Lest we forget. This is the real Andrew Cuomo.
I said when he ran for his second term in 2014 that he sounded like Scott Walker.
Vowing to break “one of the only remaining public monopolies,” Gov. Cuomo on Monday said he’ll push for a new round of teacher evaluation standards if re-elected.
Cuomo, during a meeting with the Daily News Editorial Board, said better teachers and competition from charter schools are the best ways to revamp an underachieving and entrenched public education system.
“I believe these kinds of changes are probably the single best thing that I can do as governor that’s going to matter long-term,” he said, “to break what is in essence one of the only remaining public monopolies — and that’s what this is, it’s a public monopoly.”
He said the key is to put “real performance measures with some competition, which is why I like charter schools.”
Cuomo said he will push a plan that includes more incentives — and sanctions — that “make it a more rigorous evaluation system.”
Cuomo expects fierce opposition from the state’s teachers, who are already upset with him and have refused to endorse his re-election bid.
“The teachers don’t want to do the evaluations and they don’t want to do rigorous evaluations — I get it,” Cuomo said. “I feel exactly opposite.”
He backed off because of the success of the Opt Out movement, after 200,000 students chose not to take the state tests.
He formed a commission and tempered his language. But he continues to privilege charter schools, because that’s where the big campaign contributions come from, the ones that have built a war chest for him of $30 million.
Will the unions that he blasted in 2014 support Andrew Cuomo in 2018?

The question also will the UFT support their NYSUT brothers and sisters who will not endorse Cuomo.
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https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
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The opt out movement is lead by teachers. Fact: when my daughter had a 5th grade teacher who was evaluated at 100%, every single student gained skills in math and English. Another class had an awful teacher and every student lost ground that year. Parents need to research and demand the good teachers. Just saying.
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Wrong again. The opt out movement is led by parents. Jeannette Deutermann is the leader of Opt Out on Long Island. With some exceptions, the unions have not supported Opt Out. The state’s most powerful union, the UFT in NYC, opposes Opt Out.
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Listen to the leader of Opt Out Long Island.
A parent, not a teacher:
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2018/03/jeanette-deutermann-on-why-she.html
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The Unions position can be explained by the concept of “Value on Display “. Basically a tactic to avoid confrontation by showing the quality of the workforce you provide. . The problem is that across the board from the factory floor , to the construction site to the class room . The employers and end users no longer care about quality which implies increased cost and either lower profits or higher taxes.
So the tactic that avoids confrontation since the devastating losses of the 80s ,lowering wages and destroying working conditions, has been a failure.
But the alternative is confrontation . And how far do you want that confrontation to go . Will you win that confrontation . Is now the time to confront. We may find out shortly in NYC . The strikes we saw from teachers, have so far been from those who have nothing left to lose . What happens when workers who have not lost it all yet are asked to stand with a movement?
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What does it mean to be “evaluated at 100%?”
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I wondered the same thing..
Maybe it means the teacher got a perfect evaluation score, but I find that hard to believe.
It’s more likely that the “evaluated at 100%” claim is just bogus/meaningless.
The “every single student gained skills” and “every single student lost ground” claims are the sort of “talking points” that VAMbots regularly make about “good” and “bad” teachers.
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“Parents need to research and demand the good teachers.”
Hey, when you find that secret location where all the really good teachers are hiding, please be sure to give your principal a call.
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And how do you propose parents to research and demand alleged good teachers — by using the results of flawed and meaningless test scores?
it is also a FACT that during the Vergara trial in 2012, the “alleged” experts (I recall they were Harvard professors) for the group of nine California students (funded by anti-public education millionaires/billionaires) that filed this lawsuit against the state arguing that teacher tenure, seniority and layoff policies result in unequal student outcomes, testified that they guessed from decades of observations that 1 to 3 percent of teachers was incompetent.
And that guess from those alleged experts was the evidence used to attempt to take away due process rights from public school teachers — an attempt that failed after an appeal overturned to Vergara judge’s ruling in this case.
But was does that 1 to 3 percent “guess” by those alleged education experts mean.
In 2016-17, California had 10, 477 public schools with 274,246 terachers teaching 6,228,235 children/teens.
1-percent is 2,742
3-percent is 8,227
Wow, even at 3-percent, that means at least 2,220 public schools in California didn’t have one incompetent teacher.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/cb/ceffingertipfacts.asp
And how reliable are standardized test scores in determining if a teacher is incompetent?
Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Educational Quality
“Educators should definitely be held accountable. The teaching of a nation’s children is too important to be left unmonitored. But to evaluate educational quality by using the wrong assessment instruments is a subversion of good sense. Although educators need to produce valid evidence regarding their effectiveness, standardized achievement tests are the wrong tools for the task.”
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/Why-Standardized-Tests-Don%27t-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx
Before the era of the test is god, there was an accountability system in the public schools that was designed to ferret out that 1 to 3 percent.
How does anyone justify punishing 100 percent of the teachers because of a 1-to-3 percent that are allegedly incompetent?
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As a teacher who scores the ELA and math exams every year, I can assure you the scores don’t reflect “good” or “bad” teachers. In fact, I can argue that teachers who teach to the test using formulaic writing acronyms are doing a deep disservice to their students. It might get a full score but it is emphatically not writing.
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That is why we support Cynthia Nixon
Sent from my iPad “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King Jr.
>
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https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
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if Cynthia Nixon really wants to lead the state, she must spend time with transit workers and never ever talk about re-opening their contract. this is a right wing talking point and she must retract it.
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Lauren, if she doesn’t, you will vote for four more years of charter school favoritism, more Gulen charters, more preferential treatment for the 1%?
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I don’t live in New York State. What I do know is that unions are one of the last outposts of organized opposition and that Cynthia Nixon, whom I admire, must reach out a hand to the transit workers in simple solidarity the way that Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown would.
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lauren,
What are you talking about? Are you saying that Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown are supporting having non-union groups of transit workers to compete with the transit workers union in a “charter transit worker group”? Or is that their position only with teachers’ unions?
I hope Cynthia Nixon’s position on the Transit Workers Union is far better than Sanders and Brown on charter schools which get to hire non-union teachers.
If you want Nixon to treat the transit union the way they treat the teachers union then that is not good. She will treat them BETTER than those politicians treat public schools.
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He really is a wholly political animal. Spend 4 years attacking every public school, student, teacher and family in the state and then TURN ON A DIME when public school support becomes politically fashionable.
It’s breathtaking, how completely cynical these people are.
It’s good for public school students and families, though. The dramatic change in the Democratic position on public schools is driven by what they perceive as political necessity. They stuck their fingers into the wind and they knew they had to switch sides.
That should be heartening to public school supporters.
We won’t hear anything more about “government schools” from Democrats. They get it now.
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https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
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The current Teacher Evaluation in NYC is soul-sucking and destroying our profession. It was pushed through, by NY faux-Democrat Cuomo, during the budget talks back in 2015 and became law. There’s currently a petition to push our union leaders to help repeal these awful laws and put teacher evaluation under local control. Please sign the petition and share with coworkers and friends.
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
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Ed reformers are (primarily) not educational experts but instead political professionals. If you read their bios their experience is not in “education” – it’s in politics.
That’s why the tone-deafness amazes me. DFER could have charters. They could have had their chosen schools. All they had to do was resist the impulse to damage public schools and offer something positive and of value to the 90% of people who attend public schools. Make it a win/win.
But they didn’t do that. They didn’t even make a PRETENSE of benefiting public schools. Their “public school agenda” was 100% negative. The problem with that is we’re talking about NINETY PER CENT of families. That never penetrated the bubble.
Go to any ed reform site and read the agenda for public schools. It is budget cuts and tests and stern scolding. A litany of misery. If you’re a public school parent reading this stuff there is NOTHING for your school or your kid. It’s ALL downside.
They really, really would have benefited from having one or two public school supporters in the club, if only to provide the pro-public school perspective. But they were too much zealots to do that. No dissent could be tolerated.
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Chiara, do you have any interest in publishing a book? I hope so. I think more parents need to hear your perspective. There’s so much confusion in the air, parents must be craving some guidance on the best way to approach their kids’ education–what to advocate for, where to send their kids, and so on. You already have what it takes–personal experience, writing skill, keen insights into the problem, an evenhanded outlook, intense interest in the subject, and a few thousand blog comments as a first draft.
You may not have any desire to reach beyond Diane’s self-selected audience, but if you do, there’s an approach that might help you write something to spark widespread interest. I’m talking about a short (maybe 20,000 words), personal book that tells the story of how you came to be passionate about the subject, shares the key things you’ve learned about it, crystallizes your current thinking, and calls other parents to action… A great title, appealing cover, short, pithy chapters (that include anecdotes about real kids and teachers and parents as well as vivid profiles of the opposition and its bad deeds, along with solid facts refuting the bogus reformers), and a surprising conclusion that might spur others to do something about the destruction of public schools.
Feel free to disregard this pitch. But for anyone else thinking about writing a book on public education that might go viral–something we desperately need!–see Sean Coyne’s website dedicated to writing “a story that works.” He’s written and spoken a lot about the “Big Idea Book”–that’s where I’m getting most of this. He edited the perennial bestseller called The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield–a short book that’s had a big impact.
One last note. I’ve bought a dozen or more great books on the problems with education “reform” in recent years. One reason I’ve only finished a few of them is that I buy way too many books. Another is that I’m a slow reader, and I tend to make a lot of marginal notes. (My copy of Reign of Error is marked up beyond recognition.) But another is a lot simpler: they’re too darn long. If that’s a problem for a retired person with all the time in the world, just think about the busy parents who might be ready to receive a compelling message about the attacks on public education but don’t have time to read a normal-length book. Maybe NPE can get into the publishing business. It’s not as hard as it used to be.
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So Diane why did I and many critics vote for Hillary (and then go throw up )? .
“This time around, with Working Families leaders hinting of a Nixon endorsement, Mr. Cuomo’s emissaries struck first. Some of the party’s top members were summoned to a meeting with labor leaders on Friday at the Manhattan headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers’ union, said he urged the advocacy groups on Friday to have the Working Families Party remain neutral until after the Democratic primary.
If the group endorses Ms. Nixon and she loses the Democratic primary to Mr. Cuomo, she could remain on the ballot through November competing for votes, potentially to the benefit of the Republican nominee.
“My only concern is some reckless behavior that will have an unintended consequence of us ending up with a Republican governor,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “When these elections are over, we will judge any decision we have to make off your behavior if you caused bad things to happen — even though it was not your intent you are responsible for them.”
“Among the labor leaders in attendance were leaders or representatives from Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; Communications Workers of America District 1; and the United Federation of Teachers, which collectively provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to the community groups.
Héctor Figueroa, president of Local 32BJ, and Dennis Trainor, vice president of C.W.A. District 1, confirmed their unions’ withdrawal from the Working Families Party, saying in a joint statement that they “fundamentally believe that endorsing Governor Cuomo is the most effective way to put the interest of working families first.”
I noticed not even on the list was the usually more conservative leaning construction trades who have have backed the Clinton /Cuomo wing of the party .
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/nyregion/cuomo-nixon-wfp-labor-governor-election.html)
So if you think the scenario Mulgrew is raising not plausible , it is pretty similar to the issue you raised about the Green Party . Is also the reason why Sanders lost the Democratic party primary when the entire party stood behind the heir apparent. For fear that Sanders could not win.
These Unions know exactly what is at stake with Republicans controlling the Federal Government and the Supreme Court . As my troll fellow NY(c) resident points out on numerous occasions there is a big difference between a bad Democrat and an even good Republican (if there is such a thing).
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“there is a big difference between a bad Democrat and an even good Republican (if there is such a thing).”
Not so sure how big that difference is. Yes there is such a thing. Perhaps close to being extinct by the current formulation of Ruthuglican supposed thinking but there are some decent good ones.
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Duane E Swacker
You might be right on the second point , I just have not met one yet .
But I am a rather closed minded individual . The last two Republicans I could stomach in NY were Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller.
As to the first point let’s just talk National , as much as I had a problem with Obama on a whole slew of issues . The court was more important.
.
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https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
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Joel Herman,
Bernie Sanders didn’t lose the primary because people didn’t think he couldn’t win. He lost because lots of African-American voters realized that Hillary Clinton actually cared about their issues more than Bernie Sanders. He lost because more people preferred Hillary Clinton in the primary.
Just like Cuomo had a much closer race last primary with a relative unknown.
This is a PRIMARY. This is where you vote for your candidate.
Are you intentionally trying to mix up voting in a primary and a general election? Why can’t you just accept that the candidate you voted for – Bernie Sanders – lost fair and square. He did. I voted for him too. I have voted for lots of primary candidates who didn’t win, including Ted Kennedy. Did that give me the right to fight hard to denounce Jimmy Carter as the evil Jimmy Carter and convince every American to vote for John Anderson so Ronald Reagan would win?
Since I did exactly that, I assume dienne77 and Duane must be so proud of me for standing up for what I knew was right and helping get Reagan elected. I was as smug as dienne77 telling my friends that Jimmy Carter was so evil he had to go no matter what, even running against Reagan.
The only difference is that unlike dienne77, I didn’t spend the entire Reagan administration attacking any critics of Reagan’s wrongdoing and defending Reagan and bringing up the “evil Jimmy Carter” to change the subject anytime there was talk about Reagan’s corruption. That’s when you have jumped the shark. When you are defending the right wing Republican who is destroying this country. I didn’t do what dienne77 did and defend Reagan because I was stupid enough to help get him elected and my self-worth was tied into insisting that Reagan was really a perfectly fine guy and not so bad. I wish dienne77 didn’t spend all her time attacking critics of Trump because i sure didn’t spend my time attacking critics of Reagan — I AGREED with them. Even if I was responsible for helping get him elected with my non-stop attacks on corrupt Jimmy Carter and protest vote for John Anderson. It’s a shame that the people who helped get Trump elected still feel the need to attack any critics.
It’s one thing to make a mistake and believe that there is absolutely no difference between Trump and Hillary and think that Neil Gorsuch and all the other right wing racist federal judges with lifetime appointments are no big deal. It’s another thing to be so unwilling to admit your mistake that you spend your time defending the right wing fascist who now has power instead of joining in the criticisms.
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“I didn’t do what dienne77 did and defend Reagan because I was stupid enough to help get him elected and my self-worth was tied into insisting that Reagan was really a perfectly fine guy and not so bad.”
Of ffs, why, why, why is this tolerated? Where have I EVER defended Trump or insisted he “was really a perfectly fine guy and not so bad”?
Your mendacity is really something, NYCPSP. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
Incidentally, I want it noted that I hadn’t even commented on this thread, so it’s really pretty below the belt to drag my name into the mud behind my back.
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Instead of whining about how my attacks are being misunderstood like dienne77, I will actually post a FACT:
On April 14, Diane Ravitch made a post entitled “How Low will Trump’s Courtiers Go?”
The post dealt ONLY with some of the terrible things that Trump was doing.
So did dienne77 ignore it? Did she chime in to say “I agree Trump is truly awful?”
Nope. dienne77 made two posts:
“Ekaterina bids me to say, you probably wouldn’t have too many nice words yourself if the FBI raided your attorney. How were you expecting Trump to react?”
And that wasn’t enough! dienne77 had to follow up with a SECOND post in which she wanted us to know it’s all the democrats fault:
“Ekaterina also bids me ask, what do you think of Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel? What do you think are the chances that Senate Democrats will unite to try to prevent either of those appointments? (Rand Paul is on record as opposed to Pompeo, so if he stays true to that – and I’ll be the first to admit that’s a mighty big if – Democrats can defeat him. But even if Republicans stay united, wouldn’t it be nice if Democrats actually, well, #Resisted?)”
dienne77, you could not bear to make a single criticism of Trump in a post that was ENTIRELY about Trump. But you had a lot of time to attack democrats.
Only one of us is mendacious. You posted twice in a post about Trump’s terrible actions.
The first time to defend him.
The second time to blame the democrats.
Not one word about how awful Trump is but you INTENTIONALLY tried to turn a post about Trump’s mendacity into a defense of him and an attack on Democrats. Why?
If I had done that with Reagan and did my best to turn every discussion of Reagan’s wrongdoing into an attack on Jimmy Carter and the democrats instead, I’d be the dienne77 of the early 1980s.
But if I then lied and denied that is what I was doing, and acted so offended that anyone would accuse me of defending Reagan just because I spent all my time attacking his critics instead of supporting them, I’d be an early version of a troll. And I’d be just like dienne77.
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NYC public school parent
I can barely make it through your rants . Your understanding of the American Political landscape is pathetic .
Anybody who was petrified of a DeBlasio loss last November, should really just pack their bags and see if Bill and Hill need someone to be a dog walker . Big Bird did not live up to the expectations in the days before the election, when you were in full panic mode. , The polls had him up by 45 points . No he did not quite live up to that expectation because so many voters did not think it was worth the effort to go to the polls . It became a nail biter, he only beat his opponent by a mere 38 points . I would say that pretty much disqualifies you as a political commentator. Now I am so bored with your nonsense that I will only respond to your first paragraph. Frankly I can’t bring myself to read much further than that .
Hillary Clinton was deemed the heir apparent to Obama’s throne before she ever stepped out to announce . Political parties are patronage machines on many levels . But at the top they deliver jobs and dollars to surrogates and supporters . Clinton had a 45/1 super delegate lead in the fall of 2015 before the first debate ,primary or caucus was held , 80 % of the committed delegates with only 200 undecided . The media was already treating her as Madam president .
That means that the party insiders were betting their political futures on Hillary winning . You do not screw with the King and Queen and expect to get a job cleaning the toilets in the castle.
Primaries are low voter turn out affairs . So driving your voters to get out and vote makes all the difference. The Black vote in the South makes up more than 2/3 of the democratic party electorate in many states. . Eighty five % of whom in Mississippi voted for Hillary. Was she running against Lester Maddox
Blacks must have had more faith in Hillary because Bill Clinton lowered the Black unemployment rate . By taking Black men off of the bread line and putting them into the soup line at local prison. Or was it because welfare reform increased poverty and extreme poverty rate among Black women and children . And of course as the Black population was relying on Union factory jobs in the Midwest .Trade policy that destroyed those jobs was a big hit. Leaving bankrupt cities like Flint in the hands of murders . (Snyder and company. )
They sure did trust Hillary but why . Remember those super delegates, they represent state and local politicians , party leaders and political machines. The Black vote in the South is a Church driven vote and votes as a block . Not unlike the White vote in the South . Or the way unions used to deliver the vote. It relies on local political leaders going into those communities getting a big warm welcome from church leaders ( or union leaders back in the 50s -70s . even today but the members no longer listen ) . These are people with deep connections to those churches and organizations ,. The pastor makes it clear who they should vote for.. . What ever chance Bernie had died when the Congressional Black caucus lined up solidly behind the Queen . Why we even had John Lewis seeing Hillary in Washington with a Goldwater sign. You would not have expected him to remember the little Jewish kid from Brooklyn., who went to jail for Civil Rights but seeing Hillary at the March on Washington when she was in Illinois was quite a fete .
Without any surrogates to deliver the vote Sanders was toast . Cornell West was not going to cut it . Of course worse than being a Jew a non believer in Christ , was the fact that he was a declared Socialist , which carried the connotation of being an atheist . Not a big hit among evangelicals . Trust Hillary nobody could trust her as far as they could throw the over weight pig she put in the White House.
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LOL re “Anybody who was petrified of a DeBlasio loss last November, should really just pack their bags and see if Bill and Hill need someone to be a dog walker”
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Joel,
You repeat the same things over and over again. Somehow Bernie’s loss in the primary is all the fault of those powers that gathered to defeat him and he is entirely blameless, but Hillary’s loss in the general election is due entirely to how bad she was. Got it.
It’s rather funny to hear you mimicking the whining of white males who think their situation is all the fault of those “women and minorities” who keep them down.
But love your double standard. The white guy is never to blame for his own loss. Everyone else conspired against him.
I see why so many people in your beloved “trades union” loved Trump so much.
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FLERP!,
It’s always nice to see how much joy you get when anyone makes fun of me. I’m always especially glad when you just can’t help but post about it. I suspect you don’t realize how revealing those gratuitous responses you make are and how happy they make me.
Carry on! I know that if I wasn’t getting to you with all my anti-Eva Moskowitz and anti-Success Academy posts, you wouldn’t get such joy whenever anyone makes fun of me.
lol! You just can’t help yourself, can you? Love it!
Next time someone insults me, please do post an “lol” so I know you still care ; )
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I have no idea to what you mean by this thought NYCpsp: “. . .and Duane must be so proud of me for standing up for what I knew was right and helping get Reagan elected.”
Help me out, please explain.
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Duane,
Good question. I apologize for bringing you into this discussion. It was a thoughtless remark.
When I was much younger I rabidly hated Jimmy Carter (not at first, but after 3 years of his Presidency) and thought he symbolized all that was evil with the Democratic Party and was selling out democratic ideals. I remember the 1980 general election having huge arguments with friends who were concerned Reagan would win and tried to convince me to vote for Carter instead of John Anderson, but I absolutely disagreed with all their arguments. There are times when I read something you post and it reminds me of exactly what I believed when I knew it was more important to vote against Carter as a protest vote than stop Reagan. So when I was writing that post and recalling how much I sounded like my friends demanding I vote for Carter to stop Reagan, I thought that if I had known you then you probably would have supported my standing up for my principles and voting for Anderson (unlike my angry friends!)
I also referenced you because your response to the 2016 election is one I understand and similar to my response to the 1980 election. I might have voted for John Anderson, but I was appalled at Reagan and I didn’t try to justify my vote by undermining critics of Reagan and jumping into discussions of some awful thing Reagan did to make it about how evil the Democrats are.
I never see you do that either. But I do see that from dienne77. Diane Ravitch posts about Trump and dienne77’s only two responses are to imply that Trump’s “lawyer” being treated appallingly and improperly so you can’t blame Trump for his response, and then to post how awful it is that those Democrats are too co-opted to stop one of his appointments. Two posts in a conversation about Trump without a single word of criticism of Trump but entirely about criticizing and undermining Trump’s critics.
Even though I voted against Carter as a protest vote knowing how corrupt the Democratic Party was, once Reagan was President, I felt no need to defend Reagan and turn every criticism of him against the Democratic Party. Why would I? I don’t see you doing that with Trump, either.
So I don’t understand why dienne77 would gratuitously jump into a discussion of Trump’s wrongdoings to defend Trump and then make it all about the awful Democrats.
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Apology accepted. No big deal. I don’t let much get me too upset. Got enough health issues that give me far more grief than some discussions on the internet. I just didn’t understand what you were getting at-so thanks for the explanation.
And no, I don’t react to elections in the way you did in 1980. Carter is one of my favorite presidents, so I was very disappointed and dismayed when Reagan won. I didn’t think that the American electorate could be duped like that, but what the hell did this 25 year old know about politics at that point? Obviously not much. And then over the years, Georgie the Least and now the Trumpster. Ay ay ay! So, I decided to and have stuck with voting my conscience and for the candidate that has a platform that most coincides with what I believe needs to be done at voting time.
I know many who voted for the Trumpster. I know many who, although Republican voters normally, refused to vote for him. I also know others who voted Libertarian and others like myself for Stein. I’m not one to necessarily see “a bad guy/gal” if someone doesn’t vote for my chosen candidate. I will still politically engage with them as for me that is the essence of our country’s political system.
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Oh, in rereading my post I should have included in the last paragraph that I also know many who voted for Clinton.
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Thank you for accepting my apology!
I didn’t mean to imply that you, yourself didn’t support Carter. What I meant is that I assume you did not condemn those voters who believed that Carter was such a corrupt sell-out that they had to vote for Anderson. I assume you understood that they were voting their conscience with their protest vote. You were probably more understanding of the self-described progressive voters who refused to vote for Carter in 1980 than I was toward the voters who refused to vote for Clinton during the 2016 election. Or were you upset with them?
But the larger point I was making is that – to me – there is a huge difference between making a protest vote during the election and constantly undermining the criticism of the terrible right wing Republican who won that election to make it all about the corrupt Dems instead.
As far as I recall, the people like me who made protest votes against Carter were not constantly trying to undermine criticism of Reagan’s actions during his first years in office in order to make it all about the terrible Democrats. We WANTED that criticism of Reagan! We WANTED investigations of his administration when they were acting improperly! We didn’t try to undermine criticism of Trump by changing the subject to how awful the Dems were.
And I don’t see you injecting yourself into every discussion about Trump in which you offer absolutely no words of criticism about his actions but try to change the subject to how it is all the Democrats’ fault.
I certainly didn’t spend the first few years of the Reagan administration trying to undermine all his critics because they were Dems and therefore my goal should be to attack them and blame them for everything. And I don’t think you have done that with Trump. Thank you for that.
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That there was no one in the elite ed reform corps who said “if we launch a war on public schools than public school families will be the inevitable and predictable collateral damage” amazes me. No one considered that.
That’s how little they cared. 50 million families weren’t even considered. They still don’t consider them. You will not read a pro-public school piece from a FAMILY on an ed reform site. DeVos NEVER mentions the families in existing public schools. Her entire focus is on the families who want to GET OUT of public schools.
I read a lot of ed reform and this is the frame- they advocate for charter and private school families and when they reluctantly reach public schools somewhere in the last paragraph they go to LABOR UNIONS. They have effectively disappeared 50 million families. We don’t exist. That political professionals did this is remarkable, because it’s remarkably stupid. Just sheer NUMBERS would indicate they better bring public school families in, but they didn’t. They didn’t because it’s an echo chamber.
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The tone deafness you reference above, Chiara, comes from the fact that they are listening to the words of a different audience. The billionaires and the money are almost exclusively on the side of Ed Reform. This is an issue which shows how damaged our democracy has become due the influence of money (Citizens United?) on our government. They are few. We are many. I am waiting for the politician who will grab the issue of fighting all thing Ed Reform and run with it. Would love to see this in a presidential candidate. Still waiting. And still waiting for a prominent politician (like Governor Cuomo!) to pay a price for his or her Ed Reform policies.
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I read quite a few of them, particularly the “liberal” ones. It’s defensive, my reading them. I know that every single theme they promote will end up in a public school ESPECIALLY (as you know) in Ohio, which is wholly captured by ed reformers.
To a man or woman they offer nothing positive or valuable to any public school, anywhere.
Some of these people are paid by public schools! One of the Obama ed reformers makes her living as a “consultant” to public schools!
You will not find any positive plans or investment in existing public schools in anything she writes. It’s a litany of stern scolding, and LOSS. It’s a list of losses for public schools and then a list of positive plans for charters and private schools.
Listen to some of the elite consensus at the summit they recently held on a Nation at Risk. My God, if you are a public school parent you would RUN, not walk, to pull your kids from public schools listening to these people. Luckily we know different, because unlike them our kids actually attend public schools, but still.
They don’t value our schools. They didn’t notice West Virginia public schools shut down for a week because the elite consensus is no one in those schools was doing anything worthwhile anyway.
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Chiara,
Where is Sherrod Brown on all this?
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You’re on the money again, Chiara.
NYC_PSP, Senator Brown is a disappointment on education. If he’s not DFER, he says everything they say.
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As an educator, I truly believe that greater support is needed to meet any expectation at any time and place. To not provide greater support to meet the expectations in an industry that inherently has so many variables, because both our “machines” and “products” are humans, is like filling a colander with water.
#SoTeachersCanTeach
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