TDRs, Part Two

If you thought the release of two year old TDR data today was bad, just wait for the sequel.

The new teacher evaluation deal struck last week will rate teachers ineffective, developing, effective, or highly effective. While the UFT and DOE have yet to iron out all the details about how and when the deal will take effect in the city, you can bet on one thing: these ratings will be used to further humiliate teachers. Imagine your name in all the daily newspapers, with the word "ineffective" next to it.

If you're thinking "No problem. I'm a good teacher. There's no way I'll be rated ineffective", then think again. The UFT has already agreed to a cut score of 65 to be rated ineffective, and it's all too easy to get below that number.

Leo Casey, apologist for the UFT's failed negotiations for as long as I can remember, makes the case that good teachers will get most or all of the 60 points that are allotted for classroom observations. This is nonsense. Remember that the test scores will come out well after most of the rest of the evaluations have been completed. As such, principals have a stake in fudging those numbers even for the best teachers. Imagine giving a teacher a full 60 points, and then finding out later in the year that the teacher's test scores only netted 5 points out of 40. You might think that teacher would be given a passing score of "developing" for getting a 65, but in truth the teacher would be rated "ineffective" because "Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall." Your principal is not going to want to explain to his superiors why he gave you a perfect score on evaluations when your students scored poorly.

A much more likely scenario is that principals will fudge the numbers, giving even their best teachers a score of, let's say, 45 to allow for improvement and recommendations. If that's the case, you would need to score 20 out of 40 on the test score portion of the evaluation--in other words, a good teacher with excellent evaluations would need to score in the top HALF in order to avoid being rated ineffective.

Of course, if you are not a favorite of the principal, you might get a 30 out of 60 on observations, in which case you would need 35 of 40 points on test scores to avoid being rated ineffective.

As you can see, it will be pretty easy to be rated ineffective under the current system. And that is the point. If Bloomberg can rate 10-20% of teachers ineffective, he can do several things:

• Fire senior teachers, like he's always wanted to.
• Push for and like get a merit pay system, like he's always wanted.
• Make sure that no one entering the system will ever get a pension again (who will be able to go 30 years without being targeted?)
• And most importantly, he can shift the blame for his failed tenure as the "education mayor".

That blame, of course, will fall entirely on YOU, dear teacher. You are the one whose name (and perhaps picture, if the Post can get hold of it) will be besmirched, while Bloomberg claims credit for having run laggards like you out of the system.

And when that happens, remember who sold this piece of shit to you: Leo Casey. The man who also sold you 37.5 minutes. The man who told you it was a good thing that teachers could no longer grieve letters to the file. The man who told you how wonderful it would be now that we have eliminated seniority transfers and you could get a job through the "Open" Market. The man who sold you the entire 2005 contract that eviscerated our rights now wants to sell you the new teacher evaluation system.

This is the man selling you TDRs, Part Two.

I'm not buying it. I hope you don't, either.

Edwize or EdFoolish?

First of all, happy new year to all of you. Sorry for my extended absence, but I needed a period of calm, away from ruminations about the DOE and UFT and A4E and all the other acrimonious acronyms out there.

To show you how Zen-like I was becoming, I hopped over to Edwize a week or so ago and noticed something I hadn't before.  On their blogroll of NYC Teachers, I was conspicuously absent. That didn't bother me much, as this blog has been no friend of the Unity Caucus that runs the UFT with an iron fist. What did bother me, however, is who they did include. Listed there, plain as day, is the blog Is Our Children Learning?, which is written by none other that Asshats4Education's erstwhile Blog Monkey (TM) and Defender of the Faith, Ruben Brosbe. Yet, so Zen was I, that I decided not to blog about this slight. Until today.

You see, I received an email this morning, as many of you may have (if you haven't received it, I copied it in its entirety below this post). It's being sent through chapter leaders at the direction of Leo Casey--yes, the same Leo who pontificates on Edwize. It appears that Asshats4Education has somehow gotten hold of the DOE email addresses of the teachers who work at the 33 so-called "transformation" schools--the ones who would lose funding should the talks for a new evaluation system continue to stall--and asked them to sign a petition to force the UFT to come to terms with the DOE. In other words, the Asshats have used the DOE email system to solicit support for their union busting activities.

This bugs me because Leo Casey is the guy who actually gave legitimacy to A4E by being on a panel with them during the recent LIFO discussions. Michael Mulgrew likewise met with these clowns, giving them street cred amongst younger teachers who don't know who A4E is (and often, don't know who Mulgrew is).

If the UFT is so shocked and angered by this attempt to sway its members, then they're out to lunch. Not only have Leo and Michael met with them, but Randi Weingarten invited Bill Gates to be the keynote speaker at the AFT convention a while back--the very same Bill Gates who helps fund A4E. Hey UFT honchos--if you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas.

You can read for yourself below how outraged Leo is that the A4E crowd would do such a thing, yet they continue to lend legitimacy to that organization by meeting with them and by actually promoting the blog of their moronic mouthpiece, Ruben Brosbe.

Leo, if you want us to believe that you are not in league with A4E, first stop meeting with them. Then, get up off your ass and remove Ruben Brosbe's blog from your blogroll. You're spitting in the face of all the dedicated UFT members like me by giving a platform to someone who would destroy all the things the UFT has worked for.




A number of Chapter Leaders, Delegates and Master Teachers in the 33 Transformation and Restart Schools have contacted us concerning a solicitation from Brian Erickson, who identifies himself as the Outreach Director of Educators for Excellence (E4E). The solicitation comes in the form of an email headed “URGENT: Funding Cuts to [Your School].” It states that “the School Improvement Grant funding from the state is in jeopardy,” and says this is “because the DOE and UFT cannot agree on teacher evaluations.” The solicitation goes on to say that unnamed teachers in the 33 Transformation and Restart Schools “have written an open letter to Chancellor Walcott and President Mulgrew to urge them to come to an agreement and allow the SIG funding to be restored” and that E4E is “helping them to get the word out.” It concludes by asking the recipient to sign an e-mail petition supporting this letter.

This solicitation is deliberately misleading.

You should know that Educators for Excellence was one of the prominent signatories on a recent public letter to Governor Cuomo sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization created by Wall Street hedge fund managers to pursue their anti-public education and anti-union policy agenda.  That letter asked the Governor to sponsor legislation along the lines sought by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott to impose their version of a teacher evaluation system on your schools. Among the other signers was Students First, the organization created and run by former Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Far from being a disinterested bystander concerned only about funding cuts to schools, E4E has constantly been on the side of Mayor Bloomberg and the DoE in educational matters.  Last year E4E supported legislation that would have eroded seniority protections and encouraged the Mayor to proceed with thousands of teacher layoffs. It was only the UFT’s successful campaign to preserve seniority rights that prevented Bloomberg from acting on his plans, as he himself publicly conceded.

Rather than relying on its membership, E4Es funding comes primarily from corporate foundations, particularly the Gates Foundation, which supports Bloomberg’s and the DoE’s policy agenda.

And this solicitation is being sent – quite improperly – to DoE e-mail addresses. How did E4E obtain those e-mail addresses?

We think that it is important for you to be in possession of all the facts surrounding this solicitation. It is particularly important that you understand why Bloomberg, Walcott, DFER and E4E are intent upon forcing their system of teacher evaluation upon us. When the DoE officials walked out of negotiations with the UFT on December 30th, they gave as their reason an unwillingness to agree with the UFT’s proposal to have an independent hearing officer decide the appeals of Ineffective ratings – the equivalent of Unsatisfactory ratings in the current system. The DoE has insisted upon maintaining the current Unsatisfactory rating appeals system, where hearing officers are DoE employees and appeals are automatically denied at a rate of 99.5%. For the UFT, that is a charade of an appeals system and a mockery of due process and fairness.

After the DoE walked out of negotiations, UFT President Mulgrew offered to submit the issue of appeals to binding arbitration. Chancellor Walcott refused that offer and said publicly that the DoE had no intention of returning to negotiations. It is now clear that Bloomberg’s and Walcott’s never intended to enter into good faith negotiations with the UFT, but to seek legislation that would allow them to impose on the teachers in your schools their version of a teacher evaluation system. The solicitation from E4E is designed to support that Bloomberg-Walcott effort.

Leo Casey
Vice President, Academic High Schools
United Federation of Teachers
52 Broadway, 14th Floor
New York, New York 10004
212-598-6869

Pot...Kettle...Leo Casey

Leo Casey is all up in arms. He alleges on EdWize that Answers Vending, which contracts with Tweed, is guilty of wage theft from its employees. Casey is upset that this company will reap a 15-18% profit from the DOE while another company--with a union workforce--lost the contract.

While all this is bad, one wonders why Leo Casey, whose wages are paid with the hard earned dues of teachers, doesn't consider himself guilty of anything. We pay his wages, we pay for Edwize, and we pay for the nice pension he receives. Yet he's using our resources to fight for a union that isn't even his own.

I think it would be nice if he would fight for us sometime. Last I looked, there were still a lot of ATRs and rubber room dwellers, overcrowded classrooms, and unresolved grievances.

Fight for us, Leo. We pay your wages.

Fun with Maisie

I remember watching Maisy Mouse with my child. It was great. Just watching it with her always put a smile on my face.

True to her namesake, Maisie, a poster on Edwize, makes me laugh to this day. Check out this kneeslapper from the other day:

On Edwize, I speak for myself, not Randi or the union. (Thanks to her, Edwize is a space for diverse views.)

I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Diverse views? They regularly censor posts on Edwize to the point where most people don't bother to read it anymore, let alone comment on the posts. I've never been invited to post there. What diverse views have ever been aired on Edwize? Leo Casey gets to try out new vocabulary words on a regular basis, but other than that, I haven't seen anything new or diverse there in quite some time.