I recently read James Scott’s “Two Cheers for Anarchism,” which is a good read. Scott is a professor at Yale who wrote one of my favorite books, “Seeing Like a State.” It explains as well as anything I have ever read how grandiose top-down plans fail because they ignore the people way down there on the ground, the people who actually know how things work, not how the planners think they ought to work.
In “Two Cheers for Anarchism,” Scott makes an important point about movements. He says that authentic grassroots movements do not have a single leader. They have many leaders, and as one drops away, another takes his place. That struck me as a good definition of today’s opt out movement. There are a few well-known leaders, like Peg Robertson in Colorado and Jeanette Deutermann on Long Island, but the true leadership is everywhere.
The only way that critics can attack the opt out parents is to claim that they have been duped by the teachers’ unions. Really? The parents of 220,000 children in New York decided to refuse the tests so they could follow the diktat of the unions? How insulting to parents! The one thing that every parent has in common is that they care about their children. They care about them more than the politicians do. They care about them more than the editorial boards of the tabloids do.
Who leads the opt out movement? Everyone and no one. Its leaders are everywhere. And they know exactly what they are doing.
Here is a statement by parents in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Its title: Parents Assert Their Right To Refuse Harmful Testing Practices To Protect Children from State Sanctioned Harm
These parents can’t be bought, and they can’t be bullied. And they vote.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But it is being captured by Union proxy organizations, like Class Size Matters (CSM) and BATS. When the NY Times asks for an opinion from the Union, they send them to CSM. These groups distract parents with “social Justice” issues.
In her new book, Indian author, Arundahti Roy, says:
“Armed with their billions, these NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations)
have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals, and film makers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation, ushering them in the direction of multiculturalism, gender equity, community development- the discourse couched in the language of identity politics and human rights.”
Joseph, you are wrong about Class Size Matters and BATs. I am one of six people on the board of Class Size Matters. It is not funded by any union. Its executive director Leonie Haimson is an independent, brilliant advocate for children and parents.
I am not inside the structure of BATS, but I think you smear them when you call them “union proxies.”
I support unions, but I don’t speak for them. I believe that working people have a right to representation, just like doctors (the AMA), lawyers (the ABA), and corporations (the Chambers of Commerce). Corporations buy politicians. Why shouldn’t teachers have organizations to support candidates who support public education?
Diane, thank you for creating this forum, unlike yourself, I have seen members of BATS rush to limit free speech of concerned advocates. Jeanette has “developed” as a free speech advocate, like yourself. I have the highest regard for Leonie, since we have testified numerous times before the NYC Council. I honor her and she honors me. I have seen first hand how the leadership of the Union has floundered. I was appointed by acclamation of my peers to be the Union delegate of my school, only to be remove by the local office under false pretenses. This and the issues of my toxic school was swept under the rug under Randi. Granted, this does add color to my vision of the Union. Randi is a nice person, but an attorney, not a labor leader or teacher. With Duncan in place we need a little more gravitas, not selfies. ClassSizeMatters is just a speck on the wall, while Long island Opt Out is the spoon that stirs the pot. I am pleased and startled to learn that CSM receives no support from the Union and that the benefactors will be made public by you as a board member.
By the way, Joseph, I was very critical, repeatedly, of the absurd moderation policies BATS pages on Facebook employed thanks to the Cult of Personality that ran the show nationally. I quit some groups and was booted from others for daring to question the omniscience of leaders and group moderators. It became evident that dialog was not welcome, only Amen Corners. That’s nothing new, particularly not lately, and “progressives” often seem just as repressive of speech and dissent as do reactionaries and conservatives. The folks who really believe in and fight consistently for free speech and open debate are all too few. College campuses have become among the worst places for free exchanges of ideas. Speech police, something Diane wrote about a long time ago, have continued to run riot in our institutions of higher learning. It’s shameful. I’m proud to support groups like F.I.R.E., a non-partisan (or bi-partisan) organization to protect speech rights and academic freedom on our campuses.
But again, this isn’t about BATS or CSM or teacher’s unions (and you must be aware that there are lots of factions in the big teacher’s unions, particularly in NYC; the folks I respect are not in the in-crowd and they’re not the ones getting funds from Gates or corporate NGOs). It’s about the opt-out movement. It’s about parents. It’s about people finally standing up and saying NO! to the corporate-driven educational deform movement in this country (and worldwide). If you are opposed to neoliberalism as you make yourself out to be, then step back, try to get your personal wounds and egotism off the table, and recognize that opting out is one of the most important ways that people have made the corporatists and their governmental puppets really sit up and take notice. Sure, they’ll try to co-opt this movement, too (it’s what they do). But unless you have direct evidence that such has been the case thus far (please, no shadowy conspiracies and leaps of logic: facts, documentation, evidence are what is called for), try to resist going the Charlotte Iserbyt route.
“I believe that working people have a right to representation, just like doctors (the AMA), lawyers (the ABA), and corporations (the Chambers of Commerce).”
… and I would name ALEC as the national union that collects dues from local and state Chambers of Commerce.
Joseph,
If you were to really study the recent history of teacher unions – the AFT and NEA – you would discover from the records and voting patterns that both, especially the AFT, have been more than 90% cooperative in the reform movement, opening charter schools, negotiating for merit pay, touting CCSS as they have been written, and doing virtually nothing about fighting for a fair and empirical teacher evaluation system. Randi Weingarten, for instance, has partnered with Eli Broad and Bill Gates and has taken money from at least the latter.
Unions drive a negligible amount of any push-back movement, and they certainly do not drive Opt-Out. Mommies and Daddies are pissed off enough about their loss of local control and the threat hanging over their favorite, respected, and effective teachers; they have caught on that testing mania and measuring things to death dominates teaching, learning, and the stability of their local public schools that THEY pay taxes for. That’s not to say that teaching and learning should never be measured, but the right kind of measurement for productive reasons is what’s missing in this whole sordid tale for almost two decades.
Parents, believe it or not, also understand that poverty is not being addressed with our expanding national scandalous 24% child poverty rate, even if such parents and their children are far from the poverty line.
There are no union proxies, and if ANYTHING, the teachers’ unions have failed to partner with parents and really listen to their needs. They chose not to galvanize and enfranchise parents, as they did not do so with teachers either. Instead, the unions were hell bent on not putting up any significance resistance so that the reformers would leave them alone and at least allow them to survive and collect union dues, much of which pay for high end executives within the unions and all their expensive fancy, overblown catered events. Google Randi Weingarten’s salary and “operating budget”.
The unions, if you really understand the devil in their details, are not at all democratically structured, so it is a formidable task for members to reinvent their unions, many of whom wanted a partnership with parents. This is difficult but not impossible.
If you are going to bash unions, please do so for accurate and fact-found reasons.
For the record – and if any of you have read my missives on unions on this blog – I am pro-union all the way . . . . That is, when unions behave like unions and not like weakened, bribed shills.
When I look to Northern and Western Europe, as I have connections to France and Italy and speak Spanish and French (and enough Italian to get around just fine), I have to say to myself, “Now THOSE are REAL unions!” Unions sustain the middle and working classes in Europe, even with all of their problems on both ends of employer and employee. Unions there would never allow nationalized healthcare to become privatized, nor would they allow workers to receive only two week of vacation per year. . . . or not have any paid sick days. The United States, when it comes to labor practices, is barbaric, and the sheeple are too conditioned and dumbed down to realize it. But they are finally waking up now and smelling the brew of inequity that used to be down the block, used to be in their backyard, and is NOW in their living room, under their bed covers, and in their bathtub.
I have never trashed unions, but I have attacked corruption and indifference within our own American unions, which is one of many different reasons what our unionized employees in the USA have dwindled to something like 7% when in 1974, they made up about 23% of the workforce.
All part of the growing pains of a still young democracy . . . . I wish more people would understand that.
Betsy,
The lion’s share of ALEC funding, derives from profits on goods and services, purchased by consumers.
In other words, we pay to have our democracy hijacked.
Nice quoting out of context, Joseph, to make Ms. Roy’s anti-capitalism book look like it’s anti-union. Try a bigger slice:
“As the IMF enforced Structural Adjustment, and arm-twisted governments into cutting back on public spending on health, education, childcare, development, the NGOs moved in. The Privatisation of Everything has also meant the NGO-isation of Everything. As jobs and livelihoods disappeared, NGOs have become an important source of employment, even for those who see them for what they are. And they are certainly not all bad. Of the millions of NGOs, some do remarkable, radical work and it would be a travesty to tar all NGOs with the same brush. However, the corporate or Foundation-endowed NGOs are global finance’s way of buying into resistance movements, literally like shareholders buy shares in companies, and then try to control them from within. They sit like nodes on the central nervous system, the pathways along which global finance flows. They work like transmitters, receivers, shock absorbers, alert to every impulse, careful never to annoy the governments of their host countries. (The Ford Foundation requires the organisations it funds to sign a pledge to this effect.) Inadvertently (and sometimes advertently), they serve as listening posts, their reports and workshops and other missionary activity feeding data into an increasingly aggressive system of surveillance of increasingly hardening States. The more troubled an area, the greater the numbers of NGOs in it.
Mischievously, when the government or sections of the Corporate Press want to run a smear campaign against a genuine people’s movement, like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, or the protest against the Koodankulam nuclear reactor, they accuse these movements of being NGOs receiving “foreign funding”. They know very well that the mandate of most NGOs, in particular the well-funded ones, is to further the project of corporate globalisation, not thwart it.
Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation, ushering them in the direction of multi-culturalism, gender, community development—the discourse couched in the language of identity politics and human rights.”
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/capitalism-a-ghost-story/280234
She’s CLEARLY talking about corporate NGOs, not teacher’s unions or anything of the kind. And you’re either very ignorant or very dishonest to have used that quotation to make it look otherwise. You should be ashamed.
Corporate NGOs are coming together with the Union. Are you not aware of the money received by the Union from the Gates Foundation to promote Common Core, and the NYC UFT President looking to “punch in the face” parents who may want to remove Common Core. There are numerous Union proxies who will not address this issue, I am hoping that OPT OUT is not one of them.
Michael, I am glad that your narrow focus is comforting.
“Having worked out how to manage governments, political parties, elections, the courts, the media and liberal opinion, the neoliberal establishment faced one more challenge; how to deal with growing unrest, the threat of “peoples’ power”. How do you domesticate it? How do you turn protestors into pets. How do you vacuum up people’s fury and redirect it into blind alleys?”
Arundhati Roy (2014)
Joseph, my “narrow focus” was to quote a huge context in which the quotation you mis-used appeared. If you can parse what Ms. Roy said such that corporate NGOs morph into US teacher’s unions, independent groups like Class Size Matters, etc., I’d love to see you pull off such a magic trick. But until then, I reiterate my previous claim about what you did: it was either bad reading, misreading, or non-reading.
I’m not sure what your issue(s) are here, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. The point is about parents opting out of misbegotten high stakes tests. Parents have NEVER danced to the tunes of teacher’s unions, and given how conservative many of the parents are in greater NYC who are opting their kids out and opposing the Common Core (or perhaps you aren’t very familiar with Nassau County Long Island, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of radical politics; if not try reading the running commentary about the Common Core that shows up all over the Internet from that part of the world, or try similar commentary from Staten Island, Westchester County, etc., and then tell me that these are folks being dictated to by teacher’s unions or any other unions), it’s impossible to believe that the opt-out movement there (or in lots of other parts of the country) is some sort of union-funded, union-driven stealth attack.
That said, you clearly have a bug up your butt here, and having just seen your most recent comment to Diane, I think I glean what it is: some union treated you badly. Welcome to the world of public education. I’ve taken my lumps from my own union, too. But you went off half-cocked here, attacking two perfectly independent and progressive groups because you were dissed by your local? And the quotations from Roy are just utterly off base in this context. Roy is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. She’s not anti-union and her comments simply have nothing to do with this conversation unless directed against astroturf groups and the corporate-funded NGOs that help create and support them. You say you know and respect Leonie Haimson, but that didn’t stop you from falsely calling CSM a union front.
My issues with the Union are not personal, but they have cleared my vision about the role of Unions, which I share with parents, that the Union does not give a RA about their children. as they are funded by the Corporations, who create the trash materials for test prep and testing
Joseph, making blanket comments about unions is just foolish. Offering specific criticisms grounded in facts is fine. But I know enough people in NYC who are union and progressive and VERY much about kids that I can’t just sit quietly while you make overly-broad claims. Would we be better off as a nation without the labor movement? Should we do away with unions because there have been and continue to be corrupt ones? Or should we fight for integrity and transparency while continuing to recognize that unions are the only reason we’re not ALL working for minimum wage with zero benefits 6 1/2 days a week.
I am with MPG, not Joseph, on this issue. If the union is corrupt, we have to fix it. Without any public structure (ie without a union), there is no opportunity to fix anything, and Joseph’s issues are not heard.
Education policy has been captured by very well funded “research fellows” (the hands that rock the cradle at NYSED). Even regents who seem able to see the insanity of the temporary APPR rule they are getting ready to vote into permanency, are likely to do just that be\cause they feel obligated to support the lead of legislators-legislators that HAD to vote a budget in to keep the state running, a budget that Cuomo took hostage by wedging a teacher-attack APPR into. So when he pulls the “I have nothing to do with all these upset parents and children, it’s the legislature, SED, the teachers…” The fellows include familiar initials, organizations, charter-pushers…Of course they like a tests-to-fire teachers APPR plan (they probably wrote it). They include battalions of young, cheap, transient teachers and charter schools that can engineer their enrollment to give the illusion of excellence.
Michael,
Thanks so much for your (patient) replies to Joseph, here. He is so incredibly wrongheaded. So quick to tar Leonie, for example, a woman who is beyond hardworking… and the union? The UFT? The UFT has been UTTERLY nonsupportive of Opt Out. I am a parent. I believe absolutely that a teacher’s working conditions are my child’s learning conditions. This is why I am in theory in favor of teachers’ unions, but very disappointed in the deeply conservative nature of this particular one. I hope one day soon that a more progressive caucus, like MORE, will prevail.
The Board of Regents are elected by the NYS legislature. Is that he problem? Is the legislature captive to the NGO’s of which you speak?
The union here is definitely not telling me what to do! I am a parent in favor of opting out and have been trying to get teachers and my district’s union leaders on board or at least to voice their opinions on it to me–getting very little back from them so far.
I’m sure that teachers and union reps are afraid they’ll loose their jobs if they go against the system. I’d guess that is why you’ve heard, …”very little back from them…” I’d also guess that talk behind closed doors supports you.
Keep up the good work of opting out and working to get unions and teachers on board!! The more that parents like you speak out the more confident teachers will become.
As a parent I make the decisions for my children. As a teacher in the school my children attend, I follow state policy/school policy. As president of my local union, I advise other teachers to do the same. But I advise ALL to contact your NYSED regent…all of them, even, and your legislator. The TFA, Studentsfirst, Gates, Fordham, all the suddenly (but very quietly) caring political action money that has the time and freedom to hang out in Albany…they all have the ability to be a swollen tick on the ass of the political process. I have to work, raise a family, pay my bills…and so does everyone else around me. But the overwhelming action and involvement of these and other ordinary people has DEFINITELY gotten attention. Across the nation, really. I have seen the narrative-shift in reform-rags like edu-post. Suddenly, they care about the plight of those middle class suburban white folks who are also getting short-changed out of a quality education when they don’t buy into test-reliant reform. Cuomo suddenly popped up all caring about the kids, blaming all the troubles in NY on the legislature, on SED…never bothering to mention that where we are at now is a direct result of his policies, his attitudes, and the imbalance of power that allows him to hold a state budget hostage by demanding the very test-centered approach parents are rejecting. It really is people who know better that are trying to make their voices heard. It will be interesting to see what type of “listening” our leaders will be allowed to do by the money behind the curtain.
“The TFA, Studentsfirst, Gates, Fordham, all the suddenly (but very quietly) caring political action money that has the time and freedom to hang out in Albany…they all have the ability to be a swollen tick on the ass of the political process. ”
What a metaphor! I can’t get the image out of my mind.
There is a cartoon where literally bricks are being taken from a public school in wheel barrows by workers while next door a sign reads “Under Construction Another Great Charter School” where, using those public school bricks, workers are building the charter school. I wish I could post it here; I don’t know where it came from as I found it on Facebook. A truer cartoon there never was.
The sign, ” Under construction, another great Wall Street charter school. Debt enriches hedge funds,18% APY.”
I heard this Monday, Sept. 7, 2015 on Marketplace. The doctors are fighting back against the on-line testing nonsense! Perhaps these doctors can join and support the parent-led opt-out movement.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/health-care/upstart-certification-doctors
An upstart in the certification of doctors
by Gretchen Cuda Kroen
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Featured in: Marketplace for Monday, September 7, 2015
Sounds like they haven’t backtracked to find out who is benefiting from all the fees they pay. Who produces these modules? I wonder if Pearson is involved? It is very interesting that when doctors moved to form their own organization that all of a sudden the traditional board was all apologetic and conciliatory. Someone is making big bucks.
“All Tied Up”
Andrew made his bed
Where now he has to lie
Opt out is the thread
That keeps him in a tie
Very good, Poet.
Good that parents are speaking out.
Thanks for the reading suggestions. Hurray for studies and scholars in the arts and humanities, and histories of science, mathematics, and technologies…and education.
I found “Seeing Like a State” as a pdf and have been enjoying the road trip through a lot of familiar territory. https://libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf
I grew up knowing about the orthodoxies of the modernists in architecture and planning. Their ideas are alive and well and have migrated to federal policies in education and the agendas of foundations. I also learned from the contrarians, including Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Kevin Lynch’s vocabulary for how cities work, Kenneth Boulding’s, The Image.
Think about policies foisted on schools as you read this passage from Seeing like a State. pp 110-111. Begin quote
When several or many purposes must be considered, the variables that the planner must juggle begin to boggle the mind. Faced with such a labyrinth of possibilities, as Le Corbusier noted, “the human mind loses itself and becomes fatigued.”
The segregation of functions thus allowed the planner to think with greater clarity about efficiency. If the only function of roads is to get automobiles from A to B quickly and economically, then one can compare two road plans in terms of relative efficiency. This logic is eminently reasonable inasmuch as this is precisely what we have in mind when we build a road from A to B. Notice, however, that the clarity is achieved by bracketing the many other purposes that we may want roads to serve, such as affording the leisure of a touristic drive, providing aesthetic beauty or visual interest, or enabling the transfer of heavy goods. Even in the case of roads, narrow criteria of efficiency
ignore other ends that are not trivial.
In the case of the places that people call home, narrow criteria of efficiency do considerably greater violence to human practice. Le Corbusier calculates the air (la respiration exacte), heat, light, and space people need as a matter of public health. Starting with a figure of fourteen square meters per person, he reckons that this could be reduced to ten square meters if such activities as food preparation and laundering were communal. But here the criteria of efficiency that may apply to a road can hardly do justice to a home, which is variously used as a place for work, recreation, privacy, sociability, education, cooking, gossip, politics, and so on. Each of these activities, moreover, resists being reduced to criteria of efficiency; what is going on in the kitchen when someone is cooking for friends who have gathered there is not merely “food preparation.” But the logic of efficient planning from above for large populations requires that each of the values being maximized be sharply specified and that the number of values being maximized simultaneously be sharply restricted—preferably to a single value.
The logic of Le Corbusier’s doctrine was to carefully delineate urban space by use and function so that single-purpose planning and standardization were possible. End Quote
Le Corbusier’s doctrine operates in schools where the most important aim is academic preparation and having the technical know-how to get students from from pre-test to post-test efficiently with an acceptable level of performance. The value that matters most is the test score and the deriviative VAM.
This is so interesting. Apt comparisons. The reformers are, figuratively speaking, razing Greenwich Village to build a freeway.
Compare the ideas of Le Corbusier to the ideas of Christopher Alexander
“The conventional master plan cannot solve the basic problem [creating an organic order as opposed to totalitarian order] because it is too rigid to do so — and, because, in addition, it creates an entirely now set of other problems, more devastating in human terms than the chaos it is meant to govern” — from The Oregon Experiment, by Christopher Alexander
Alexander understands what school “reformers” do not. That the best solutions to problems (eg, architectural and educational) are not totalitarian ones imposed from above, but “organic” solutions which are an outgrowth of local conditions.
He also understands that design is an ongoing process — never set once and for all time in stone (as Common Core was/is)
should be “entirely new”
“Alexander understands what school “reformers” do not. That the best solutions to problems (eg, architectural and educational) are not totalitarian ones imposed from above, but “organic” solutions which are an outgrowth of local conditions.”
Yes! (Fist pump.)
Diane, they revealed their true colors in the following portion of the statement: “to take the flawed common core tests tied to an unstable teacher and principal evaluation scheme“. Not only does the word “scheme” denote a pejorative view of evaluation but they clearly have nothing against the test itself. They simply don’t want teachers evaluated. This is of, for and by the teachers.
Virginia. That’s ridiculous. I have written many times that it is wrong to tie test scores of students to teacher evaluations. It promotes teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, gaming the system, and cheating. No high performing nation in the world does it. We should not either.
‘…they clearly have nothing against the “flawed common core tests”…’?! Say what?
I always want to be evaluated in several levels every day and every year, Virginasgp. I do get evaluated accordingly.
Since you have taught for so many years in a public school with low income children, please share your expertise.
Robert, pray tell us exactly how you want to be evaluated objectively? Did you want your principal to observe you and give you the same grade as the other 99% of teachers who are given “great” marks?
Or did you want to evaluate yourself as those in my county do. They write up their own evaluations and then provide “documentation” on how they met each goal. I am just shocked that no teacher in the history of the world has ever given himself/herself a less than passing grade.
I don’t suppose you want to be graded on outcome measures like VAMs, eh?
Do you think that 99% of the teachers in your school are “great”? What system have you ever seen that evaluates less than 99% of the teachers as great?
Virginia, the VAM all over the country found more than 95% of teachers to be “effective” or “highly effective.” Why do you lust for firings?
> Not only does the word “scheme” denote a pejorative view of evaluation but they clearly have nothing against the test itself.
Clearly, you have no clue about testing and its problem. No single country that outranks the US of A has ever made such a stupid punitive teacher-evaluation system based on standardized tests.
While I think people at the bottom can and should have influence at the top, I totally understand your point about top down planning >>> “they ignore the people way down there on the ground, the people who actually know how things work, not how the planners think they ought to work.” I hope to see people at the state level support efforts around defining and measuring achievement…achievement relevant to the needs of its people. http://empowermentnetwork.org/2015/09/08/education-next-poll-results-ecaa-and-state-level-accountability/
The elephant in the room is the Union. The Union can no longer be considered a “labor union” since it is receiving funding from corporate entities to “devise” programs of education for industry. No one challenges the sincerity of the parents. Even the Governor is now claiming that Common Core is a failure. What does raise questions about independence of “proxy Union” organizations, by default, is their complacency with the policies of the Union, which continues to support Common Core (please don’t mention implementation).
This Union has already stated that those who look to remove Common Core (parents) will be “punched in the face”..None of these Union proxies will speak out against the Union on Common Core, while the Chicago teachers union has abandoned it.
Please direct me to those Union proxies that are taking the Union head on about Common Core and the funding from the Gates Foundation. Are they with us or against us (the parents)
Changing the Union to support teachers and parents, and come out for the “demise” of Common Core, would be a game changer since many elected officials follow its direction.
It appears that the conditioning is complete, this thread has moved in support of unions to changing them, to feeling sorry for activists. To close the thread, you can not change unions, just by elections, if even that, if they are taking corporate money. The new president in New York NYSUT still follows the party line that Gates’ Common Core is great and that the parents are wrong.
Rather than Union proxies licking their wounds, they should come out against the Union on this position, which is bedrock with parents, who actually see its results.
As much as Class Size Matters and is supported by the Union, since it creates jobs, Common Core Matters. Without teachers in charge of their own classrooms, class size is moot. Many organizations are dependent on the Union for donations. Those that are not will come out immediately and address the obstacles that the Union has created to Common Core’s demise. This is not to pick on CSM or BATS or Save Our Schools, they all are fearful and dependent on the Union, or they would address the Union and Common Core, the elephant in the room.
Joseph, the Common Core is just one elephant in the room, and it’s not the biggest one. A one has been cleverly identified and labeled GERM by Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg. and you can see who many of the players are in the US by looking at – surprise! – the corporate-funded NGOs, Astroturfing groups, etc. Diane has written about this stuff for a long time and so have many others. The unions aren’t the big players here, but I don’t get the sense that there is a blanket endorsement here for all the things teacher’s union LEADERSHIP has done. Indeed, there has been a lot of criticism thereof, most recently when leadership rammed through an endorsement of Hillary Clinton and before that one for Obama in 2012 without getting any sort of commitment to meaningful reform of the deform stuff (including NCLB, Race to the Top, CCSSI, and the high-stakes testing disaster).
In NYC, there is the MORE faction that continues to support progressive issues in our public schools and is critical of most of what seems to concern you (other than your apparent obsession with blanket attacks on unions).
Why you continue to speak about Class Size Matters or Save Our Schools or any opt-out group I don’t understand other than as your anti-union hobby horse you’re going to ride forever. As for BATs, well, I honestly don’t see them as particularly important or influential, but my understanding is that they went through some internal changes. If for the better, I’m happy to hear it and if not, I don’t see why they are at all relevant to the opt-out movement which, you may recall, is the subject of this blog piece. But you seem dedicated to hijacking the conversation to be about unions. I won’t be further distracted with that effort: I think you’re misbehaving and won’t stop until you get your way. You don’t really care about facts: you see evil unions backed by evil Bill Gates under every rock, dictating to every parent or teacher group and it’s just not so.
We GET that Gates and others try to influence unions but that isn’t quite the same as demonstrating that he’s also somehow behind Opt-out groups and in fact given his role in the Common Core it would make zero sense for him or Broad or anyone else of that ilk to be backing these parent groups. Is there some crazy right-wing stuff going on in some of those groups? Yes, undeniably so. But that really doesn’t change the thrust of what they’re doing for the most part when it comes to undermining bad tests and the evil that’s being done with test scores.
I think right-wing parents and groups are off their collective rockers with some of their complaints, but that’s unsurprising. I think some left-wing critics are also a bit nuts. But anyone who is reasonably critical of Common Core and, more importantly, of GERM is okay in my book. The key words are “reasonably” and “critical.” Work on getting to that point or don’t. But please consider ceasing from muddying the waters with your personal and not well-founded obsession.
The biggest “corporate funded” NGO is the Union, Michael, so I can’t parse the Arundhati Roy comments as you have, and their money from Gates and other corporate benefactors goes to “award ceremonies” and distracting parents and teachers away from the Common Core and test prep with cutouts of “social justice” issues, which are real, but used as distractions, shadows.
Which part of “punch in the face” by the Union President, parents who oppose Common Core, is their trouble understanding?
Joseph, I don’t belong to any union, but it was my understanding that the unions are funded by dues from members.
Joseph, your #1 problem is that you have no facts to back most of your claims, and you extrapolate so wildly from the few facts you do have that it’s hard (nay, impossible) to take your exaggerated conclusions seriously. Add to that the utter lack of logic in your claims about unions being the biggest NGOs (let alone your completely ungrounded leap that they are what Roy is talking about AT ALL), and you simply come off as what the British would call a “nutter.” Are there tiny grains of truth in some of what you say? Already granted. But they are surrounded by so much bilge and wild exaggerations that the overall impact is to make you into a kind of left-wing Charlotte Iserbyt or Beverly Eakman, two of the wackier right-wing conspiracy theorists about public education in this country (sad to say, John Taylor Gatto occasionally becomes entwined with them and their thinking, though I believe there has been a falling out between him and Iserbyt, and at this point his health is so awful that I doubt he’ll be able to weigh in much if at all on these issues again anytime soon, if ever).
I addressed your deep concerns with Michael Mulgrew’s offensive comments about face punching in another response so there’s no need to get into that again. You won’t agree with my remarks or will ignore them, of course, and you’ll just continue singing your same one-note song. Were you as fanatical in your support of teacher’s unions as your are in your current hatred of them before someone did you a bad turn? My teacher’s union left me to hang out to dry in 1998, and it was 100% clear that they worked in concert with the school district, not in the service of the rank-and-file teachers who paid them (or at least not a new union teacher like me). I lived. The experience didn’t shock me, given that I’ve known union teachers in NYC and elsewhere most of my adult life who suffered far more indignities at the hands of their union than did I. Had I remained in that district, I might have been able to help bring about needed changes. There are folks in NYC trying to do that. They’re people of real integrity, intelligence, and decency. Why not volunteer to help them accomplish something positive instead of furthering your career as a pain in the behind who serves only himself (and not very well, on my view)?
“This is not to pick on CSM or BATS or Save Our Schools, they all are fearful and dependent on the Union, or they would address the Union and Common Core, the elephant in the room.”
They are addressing the union and Common Core by their very existence.
Action is needed to challenge the Union policy, not “existence”.
None of them have any influence EXCEPT Opt Out, which is Snow White, and the dwarfs are the Union proxies.
It’s really late here (I couldn’t sleep &, also, woke up early to get ready for a retired teachers {NEA-Retired} luncheon, at which we heard from, conversed with & Q-&-Aed 2 state representatives & an administrative assistant taking the place of her congressional boss {she was in D.C.}). As retired teachers (still in the state local & NEA–some of us being life members), many of our group know the parents who started & who perpetuate the opt out movement here, who worked with the state reps. to craft an opt out bill & get it co-sponsors, and who kept this in the forefront of the news. And–as a once active teacher who had to administer these tests (or not, actually–for Duane–not GAGA at all, but a long story off-thread)–I salute the parents who started & keep the opting out movement alive, growing and–most importantly–effective. Having said that, I am wary of all the union criticism in some of these comments. One really important thing to remember is that the union(s) should not be characterized by their leaders, but by the rank-&-file. And–as one local president who commented above (& I’ve found the locals & their leaders {particularly presidents} to be extremely strong advocates for their students and parents. The best part of being a retired union member is that we have been readily able to help in the opt out movement–numbers of us handed out opt-out literature to CPS students & parents (& would do so at suburban schools, which I suspect will happen this year). Our local had a business meeting, after which we sponsored 2 parent opt out leaders to explain opting out to suburban parents, providing them with literature & helping them to spread the word.
So–we retired union teachers are proud to say that we’ve been able to help, & will certainly continue to do so. We have no consequences, as would a classroom teacher, & we are happy–to paraphrase that great statement up there–to be “a swollen tic on that ass” of the CCRAP testing machine, one that steals public education from our children, both in time & in money.
(Again–very tired–hope this made sense.)
JOSEPH’S LOGIC: Speaking for myself, the whole reason for BATs is because the unions were not adequately fighting unfair policies. But because BATs are also mostly members of the unions, we do not attack them by bashing them publicly as Joseph seems to be salivating to see. We want the unions to improve and represent the rank and file more, not go away. Rather than bash our own union, we do it internally, via direct communication, or running in union elections to fight harder for the things we believe in.
But the best way is to work independently to accomplish things which draw great public support. Opt-out is a perfect example, with BATs just one of many groups to help bring wide attention to the parents of NY. I was pleased to see the state union finally come aboard, which signaled progress, but I’m tired of batting down accusations that they influenced BATs or the larger opt-out movement because it’s a lazy attempt to connect previous anti-union messaging to this new, different situation.
CORRELATION VS. CAUSATION: You and some Daily News reporters seem to be the last holdouts perpetuating this myth, which we have to continually debunk, so please either demonstrate some evidence to prove BATs are controlled by unions, (because it would be news to me) or concede the point. As stated above, the suggestion that unions are influenced by corporate cash may be so, but then would completely contradict the idea that they are behind opt-out.
You also repeatedly bring up what “some” BATs did to you, which suggests an axe to grind with individuals, for which you broadbrush a much larger organization, using the comment section of an article that was supposed to be discussing the anti-hierarchal structure of the anti-testing movement.
@Jake J.: Thanks for your comment reinforcing and amplifying some of the points I and some others have tried to make to Joseph. However, I think he is deaf to such criticism.
“Rather than bash our own union, we do it internally, via direct communication, or running in union elections to fight harder for the things we believe in”.
First of all there is nothing Bad Ass about BATS if they are going to get rolled by the Union. I am sure that there are many nice teachers there, as I am also a retired teacher.
Parents don’t have time to waste with your naval gazing and utopian reforms of the Union in the future, as you stroke the serious parent representatives. They are acting in the NOW and the Union wants to punch them and teachers in the face.
Wake up!! Help parents, children and teachers, get off the morphine drip of your leaders, who are taking selfies with the President Obama, while grandparents in Chicago are dying of hunger strike with Obama soul mates, the Mayor of Chicago and and his ball buddy Arnie Duncan.
It takes a special kind of person to refuse to listen to ANYTHING anyone else has to say. No one denies that there are some idiots leading some unions, including some teacher’s unions, and there’s no news there. But when a leader of a union makes a controversial and highly offensive statement that hardly demonstrates that s/he is speaking for everyone or even a majority or significant minority of the rank and file.
UFT’s Michael Mulgrew is notoriously combative and bombastic. But he doesn’t speak for me and clearly doesn’t speak for many members of his own union let alone all teachers. You seem absolutely unwilling to look at the situation with any nuance whatsoever. And the issues surrounding the Common Core are complex, no matter what one’s general opinion of them and what should be done with them may be. Failure to distinguish among various aspects of the actual standards themselves, the concomitant exams, the various curricular materials published which, of course, claim to be perfectly aligned with those standards, the corporate agenda behind the development and roll out, while we may wish to dismiss the whole thing (what I call the Common Core Initiative [CCSSI] to try to distinguish it from individual aspects), we would be foolish to miss the fact that much of what’s in those standards is identical to or very close to perfectly reasonable standards of individual states and professional organizations (e.g., the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics). Do we seriously want to eliminate those things forever from our classrooms? I hope not, for if we do we’ll be deep-sixing a lot of excellent stuff. Have you checked, for example, the Standards for Mathematical Practice? On my view as a professional mathematics educator, teacher educator, and teacher coach, they are excellent; they adhere closely to the Process Standards NCTM published years ago. I believe that the vast majority of my colleagues agree with and support those principles. And they only coincidentally are now labelled as part of the Common Core. Unfortunately, some extreme critics of CCSSI regularly lump everything affiliated in any way with it into the same basket and want to throw it all away, preferably permanently. You come off as such an extremist, Joseph, though I doubt you are at all familiar with the particulars unless you’re a retired mathematics teacher.
Getting back to Michael Mulgrew, don’t you find it at all intriguing that he wants to punch critics of the Common Core in the mouth (for attempts at taking something away from him that he claims to value), and Chris Christie wants to punch people like him in the face (or have I got the anatomy wrong)? Maybe just put the two of them in a locked room and let them punch away for Old Glory. But neither represents me or my concerns about education, and neither has a thing to do with the Opt Out movement or Class Size Matters. And likely nothing to do with BATS, though once again I must say that that is an organization about which I care nothing at this juncture.
It’s a safe bet that Christie opposes that, but like other conservative, reactionary, libertarian, and neoliberal governors he has a problem: many teachers and parents oppose the CCSSI. Many of those governors were on board with it before they were opposed to it (see Jindal, Bobby). These same pols want “accountability” for teachers which they view strictly in terms of high-stakes standardized tests (no reason to believe that any money from the big testing companies greased any palms there, right?) So the pols HAVE to want these tests, regardless. Now that the roll-out of the testing is in full-swing and the predictable bad results are coming in, as well as some intelligent and pointed criticism of the instruments, which way do these governors jump?
I won’t even attempt to parse Mulgrew’s nonsense. I’m not sure that he matters much. He likes the Common Core but he can’t possibly like the ways the new (or old) tests are being used against teachers in high-needs and impoverished public school districts. But he’s angry or was a couple of years ago and wants to punch some folks: I really think a cage match with Christie would be a fabulous fundraiser for inner-city and rural poor districts, particularly if there were pay-per-view proceeds. With all the time you seem to have on your hands to say a lot of inaccurate and wrong-headed things, why not take that idea up, promote the battle, make yourself a few bucks for your retirement? And stop wasting everyone’s time here with nonsense.
Please, “And the issues surrounding the Common Core are complex, no matter what one’s general opinion of”
These have not been field tested and they are not “complex” to parents and children, the Union has no business in this field of approving curriculum for Gates’ dollars. They never challenged any other programs.
Parents need to put this union hand wringing aside and recognize that they have sold out their children and teachers. The Union proxies need to step up and not suck up to “awards” for their indifference.
Joseph, what on earth were you certified to teach? Your ability to read and comprehend anything more subtle than “Unions are totally evil and in the control of Bill Gates” appears to be non-existent. You’re a complete waste of time other than as a reverse weathervane or a very weak foil for people who care to look an angstrom beneath the surface of issues.
Maybe create a numbered template for your tiny menu of thoughts on these issues, then just post it and make your comments shorter by offering one or more numbers from that list? Because you seriously have nothing much to say, but you seem dedicated to saying it over and over no matter what anyone else offers up in return. You aren’t looking for a conversation, debate, dialogue, or anything of the sort.
Michael, “thou dost protest too much”, was it Shakespeare who said that? I must be landing some good ideas, that you are speaking for everyone on this site. I was an adjunct in literacy for the UFT’s Union teacher center at Long Island University as well as Queens College Graduate School. Please provide your credentials. I have a degree in educational administration and finished my doctoral work in literacy studies. Teachers with those credentials do not stoop to you personal attacks, but try to understand who you represent, obviously not parents or children.
Oh, my, Joseph: a peeing contest! How lovely. And whom would you suggest judges which of us has the “bigger” credentials? You are a silly man.
But if I don’t play, you’ll cry that I’m not qualified, even though you know already that I clearly am. Amateurs don’t wander in off the street to comment on this sort of thing very often, and when they do, they’re rarely as articulate about it. Then again, “big” credentials coupled with a lack of clear writing and thinking skills hardly stopped your repeated “contributions,” so maybe I should steer clear of even modest generalizations.
I have three master’s degrees: one in literature and one in psychological foundations of education, both from the University of Florida; and a master’s in mathematics education from the University of Michigan. I have been certified to teach secondary English and mathematics from the State of Vermont and in mathematics by the State of Michigan. Would you like my GRE scores, Joseph? I don’t think you would. Of course, I could also make up a bunch of things to pad the above, but that’s pointless.
Now, as for whom I “claim to represent,” I didn’t realize I was representing anyone but myself. However, I do have knowledge as to where the majority of post-secondary mathematics teacher education folks stand on many issues regarding K-12 math education. It would be difficult not to have acquired that after attending professional conferences, reading relevant research and practitioner literature in my field, and engaging nearly 25 years’ worth of online conversations, debates, etc., on relevant topics.
I’m well aware that leadership of NCTM has generally and officially endorsed the Common Core Math Standards. I think that’s unfortunate and have written multiple public and private pieces expressing my disagreement. The situation reminds me to no little extent of the way the big teacher’s unions endorsed Obama in ’12 and Hillary Clinton in ’16 without demanding any clear commitment at all to progressive educational principles and practices, though in the case of NCTM & the Common Core, I believe leadership swallowed the doubtful notion that the inclusion of the Principles for Mathematical Practice somehow ensured an overall commitment to progressive math education on the part of the US DOE and the rest of the machinery behind CCSSI. On my view, as I warned several presidents of NCTM repeatedly, this is a false hope. Subsequent events have confirmed my view, but I hold out zero hope for NCTM, which has had a fundamentally conservative Board of Directors for as long as I’ve been aware of the organization, to switch gears and offer a more nuanced take on the Common Core. They rarely have missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to actually win something on behalf of the kids they’re supposed to be fighting for. And they’re not a union and I doubt Bill Gates has to bother to try to bribe leadership to roll over.
Don’t fool yourself into believing that because your annoying nonsense engenders responses that you’re scoring points. Like most ‘Net trolls, all you want is attention. You’re getting it, but that isn’t quite the same as convincing anyone of anything. I have more than once stated that there are a few grains of truth in your overall output, but they are lost in the mass of garbage in which they are embedded. Despite my dislike of your style, I am not the sort of person to ignore or dismiss real insights just because I can’t stomach the source. But you really overrate the volume of what you say that is worthwhile, and none of it is even vaguely new to me or, I suspect, many other readers here. Lots of conspiracy theorists have ranted about unions, Gates, CCSSI, etc. But there is more than enough better writing, better documentation, better thinking, better analysis on these issues out there that there’s no need to pick through the trash to find your occasional insight.
And finally, you can’t seem to make yourself just state the obvious: you totally overreached with your original snipes at Class Size Matters and the Opt-Out movement. As for BATS, you brought them into this, not Diane, and they aren’t the issue here at all. How about an apology for going off the deep end, wrongheadedly, on what actually was the point being made? And then shutting up for a bit, at least until the conversation turns to what matters so much to you? Or better yet, Joseph, since you’re so educated, so knowledgeable, so filled with revelations: why not do what Diane has done and start your own blog? I have blogged on these issues and math education for nearly a decade. Go carve out your own ground (and see how you like it when someone tries to hijack one of your posts!)
I know that when attacks become rude and personal, that your opponent is floundering, like Michael, though he did mention Barbara Eakman, who offends him as a parent against psychological testing of children with out parental permission. This is his idea of “conspiracy theories”. Parents have expressed this concern without this demeaning language.
In any event, Diane, the Union is funded by dues of teachers and corporate financing to support their vision of education. You are right with the first part.
I’m sure you do know when things become rude and personal. You have insulted most of the participants here and Diane with your attempts to hijack the thread and turn it towards you narrow, personal obsessions. Ms. Eakman and Ms. Iserbyt are crazy, on my view, but that’s a debate I’m only interested in having with people who: 1) have read some of their works; and 2) are actually capable of keeping things within the bounds of reasonable evidence. I’m pretty sure that leaves you out on both counts.
Hmmm, peeing contest, Michael, I am sure that Diane appreciates your taking this “high ground” with your Florida degrees. I have tried to close this thread, despite your anger.
Let’s all agree to disagree for Diane’s sake, that you cherish.
Joseph, how did I know in advance that you’d mention my Florida degrees but not the one from the University of Michigan? Could you be more transparent or predictable?
The thread isn’t yours to close. Our disagreement does not comprise ownership, a point you seem unwilling to grasp. (And besides, I’ve seen ZERO evidence before your latest comment that you had “tried to close this thread.” Pray tell, in what manner did you do so? Perhaps in a comment I didn’t see?)
If you’re going to continue to post on this thread, however, you might at least wait before hitting “Post Comment” to check if you’ve said anything even vaguely new. If not, consider NOT sending it.
Go Blue!
Thanks, FLERP! but they’ll need more help than that tomorrow and for the rest of this season. 😦 And as a former Gator, I have to suffer watching Urban Meyer take OSU to another national title this year. As far as college football is concerned, this will be a good season for me to take up more volunteer work.
Indeed I suggested closing the thread, you must have missed it, all is forgiven. I think that your dream of representing everyone including Diane might have brought discomfort for those that have not fallen into your imagined camp. I know that Diane encourages friendly discourse.
Diane did have an interesting comment about the teacher organizations, that are corporate NGOs, do indeed collect dues, this hearkens back in history, as a remnant of the era when there were labor unions in this country.
Sports is the opiate of political organizing.
Here is a story from Plato called “the Cave”.
Imagine that those in the Cave are teachers and parents
and the shadows are “social justice issues”
to distract them from the Corporate agenda
to dumb kids down with Common Core and Test Prep
on computers.
http://historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html