This exclusive news appeared this morning on politico.com’s education site. When Randi spoke at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin, she told the audience for the Common Core panel that she would ask the AFT executive board for permission to do exactly what is described here. She understands that many members of the AFT do not trust the Gates Foundation, do not like Bill Gates’ public statements such as encouraging larger class sizes, or his unwavering commitment to measuring teacher quality by student test scores, despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy. I welcome this change and thank Randi and the AFT for severing ties with the Gates Foundation. Gates and Pearson have bought most of American education. Those who represent teachers should be free of their influence.
By Caitlin Emma
With help from Stephanie Simon
EXCLUSIVE: AFT SHUNS GATES FUNDING: The American Federation of Teachers ended a five-year relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation after rank-and-file union members expressed deep distrust of the foundation’s approach to education reform. AFT President Randi Weingarten told Morning Education the union will no longer accept Gates money for its Innovation Fund, which was founded in 2009 and has received up to $1 million a year in Gates grants ever since. The Innovation Fund has sponsored AFT efforts to help teachers implement the Common Core standards – a Gates priority – among other initiatives.
– Weingarten said she didn’t believe Gates funding influenced the Innovation Fund’s direction, but still had to sever the relationship. “I got convinced by the level of distrust I was seeing – not simply on Twitter, but in listening to members and local leaders – that it was important to find a way to replace Gates funding,” she said. Weingarten plans to ask members to vote this summer on a dues hike of 5 cents per month, which she said would raise $500,000 a year for the Innovation Fund.
– The Innovation Fund isn’t the only AFT initiative funded by the Gates Foundation. Since 2010, the union has received more than $10 million. The AFT’s executive council hasn’t formally voted to reject Gates funding for other projects, but Weingarten said she would be very cautious about taking such grants. “I don’t want to say ‘never never ever ever,'” she said, but “this is a matter of making common bond with our members and really listening to the level of distrust they have in the philanthropies and the people on high who are not listening to them.”
– Vicki Phillips, who runs the Gates Foundation’s education division, said her team is “disappointed by Randi’s decision.” She called the AFT “an important thought partner” for the foundation. “We continue to applaud the work of the Innovation Fund grantees to engage teachers in improving teaching and learning in their local communities,” Phillips said.
Applause to the AFT for the strength of their conviction.
What applause??? The damage has already been done and public schools and their teachers will never recover from what Gates and others have done.
Randi finally saw the level of discontent and disconnect, and is trying to save her backside. Instead of applauding, let’s replace her.
Quite accurtately stated schoolgal.
No real walkin this back; Randi squeezed the toothpaste out of this tube for her own personal reasons. Do not forgive her teachers for she knew exactly what she wanted.
All true, and as a canary in the coal mine, Randi may be a good indicator of the level of resistance that is continuing to solidify against Gates et al. Too late.
And let’s not forget she co-authored an article with the Gates Foundation basically approving using test scores to evaluate teachers even though she knew deep down VAM was junk science. Randi represents one person—and that’s herself. Notice how she is now manipulating the votes for NYSUT (NY State United Teachers) president because the current president came out strongly against both Common Core and Cuomo. She is backing the pro-Cuomo candidate. With Randi is never what she says in public, it’s watch what she actually does. If you believe in everything she says when in fact she is working behind close doors doing the opposite, and as a teacher you still believe in her, then that doesn’t speak well of the teaching profession and a teacher’s ability to separate fact from fiction.
Look at her history with the contracts in NYC, Newark, DC, Colorado, and other places she made sure either merit pay, VAM or both now control the future of every teacher. She went along with Bloomberg and Klein here in NYC, and now we have classroom teachers out of their positions and put into weekly sub assignments. On top of that these teachers are being observed with students they have never met and many times these observations take place on their first day of their sub assignment. Where is her outrage??
I agree Gates and the rest of the club of deep pockets care about one thing and that is making more money and destroying anything they don’t like. They have done an outstanding job in dismantling public education filling key positions with their talking heads and will not stop till everything crashes and burns. They are now going after the new mayor of NYC because he wants the rich to fund pre k I guess rich people feel that they have no social compact with society except make money off of the backs of people that Wall Street has forced into poverty and no longer have any pensions look at what is happening in NJ. We need new forceful leadership not grandstanding, this is not a movie
I heartily agree with you.
Wasn’t it Randi Weingarten that sold us down the river as teachers in NYC when she was the head of the UFT?
And now, Michael Mulgrew, her hand picked replacement, is doing the same.
This is wonderful news, indeed. Another sign, it is, that the tide has begun to turn, that we are beginning to dig out from under the onslaught of money that has been controlling education “reform” for so long.
I will be joining the AFT next year.
It would be nice if NEA would come out as well.
Agree. We need to pressure NEA to give back the money and cut ties with Gates.
I doubt they will listen. I can’t even get my local rep. to return my emails. I’m leaving NEA at the end of the school year.
Really !!! The AFT woke up today and discovered that the Gates foundation may not be working in the best interest of public schools. The professional educational community continues to break my heart—whether it is the AFT, ASCD, NASSP, the list goes on, but they have offered no public oppositional voice to what has be going in education for the last decade. At one time we had educators like Dewey, who fulfilled the role of public intellectual. That role has been taken over by corporate shills who so often co-opt the leadership of organizations that should be promoting an oppositional reform agenda. In today’s big box/franchise/ world of almost every public good, we need leaders that stop asking the question: “what just happened.”
An encouraging development. Better late than never. A lot of damage has already been done. I credit this blog for being one of the forces for change here.
I appreciate that Randi Weingarten is doing this, but please read Mercedes Schneider analysis. http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/a-schneider-debriefing-on-weingarten/:
Weingarten implied that “so little” Gates money does not matter. However, it apparently does since not accepting “the next round” for the AFT Innovation Fund means a dues increase. The current Gates grant for the Innovation Fund and CCSS ($4.4 million) expires in May 2015.
Note: There was no mention of returning any Gates money. There was also no agreement to not accept Gates money in the future– just not for the Innovation Fund.
The Gates money matters to those who take it. However, the connection to Gates and the power that such connection brings matters to those benefiting from his circle of power more than does his money.
A five-cent annual annual dues increase for all 1.5 million AFT members yields $75,000 in additional revenue.
A two-dollar annual dues increase for all 1.5 million AFT members would yield an additional $3 million in AFT revenue.
I would like to challenge Weingarten to offer AFT members the total amount that AFT dues must rise in order for her to say no to all corporate-reform-associated philanthropic money given to AFT.
Thanks to Mercedes, Diane and all of the people who have been speaking loudly about this. Unions are our best hope to fight corporate reform and if our unions are misbehaving then we need to speak up and put pressure on them. I think the recent conference, and Mercedes recent posts and many private and public conversations demonstrated to Randi where her mistakes had been. And she has never been a fool. She knows where the wind blows. Great news!
Rowdy delegates to a national teachers convention Saturday gave several standing ovations to Bill Gates, whose billions in foundation grants for experimental-education-overhaul efforts over more than a decade have sparked widespread controversy and debate. There were scattered boos and hisses among the 3,400 attendees at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Seattle, and a small group of dissident teachers walked out on Gates’ speech, but many at the Washington State Convention Center seemed to welcome the Microsoft co-founder’s message that teachers must be partners in any efforts to improve student achievement… Seattle local report
At what point do our leaders take responsibility for their actions and be accountable for their errors? Remember how Randi and her horde mocked the people who walked out on Gates at the AFT convention? I shot the video of the sing-song “good riddance” shouts.
Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Ezri0pVOg
We have seen well over a decade of AFT/UFT collaboration and only the weight of resistance has forced — and I say forced– Randi to take actions like this — but does is it good news and a real change in the way the leadership which persists in promoting the common core and other ed deforms until forced to change direction? and often for PR reasons? Why does Randi always have to be forced?
Here are links:
laugh yourselves silly — remember the Unity caucus hooting and booing those who walked out on the Gates speech at the AFT convention.
Only when the AFT and UFT which is the tail that controls the AFT become democratic institutions of change will we see a true change in policy that will allow the unions to lead rather than tail the fight for public education.
I only have to point to the big battle over charters in NYC over rent and co-location and how the very body that should be organizing against the Eva Moskowitz monster – the UFT – is toothless because of Randi’s folly – a co-located charters pushing out public schools — one middle school in the same building was closed by Bloomberg and the parents and teachers blamed the UFT charter.
Will we get cheers when Randi one day gives that folly up? Really, when will this end?
If you need a refresher google links to stories about that walkout in July 2010
Here is one:
Gates’s controversial speech to the AFT – Substance News
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1529
Jul 11, 2010 – A video of the protests against the Gates speech has been posted … [A separate report in Substance will cover the walkout and protests from some of the delegates]. ….
Norm Scott, sometimes it is right to accept “yes” for an answer. Randi is doing the right thing. Would you prefer that she continue on the previous course? This is a time when people either hang together or hang separately. Decide whether it is more important to continue to complain about Randi or to move forward in unity towards common goals. I prefer the latter course. No hostilities inside the tent when you are surrounded by predators.
Diane and Norm,
Major damages are done. Children’s and parents’ lives adversely affected . . . . Teachers unfairly characterized, terminated, and evaluated.
I personally am not invulnerable to budget cuts, restructuring, and just plain old junk-science APPR in my own profession.
I preach to both your choirs.
Norm, I am very uncomfortable with Diane’s take on this, but power is power, and Weingarten knows how to gather it, cultivate it, and harvest it for her use.
While she does still have it, it is better to use it to parlay of this very acute statement about the relationship between Gates and the AFT into something that can be long term, powerful, and in the interests of eduators and students.
There is power in not only direct actions, but in symbolism and symbolic gestures.
We may need to take our “friends” and their weapons, however temporary and superficial, where we can get them when, as Diane states so truthfully, we are surrounded by predators.
Right now, Randi may be stegosaurus and the rest of us are brontosuarus, but we are both huddled in the jungle and all surrounded by a herd of Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Times like this I wish I had a harpoon loaded with tranquilizer tips . . . .
Thank you Norm for teaching us that the apple does not fall far from the tree. There would not be any need for hostilities inside the tent had Randi not invited the predators in. But she did.
Diane Ravitch might prefer this new course, but I for one would prefer new leadership.
Or, we can continue hiding our heads in the sand and pretend all is going so well when in fact it’s not. Teachers are suffering and laws were changed, and those are things that are going to take too much time to mend. In the meantime, teachers are leaving the profession they once loved. Can Randi bring the love of teaching back after she destroyed it? She changes course but never apologizes for her actions. Actions that were taken without the vote of her own rank and file.
I will forgive that when the Unity party steps down, but right now they are petting the ego of Cuomo by running a pro-Cuomo candidate for NYSUT. Yes, Diane, let’s decide what’s more important!!
Schoolgal and Norm,
I would prefer new leadership over every other scenario.
But is that not a longer term goal? Is that something one can readily change? Believe me: my wife and I have aided MORE in several very dedicated ways, and we believe very much in a completely new paradigm antithetical to the Unity Party . . . .
But what do we do with this recent gesture of Weingarten’s and how, if at all, can we use it to our advantage so that true, long term social and educational justice can be achieved and maintained?
I say use the crap out of this solidarity (that term is used with license) and then drop the friendship when you discover it has no more benefits . . . .
Sometimes, you have to use e-bola to fight the plaque . . . . . You just have to be careful how you use it . . . . .
Robert Rendo: if I read your comments correctly, I am in agreement.
This is what winning looks like: it’s messy and uncertain, looks transient and untrustworthy—
But you are right, IMHO, when you wrote that we need to keep our eyes on the prize:
“But what do we do with this recent gesture of Weingarten’s and how, if at all, can we use it to our advantage so that true, long term social and educational justice can be achieved and maintained?”
Notice two specific things. First, Randi Weingarten appeared at the NPE conference. Good for her. Second, this recent action.
Now consider: someone like Diane Ravitch requesting the opportunity to speak at an important AFT function. Or asking to have something critical to an issue like VAM or charters or deprofessionalization of teaching placed in an AFT publication. Or requesting, on behalf of others, opportunities to speak to AFT members in a variety of union forums.
The door is ajar. A little. Yes, it is prudent to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but let’s take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. Let’s truly have the courage of our convictions.
“Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained.” [Chaucer]
😎
Yes, KrazyTA, you did interpret the fair import of my words correctly (even with a few grammatical errors that I made . . . ).
Let’s use this to our advantage.
I too share Norm’s and Schoolgal’s fury, but a healthy use of anger is to use it to propel yourself out of a toxic situation rather than macerating in it to the point where it consumes and breaks you down.
I am NOT saying that Norm Scott or Schoolgal are doing this necessarily at all . . . . I am merely saying this is what I do with anger if I choose not to use it productively.
I look forward to Schoolgal’s posting and have the utmost of respect and admiration of Norm Scott, who is a true hero to public education, and in his retired years, does not have to bother with any of this if he chose not to. Norm is also a tour-de-force journalist on the NYC education circuit.
It’s okay to have have 100% overlap. . . but we who are fighting privatization need enough overlap and for a long enough time to achieve justice . . . . .
Keep writing, KTA. . . . I’ll keep reading . . . .
Robert…..Arguments like yours and Diane’s are what makes it difficult to move forward. Randi invited Gates and others in and treated them like rock stars. Less than a week after being a keynote speaker and getting praised by Randi (while Randi belittled those who were not happy with Gates’ appearance) he turned on public school teachers by calling for larger class sizes and no pensions. What did Randi do or say? Absolutely nothing she continued the relationship and happily took his checks.
By giving Randi any leeway and cheering her on will solidify her as a hero instead of the villain she really is. This is the best time for teachers to call her out and continue to do so until she either resigns or is no longer elected. Meanwhile how do we stop her from getting total control of NYSUT when Iannuzzi has finally come to his senses? If you do not see what she and Cuomo have planned, then shame of you.
Right now NYS is supposedly rethinking Common Core, but I will bet you anything that whatever the result, it will not be good for either teachers or students and Randi and Mulgrew will be behind it, the same way they endorsed Pearson taking over certification. (Wonder how much money Pearson has put into the AFT coffers?) If anyone here thinks for a moment that Randi and Gates are no longer in cahoots, I have a bridge in NJ that I can sell you–traffic jams and all!!
btw, it’s arguments like this that make it possible for Neo-liberals to win elections.
schoolgal: just to be clear—
Never stop holding everyone’s feet to the fire.
Please keep posting; I’ll keep reading.
😎
Schoolgal,
I agree with you.
Believe me when I say that I hold deep and acute opprobrium for Randi Weingarten. If you follow my posts since 2012, I have been anything but kind or accepting of Ms. Weingarten.
A while back, Diane innocently and inadvertently send one of my comments to Randi because she genuninely thought comments from her readers would educate and inform Randi. Diane in this rare instance forgot to remove my name. Diane took full responsibility for it, and I harbor not one molecule of resentment toward her . . . in fact, my alignment with and admiration and respect for Diane Ravitch only grows more every day. (I don’t mean to embarrass you, Diane).
By no means am I cross with either person for responding to me. Thereafter followed an excahnge of e-mails between Randi and myself, and I had all but to restrain myself. . . . . If she were a man and this were 1880, I’d have challenged her to a boxing match or a pistol duel. I fel that opposed to her manipulations, deaf ear, non-democratic consolidation of power, and self opportunism. Randi claimed that mayoral control was a done deal far before she ever gave her blessing to it, and she declared my global view to be far more limited than hers.
Don’t you know by now that as head of the AFT, Ms. Faux-Talmudic knows everything and we little pitselah constituents know nothing?
But how do we move forward when getting her out of office or motivating her to resign is extremely difficult?
I can spend my time doing just that, or I can spend my precious time and energy – after putting in typically 14 hour workdays serving a low income ELL population, trying to collectively manipulate power to achieve long term justice. It was the very manipulation of power that Randi used to put herself in her current position, and there’s nothing from stopping any of us from contributing to a manipulation of power that utilizes hers in such a way that will achieve what she was originally slated to do and never had the political will to execute.
As far as my political strategy, I hope it does not lead to any neo-liberals winning elections, because neo-liberals are worse than someone like Paul Ryan in the sense that with Ryan (who I loathe), you know exactly what you are getting and what to expect . . . . ditto for GW Bush. . . . But with neo-libs, you vote one way because he/she campaigns one way, and then you suffer afterwards because he/she serves the plutocrats. Campaign for the average Joe, and then once you’re in office, serve in the government for the average billionaire. . . . that is indeed the neo-liberal credo . . . . .
Schoolgal, I appreciate and respect who you are, your candor and your standards . . . .
There are no easy answers here, but there are windows of opportunity . . . . .
Did Randi also disavow any Gates money to support the Common Core?
Norm, the video you posted above about educators protesting Gates is particularly telling.
These protesters who continued despite rejection from their peers and the AFT leadership have my admiration.
While I am very glad Randi has had a change of heart to some degree about Gates’ influen$e, isn’t an apology in order from her or, at the very least, an explanation?
PARCC recently announced that AFT and NEA are working with the two testing consortia under a 1.6-million-dollar grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. This is the part where some teachers are chosen to rubber stamp what the consortia has done.
I hold out hope that Ms. Weingarten will back away from the hackneyed, autocratic, unimaginative, and PRIVATELY HELD Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] and make hers, once again, an organization that represents the interests of teachers and of the kids they teach. There are positive signs. We need the AFT to come around.
Cx: what the consortia HAVE done, of course
Sorry about the typo.
Better late to the party than not at all…..but it’s hard to “unring” a bell…..
as another reply already stated….Mercedes Schneider seems to have dedeuced why randi has done this, hope she isn’t already in too deep….
read Mercedes Schneider analysis. http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/a-schneider-debriefing-on-weingarten/:
oops, “deduce”
It’s a start!
A Tweet to copy and paste
#AFT stops accepting Million $ bribes from #BillGates
Pushing agenda to destroy public ed
Via #CommonCore testing
http://bit.ly/1fjEcIz
Even as I am glad to read this, the truth is that Weingarten should have never accepted a thin dime from a figure like Gates for in doing so she not only betrayed the members she is paid to protect but legitimized the dictates of crazily rich and willful private citizens on our most vital public institution. In short, by legitimizing a figure like Gates, Weingarten is guilty of much more than a profound failure in judgement. She is instrumental in legitimizing plutocracy, far and away the greatest threat to our anemic democracy as I write. The line that she had no choice is nonsense. Weingarten’s refusal to accept more money is easy. She must now begin the far more difficult task of removing the degrading influences of Gates and people like Gates from every classroom in America. She owes it to every teacher in America to do nothing less.
Do you think Gates offered that money and revealed his goals that he wants to destroy the teacher unions and alter public education for profit?
I don’t think so. Gates came with this offer wearing sheep’s clothing and I’d be willing to bet that the original pitch that came with the money was designed to mislead, to tell AFT what they wanted to hear—but not the whole truth.
In business, the road to profits is the same as the road to war and you play the game ruthlessly to win.
Lloyd, the policies that Gates has been purchasing and promoting -merit pay, VAM, expansion of charter schools, TFA, CCSS and it’s attendant high stakes exams, in fact, every punitive and pseudo scientific fad that’s come down the pike – have been transparently anti-teacher and anti-public education from the beginning.
For Randi to ask, “But how were we to know it would come to this?” would be disingenuous. She’s too smart a woman and too politically astute to play the ingenue: she knew exactly what it all meant, but was willing to sacrifice her members and public education for her
“(servant’s) seat at the table.”
Billionaires with no education experience whatsoever who want to remake the schools should be treated skeptically (at best) until they demonstrate knowledge, empathy and personal engagement over a substantial period of time. Otherwise they’re either dabblers, dilettantes, takeover artists or all three, who should be told to take their money elsewhere.
Now, as for Wiengarten’s saying she’ll accept no more of Gates’ blood money, it’s a good thing, if long overdue.
However, it’s one thing to no longer take his money; it’s another to mobilize broadly to defend her members from the continuing attacks by Gates and his minions.
Let me know when that happens, and we can together watch pigs fly.
Fiorillo
Well said and spot on.
Al Shanker is spinning in his grave.
Lloyd,
How can you even argue that when less than a week as keynote speaker at the AFT convention, he called for larger class sizes and no pensions for teachers? And Randi continued to endorse VAM. She knew what she was getting into, but the money was too good to pass up.
This new move is most likely due to the fact that many, even in her own Unity party, may not support her bid for president at the next convention and may put forth Karen Lewis’ name.
Randi is a lawyer (not a teacher) and let’s also recognize she made alliances with both Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein. During an election year, she made sure the rank and file approved one of the worst contracts designed by Joel Klein, and NYC teachers have been paying the price for a decade. She knew quite well that both Bloomberg and Klein wanted to privatize education. And when they started closing school after school, she never once took to the bully pulpit to stop it. The only wolf I see here is Randi.
I didn’t know the whole history of Gates involvement in this war against public education and I’m still learning.
Until I read Diane’s book, I had no idea how bad it was. For decades, I suspected something was going on—a plot of some kind to destroy public education by deliberately passing legislation that made it more and more difficult to teach successfully—but I never had any evidence to substantiate my suspicious. I thought I was just being paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there were none.
On that same note, I thought Bill Gates may have been using stealth to get as far as he has in the take over of our democracy’s democratic public education system. Now i can see that Gates was buying people, like this Randi, left and right. Maybe he funded Randi’s move into that position.
The robber barons and wolves of Sesame street gave up on the initiative process years ago and have been using the democratic process to destroy it from within by using the media they own and their great wealth to flood local, state and national elections with lies and propaganda to elect politicians they own and further their agenda by cutting to voters out after fooling them.
What frightening is that the President is not elected by the people. Presidents are elected by about 500 in the Electoral College. How many members of the Electoral College are now in the pay of the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street.
It’s obvious now after reading your reply and others that Randi may be one of these quislings who was placed in that position through the use of money and lies. If the oligarchs can do it at the local, state and national level, why not the teacher unions too?
It will be up to the membership to get her out and replace her with someone they can, hopefully, trust.
The two unions are still democratic organizations. For now at least.
At first, I thought this Randi may have been seduced by Gates—that rubbing shoulders with the world’s wealthiest man was the same as a chance at an opportunity to get your picture taken with an Academy Award winning actor so you could hand the photo on your wall and brag about it. Randi has either been bought by the money or seduced by the manufactured image of Bill Gates. There are people who can’t resist this temptation. She may be one of them. But then, as you point out, she’s a lawyer and most lawyers go into that profession for one reason only, the money.
I suspect that when she leaves that job with AFT, she’ll end up with a six or seven figure income working for one of Bill Gates companies or a company that feeds off Microsoft.
schoolgal: I always appreciate your passion. The horror stories of what’s happening on the other side of the bridge are incredibly terrifying for those of us here in NJ.
I would like a little clarification. “During an election year, she made sure the rank and file approved one of the worst contracts designed by Joel Klein, and NYC teachers have been paying the price for a decade.”
How did she get the rank and file to approve this contract–by leaving out specific details? If the contract was not transparent, isn’t it illegal? If it was transparent, why did the rank and file vote for it?
Lloyd, I appreciate your response, and I know for a fact that “quisling” is a term that has been used to describe Randi by people who know her all too well, but praise her in public.
LG: There was a big backlash to the contract, but Randi had her people go to schools to sell it. In fact she personally came to my school. What she sold was fear and teachers are basically pretty timid people. The other part of the contract came with a nice raise, and many people voted their pocketbook over basic rights. All I can say was that the UFT blog was against mayoral control and the so-called “open market”. Then one day it all changed and the UFT blog thought it was a good idea to turn teachers into ATRs. They argued they would get jobs using the “open market”. However, when September came around, Klein issued an email to all principals telling them not to hire ATRs and used the term “undesirables”. Randi never protested. She went on to push merit pay and VAM. Meanwhile many dissenting comments on the UFT blog were being deleted. When mayoral control came up for renewal, Randi supported it even though Bloomberg was closing school after school and pushing out the voices of parents. Then when he came up for an “illegal” third term, Randi blessed it with her silence.
There was once opposition to Randi, a group called New Action, that was getting support. Then one day they joined forces with Randi after their leader was offered a cushy job in the union. Right after that the rules of the Delegate Assembly were changed, and voices were stifled.
You must keep in mind that Randi, a labor lawyer and not a teacher, did everything in her power to gain total control. She even made members of her Unity party sign an oath which basically stated they will always agree with her positions. So to argue that she is naïve when in fact she is very cunning just makes my head spin. You do know the joke about lawyers?? Klein was a lawyer, yet he ran a school system—well he ran it into the ground in order to privatize, and Randi went along with it. Then came the UFT elections, and many in-service teachers just threw their ballots away. The last election was decided by retired teachers who are so far removed from what’s happening.
Now has Randi “changed”? No, not at all. She goes where the wind blows especially if it is not looking good for her.
Robert Rendo: I have no idea if you are reading this, but I read your latest response and I still have to say you still don’t get it. Randi knows how to manipulate people, especially teachers, and you are falling into her trap. All I know is that legislation around the country has stripped teachers of their dignity and now they are going after pensions. Democrats have changed, and today in NYS we learned that the hard way when the incumbent Regents were reinstalled by a majority of Democrats despite the efforts of people like Carol Burris and the many emails I and others sent to vote NO. Now if Randi wanted to use her influence to get real teachers elected to the Regents, it would have happened. So ask yourself, why did Cuomo get his way when our Cope money should have been backing the new slate?? It’s easy to say you stepped away from Gates, but what is said to the media and what goes on behind close doors are two different things. If every teacher signed a petition saying we no longer trust in Randi and Mulgrew’s leadership, I would respect such an action because it would also send a very strong message to the likes of Cuomo, Obama, and all the Neoliberal Democrats that they are also losing a whole voting block.
I have been a lifelong Democrat, but I will soon be changing my affiliation to either Green or Independent. I stayed a Democrat just to vote for deBlasio in the primary. Democrats no longer represent teachers, unions and more importantly, they turned their back on public education. I wonder what would happen if every teacher, whether Republican or Democrat did the same thing? Do you think it would make a ripple or open up the floodgates?
I’ve been an independent for decades and often turn to:
http://votesmart.org/
http://www.factcheck.org/
http://www.politifact.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://www.snopes.com/
I don’t like to rely on one site (beware of Trojan Horses) and may look at several before making up my mind.
Be careful not to brand all Democrats and Republicans with the same mark. There are politicians of all stripes who aren’t in the pay of the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street.
This was also the case in Teddy Roosevelt’s time as demonstrated in the book “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. You might want to use Vote Smart in an attempt to separate the honest (or at last more honest than others) elected officials from the corrupt ones who have sold out to the public school destruction machine.
“There was a big backlash to the contract, but Randi had her people go to schools to sell it. In fact she personally came to my school. What she sold was fear and teachers are basically pretty timid people. The other part of the contract came with a nice raise, and many people voted their pocketbook over basic rights.”
The whole mess regarding ATRs should have been a clue that this contract was not right, but teachers tend to be so “busy” that they just go along with whatever they are told as long as it is framed in an appealing way. The biggest red flag to me was the word “market.”
What’s next for the camp against Mulgrew? I would hope there is an organized coalition gaining ground to oppose these tactics and permit members to take back the union.
It’s a shame that teachers are timid, but we’ve always been encouraged to trust that our leadership has our best interests at heart. In my local association, the youngest teachers are the group that is most apathetic. They have no clue about what’s going on, nor do they have a context with which to make sense of it all. We lost a great many veterans to retirement in the past four years which make the mid-career teachers our “veterans.” The mid-careers aren’t stepping up, either. They are petrified of being deemed anything less than “highly effective,” so they do not want to make waves. Despite the NJEA’s protests about the new evaluation system, word is that the highly effective score mark will be even higher next year thus putting more teachers at risk of getting a low mark just because their observed lessons do not always have every single one of the “required elements.” It is frightening to think that teaching has become such a negative experience for us because of mandates and laws. I don’t know about you, but to me, the lack of income growth and the higher cost of health benefits does not make up for even one tenth of the stress in this job.
To take money from Gates is the same as taking money for prostituting ourselves.
Gates has shown little regards for our democracy. He funds institutions that will do end-runs around our democracy. Gates spent millions to push charter schools in Washington state, which will weaken an already stressed and underfunded system.
It is time for people to stand-up to Gates.
Bravo.
Sarah in Seattle, you are far too kind. Gates has shown absolute and unmitigated contempt for all and every democratic tradition and impulse imaginable. It’s time to stand up and expose this person for what he is and what he is methodically doing to our nation and our children.
Very true, Patrick. Gate’s limited small school venture was an absolute failure. Instead of showing humility, Gates seeks to spread his agenda throughout the nation!
Oh well, there goes the remake of Indecent Proposal, with Bill in the part of Robert Redford and Randi as Demi Moore.
WOW, great to hear. It is rare when any source of funds are shunned. The Gates Foundation, as well meaning as it portrays itself to be, share a behavior pattern of its founder, Bill Gates.
Anyone who has studied Gates knows what an arrogant SOB he was. I can imagine him throwing more than one hissy fit as a child.
He appears to approach problems, surrounded by like minded experts resistant of true scientific open minded analysis. No wonder his pet project, Common Core, was never carefully constructed and analyzed before being dumped on cash strapped states. Even to this day, Gates is propagandizing the critics are wrong…and HIS experts are right.
Again, thanks Randi, as one strong conservative to one strong liberal, we both want what is best for America’s kids, not what Bill Gates and Arnie Duncan believe is best. ajbruno14 gmail
Randi is one of the few leaders who actually engage their members on social media. I am thrilled she heard many of us and has made a wise choice. Thanks Randi
This is good news. Please note however that the AFT and the NEA are working with the two testing consortia to foist the new national standardized tests on the country:
http://parcconline.org/partnering-educators
I am glad that all of you always knew Gates had an agenda to control education and that his goals were nefarious all along. But many of us did not know and we were fooled. I know Diane went through a change of heart years ago. I did too. So that is why I think others can change as well (especially when pressured to do so like Randi).
You may all think ill of me, but as a person who always wanted what was best for children I was willing to try charter schools, vouchers, flipped classrooms, inclusion, differentiation, response to intervention, online instruction, service learning, early colleges, PLC’s, Problem Based Learning, even CCSS and value added. . . I could go on and on. But I only woke up last year when I realized that when the research demonstrated that a whole lot of these options did not work, they were expanded anyhow! I realized that no one cared if they benefited children or not- that the options that were expanded made people money and the one’s that were discarded did not , , , even if effective.
When profits, rather than positive educational results was the only outcome anyone cared about I saw there was a effort to destroy public education and hurt the very children I was starting to make great progress with ( I work with at-risk student/dropout prevention). I started reading all about it. I am not a historian, nor am I usually political or suspicious of corporations. So I was slow to the battle.
Many of us in higher education or who work for organizations are praised, rewarded, given tenure, recognition and accolades when we win federal or foundation grants. Before this year I never realized the strings attached to these prized awards were ropes intended to hang us.
So that is why I can still hope Randi will change her ways. And that is also why I do not get upset when people still want CCSS and do not realize it is part of a large plot to control education for $$. Or even those who still think VAM is useful even though the research overwhelming discredits it. I think we will win, but just like I differentiate for my students, I alter my conversation about the corporate reform agenda according to how far along the people are. If I start off saying there is a plot to destroy public education I sound like a crazy person to some people and short sighted to others who know the agenda is to take over all public institutions. 🙂
When AFT stops toeing the CorpEd line, then you can say that something has changed. Until then, nothing has changed, except that Randi will get her innovation stash from another oligarch. Note that the Austin trip found Weingarten visiting a charter school as an example of the kind of innovations she embraces.
The AFT constituency has clearly said, “No Gates money.” RW’ has clearly stated in her Politico announcement, “No Gates Innovation money but leave the door open for future Gates money.”
These do not match. It’s that simple.
Here we go again.
RW wants to be all things to all people . . . .
It does not work that way . . . .
That’s because the whole deal is shady. It makes me sick to see all the teachers that support CC. Do they not know that the AFT were going to come in and take their jobs?
theassailedteacher.com/2012/07/…/the-death-and-birth-of-teacher-unions.
This is another NYC teacher blogger who is not exactly enamored with the “leadership” of Randi Weingarten, when she was the head of the UFT in NYC. And, there are many other NYC teacher bloggers that discuss in detail how teachers in NYC were sold out by Ms. Weingarten.
Dare I make the comparison that for teachers, Ms. Weingarten is our own version of Nevelle Chamberlain?
I wonder it the average teacher knows more about computers than Bill Gates knows about education?
LOL
I don’t think Bill Gates knows anything about the challenges that walk in a public school classroom. He didn’t grow up in that world and if there were students around him in high school who were challenged, he probably didn’t notice because at that age your world would fit in a tea cup.
Does this mean the AFT is disbanding too? I thought this was a sick idea to begin with.