Re: Labor Notes Polemics

[LeoCasey@aol.com]

John Lawhead:
> Only you forgot to describe any attacks
> from Bloomberg or Klein on [the UFT] this 
> issue [third grade retention].
 
This is, to say the very least, disingenuous. In the e-mail you responded to, I wrote at some length, about what Klein had done at Clara Barton HS, and I linked to the NY Post article and editorial attacking the UFT on this subject, and quoting Klein's attacks on the UFT. [ www.nypost.com/seven/03042004/postopinion/editorial/19689.htm ] I could just have easily linked to the very same thing in the other NYC tabloid, the Daily News, which is universally known as Bloomberg's mouthpiece.
 
> In fact there's been no significant
> opposition from the UFT 
> leadership. Recent indications are
> that they're still using the issue to 
> curry favor from the Bloomberg regime.

And this is beyond disingenuous; it's outright misrepresentation. You can't read the NY Teacher, the union publication which can be read at our web site [www.uft.org], or any local newspaper, including the NY Times, and come away with any other view than that the UFT took on Bloomberg and Klein on this issue.

And the notion that the UFT is seeking to "curry favor" from Bloomberg and Klein, when there isn't a person who is not brain dead in NYC who doesn't know that we are in a state of complete and total war, unlike anything that has happened in NYC in the last 30 years, is so laughable that it could only be made to people outside of NYC, who might not be up on the latest developments here.
 
> Here's Randi Weingarten's response
> to the initial announcement of the 
> retention plan in January:  "For
> years the city's teachers and the UFT have 
> tried to get the system to stop
> social promotion, so we welcome this 
> 3rd-grade initiative."  New York Teacher (1/14/04).

Here is the one piece of evidence offered for this misrepresentation: a single line, torn out of context, months before the issue came to a head in March. Randi's point here was to attack one horn of a Hobson's choice -- that Hobson's choice being to promote a student without the necessary skills to do the work at higher grades [the social promotion side] or to hold them back for another year of what already failed them [the retention side]. Neither of those options is acceptable to an educator with any integrity. The entire point of the plan the UFT presented to the City Council right before the Monday night massacre in which Bloomberg fired the Educational Policy Panel members who disagreed with him in order to force his plan through, was that you needed to provide students who had not learned the fundamental literacy and numeracy skills something different, a comprehensive approach which included a conditional 4th grade, with very small classes, taught by teachers who are literacy specialists working with credible literacy programs.

To ignore the UFT plan and the testimony which presented it to the City Council [which I linked to in my previous response and is also available at the UFT web site www.uft.org?fid=198 ] and then to charge that the UFT supports Klein is beyond hard political tactics -- it is an outright misrepresenation.   

> As the outcry against the plan
> mounted she made statements concerning the 
> implementation and whether 
> there would be enough support given to 
> low-performing third graders.
> Randi never asked why only third graders were 
> being made the focus of the new policy.
> This contrasted with the opponents 
> of the plan who pointed out that
> the retention plan was not meant to "stop 
> social promotion"  but is a 
> thinly veiled scheme to boost fourth grade 
> scores on the state tests 
> in 2005 (the mayoral election year) by holding 
> back low-scoring third graders this year.
> Randi has refrained from questioning whether
> a concern about future test results should
> be a reason for creating new policies.

Anyone who cares to do the reading at the UFT web site will see that this point regarding the fourth grade tests was often mentioned. Take this passage from Randi's City Council testimony: "And aside from being right educationally, this [UFT] plan would quell the objections of the cynics who believe the only reason the mayor picked the third grade is political -- so that Level 1 students won't show up in fourth grade test scores the year he is running for re-election." John reads the NY Teacher so carefully that he can pick quotes out of context months ago, before the third grade retention issue came to a head, but then suddenly develops amnesia when he reads the key documents of the moment in the very same newspaper.

> In January rather 
> than criticizing the numbers 
> game she invited Chancellor Klein to address 
> teachers in the union newspaper.
> Tellingly, the first concern he raised 
> about the city schools in his
> long letter to teachers was the low city-wide 
> test scores for fourth graders.

Reading this e-mail is like stepping into an educational twilight zone. In January, the UFT ran a major e-mail campaign in which we organized members to send thousands of e-mails, with copies to the press and to NYC elected officials, detailing the problems which the Bloomberg-Klein regime of micro-management and administrative malfeasance had brought to the schools, including severe safety problems. Our newspaper covered the campaign in detail, reproducing many of the e-mails. Klein wrote a letter in response, which he sent to us -- no one solicited anything from him. The UFT made the decision that members should be able to read what he said, that we should not put ourselves in a position where he could say that we refused to allow him a chance to reply and that our membership is intelligent enough to see exactly what he was about. Since Klein has launched a campaign to try to undermine the UFT's standing with our teachers -- it was reported this week in the NY Times, based on an e-mail they were given which detailed it -- the UFT's response of being completely open and honest with the membership, hiding nothing from them, even the transparently insincere messages of the Chancellor, will stand us in good stead.

> Two months after the plan was announced
> and with implementation of that plan 
> already started, the UFT leadership
> responded to the groundswell of 
> opposition by offering an 
> ?alternative plan? to the City Council. This 
> proposal maintained the focus on
> third graders and the use of the third 
> grade tests. The departure was in
> creating a "conditional" fourth grade 
> level. If you're arguing that this
> plan constituted an "opposition to the 
> 3rd grade edict" you're not
> going to fool anyone.

Only someone who think that the "alternative" to holding students back is to grasp the other side of this Hobson's choice and to promote them without the necessary skills could argue that the UFT did not have a plan. Both Bloomberg and Klein, on the one hand, and the sort of position advocated here by John Lawhead, on the other hand, punishes the kids who are the victims of an education system which had failed them. These are Machiavellian politics played out on kids, either by holding them back without any meaningful help, or by passing them on without any meaningful help. It was the UFT and Randi which refused both horns of the Hobson's choice and said, we need to do what is right for the kids, and put together a program which actually addresses their academic needs and helps them.
 
And I suppose the "no one fooled" by the UFT program doesn't include the major anti-standardized testing group, Time Out From Testing, which issued a statement of warm support for it which I quoted at length in my last e-mail [see below].

> I attended the PEP meeting the 
> night of the "Monday night massacre" and 
> noted the underwhelming reception 
> given to Randi from the audience.  There 
> were several hundred activists 
> there including supporters of Time Out, 
> NYCORE, ICE, I-COPE, the citywide
> parents' association as well as City 
> Council and Community School 
> Board members.  I was amazed that after 
> I attended the PEP meeting the
> night of the "Monday night massacre" and 
> noted the underwhelming reception 
> given to Randi from the audience. There 
> were several hundred activists 
> there including supporters of Time Out, 
> NYCORE, ICE, I-COPE, the 
> citywide parents' association as well as City 
> Council and Community School Board
> members. I was amazed that after 
> strongly criticizing the firing
> of the panel members Randi went on to argue 
> that if the UFT plan wasn't
> going to substitute, the mayor's plan should be 
> given more time to take effect. 
> With the room in an uproar over both the 
> removal of independent-minded panel
> members and the retention plan itself 
> she still avoided expressing any
> opposition to the plan she might have been 
> harboring.
 
John has this way of deciding that he knows better than the actual people what they think. In the last e-mail, he decided he knew better than Deborah Meier which unions she believes have been supportive of the small school reforms she champions, even though the article in question discussed at length her view that she had received real support from the UFT in NYC. Now, he decides that he knows better than Time OUt what they think of the UFT plan. Here, once again, is what they said: "Time Out From Testing applauds the UFT in its call to end high stakes testing as the sole determinant of whether or not a student gets promoted and enthusiastically joins the Union in calling for policies which give support to children who need extra help. We strongly endorse the UFT's determination to craft educational solutions that serve the needs of the children while also rejecting models based on a 'deficit model'." The UFT relationship between the citywide Parents Associations and with the City Council is also quite close. None of the ther groups John mentions amount to anything; NYCORE was a splinter from the national CORE group years ago run by the reactionary, race-baiting Roy Innis and ICE is his small group running against the UFT leadership in the union elections -- who would expect them to be anything but critical of the UFT?

> Lately comes news of UFT participation
> on the "secret panel" formed by 
> Bloomberg to study and develop a
> program for students affected by the 
> retention plan. City Council 
> members were told that panel members' names 
> could not be disclosed, nor
> the schedule of meetings, nor details of its 
> business. A UFT spokesperson informed
> the New York Sun that this panel 
> includes the union's VP for Elementary
> Schools and its head of staff 
> development. No surprise.
 
The DOE asks the UFT to participate in a working group on this subject. Like every other working group on every other subject, the UFT always participates because we owe it to our members and to the school children of NYC to make every effort to have positive input into the formulation of DOE policy. That is what unions are about, and what they are supposed to do. If you think your job is to let policy be formulated without attempting to influence it in a positive way, and then criticize the results, you belong on a newspaper editorial board, not in an union or other serious political organization. Our main problem right now is that we have a Bloomberg-Klein administration whose arrogance is only surpassed by their ignorance, and so they have tried to block us from having any meaning any meaningful input into policy formulation. BTW, isn't it obvious, even from John's convoluted account, that the UFT was not prepared to be "secretive" about what we were doing, and that now, only the name of the UFT members on the panel are public, because we announced them.
 
> Time and again Randi has
> appealed to the mayor 
> to let the UFT to become a junior
> partner in his corporate-style management 
> of the schools. Perhaps it's 
> this pathetic groveling that's convinced the 
> mayor he doesn't really need her
> help in controlling the teachers...

You believe your own propaganda. When you start lying to yourself, you are really in trouble.

> This claim [that TJC is trying to set 
> teachers from large high schools
> and small high schools against each
> other] is ludicrous. Not even plausible.
> TJC has written nothing about 
> small schools reform that
> I'm aware of. Here is their platform:
> 
> http://teachersforajustcontract.org/

"That you are aware of": I guess this is the common man's version of deniability. Anyone who has attended high school committee meetings in the last four years knows that the TJC Presidential candidate, Nick Licari, has been a consistent, very vocal and very outspoken critic of the small high schools. And there are numerous places in TJC literature, and in Norman Scott's newspaper advocating for ICE, which talks about how the TJC-ICE high school slate comes entirely from large high schools -- which is Willie Horton type code for we only look out for large high schools. Or maybe you can tell us which of the slate comes from a small high school, John: it would be a little hard to say "that you are not aware of" on that count.
 
> While TJC has no such position, ICE 
> raised the issue of small schools reform 
> in its Winter 2004 high school newsletter.
> It demands a halt to such school 
> reorganizations until DOE conducts
> impact studies to account for how the 
> reduced capacity will affect
> other schools, small or large. This is not all 
> that different from what the
> UFT leadership was saying during the last 
> school year. Frank Volpicello 
> dramatically described the process in the 
> Bronx as being akin to ?sinking
> ocean liners? with too few life boats. In 
> response to situations of 
> chaos and overcrowding in the
> fall of 2002 the UFT 
> Delegate Assembly passed a resolution
> calling for such impact studies to be 
> done.
 
The UFT has supported the establishment of small high schools with teacher empowerment in making basic decisions about education in them; we are one of the three partners on the core team establishing them. What we opposed was the way in which the DOE has implemented this reform: first, it did nothing to address a growing and very serious problem in the high schools, and then it exacerbated it by forcing new small schools into large overcrowded buildings. The UFT DA resolution was proposed by the UFT leadership.
 
This is fundamentally different from what you hear from the likes of TJC-ICE. People like Licari insist that the very idea of new small schools which don't conform to what he calls [following Bloomberg and Klein] union work rules, such as the requirement that a high school teacher teach exactly 5 periods of no more than 45 minute length a day, is union busting. By contrast, the UFT leadership recognizes that new small schools do not fit neatly into a factory model of schooling, where every class every day in every school is of the same length, and it has pioneered contractual provisions such as the School Based Options, which allows small schools to reconfigure class and teacher time to meet the mission of their school, and a special Staffing and Transfer Plan, which allows a Personnel Committee, the majority of whom are teachers, to make decisions about staffing the school which take into account the mission and special needs of the school, rather than simply following seniority. Again, for years Licari, Weiner, Swerdlow and the rest of the small group in TJC have been attacking these provisions in the UFT contract. It is a constant theme in their newsletter and pamphlets. But I suppose John is "not aware of" that either.
 
> I'm especially interested in 
> this because of the way your claims made their 
> way into some UNITY caucus 
> campaign literature. I'm talking about a glossy 
> blue brochure entitled, 
> "New York City School Teachers Can't Be Divided and 
> Won't Be Defeated." 
 
"Glossy" means that it is actually readable, unlike the solid blocks of 8 point text which make up the turgid prose of ICE.
 
> That brochure also contains a 
> nasty bit of redbaiting. It lifts a quote 
> from Progressive Labor Party 
> literature that faults the UFT for supporting 
> "bourgeois politicians" in the
> effort to get more school funding.

Nonsense. Here is the actual quote:

>> When Governor Pataki threatened massive state cuts to education in 2002-03, Weingarten and UNITY worked with our state union, NYSUT, to have the state legislature take the unprecedented step of adopting a budget, over Pataki's veto, that fully funded education. Under Weingarten's and UNITY's leadership, the UFT was pivotal in the successful CFE lawsuit, which will bring NYC its fair share of state funds for the first time. <<

>> UNITY's opponents, ICE/PAC and Teachers for a Just Contract, have no record and no accomplishments on issues of funding. They deride as support for "bourgeois politicians" the political work of the UFT which makes these successes possible. <<

It is not a quote from anybody's literature. It is reference to the arguments that leading members of the TJC-ICE slate have made at UFT Delegate Assemblies and Executive Board meetings for a number of years when they have condemned the union's supports for mainstream Democrats, and talked about the need to establish a third party run by workers. TJC was founded and is led by Trotskyists who hold to that dogma without the slightest bit of flexibility. The fact that in an election campaign they would rather not have to own and defend those comments, or the political views they express, in an election campaign does not make them any less true, or any less important for UFT members to know what they would do, if they had the opportunity to do so. "Red baiting" is a convenient charge for those who think that their politics should be beyond public discussion.

Leo Casey

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --