The Offical Website of the PJSTA

Let’s End Top Down Unionism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted on December 12, 2015 by thepjsta

Reaction to the Common Core Task Force Recommendations

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

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

Overhauling the Common Core and adopting locally-driven high quality New York education standards with input from local districts, educators, and parents through a transparent and open process that are age-appropriate and allow educators flexibility for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

Establishing a transparent and open process by which New York standards are periodically reviewed by educators and content area experts, since educators know their schools and students best.

Providing educators and local school districts with the flexibility to develop and tailor curriculum to meet the needs of their individual students and requiring the State to create and release new and improved curriculum resources that educators can then adapt to meet the needs of their individual students.

Engaging New York educators, not a private corporation, to drive the review and creation of State standards-aligned tests in an open and transparent manner.

Minimizing student testing anxiety by reducing the number of test days and test questions and providing ongoing test transparency to parents, teachers and districts on test questions and student test scores.

Ensuring that State tests account for different types of learners, including Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted on December 10, 2015 by thepjsta

Common Core Panel’s Recommendations

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

Via Keshia Clukey in Politico New York…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statement on Muslim Rhetoric

We, as educators of conscience, stand in defense of our Muslim Sisters and Brothers and formally denounce any and all anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiment. American communities and their schools should be safe havens for all students, and we as educators must stand by all members of our community, regardless of faith.

Recent inflammatory statements by a presidential candidate serve only to divide us and to create an atmosphere of fear and prejudice. These statements are reminiscent of our nation’s past injustices, including:
-the attacks on German-Americans during WWI
-the wave of race riots against African-Americans after WWI
-the blacklists of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s
-the barring of Jewish emigres into this country during WWII
-the internment of Japanese and Italian Americans during WWII

We call on all public officials and candidates to denounce religious and racial bigotry. Furthermore, we call on school district personnel to work together to create and implement programs that celebrate diversity and foster an attitude of tolerance. It is the responsibility of every American citizen to defend the ideals that this country embraces, including but certainly not limited to the freedom of religion.

In Solidarity,
August Leppelmeier, Teacher, NYC (MORE Caucus/UFT)

Beth Dimino, NY, PJSTA President

Lyn Bigelow, Teacher, Sacramento CA (NTA, California Teachers’ Association)

Jia Lee, NYC, MORE Caucus/UFT

Aixa Rodriguez, NY BATS

Jamaal Bowman, NYC Principal C.A.S.A. Middle School

Francesca Gomes, NYC, MORE Caucus/UFT

Xian Franzinger Barrett, Chicago CORE/CTU

Brian St. Pierre, NY, PJSTA

Mike Schirtzer, NYC, MORE Caucus/UFT, STCaucus/NYSUT

Bet Chetney, Baldwinsville Teachers’ Association, STCaucus