Bloomberg Supports Gun Owners While Bashing Teachers

Bloomberg is one of the leading advocates for gun reform in this country. In fact, this is about the only thing on which I agree with the little emperor. We do need ways of keeping track of who owns an AK 47 and who's out there buying enough ammunition to wipe out a small town (or a school).

So you would think Mayor4Life would support the idea of publishing the names of gun owners in the papers. After all, this is public information that can be obtained legally elsewhere, so why would gun owners object? But when asked, he said, "My instincts would be no..."

Really? Suddenly this mayor is against publishing information in the papers? He certainly wasn't against it when it came to trying to publicly humiliate teachers by publishing flawed Teacher Data Report scores in the papers, even though his hand picked chancellor promised in writing that he would publicly fight against the release of the data, even if it meant going to court to support teacher privacy.

Of course, that didn't actually happen. What did happen was that the TDRs were FOILed, and the city actually pushed for the data to be released, even though they had promised not to allow it and even though they knew the data was horribly inaccurate.

And this mayor is so intent on making sure teacher data gets published in the papers that he is willing to walk away from the $250 million the city would get from a new evaluation agreement because he wouldn't be able to "hold teachers' feet to the fire".

So why not publish the names of registered gun users, Mr. Mayor? You certainly never promised the NRA that you'd never do so.

It can't be because the data would be inaccurate. I'm sure gun permit records are quite accurate in NY. Even if the data was wildly inaccurate, the mayor should object, since he supported the release of TDRs that varied more than 90% in a year.

Could it really be that Bloomberg hates teachers so much that he'd rather defend people building personal arsenals that could wipe out a school or a theater full of people in minutes?

I think it could.

How To Spend Your Teachers Choice Bonanza

This blog (i.e., me) has always had a bug up its ass about Teacher's Choice. I hate the program. I won't rehash all my arguments here; if you are interested, you can read my past rantings about this ridiculous program here. Suffice it to say that my main argument against TC is that classrooms should be adequately supplied at all times--Mayor4Life would never dream of running any of his businesses without supplies, so why would he run schools that way?

Of course, this is a mayor who is trying to install a room air conditioner in his chauffeured SUV because he hates getting into a hot vehicle, while teachers and 1.1 million students sweat out a prolonged heat wave.

As you are probably aware, Teacher's Choice went from $260 a year at its high point, down to $150, then $110, until it was finally eliminated. At its height, the program was woefully inadequate; at its low point, it was a slap in the face to teachers and students alike.

Now, according to Gotham Schools, Teacher's Choice is making a comeback. The City Council is going to give NYC teachers a whopping $40 a year to supply our classrooms. So if you have 100 students a year, as I typically have, you will receive 40 cents per child.

I spent more than that on candy for my students for the last day of school.

The total spent on this failed program will be 3.75 million. Compare that to the 900 million that the city spent on computer contractors last year. Obviously, what this city cares about is making sure that the pockets of business people are lined with cash, while teachers' pockets remain empty. 

Here's what I plan to do with the money, and I urge you to do the same. Buy a ream of paper, a box of envelopes, some mailing labels, and 40 stamps. Then write a letter to Mayor4Life telling him how insulting it is that he refuses to support public schools with proper supplies. Print 40 copies and 40 mailing labels, and send one copy of the letter to City Hall every week starting in September and every week for the 40 weeks of the school year. If every teacher did this, we could dump 75,000 letters on the mayor's desk every week for a year.

I can't think of a better way to thank him.

Dennis Walcott, Debunked

In an Op-Ed in the NY Times and featured prominently in the Times' Schoolbook section today is a piece by Chancellor Walcott calling for the state to grant him the authority to fire teachers for alleged sexual misconduct, regardless of the outcome of investigations and arbitration. It's so full of holes that it needs to be rebutted, so here goes.

It centers around a predictable ploy, the argumentum ad populum that we need to rid ourselves of sexual predators in the schools. Of course, we do--no one would argue against that other than perhaps predators themselves. The question, however, is not whether we should do this, but how.

Walcott begins by discussing two cases in which teachers "stand accused" of sexual misconduct. He never goes deeper than that, hoping that the reader will assume that the accusations are true. I don't know whether they are or not, but I do know that teachers are subject to arrest for such actions if there is sufficient proof, and subject to an arbitration trial for dismissal even if charges are never brought. This is as it should be; even if there is insufficient evidence for a criminal proceeding, there needs to be a mechanism to remove teachers who may not be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, as the courts require, but may appear guilty by a preponderance of the evidence and removed via arbitration.

This isn't enough for the chancellor. He wants the ability to fire accused teachers regardless of whether there is any substantial evidence against them. He wants to fire teachers who were never criminally charged, and who were found not guilty through arbitration. In other words, he wants the power to fire teachers based on an accusation, even if the courts and an independent arbitrator find no merit to the case whatsoever.

He bases his need for this power on two ideas: That arbitration doesn't work, and that teachers receive protections that no one else has. Let's tackle both of those assertions.

First, Walcott says, "An arbitrator knows that if he makes a ruling that disappoints either party he might be barred from future cases. This interest in pleasing both sides can lead an arbitrator to “split the baby,” for instance by offering some punishment (in hopes of pleasing the school district) but also some leniency (in hopes of pleasing the teachers’ union)."

Think of what Walcott is really saying here. He is saying that an independent arbitrator, who believes in his heart that a teacher is guilty of sexual misconduct against children, will nevertheless return that teacher to the classroom to prey on students again just to please the city and the union. It's an outrageous statement on the face of it. Furthermore, if the city really believed that arbitrators were knowingly sending sexual deviants back into the classroom, why on earth would they continue to hire those arbitrators? Remember, both the union AND the city must approve arbitrators, so if Walcott is correct, what he is saying is that the city knowingly agrees to hire arbitrators who send sexual predators back into the classroom. And since he is in charge of the DOE, the buck must stop with him. He is as guilty as anyone of what he claims is true.

His next argument is that teachers receive protections in this area that others don't. He says, "As it stands, public school teachers accused of sexual misconduct enjoy protections that no other city employee has." While this may be true, the question really is "What other city employee needs such protection?" How many sanitation workers and toll booth clerks get accused of sexual misconduct each year? Very few, I'd wager, as they don't come into contact with children in the same number or manner as teachers. It is all too simple for a child to make an accusation against a teacher because they got a bad grade or got yelled at. I have also personally seen cases in which teachers were set up by principals and children were coerced into making statements that they later recanted. So we need that special protection. We don't need bullet proof vests like police officers, nor fireproof uniforms like firefighters, but we do need, like those professionals, to be guarded from the particular hazards we do face.

To complete his attack on teachers, Walcott just plays fast and loose with the facts. For example, he used the case of a teacher accused of touching an 8 year old girl today to claim that he needs the authority to fire teachers accused of sexual misconduct. What he does not say is that the city already has the power to fire teachers who are arrested and convicted of such charges, so if this teacher is indeed guilty, he will never see the inside of a classroom again, and certainly will never face an arbitrator. He will be in jail. That is how the system is supposed to work.

Walcott's power grab reminds me of how GW Bush pushed through the Patriot Act and justified torture and two wars following 9/11. Bush tried to scare people into believing there was a terrorist on every street corner, and if we didn't cede our rights to the federal government, we were just begging for another terrorist attack. Likewise, Walcott is using a small number of incidents to scare parents and the legislature into giving him unprecedented power--not to "punish" the guilty, as he claims, but to go on witch hunts against teachers who were not only not criminally charged, but cleared by arbitrators hired in part by the DOE itself.

I did a little research to see if any of Walcott's histrionics were justified. Schoolbook claims that there have been ten arrests of school employees (not just teachers) this year. That is 10 arrests per 120,000 employees. That, of course, is unacceptable--even one is unacceptable. But according to the US Department of Justice, that number is actually low. For example, in large cities like New York in 1995, there were 80 arrests per 100,000 people for rape or other sexual offenses. Yet your don't hear Walcott or Bloomberg calling for a suspension of due process for the general population. As far as they are concerned, teachers are the villains--first, last, and always.

Is it really surprising though, that Bloomberg would support this power grab? His "stop and frisk" policies are right out of the fascist playbook, effectively making being black and mobile a crime in NYC. Mayor4Life doesn't believe in rights for anyone but himself. While you can't drink a 20 ounce Coke or defend yourself against baseless charges in this city, the mayor can buy himself an illegal 3rd term and land his helicopter wherever he pleases.

Dennis Walcott seems to have embraced all the Napoleonic leanings of his boss. And the teachers of NY are the ones who have to pay.

Why a 4+4 Raise Is Still Possible

There's been a lot of buzz on the blogs about Mayor4Life Bloomberg's decree that there will be no retroactive money for teachers. While Uncle Mikey is certainly talking tough, he (or perhaps more likely, his eventual successor) may well have to cough up that 4% plus 4% that was given to all other municipal workers other than teachers.

The reason? Pattern bargaining. The city has, for a long time, used pattern bargaining (in which one union agrees to a paltry raise and the city says that the rest of the work force has to also settle for that amount) as a way to keep costs down. Even PERB has insisted that this is the way to go and forced teachers to accept contracts that have kept our salaries far below those offered in surrounding areas.

If Bloomberg keeps his promise, or if his successor sticks to it, it breaks the pattern and all bets are off in future contract negotiations for all unions throughout the city. So if DC37 (for example) accepts a piss poor raise as they have done in the past, it would not establish a ceiling for the rest of the unions. If anything, it would establish a floor for all other unions, who would all demand far more. The city would be unable to claim that all the other unions must accept whatever DC37 got because it established a pattern.

It seems to me a more likely scenario that the city agrees to give us the 4+4 for 2010/11 and asks us to accept, as a quid pro quo, a tiny increase (say, 1% a year for the next three years). That way, the city could set the pattern for all the unions going forward and keep pattern bargaining in tact. While it would be a shitty thing to do to the other unions, Mulgrew would leap at it and the city would save billions in raises with the other unions.

Remember if the city claims that it doesn't have to adhere to the pattern in bad financial times, then unions can rightly claim the they don't need to stick to the pattern when times are better. And that will, in the long run, cost the city far more.

Bloomberg's Impeccable Logic

The New York Post gives Mayor4Life Bloomberg an A for his logic on teacher evaluations. You see, Mike is concerned that if teacher privacy is preserved to even a small extent, as in giving the information only to parents, that it will result in harm to teachers. “It would lead to just chaos — and it would be very bad for our teachers," said Bloomie, who is world-renowned for his deep concern for educators.


You see, he's afraid that by giving teacher evaluations to parents, the information might be collected on some rogue website put together by some vindictive parents. And if that happens, says Mike, "the information it presents would be unreliable — and possibly misleading."

Of course, one might argue that this is a reason for the parents not to get the data at all.

I see what's happened here. While I fully believe Mike when he shows his compassion for teachers, there may be something else at play here. You see, what Mayor4Life is truly afraid of is that parents might be trying to infringe on some of his territory.

If there is any harm to be done to teachers, Mike would like to do it himself. He practically has a patent on harming teachers. How dare rogue parents even think about taking some of that action? And when it comes to unreliable and misleading information, who does it better than Uncle Mike? He managed to pay millions for a TDR system that has an 87% margin of error. Who do parents think they are--potentially posting even more misleading data for free?

You can understand why Mike is steamed. He has worked damn hard to harm teachers, and he's not going to let parents take over his turf.

The New Holy Grail of Union Busters

Politicians, including so-called Democrats such as Cuomo and Obama, have held the coats of union-busting Republicans as they attempt to dismantle unionized labor in this country. There has been some backlash, such as the recall effort of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, but not nearly enough. Unions themselves are complicit--the UFT, for example, continues to grant concessions such as the Race to the Top evaluation fiasco, even as the city has denied us raises they granted to other unions and as they refuse to negotiate a new contract with us.

You might have thought the union-busters were done. They didn't get LIFO, but the new evaluation system make seniority moot in many cases. They didn't get tenure, but they managed to get the UFT to agree to shift the burden of proof in 3020 hearings--the city used to have to prove a teacher was incompetent, but now a teacher with two ineffective ratings will have to prove his or her competence, which is virtually impossible. So the union-busters have been winning hands down, but they aren't done. Their next target is the Triborough Amendment.

The Triborough Amendment is part of the Taylor Law, and you can read up on it here. But the basics of why union-busters want it abolished are simple: it guarantees that when a contract expires, the terms of any current union contract remain in effect until a new contract is signed. In return, unions are heavily punished if they strike. Republicans hate this law because even though an expired contract is essentially a wage freeze, other provisions of the contract, such as step and longevity increases, remain in effect. Republicans argue that this gives unions little reason to negotiate, as workers will continue to receive 'raises' even without a new contract.

That, of course, is nonsense. Bloomberg decided all on his own not to give teachers the same 4% + 4% two year contract that he offered other unions, and we continue without a contract to this day. We are approaching three years without a contract, despite trying to bring the city to the table with a PERB complaint (anyone know why THAT is stalled?). So we are, at least, down 8%, and by the time a new contract is signed, presumably with a new mayor, it is virtually certain that we will not see that money. Why should the city negotiate when they can save a fortune by stonewalling, and the unions are prohibited from striking by the same Taylor Law?

You might think that Cuomo, an alleged Democrat, would oppose any change to the Triborough Amendment, but you'd be wrong. According to the Times:


Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who has taken on labor over several issues, has yet to express a position on the Triborough Amendment, but a top aide, Lawrence Schwartz, said last year that the administration would explore options, including proposing the suspension of the amendment.

When Cuomo starts exploring options, union workers need to hold on to their wallets. He's the one who pushed through the new evaluation system, put a wage freeze on state workers, and engineered a new pension tier that will punish future union workers.

If they can abolish Triborough, municipalities can force unions to agree to almost any concessions, as  contracts would become null and void when they expire.

Luckily, it seems that there will be no action on this for the current legislative year. Still, this looming attack makes it even more important that the UFT ends up backing a genuine union supporter in the next mayoral election, such as De Blasio or Liu, rather than some Bloomberg sock puppet like Christine Quinn who will basically give Mayor4Life the fourth term that even he doesn't have enough money to buy.

A Lesson in Irony

Recently, Mayor4Life Bloomberg insisted that Teacher Data Reports, which have a margin of error of 87%, be released and published in the papers because the public has a right to know. Never mind that such inaccurate data would publicly shame good teachers, or that slimy news outlets like the Post would choose to highlight and vilify individual teachers as being the worst in the city (unjustly, of course).

The public's right to know, however, apparently does not extend to the shenanigans of the mayor himself. Following the CityTime debacle which cost the city $700 million dollars more than projected for a system that still doesn't work the way it was supposed to, we now have the 911 scandal. If you're unaware of that one, the city contracted for a new 911 system at a cost of 1.3 billion dollars. The system has now cost 2 billion dollars, or 800 million more than projected. And a scathing preliminary report alleges that the city's response time has actually worsened since the system was implemented.

Bloomberg has refused to release that report, and you'll never guess why.

He claims it is inaccurate.


Here's what he said: “You can’t take a working paper where no one’s really checked the facts and just put it out,” the mayor contended on his WOR Radio show. “Because all of a sudden, everybody believes that’s the truth."

There are a lot of NYers who believe the TDRs are the truth, as well, but that didn't seem to bother the mayor. Putting data out there only seems to bother him when it's preliminary--not, as you would think, when it is totally inaccurate. Or maybe it bothers him because it shows that he is a crummy mayor. The CityTime and 911 scandals have cost the taxpayers of this city a total of 1.5 BILLION dollars in cost overruns. That's chump change to a man who has 20 billion socked away, but it's real money to the rest of us.

If that report, which the mayor may have to release on Monday when a judge will rule on it, shows that response times have actually slowed, it will mean that the entire two billion dollars spent on this system has been an utter waste. Added to CityTime, that would mean close to three billion dollars that this mayor has flushed down the toilet on these two projects alone. God only knows how much else he has squandered.

And let's not forget that this is the mayor who used his vast wealth to buy himself an illegal third term, despite the voters having twice opposed an end to term limits, allegedly because the city was in a financial mess and we needed his wise stewardship to keep our fiscal house in order.

The only consolation we may end up with is that this mayor may well be remembered as one of the worst in the city's history, despite his efforts to hide his incompetence.

Bloomberg KO'ed by KO

I don't know how many of you watch Keith Olberman these days. I know I rarely see him now that he's on Current TV, but I'm going to watch him more often. Watch him as he eviscerates Mayor4Life, comparing him to George Wallace, Mayor Daly, and Joe McCarthy. Enjoy!

Mic Check

We need this to happen to Mayor4Life and Governor 1% Cuomo!

What I Learned In Kindergarten, And What Education Leaders Missed

I've always been a pretty big fan of Robert Fulghum. If you remember, he wrote one of the first essays to go viral on the internet, way back when people emailed such things to each other rather than post them to Facebook. It was called All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. You can read it here if you've never read it before. Yes, it's sappy and sentimental, but it's oh-so-true.

The premise of the essay is that if we all behaved as we were taught to in kindergarten, the world would be a better place. Here are some examples of things Fulghum exhorted us to do, and how education leaders have failed us.

Share everything.
Almost nothing is shared with teachers. The rich get richer while teachers get laid off. Our billionaire mayor has seen fit to get rid of some of the most poorly paid school workers while offering no-bid contracts to his cronies. Bloomberg has eliminated Teacher's Choice, so teachers will have to dig into their own pockets to supply our kids with materials they need to succeed. Teachers know how to share. Billionaires don't.

Play Fair.
The DOE and UFT agreed--in writing--to keep teachers' TDR scores confidential. The DOE even agreed to side with the UFT in court should it come to that. Instead, they went back on their agreement and are now pushing for the release of the scores. This will unfairly hurt many teachers, but the DOE doesn't care. Bloomberg would like for teachers to be publicly humiliated, but when his deputy mayor was arrested for domestic violence, Bloomie hid that fact from the public. If the deputy mayor had been a teacher, that wouldn't have happened.

Clean up your own mess.
You'd think the DOE would feel obligated to enforce a minimum of cleanliness in schools, but you'd be wrong. The rate of bedbug infestations has tripled in the last year. And instead of stopping the use of dangerous dirty oil in schools, the city decided to spend 70 million dollars on it (but don't worry--that will only last until 2030). To be fair (play fair!), the city is promising to only take ten years to rid school lighting fixtures of cancer causing PCBs.

Don't take things that aren't yours.
NJ Governor Chris Christie would like to solve the state's pension shortfall by shafting teachers and other workers who have contributed their share to the system over the years. He withheld a 3 billion dollar payment that the state owes to the pension fund. That money was not his--it was money that was promised to the pension system through collective bargaining. Christie rationalized this by saying the state can't afford to pay for the things it promised, even though he refused to ask his millionaire and billionaire pals to pay an extra cent. I wonder what Christie's kindergarten teacher would say about that?

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
There's none of that in the public schools. It's all testing, all the time.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but you get the point. The government in general and educational leaders in particular have forgotten the most basic lessons that they should have internalized long ago. One hopes they at least remember to flush.

Charity Begins...Well, Everywhere But Here

The Times reported Thursday that Mayor4Life Michael Bloomberg will give 50 million dollars to the Sierra Club to assist them in their efforts to close down coal plants across the United States. Mr. Bloomberg believes that this will help reduce greenhouse gasses. The Times also reported that Bloomberg gave an additional 20 million dollars earlier this year to C40, "a group of cities around the world that are trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare for the growing impact of global warming."

So Bloomberg is, essentially, tossing money about in an effort to replace dirty energy with clean energy. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?

Well, no. As far as I am concerned, clean energy is the way to go, and I hope President Obama, after he's done sucking up to the Tea Party, will actually get around to creating those clean energy jobs he's talked about since he first burst onto the political scene.

The combined 70 million the mayor has scattered to cities throughout the world to create clean energy is something of an ironic number, however, as the DOE wants the city to spend 70 million tax payer dollars on dirty oil to burn in NYC public schools. But don't worry. The dirty oil should be gone by the year 2030.

As may many of us. As may many children who attend these schools.

Sure, Bloomberg can spend his money however he wants. It's just a little galling that he's spending 50 million on cities across the country to make their air cleaner, but not a dime to help end the practice of burning dirty oil in NYC public schools. Isn't he the education mayor?

For context, Bloomberg could easily have spend another 50 million--or more--to convert schools to cleaner energy instead of allowing us to breathe toxic soot for the next 19 years. In fact, he could give away 50 million dollars a day for more than a year and still be richer than you or I could ever dream of.

It feels to me as if Bloomberg has embraced his lame duck status and begun to shift his focus to a more national and global point of view. How else can you explain his spending so much to clean the air everywhere else but here? He's dropped hundreds of millions to get himself elected, so 50 million to buy himself some goodwill nationally seems a drop in the bucket.

One of our favorite education writers, Arthur Goldstein, was all over this issue in the Huffington Post. You should give it a read.

Wipe the soot out of your eyes first.


They have no clean air? Let them breathe soot.

Requiem for a Bad Program

Teacher's Choice is dead, my friends. And I am here not to praise TC, but to bury it.

It was a tragically flawed program from the get-go. Even at its highest point, when classroom teachers were given $260 a year to spend, it was woefully inadequate. Think about it. A high school or middle school teacher with 150 students received less than two dollars per student, and that was when the program was at its highest.

Since then, it has been whittled down to a paltry $110, or less than a buck a kid per year for many teachers. With that money, teachers were told to do miracles. It was supposed to buy enough chart paper to last a year (at about $20 for a pad of 40 sheets, that was an impossibility). Need copies? Admins would tell you to go to Staples for them, or to buy ink and paper for your own printer, and charge it up to TC. Most of us were required to purchase "portfolios" (i.e., legal size file folders) for our classes, at about $25 a box. By the time we were done spending that $110, it often came closer to $1000, at least for me.

You can bet that employees at Bloomberg, Inc. are swimming in paper clips and sticky notes. His Mayorship wouldn't dream of making his other employees buy their own supplies. He treats them like professionals. Teachers? Well, who the hell cares about teachers? If we love kids so much, we'll skip that vacation we planned in order to buy our poverty-stricken students those oh-so-important composition books.

In this current budget, which gives $900 million to computer contractors, not a cent could be spared for supplies for teachers, so the program was cut. That should have been the end of it. But Mulgrew decided to make the following statement: “Our members always dig into their own pockets for the supplies their students need; next year, while the city carries over a multi-billion dollar surplus and millionaires get a tax break, teachers will have to dig even deeper.”

Come again? We have to dig into our own pockets? Why? Why isn't Mulgrew screaming from the mountaintops that if Bloomberg wants results, he has to at least supply us with #2 pencils for all the additional testing our kids will be doing.

In fact, Mulgrew should be out there telling teachers not to spend a dime--not one thin dime--of our own money on school supplies. At a time when Mayor4Life has denied us the 4% raise that he gave other unions, and has chosen instead to freeze our salaries for the last two years without a single sit down at the negotiating table...at a time when he threatened to lay off 4100 of us and settled for 2600 jobs that will not be coming back...at a time when he has tried to hack away at seniority, tenure, pension, and health care benefits...at a time when CityTime has stolen 600 million dollars from this city and the mayor applauded the job they did...now Mulgrew sets up the expectation that teachers should spend more on supplies out of our own pockets? Is he out of his mind?

Teacher's Choice is dead, and good riddance to bad rubbish, say I. But if we, as a union, step up and spend our own money because the "education mayor" is too cheap to give us the basics we need to get the job done, we will be expected to do this every year.

Instead, we need to say no. No more money from our pockets while Bloomberg spends 900 million on "contractors" or pays millions of our tax dollars to Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein in no bid contracts. Nuh uh. No way. I'll live without chalk and chart paper. But I can't live with the idea that the billionaires are feasting on our tax dollars while we have to go begging for rubber bands.

The Deal Mulgrew Should Make

I was thrilled with the news that the city's labor unions refused to give in to Mayor4Life Bloomberg's blackmail by rejecting a deal to tap into a health care fund to the tune of 360 million dollars to avert layoffs. When the news first came out, I was hoping that Michael Mulgrew was one of the driving forces behind the refusal. In fact, he's trying to revive the deal.

Mulgrew still doesn't get it. This mess is of the mayor's making, and he is looking for a way out. Why should the city's unions fund the mayor's escape hatch? By even entertaining the idea of funding our way out of layoffs, we are buying into the mayor's lie that the city doesn't have the money. But the city does have the money--there is a 3.2 billion dollar surplus. How can we ask for a new contract with the pay increases we are due when we are tacitly admitting that the city is broke? It makes no sense. So besides bailing His Moneyness out, we would be guaranteeing 3 more years of no raises and annual layoff threats. This is the deal that Mulgrew is so anxious to make?

Here's the deal we should make: We'll give him the money in exchange for a 2.5 year no layoff guarantee and the 4% annual raises we should have gotten in the first place. That way, we won't ever have to deal with the midget mayor again, unless he decides to buy himself a fourth term.

And knowing the mayor's penchant for ignoring deals he has made, such as the promise that TDRs would remain private, we need this deal to be iron clad. Knowing Bloomberg, he'd create a new "crisis" next year that would necessitate scrapping the agreement. To prevent this, any agreement should stipulate that emergency layoffs could only occur if all city contracts with outside vendors, such as the 900 million being spent this year, are cancelled first.

That's a deal I'd make.

Bloomberg's Alter-Ego

As if Mayor4life's ego wasn't large enough already, he created "Bloomberg View", because as you know, the world simply couldn't revolve without getting more of the midget mayor's opinions shoved down its throat. Initiating this week's gag reflex is Jonathan Alter, an ostensibly independent writer who just happens to echo every major talking point of Bloomberg's education deform agenda. It's quite fortuitous that Alter holds all the same beliefs as the man who writes his paychecks. Who'd have thunk it.

I don't know what Alter's price was for attacking teachers, but I'd say whatever it was, Bloomie got rooked, because Alter's anti-Diane Ravitch diatribe is an exercise in sloppy writing and faulty logic.

First, Alter regurgitates Bloomberg's mantra on seniority:

Amid grim news about budget cuts, the year brought new awareness that relying on seniority alone in determining teacher layoffs is mindless. It’s like saying that if the Chicago Bulls wanted to cut costs, they should start by releasing Derrick Rose, the NBA’s MVP, because he has only been in the league for three years.

This is stupid on the face of it. If the Bulls wanted to cut costs, they wouldn't do it by eliminating their players. They want the best team possible, because they know that produces results. Good teams are always a mixture of great veterans and promising rookies. What Bloomberg wants to do is eliminate a good percentage of the players. The correct analogy would be if the Bulls cut 8% of their players to save money and expected the same results as teams playing at full strength.

Alter attacks Ravitch's critique of the Bruce Randolph School in Denver. Its middle school, Ravitch noted, was in the 5th percentile in math and the first percentile in reading and writing. Its ACT scores were well below the state average. Yet Alter claims we should laud this school because it boasts a 97% graduation rate. Apparently, in Alter's world, success is measured by the number of diplomas issued, not by whether those diplomas were earned. Following this logic, we can solve all the education problems in America simply by issuing diplomas to every child, much as the Scarecrow's IQ increased when the Wizard gave him his sheepskin. Pay no attention to the illiterate students behind the curtain.

Alter also claims that "No education reformer has ever challenged the idea that conditions in the home and in the larger society are hugely important." Is he kidding? Just about every education reformer has said that in some form or another. They constantly claim that a great teacher is the most important factor in a child's education, while all the evidence shows that performance is directly linked to a child's circumstances.

Alter claims that Ravitch creates a strawman when she ...'charge(s) that political leaders are trying to prove that “poverty doesn’t matter.”' Actually, I've heard a number of politicians, including Alter's new employer, make that claim. The "no excuses" mantra is the embodiment of that idea. Alter then goes on the create a pretty impressive strawman of his own:

It’s a gross distortion to claim that reformers think charter schools -- a tiny fraction of all public schools -- are the only solution for all the ills of the education system.

I have never heard Ms. Ravitch make that claim. She knows, as we all do, that charters are just one chunk of the wrecking ball aimed at public education. Education deformers have lots of solutions to public eduation: demonizing teachers, busting unions, destroying seniority, closing schools, firing teachers, creating fake grassroots organizations, and controlling the media itself, much as Bloomberg is trying to do by hiring Alter.

Finally, Alter accuses Ravitch of using "selective data to punch holes in the work of good schools and turn reformers into cartoonish right-wingers." In fact, Ravitch was one of the few who acknowledged what teachers already knew was true: That the test scores in states like NY were cooked by a combination of easier, more repetitive tests and lowering of the cut scores. That data is undeniable, as the state itself admitted that the scores were false and re-calibrated them. When they did, it became immediately clear that critics of the reform movement, like Diane Ravitch, were actually correct. The scores in schools that had been held up as models of education reform, such as Geoffrey Canada's HSA, plummeted.

I don't know how much Bloomberg paid to get Alter on his team, but I'd say whatever it was, he got screwed.

Stop Layoffs by Stopping Fraud

You know that 300 million the mayor says he needs to prevent layoffs? One way he can get it is by actually paying attention to all those contractors he hires.

In yet another CityTime scandal, it was found that one contractor gave $450 million dollars out in kickbacks. That enough money to save every teacher's job and even give us a raise.

Remember, this is just one contractor. Imagine how many billions are being siphoned off by all of the countless contractors the mayor has hired.

If Mayor4Life had any decency, he'd resign now for his utter incompetence and pay the money back out of his own deep pockets.

The Four Asshats of the Educational Apocalypse

Is the world ending today? I can't say for sure. So far, my world has not been invaded by the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who represent conquest, famine, war, and death. In the original biblical tale, the horsemen ride on white, black, red, and pale horses.

Assuming we survive until tomorrow, teachers still have another apocalyptic vision staring them in the face: the Four Asshats of the Educational Apocalypse. Here's how I see them:

On the red horse, representing war against the teachers union, ride Evan Stone and Sydney Morris. While they are, technically, two people, in my vision they are a two-headed hydra determined to peck away at teachers' rights while securing cushy jobs for themselves.

On the white horse, representing the famine of intelligence, experience, and educational know-how, rides Ruben Brosbe, spreading his dishwater wit and penchant for self-flagellation.

On the black horse, representing the death of the public school system, rides Mayor4Life Bloomberg. Unlike traditional representations of death who bring about a swift end with a scythe, the billionaire reaper prefers to squeeze his victims of resources and slowly bleed them dry.

The rider of pale horse represents conquest. Biblical scholars disagree as to whether this rider represents good or evil, and so we are forced to place Michael Mulgrew in the saddle of this one. He may stand up for us and protect the rights we've won over the past fifty years, or he may roll over, Weingarten-style, in a culminating act that seals our fate.

I'm pretty certain that the world will see another day. If not, I will be pissed, because I just spent the morning stocking up on toilet paper and cat food at Costco. I am less certain that New York Public Schools will survive the attempted apocalypse being fomented by the Four Asshats.

All I can say to them is, FU and the horses you rode in on.

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Mr. Talk Predicts...

Layoffs.

Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but after correctly predicting no layoffs for the last two years, I'm donning my swami hat once more to reverse course this year. I think Mayor4life will carry out his threat to lay off teachers this year--but not in the numbers you might think.

I'm guessing that the mayor will announce, in a tortured voice, that he did everything he could to save teachers' jobs, but he just couldn't pull it off given the fact that no one has enough money (unless you count Bloomberg himself, or the three billion dollar surplus).

I do, however, think the number will be smaller than the 4,600 Bloomberg originally announced. I can't say what the number is, but I'm betting it will be more or less equal to the number of some set or sets of teachers that Bloomberg would like to get rid of. It will look something like this:

Number of Layoffs = Number of ATRs + Total Rubber Roomers OR

Number of Layoffs = Number of teachers rated U in the last 3 years OR

Some other combination of teachers that Bloomberg wants to fire anyway.

You see, this was NEVER about money. The city has the money to avert layoffs right now. What the mayor wants is ability to fire whoever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants to. He has been stymied at every turn in his efforts to end seniority. This will be his final attempt to get his way.

What better way than to say, "We've done all we could to avert layoffs, but we couldn't. Now if the UFT would just let me fire the (insert favorite type of vilified teachers here), we could have a great teacher in every classroom!"

It's an underhanded ploy, of course, but that's exactly why I'm predicting the mayor will try it.


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Mr. Talk Gets High

No, not that way. I'm talking about my Teacher Data Report (TDR). If you haven't seen yours, check your DOE email. Mine arrived today.

If you follow this blog at all, you know that my previous TDR was a stinker. I'm not as daring as Ruben Brosbe, who disclosed his lousy TDR to everyone on the planet by announcing it in the NY Post. But I will give you a hint as to what it was. Think single digits.

So when I saw the email announcing that my current scores were in, you can imagine how my heart skipped a beat. Another number from the crapper, and my principal would have to take notice. I began picturing myself on the front page of the Post, with the caption "Worst Teacher In The City--End LIFO Now!"

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Teacher Hall of Shame. I opened the report, scrunched my eyes--and laughed. Yes, laughed. And this time it was because I was high. I'm talking about my Performance Catergory. Again, I'm not disclosing the number, but to end up in that category, one has to score in the 95th percentile or above.

Value-added has an alleged margin of error of 35 points, by most accounts, which is lousy in and of itself. In my case, however, the data changed more than 85 percentage points.

I don't put this information out there to pat myself on the back. I'm the same teacher, teaching the same curriculum as last year, but my numbers varied widely. I'll repeat what I said back when my number was microscopic. These numbers are worthless.

A lot of you will be opening your TDR reports tonight to not such good news. Don't let it get to you. The numbers don't reflect reality. It's just a moronic formula dreamed up by a bunch of non-educators who believe that you can quantify everything. What you should do, regardless of what the TDR says, is ask yourself whether you are really working hard and doing a good job. If you are, then the numbers mean less than zero.

What gets to me, though, is how those numbers can be abused. Based on that worthless formula, some of you will be denied tenure. Others will be targeted for U ratings. Had Mayor4Life gotten his way on ending seniority for layoffs, that formula could have cost you your job. It's insanity.

I wonder which numbers will appear in the papers, should the FOIL request be granted. I hope both of mine appear, so that everyone can see just how ridiculous value added really is. I'd love to hear from anyone else whose number changed more than the accepted 35% margin of error. If there are enough of us, maybe we can expose the TDR fraud for what it is.

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When is a Joke Not a Joke?

When it comes true, at the expense of children.

I joked last week, after Cathie Black's firing, that Mayor4Life Bloomberg...

"...conducted the same exhaustive search for Black’s replacement that he did for Black herself, by which I mean Walcott happened to be in the room at the time."

As it turns out, that was no joke. According to the Post, Bloomberg "...looked over his shoulder and saw Walcott," said a second City Hall veteran. "At least he didn't look across the room at a cocktail party, as he did when he found Black."

If you wonder why Mayor4Life didn't bother with scouring the country for the best education leader he could find, the answer is obvious. He isn't looking for someone who can bring something to the table educationally. He's looking for a stooge who will unblinkingly carry out his policies.

He didn't have to look any further than over his shoulder. And that's just not funny.

Layoffs in Tomorrow's Papers

Word on the street is that Mayor4Life has sent lists to NY newspapers detailing the number of layoffs that will occur at each school, and that this information will appear in tomorrow's dailies.

Considering that seniority is still in effect, you can bet that the list will show that some schools will lose much of their staff. Bloomberg will use this to claim that minority schools will be discriminated against. He will not, of course, mention that if layoffs actually occur, more senior teachers will take their place so the experience level at those schools will actually go up.

This is just another Bloomberg tactic. Layoffs are still not needed. Cuomo even says so. The mayor admits he has found 2 billion in new revenue. This is nothing but another attempt to force an end to seniority layoffs.

UPDATE: Confirmed by the Times a few minutes ago.


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