Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani has a unique theory about why Eric Garner died. It was not because a police officer choked him until he died. No, it was because the teachers’ union blocked charters, vouchers, and merit pay. I am not sure whether he wanted Mr. Garner to go to a charter school or the police officer. Maybe both. If there is an edge, he went over it.
His remarks reminded me of the incident during his term in office when police brutalized a man named Abner Louima, and one of them allegedly said, “It’s Guiliani-time.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This washed up, has been of a politician has to rely on outlandish statements in order to get attention. He will probably succeed in getting the attention he is seeking, for at least one news cycle.
“This washed up, has been of a politician. . . ”
All I have to say is: F–k you Rudy, eat shit and die!
Sorry Diane, but that’s how it is for me.
Duane Swacker’s comment is tame compared to what I want to say, but I’ll just agree with him—because my language might offend someone.
Don’t sugar-coat it Duane…tell us how you REALLY feel. 😦
What do every felon, murderer and corrupt politician have in common?
Answer, they all had teachers. Right Rudy?
Giuliani has revealed himself once again. Let those who embrace him bear shame.
Any excuse to demonize a teacher is a good one these days.
Abner Louima has admitted that he fabricated the “Giuliani Time” remark. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/the-abner-louima-case-10-years-later/
Giuliani certainly went far over the line with these remarks. Speaking of crossing lines, I’ll point out again that the expert investigation conducted by educators, health care professionals, and law enforcement officials on behalf of Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate did not turn up even the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest that the Newtown murderer was motivated in any way by education reform or “teacher bashing.” Will you remove or edit (comments are closed) your blog entries from Dec 2012 wherein it was speculated that these factors may have inspired or disinhibited the killer? “When the facts change” and all that …
I don’t recall Dr. Ravitch ever saying that the psycho kid in Newtown was motivated by education reform or teacher bashing.
I do recall her citing recent (at the time) comments from the corporate reform governor in Connecticut—parrotting the union-busting, privatizing party line—who went around trashing the performance of unionized traditional public school teachers, specifically that they were doing a lousy job. He said that “all they do is just show up” and do the bare minimum required to earn their cushy salary and benefits at what he thought was a cushy job… blah-blah-blah…
Dr. Ravitch asked him publicly the teachers who placed themselves between the gunman and their students were “just showing up,” and pointed out that these dead and wounded heroes were also members of the union (you know… that pernicious force that the governor blames for the poor quality of teachers. She didn’t say that at the time; I’m saying it now.)
(even though the states with the strongest unions, and strongest job protections are the highest achieving, and those with no unions and no or little job protections have the lowest achieving students. She didn’t say that at the time; I’m saying it now.)
At this point, idiots—including some douche from TFA—then went around putting words in Ravitch’s mouth saying, “Oh, so you’re saying that if those teachers were non-union, they wouldn’t have been as brave? That’s nonsense, and an insult to our charter teachers and TFA Corps Members.”
Yeah, a comment like that was/is nonsense, and that’s why she never said it.
She merely wanted to counter the corporate reform propaganda about how unionized teachers were the problem with education. The heroic actions of those teachers, at least, were testimony to the contrary.
“(even though the states with the strongest unions, and strongest job protections are the highest achieving, and those with no unions and no or little job protections have the lowest achieving students. She didn’t say that at the time; I’m saying it now.)”
Have you disaggregated the scores of union and non-union states by race and socioeconomic status? You might be in for a surprise, as Dr. Ravitch was when she used NAEP scores to show San Diego’s “superiority” to Houston, or as Paul Krugman was when he used NAEP and graduation rates to show Wisconsin’s “superiority” to Texas.
In reality, the impact that unionization has on achievement won’t be known or settled until a random assignment study places a group of kids evenly in union or non-union schools and compares the results. The unions don’t seem to be too interested in that line of research!
Jack: as Phil Ochs once said, “a lesson in safe logic.”
From the linked article:
[start quote]
One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.
[end quote]
Now a very short excerpt from the same linked article:
“(Mr. Louima at one point claimed that police officers shouted ”It’s Giuliani time!” as they tortured him; he later retracted that account.)”
Jack, Jack, Jack: isn’t it clear as “black is white, day is night, and the Pope is a Jew” that the first and second parts of the linked article—
Are of the same moral heft, evidentiary weight and shock value?
Your comments have left me, well…
Thank you for helping to move the discussion forward.
Really!
Not every commenter on this blog does that.
Rheeally! Except in a Johnsonally sort of way…
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
I think your key word is “speculated”. I think it was perfectly reasonable to speculate that violence against schools and teachers might possibly be related to the onslaught of hostility to teachers from the “reform” forces. If you demonize a group of people often enough, it’s not surprising when someone eventually commits violence against members of that group.
In any case, I think Diane was mainly calling for an end to teacher bashing, given the fact that it was teachers who sacrificed their lives to save their students. Or do you support continued teacher bashing?
BTW, I find it interesting that you have apparently stewed over this for nearly two years now.
I diagree that it was perfectly reasonable, given the complete absence of even a shred of evidence that it had anything to do with it.
I find it interesting that you are a private school parent who has posted thousands of times about the necessity of restricting families to their neighborhood school.
I don’t think parents should have a right to remove resources (including the funding for their child) from their neighborhood public school.
Unless you are making a voluntary donation to your neighborhood school in the precise amount of the per-student funding it would receive if your children attended it, you are enjoying the right to remove resources from your neighborhood public school.
Tim, try not to make stuff up. It is unbecoming.
About 36 hours after the Newtown shootings, you elevated a post by a reader containing the following: “I can’t help but wonder if this climate of teacher-bashing and public school bashing in which many of our political leaders partake regularly, is to some degree a variable in the aggression, hatred and violence that have been directed at our schools’ students and staff.”
It strains credulity to believe that the reader wasn’t wondering whether “teacher bashing” played a role in the Newtown shooting.
Now, after two years and two exhaustive investigations, we don’t have to wonder: we know conclusively that “bashing” had nothing to do with it. In fact, what makes what happened even more tragic and unimaginable is that Sandy Hook was the only place Adam Lanza was something even resembling happy and well-adjusted, and it was the last time his family, health care providers, and educators had a unified, solid grasp on what his issues were and a plan to address them.
The politicizing of Newtown–on all sides–was shameful. I think it’s important to set the record straight.
dianeravitch: what do you call a humorless parody of an illogical caricature of a completely un-called for send-up of something that would seem to require thoughtful reflection and accurate commentary?
What the doctor ordered:
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [“Dr.” Charlie Chaplin]
Or if one is in a more serious mood, the way you put it: “[U]nbecoming.”
😎
P.S. Or as former Mayor Giuliani would say about folks like the owner of this blog and others that rather than focus on the needless death of a citizen of this country, they “should be talking about and holding rallies about the problem of black fathers taking care of the children they fathered.”
¿😧?
Tim,
The corporate reformers claim that if only they could put through their reforms:
— the ability to fire teachers at will;
— the ability to institute merit pay;
— the ability to expand privately-run charters.
etc. …
then educational achievement of all classes and races would skyrocket.
(Just as an aside, can you name one country who has ever improved their education system by implementing these reforms? Or take a look at the high-scoring countries… have any of them used those reforms?
The answers to those questions are NO and NO.
However, we do have an example of a country that has implemented these reforms: Chile. Thanks to a 30-year military dictatorship, the Milton Friedman acolytes there were able to implement all of this and more. The result: a total friggin’ disaster in just about every way.)
Now, the states with no unions—just “associations” where the teachers have no collective bargaining, and no real power… well, they’ve always been able to institute these reforms… and those states academic achievement is rock bottom.
In the absence of a gold standard random assignment study that would settle the matter conclusively, all we have is research that attempts to control for student characteristics. You continue to ignore the differences between high-poverty and low-poverty states and overlook the need for disaggregation. Wisconsin’s kids score way better than Mississippi’s, right? Well, not their fourth-grade black kids in 2013 NAEP reading and math.
The current research, summarized nicely here–http://shankerblog.org/?p=1941–suggests that unionization has no impact on achievement either way. Whatever the “right to work” states are doing seems to be enough to ensure a baseline level of teacher competency. The same dynamic generally seems to be true with respect to states that spend a lot on education vs. those that spend less.
Tim,
If you think that test scores are all that matter, I suggest you read Yong Zhao’s book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China has the Best and the Worst Schools in the World.”
Teachers organize into unions not to produce higher test scores but to have a voice in education policy making and to have an association to protect their rights against politicians. The highest scoring states on NAEP happen to be unionized–Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The lowest are right-to-work. Having unions helps create a middle class. Not having unions sustains poverty and powerlessness.
I didn’t say that test scores are all that matter, and given your frequent references to NAEP scores, including a 20-page appendix in “Reign” devoted to trendlines, I think it’s safe to say that you don’t feel that they *don’t* matter, either.
You are mistaking correlation for causation. It would be like if I said that teacher’s unions are responsible for much higher tax burdens, higher rates of income inequality, significantly lower population growth (even losses), and economic stagnation when compared to non-union states.
I refer to standardized test scores because they are what reformers promise and value most. Their failure to achieve their goals shows that “reform” has failed since it has no other goal. I refer to NAEP scores because they have no-stakes attached to them. The changes are small sand very incremental. No student takes the whole test. No one is rewarded or punished for NAEP scores. It is an indicator. Like all standardized tests, it reflects family income and education. Haves at the top, have-nots at bottom. Same thing every year. Why value such a predictable measure?
Bring quotes or portions of postings that Diane suggestes so if you want to make an argument against her. Just because her posting doesn’t agree with you doesn’t give you any license to make an insinuation or put your words in her mouth.
Disgusting!!!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Corporate school reform demagoguery at its worst—
obtuse and asinine beyond belief.
Teachers unions’ are to blame—at least
partly, according to Rudy—for Eric Garner’s
death at the hands of the police?
Okay… I’ll bite.
If Garner’s teachers had only been judged by
merit pay via students’ test scores…
or
if only a merit pay system had been in effect way
back when, and consequently would have
led to a higher-quality of teachers…some of
those higher quality teachers would have taught
Garner…
or
if Garner would have attended a charter school…
or
if Garner had attended a private school through
the use of a voucher…
(Ditto all of the above for the police involved)
then Garner would have been more cooperative
during his encounter with the police, and still
be alive today…
Is that’s Rudy’s point?
Or is Rudy saying that unionized (read “liberal”)
teachers influenced Garner to be less respectful
and cooperative of authority figures such as police…
I give up.
I don’t understand the connection… perhaps
I’m just too stupid to see it.
Just think how happy the lawyers will be when the system allows them to identify “inept/bad” teachers. Think of all the victims who will be able to sue the system for the redress of this grievance. Welcome to the world of “corporate reform.”
Do you suppose that all those reforms would have improved the behavior of the cops? H-m-m-m.
2Old2Teach
Yes, the reform movement has led to the police acting the way they do today. Under Reagan, the privatization movement started in the prisons leading to corporate lobbyists in DC and state capitals pushing hard for tougher laws with longer sentences.
Before the privatization movement in prisons, the U.S. had a steady prison population for decades hovering around 250k. Today, the U.S. prison population hovers around 2+ million.
“Private Prisons Spend Millions On Lobbying to Put More People in Jail”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251363/cca-geogroup-prison-industry/
And now, with the corporate reform movement focused on the public schools, you can bet that the same corporate prison lobbyists are pushing hard to make sure we end up with a solidly built school to prison pipeline for profits.
Ever more stunning than his comment, is that people still want to hear what he has to say. No matter how off the wall. Great sound bite for a logic class problem though.
The link provided above is to a reaction to Guiliani. A better link might be to where the blog cited got its quote. From a search, the following resulted:
observer.com/2014/12/giuliani-blames-liberal-guilty-whites-teachers-for-police-relations/
The text reports that Guiliani’s remarks were made on WABC’s Geraldo Rivera radio program. I have not looked, but there’s has to be some audio file out there that would make for a good sound clip. Just sayin’…
http://www.stationcaster.com/player_skinned.php?s=1251&c=6211&f=3720733
Guiliani on Rivera’s show on WABC 12/8
“Liberal, guilty whites” comment @ 23:07 – 23:17
“Teacher’s union” comment @ 25:20 – 25:45
From the linked article:
[start excerpt]
“He then turned his fire on teachers unions, claiming they are to blame for the problem of poor schools in black neighborhoods.
“Maybe all these left-wing politicians that want to blame police, maybe there’s some blame here that has to go to the teachers union, for refusing to have, for refusing to have schools where teachers are paid for performance, for fighting charter schools, for fighting vouchers, so we can drastically and dramatically improve the education situation. Maybe they should be talking about and holding rallies about the problem of black fathers taking care of the children they fathered,” he said.”
[end excerpt]
So let me get this straight: the “teachers union” should do nothing about defending its members from being humiliated, shamed and beaten down because they should instead be “talking about and holding rallies about the problem of black fathers taking care of the children they fathered.”
English-to-English translation: teachers should respond to teacher bashing by engaging in ‘black men’ bashing.
😳
This only makes sense to the thought leaders of the self-styled “education reform” movement. And Rheeally and truly, only in a Johnsonally sort of way.
For the rest of us, really, not so much…
😎
P.S. Mark Collins: you nailed it.
oops, did not provided it as a clickable link:
http://observer.com/2014/12/giuliani-blames-liberal-guilty-whites-teachers-for-police-relations/
Hope it works…
“Giulianiish”
Giuliani’s had his day
Now he blabbers for his pay
Opens lips and lets them flap
Informs us of his mental gap
Well…someone is insane and the winner is….Guilani.
EducationRealist found another example last week:
http://tinyurl.com/nxrglfx
In a nutshell, David Asman and three panel members–Steve Forbes, David Webb, Sabrina Schaeffer–all observed that what Ferguson needed was more Polly Williams– black Democrats pushing for school choice. The key to fewer Ferguson incidents is educational freedom. Vouchers bring families together because they can’t just be passive recipients. “The people to blame [for Ferguson] are the Democrats and the teachers unions,” thundered Schaeffer.
One has to wonder whether this isn’t the newly emphasized oligarch meme: “The people to blame are the teachers unions”.
I’d bet those “teachers unions” orchestrated 9/11, along with the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Pearl Harbor before that.
It goes back even further
“Satan’s Union”
The source of original sin
Was surely the teachers’ union
When Eve gave the apple
Humanity did grapple
With earliest Weingarten kin
Duane, you know the rules, quit sharing our secrets!!! Seriously, we are such a scary conspiracy you are going to get the CIA and others on us. Stop! Now! Wait, I need my tin foil hat so I can hide. For Krazy T.A. See weird all and tin foil.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani probably doesn’t know that corporate Charters usually don’t accept many students who live in poverty, have learning disabilities, and/or are challenging to teach.
Instead, the evidence is overwhelming that these private-sector Charters cherry pick the easiest students to teach, and siphon off tax money from the public schools where all the students they refuse to teach end up, so those public schools have fewer resources to work with the most at-risk and most difficult children to teach.
Yet, even the OECD’s international PISA test results—when broken down by socioeconomic level—provide evidence that the public schools in the United States do a better job teaching these at risk students than comparable OECD countries, the same students that corporate Charters tend to reject.
A study out of Stanford that was vetted by the Economic Policy Institute says, “Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.”
http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/
For every administration of PISA and TIMSS, when controlling for poverty, U.S. public school students are not only competitive, they downright lead the world. Even at home nationally, when controlling for poverty, public school students compete with private school students in Lutheran, Catholic, and Christian schools when analyzing NAEP data. This is my own synopsis of the Braun (2006) study using large samples of NAEP data and using HLM to compare private school students to public school students:
Guiliani’s comments reveal the depth of hostility towards one of the few sources of strength for the middle class.
Shame on you, the unions and the teachers in the union, that there are so few in the 1%, and so many in the 99%. Shame on you for causing the mortgage bank bailout. Hide your heads in the sand because Rudy’s quite irate and blames you for the ills of our society! Hahahahahahahah (breathe) ahhahahahahah(breathe)HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH…. Woohoo… ya just can’t make this excrement up. (Wiping away tears). WHEW!
To repeat part of a comment I made on Fred Klonsky’s Blog–it was only a matter of time before SOMEONE blamed teachers for this. In the past, it would’ve been Michelle Rhee, but she’s been relatively quiet, as she’s lost lots of her cachet with the reform crowd, and has made so much money that she can afford to stay home.
Yes–while we’re at it, Rudy, mortgage fraud, two World Wars and the existence of twerking is also our fault.
Add to the list the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the torture at Abu Garib. Kennedy’s assassination. The bridge that failed in Minnesota and killed how many people? Persephone being kidnapped by Hades and making her mother cry for half the year.
Pestilence.
Famine.
Plagues.
Nuclear contamination.
ALL OUR FAULT. WE DEMONIC TEACHERS, WE!
We with our audacious shiny apples and new no. 2 pencils.
We are the devil incarnate.
Jon Stewart’s Daily Show riffed on this a couple years ago when he said something about those teachers driving around cars with windshields! How dare they!
rbmtk,
Well that’s my new word of the day (or is that tword?). Had to look twerking up. Thanks for adding to my vocab!!!
Duane
Ah, the absurdity of it all.
I guess we should draw ex NY mayor’s grinning face in disillusion bubbles that will be shot down by a firing squad.
Giuliani is a cheater and liar. Just ask his former wife and children whom he lied to for years and then left them in the cold while he went off with another woman!!! His credibility is worth garbage people just blow his comments off they are worthless…just ask his former wife whom he ditched
This is why Rudy needs to fade away.
Giuliani pins minority community problems on teacher unions
http://www.educationdive.com/news/giuliani-pins-minority-community-problems-on-teacher-unions/342659/
I would like to see a video clip of this aledged statement. I don’t believe it. BTW, Eric Garner died of a heart attack. He did not die on the sidewalk like they eNt us to believe, he passed away later at the hospital.
Eric Garner was choked to death. Chokeholds have been prohibited by the New York Police Department for 20 years.
Somehow Giuliani thinks this is the fault of the teachers union and not the police union. School privatization is quite the cult.
Attacking labor unions is also quite the cult—of the wealthiest 0.1%, who spend millions to fool as many of the people as possible who will end up being losers and victims of what happens when labor unions shrink.
I suggest, watching the video from beginning to end: