for charter schools – that goes without saying.

…

It’s a lot of noise meant to fool the rank and file into thinking the union leaders plan on trying to protect them in upcoming negotiations.

Make no mistake – they don’t.

They plan on selling you out, giving Cuomo and the charter school entrepreneurs most (if not all) of what they want on the charter cap and charter funding, giving Cuomo and Tisch most (if not all) of what they want on the evaluation system “reforms” and 3020a changes in return for a few extra dollars in “education funding.”

We’ll hit on the coming sellout more in the coming weeks.  For now one other thing to note…

Why is NYSUT giving VOTE-COPE money to John Flanagan?  The Republican senator, who chairs the senate’s K-12 education committee, is a noted ed deformer and member of ALEC.  He is on the take from reform group StudentsFirst and has been in the news for backing changes to the APPR that would take local control away from school districts.  Flanagan has supported the idea of eroding tenure rights.  He was also the senator who complained to Comsewogue’s administration that Beth Dimino needed to speak to him in a more deferential tone.  He was not endorsed by NYSUT as there was literally no reason to endorse him.  So one certainly wonders why NYSUT contributed $7,750 to him in this past election.  That made them one of Flanagan’s top donors.  Not issuing an endorsement is sort of pointless if you are going to then fill the coffers of that candidate anyway.

Pallotta and Flanagan

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.

De Blasio, Weingarten, Magee, Mulgrew: 4 Biggest Reasons for Cuomo Victory

I have a lot of thoughts to share on the role of our unions in yesterday’s Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary.  Within the next day or two, when I have the time to sit down and get those thoughts on paper I will share them.  In the meantime our friend Reality-Based Educator who blogs over at Perdido Street School absolutely hit the nail on the head in his piece today.

Via Perdido Street School…

The only group of people who did more work than de Blasio to help Cuomo and his bank lobbyist running mate win the primary?

The UFT/AFT/NYSUT leaders:

1) who engineered a putsch at NYSUT to make sure the old leaders who had turned on Cuomo were ousted

2) who threatened the Working Families Party with dissolution if WFP gave their ballot slot to Zephyr Teachout

3) who refused to endorse Teachout in the primary and provide much needed cash and support for the Teachout/Wu campaign (as PEF did) and

4) who made robocalls for the campaign.

De Blasio, Weingarten, Magee, Mulgrew – four reasons why Andrew Cuomo will win re-election this year handily in the general election and his bank lobbyist running mate will ride along with him into power.

Head on over and read the entire thing.  There are some good quotes from Tim Wu as well on the role that De Blasio played.

Cuomo Wins Primary But Has Lost the Faith of NY Dems

If you are into moral victories there were many to be had last night.  Zephyr Teachout, while not winning the primary, garnered nearly 35% of the vote, an astounding total for a virtually unknown candidate facing off against an incumbent governor with loads of Wall Street cash.  Cuomo had a $35 million war chest, including money from NYSUT, nearly forty times the amount of money Teachout raised.  Interestingly enough, Teachout had over 8,000 donors to her campaign while Cuomo had less than 1,000.  Teachout won 30 of New York State’s 62 counties, which is fairly stunning.  Given their discrepency in fund raising it appears as though Cuomo’s votes cost about $65 per vote while Teachout’s cost $1.50.

Teachout did not endorse Cuomo in her concession speech.  She reportedly could not call him to conceded either as he wouldn’t give her his phone number.  He is a classy guy that Andy Cuomo.

Teachout’s comments to her reporters last night pretty much say it all.  Via the Washington Times…

“What we have done here is incredible.,” Teachout told her supporters in a Manhattan bar. “I will not be your next governor but the Democrats of this state have been heard.”

 “Anything over 25 percent against an incumbent with 40 times as much money, one of the most famous names in politics, and a four year’s head start on me, I am really, really proud of what we did.”

I can appreciate the moral victories.  I can appreciate the fact that Cuomo’s small margin of victory against a largely unknown challenger virtually eliminates any opportunity for him on the national stage.  However I still find myself disappointed and angry.  The reality is that we have four more years of a governor who waged all out war on teachers, students, and local communities in his first term.  The reality is that big money Wall Street donations bought another election.  Perhaps what cuts deepest for me is the reality that with an opportunity to make this a really interesting election, the leadership of our parent unions not only failed to support Teachout, but worked to win the election for the governor’s ticket.  But with friends like that who needs enemies?  I’ll have more on that later.

Reality-Based Educator with a good write up of the primary here.

 

Solidarity, Loyalty, and Asking Questions

Fellow NYSUT member Bianca Tanis recently wrote a great piece about NYSUT leadership titled A Respectful Revolution: Questioning Union Practice as an Act of Loyalty.  Tanis hits the nail on the head in the article.  This blog, along with several others, have regularly called out NYSUT leadership for what have been a series of broken promises and behavior that is in the best interests of only the top few officers in the union, not the 600,000 members they represent.

Via @ The Chalk Face…

Does loyalty to one’s union require blind faith? Must one eschew raising questions and concerns to demonstrate solidarity? Over the past few weeks, I have asked myself these questions. Certainly, any organization worth protecting is worth holding up to a high standard and can withstand tough questions, even when such questions are made in the public eye. In recent months, I have found it increasingly difficult to defend, let alone maintain faith in the current state union leadership in NYS, yet I believe steadfastly that the union can and will remain a powerful force for worker protection and student advocacy.

Tanis goes on to articulate her experience with the NYSUT leadership, in particular dealing with a situation in which she questioned NYSUT over spokesman Carl Korn being quoted in a Newsday article saying, “The vast majority of questions do appear to be age- and developmentally appropriate,” when referring to the 2014 ELA and math state assessments.  After trying to question NYSUT over this seemingly bizarre comment Tanis received little or no response from the leadership.  I urge you to read the entire article detailing her experience.

Tanis calls into question an issue that several of us have been dealing with recently.  NYSUT’s leadership simply ignores any criticism or questioning of their behavior.  Emails, tweets, and phone calls go unanswered as though they are teaching dissenters a lesson.  While they ignore concerns from their membership, those who support the leadership accuse anyone asking questions of being disloyal and destroying solidarity.  Some even claim us to be “union busters.”  They did it when leadership broke their campaign promise of being “against the Common Core.”  They did it when they worked to block a Zephyr Teachout endorsement.  They did it one more time when members called into question the back room, double pension deal that suspiciously sailed through state government. Last week Arthur Goldstein echoed the very same concerns that I express here.

I love NYSUT and believe that our statewide union can be a force for good in public education.  But members should have their eyes open.  They should ask questions.  They should hold their well compensated officers accountable.  It’s part of the democratic process and it makes us a stronger union.

Links on Teachout & NYSUT

I’ve been out of commission for a few days as I had some laptop issues resolved.  However I am back in action and have a few links to pass on that we should all be reading.

First to Zephyr Teachout, the PJSTA endorsed gubernatorial candidate…

There will be a a rally in support of Teachout on Thursday, September 4th at 4:30.  All PJSTA members should be there.  Teachout, Beth Dimino, Carol Burris, Kevin Glynn, and Jeanette Deutermann will be among the attendees and speakers.  More information at the bottom of this post.

The Long Island Press quotes Teachout as saying her first order of business would be working to eliminate the Common Core in New York State and dismissing commissioner John King.  Via the Long Island Press…

Teachout has been equally outspoken against Common Core, the education reform created by the National Governor’s Association and the Council of State School Officers and implemented to what many are calling disastrous results under the leadership of Cuomo and his appointed Commissioner of Education John King.

Teachout said the first order of business if she was to beat Cuomo would be the elimination of Common Core, and King as commissioner.

“John King has failed to listen to parents and teachers who have spoken up forcefully about the problems with high stakes testing and privatization of public schools, and is the wrong person for the job,” she said.

“Listening” is a key component of being governor, she stressed amid the market. “He’s not a good listener.”

The more you hear her speak the more you wonder what NYSUT possibly could have been thinking when they chose not to endorse her.

Speaking of NYSUT, we have a few good links on the double pension scandal that broke last week…

Over at the Perdido Street School blog, Reality-Based Educator says the Cuomo/NYSUT double pension deal needs to be investigated.

Sean Crownley from the B-LoEdScene blog says that NYSUT leadership needs to explain themselves or resign.

Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator talks about the poor defense arguments that NYSUT leadership’s mouthpieces are offering up.

Here is the information on Thursday’s Teachout rally…

 

Bombshell Rocks NYSUT Officers

I came to school early to work in my classroom this morning.  I wasn’t intending to post a blog until later on.  But then I read Norm Scott’s bombshell over at Ed Notes that was posted late last night.

To summarize, in very quick fashion NYSUT got legislation pushed through the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate, and the governor’s office that allows NYSUT to pay the school districts that current officers used to work in, to keep those officers on as active employees on leave from those Districts.This allows the officers to continue to accrue time in the New York State Teachers Retirement System. This would further allow the officers to collect not only their NYSUT pension when they retire, but also a much more lucrative pension from the State than they should actually be entitled to.

What is amazing (and alarming) is the speed in which this was all done and the fact that it was done secretively.  On June 9th the bill was referred to governmental employees.  By June 19th it had passed the assembly.  It passed the senate on June 20th.  It was delivered to the governor on July 11th and he signed off on it on July 22nd.  Astounding.  Andy Pallotta has had virtually no legislative victories to benefit NYSUT’s 600,000 members, yet in just over six weeks he had a victory that ensured double pensions for his cronies.  Additionally it seems to ensure that should Karen Magee, Martin Messner or Paul Pecorale, none of whom are close to retirement age, ever lose their NYSUT positions they will have teaching jobs to go back to.  Contrast this to former NYSUT Secretary-Treasurer Lee Cutler who lost April’s election and has no job to return to.  The officers are no fools.  They saw how that could happen and apparently made it a priority to ensure their jobs and double pensions within the first few months of taking office.

All of this begs a few questions:

What did the NYSUT officers promise to legislators to get them to sign off on this so quickly?  Is this why they endorsed a pro-charter, pro-voucher, reformy Jeff Klein?  Or why they endorsed the indicted Tom Libous?

What was Governor Cuomo promised, by NYSUT Officers, to get him to sign off so quickly?  After all, they have gone out of their way to tell us they oppose him.  Why would he want to help them? Is it in exchange for not endorsing Zephyr Teachout in the Democratic Primary and not donating VOTE COPE funds to her campaign?

Did NYSUT promise that they’d support the Common Core that is favored by so many politicians in order to get this done?  Curiously, the time when Cuomo received and signed off on the bill, was sandwiched right around the AFT Convention, where Karen Magee claimed that we would have no direction without the Common Core.

How much money in membership dues was spent to get this deal done?

How much VOTE COPE money will be going to elected officials who helped to move this bill through so quickly and quietly?

When will NYSUT release a detailed report of every dollar that has been spent since they took office, of every VOTE COPE dollar donated, and of the officer’s compensation packages?

This scandal is really just breaking.  Plenty more questions will arise. Who knows if we’ll get an answer to any of them.  What is blatantly clear, however, is that despite running on a platform of transparency, the NYSUT officers have secretly prioritized using our money and time to win a legislative battle that benefits only themselves.  It is a betrayal on the grandest of scales.  It is absolutely unconscionable behavior and may very well warrant a call for their resignation.