Education
Related: About this forumDiane Ravitch Praises Randi Weingarten on Her Blog and All Hell Breaks Loose
Let's just say it was not the reaction she was expecting. Holy Cats.
I like this exchange especially, involving NYC's Michael Fiorillo, who always seems to have a cogent analysis at the ready:
Ron Poirier
July 11, 2013 at 11:20 am
Again — how do I vote in the AFT election? I’ve asked my local union leaders and gotten vague answers about delegates going to NY. What can I do? Does anyone know?
Where can I learn how the AFT election system works? If the only option available to me is to petition my local leaders, can anyone help me create a set of bullet points that I can send along to my leadership regarding Randi W. and why they might not want to vote for her next time around? It sounds like such a list must already exist somewhere.
I feel like there isn’t a lot of transparency regarding how the AFT election system works.
Reply
Michael Fiorillo
July 11, 2013 at 12:04 pm
Ron,
As a rank and file teacher, you can’t vote in AFT national elections. That is only done by delegates elected on the local level. To have direct rank and file elections of national officers – something very, very few unions permit, by the way – would require re-writing the union by-laws.
With the UFT in NYC being the tail that wags the AFT dog in Washington, in practice that means that only loyalty oath-signing members of Unity Caucus become delegates. It is no accident that, with the exception of a brief caretaker administration after the death of Sandy Feldman, every AFT leader has sprung from Unity Caucus leadership in NYC.
Under Albert Shanker, that meant support for the Vietnam War until the bitter end, and support for the coup that killed Salvador Allende in Chile and ushered in the neoliberal era in 1973. Under Randi Weingarten, that means nominally (though empty and meaningless) support for more liberal politics, but also co-managing teachers as their profession is de-professionalized and de-skilled, and as public education is re-configured into a vehicle for corporate profits and explicit social engineering.
This is the same Unity Caucus leadership that was elected in April with 52% of the votes coming from retirees, and only 18% from working teachers. This is the same Unity Caucus leadership that the year before passed an amendment to the by-laws giving increased weight to the retiree vote.
And this is the same Unity Caucus leadership that boasts about its “collaboration” with Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, John King, Andrew Cuomo, and others members of the Overclass and their political brokers.
There is, however, hope for change. The Unity Caucus mentality of collaboration with those who would destroy us is being challenged by teachers who see what is happening to them, their schools and their communities, and refuse to cooperate with their own destruction. Chicago, DC and Newark show that teachers are perhaps waking up to the epochal struggle, or in the absence of struggle, the demise, that faces them.
link:http://dianeravitch.net/2013/07/10/my-friend-randi-weingarten/
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duffyduff
(3,251 posts)to kill teachers' unions from within.
How somebody with minimal teaching experience ever got to head a major teachers' union is a mystery to me.
She is the Cory Booker of teachers' unions.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)We have a couple of years window to do things to curb Ed reform and Duncan isn't going anywhere despite all of the Dump Duncan initiatives I see.
I don't get the hostility. If people want to burn every avenue of struggle, that's on them, but I'm not on board.
Diane used to be an ultra right conservative as she mentions in her letter. She moved left to an anti corporate agenda and is in a position to make common cause with Randi. I'm going to trust that someone as smart as Diane knows what she's doing.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)*shrug* I don't agree with everything Randi says or does, that doesn't mean we can't recognize some shifts and encourage them.
Igel
(36,087 posts)A lot of people have concluded she's "one of us." Some were pleased when she saw reason and joined "our side."
She's on her side.
She was on her side when Kennedy and Bush II claimed her in supporting testing regimes and a more rigorous curriculum when NCLB was being gestated. She looked at the data she had and said, "This is what's needed."
At the time, she wasn't on our side. And the data we had was pretty wimpy. The data was clearly on *their* side--which is one reason Ted Kennedy was on that side.
She was on her side when she looked at the data and said, "No, some of my data were bad. And in any event, the data now show this was a mistake." Duncan has the data. But politically there's a question as to what to do with it.
She still has her side. She has policy recommendations and decided ideas on what is needed. By and large those aren't (D) ideas. However, before any new policy can be implemented the hard-core faith in the current poilcy has to be eroded. Odds are that if that actually happens then we'll suddenly find that she's gone crazy and stopped agreeing with us. Because that's what her data say is best.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)Can you break that thought out for me a little more? I found the switching around in the last paragraph confusing.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)bush education policy. Even more so when I learned that her ex, richard ravitch (26-year marriage), was an investment partner of warren buffet, laurence tisch & lionel pincus (pincus family = intelligence & banking going way back). silvers is a pretty big shot.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)She and the "reformers" go way, way back. The bad far outweighs the good with her.
Most people on that thread see through her, too.
A lawyer with little experience as a teacher has NO business heading a teachers' union. No business. Period.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)The guy who had to have the procedure for voting in AFT was a little sad. He's opposed to corporate reform but didn't know the basic political structure of his own union? Hopefully he'll get more involved, run for office or something.
"Most people" on that thread were a few people posting a lot.
I'm aware you think Randi is a plant. We'll have to agree to disagree. But if hating her gets more people off their duff and involved in union activity, that would be a big step forward for some.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)We can argue whether that's because of her leadership or despite it... but in either case it doesn't speak well of her stewardship of the local.
18% of actives voted for her protege/successor. 18%. Her protege, who does very well personally under the current arrangement... according to unrefuted news reports.
How hard are people like this going to fight for their captive membership? ( Union dues exceed 1,000 dollars per person per year.) The answer BTW, is "not very." Believe me, I've been there.
We locals have watched her up close for a long time. Her shtick is still relatively new on the national scene. Even there it seems to be wearing thin. Only a vote by national membership , precluded --- as noted by Fiorillo --- by the bylaws, would tell for sure.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)how could people not know they have a union, aren't their dues deducted from their checks? It's listed on my pay stub, but I don't know how it's done elsewhere, so I'm not speaking from expertise here.
I'm not there, so I don't know. I do know some people who have run on progressive slates in UFT elections and won.
I'm not saying there aren't issues. I was just disappointed to see the reception this letter got, the message it held got lost in a round of Randi bashing.
I'm glad to see the anti-corporate ed reform message finally hit the national stage, and I feel that's something that can be built on. If that message can get into locals across the country that have had their heads in the sand on this issue, I'll be pretty happy for now.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)in nyc, which is the only place that matters because of the rigged system.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)Not really interested in this line of discussion anymore. I've already posted what I felt about the reactions to this piece.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)people's feelings, i'm interested in facts.
if i have the facts wrong i'll be happy to note my error.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)When I have ever been a liar? That's not very cool.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)a very specific claim you made. you essentially said, 'i don't want to, i'm not interested, i already told you my feelings'.
i didn't speculate about why you said it. it doesn't matter to me.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)normal impersonal political discussion.
when someone answers such a request with 'why?' & "lol" that 'feels' like personal animosity. fyi.
similarly, implying that asking for a cite is equivalent to calling someone a liar.
time will tell how well trusting randi et al pays off.
Both ravitch & weingarten explicitly supported bloomie's one-man rule in nyc, a major reason that nyc is now a wasteland. Later, they had second thoughts -- gee, who could have known that by giving bloomie the majority of votes on education policy it might turn into a personal dictatorship?
But too late. Woe is me, who could have known?
"Two years ago, the State Legislature gave Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg nearly unlimited control of New York City's public schools. It abolished the central Board of Education and created a Panel on Education Policy (with eight members appointed by the mayor, five by the borough presidents) that is largely advisory. The move was a sharp departure from the American tradition of placing education policy in the hands of an independent public board that is not directly controlled by elected officials.
Hoping that this change would reduce bureaucratic inertia, we were among those who supported the measure in Albany. And we certainly commend Mayor Bloomberg for his willingness to take responsibility for improving the public schools. In recent days, however, many of us have realized that the legislation went too far by consolidating all power in the hands of one elected official."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/opinion/public-schools-minus-the-public.html
That's definitely the politically 'smart' way to go about it, though. Go with the power & when the inevitable cock-ups appear, become part of the 'opposition' & pretend you were too stupid to understand the consquences at the time.
How the 'smart' people do things & why things are so fucked.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)... they're replaced by new college grads who work without tenure, for less than half the pay, and for fewer benefits.
In about 1/3 of UFT chapters there is no elected Chapter Leader. (No one wants the job, in most cases; it's too dangerous.) If there is no CL there is no consultation committee, no chapter meetings and so effectively there is no contract in force.
In many other chapters there are "dummy" or "puppet" CLs. These people are like add-on admins... and are treated to add-on perks by the the admin... which is grateful for labor peace they enforce. ( In other words, filing grievances is discouraged.)The admins are highly skilled at manipulating written contract provisions to actually make the work atmosphere more untenable for teachers. Example: superfluous out of classroom positions are created thru "school-based options" ( Do they have this in other locals?) and then staffed w. teacher-cronies who then do a lot of the admins' paperwork while they kick back, come in late, go home early. My old school reverted to this type of system when I left.
The number of leaderless chapters has swelled w. the movement toward "small schools" ( a movement enabled by the adoption of mayoral control.... which was supported by Weingarten & co.). Young teachers in these places know nothing of the genesis of the union, its long history of job actions, work stoppages, jailings and strikes. They are unaware of chapter elections. There's no one to keep them connected or to pass on the history.( I went into one formerly large HS to campaign in the last UFT election. It is now broken up into eight separate schools ( 2 non-union charters) with eight separate faculties and eight separate administrations. Few teachers there were aware there was an election. several told me that they did not have union meetings. *Ever*. One thought that the union's role was limited to providing dental coverage. ( Actually, increasingly, it is.)
So... this is the State of the Union, 2013, NYC. A fine state of affairs. And what are President Weingarten's priorities? Smooth implementation of the CCSS and collaborating with the Gates empire to produce a more "rigorous" teacher eval system.
Really? From the AFT's vantage point *THAT'S* what's wrong? We don't have homogenous standards and teachers need a complicated bureaucratic rigamarole of eval benchmarks and rubrics??!!
Well. You could have fooled me.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)but we have been closely watching what Weingarten has been doing.
I concluded a long time ago she was a mole or a plant for "the other side."
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)not him.
The same caucus has won aft elections for about 50 years. It's like the democrats winning for 50 years. and the reason is the rigged election structure.
With the UFT in NYC being the tail that wags the AFT dog in Washington, in practice that means that only loyalty oath-signing members of Unity Caucus become delegates. It is no accident that, with the exception of a brief caretaker administration after the death of Sandy Feldman, every AFT leader has sprung from Unity Caucus leadership in NYC.
Under Albert Shanker, that meant support for the Vietnam War until the bitter end, and support for the coup that killed Salvador Allende in Chile and ushered in the neoliberal era in 1973. Under Randi Weingarten, that means nominally (though empty and meaningless) support for more liberal politics, but also co-managing teachers as their profession is de-professionalized and de-skilled, and as public education is re-configured into a vehicle for corporate profits and explicit social engineering.
This is the same Unity Caucus leadership that was elected in April with 52% of the votes coming from retirees, and only 18% from working teachers. This is the same Unity Caucus leadership that the year before passed an amendment to the by-laws giving increased weight to the retiree vote.
And this is the same Unity Caucus leadership that boasts about its “collaboration” with Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, John King, Andrew Cuomo, and others members of the Overclass and their political brokers.
Starry Messenger
(32,375 posts)Members of the MORE coalition in the comments appear to think Diane got involved somehow in the UFT elections this Spring. Most people outside of NYC probably don't know half of all this drama.
If we could get most of the country's teachers interested in resisting the corporate education reform, that would be a win. If they pay attention because Randi and Diane make a statement about it, I'll cheer.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)district on contract matters, there's the surface appearance & the hard policy reality underlying it. if the good PR enables randi to do more sell-out deals furthering the actual dismantlement of public schooling under the wire, there's a problem.
fact remains, if the guy couldn't get an answer to his questions, that's a problem with his rep & with the union, not with him.
and fact is, the same caucus has controlled aft since nearly day one. and that tells you something.
and what tells me the most of all is that neither union has mobilized its membership to fight, as united unions (not little local actions) against the biggest threat to their existence since forever. if the membership is not mobilized, given the tools the union has, there's not a chance in hell that the public ever will be.
aft controls elections by controlling nyc, through rigged rules that give uft the preponderance of delegate votes. and nyc is a wasteland of education deform & charters today, that's how 'effective' the uft is.
continuing with such 'leadership' will lead the entire profession into the grave.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Last edited Sat Jul 13, 2013, 02:15 AM - Edit history (1)
at least some aspects of education deform.
People like Mad Floridian were posting at DU against ed deform at least by 2009, & there were anti ed-deform, anti-NCLB bloggers and others out there for years before that.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5034
When did ravitch become a critic of NCLB (after supporting it heartily when it was developed)?
2010.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124209100
Her book came out in 2011.
She worked for the education-deform-promoting Fordham Foundation & the education-deform-promoting Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution until 2009.
She suddenly became a critic after HW's son was safely out of office.
Seems like she's always a day late & a dollar short. And then -- "oh woe is me who could have known that the policy I supported would turn out to be so fucked up?"
Nothing like jumping in front of a parade.
But we're supposed to think ravitch is smarter than we are. No, we're smarter than she is, because we could see what a fucking sham the whole thing was before she did. She, who had a major role in developing & promoting the sham.
By Diane Ravitch and Randi Weingarten
Published: March 18, 2004
Two years ago, the State Legislature gave Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg nearly unlimited control of New York City's public schools. It abolished the central Board of Education and created a Panel on Education Policy (with eight members appointed by the mayor, five by the borough presidents) that is largely advisory. The move was a sharp departure from the American tradition of placing education policy in the hands of an independent public board that is not directly controlled by elected officials.
Hoping that this change would reduce bureaucratic inertia, we were among those who supported the measure in Albany. And we certainly commend Mayor Bloomberg for his willingness to take responsibility for improving the public schools. In recent days, however, many of us have realized that the legislation went too far by consolidating all power in the hands of one elected official.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/18/opinion/public-schools-minus-the-public.html
It's people like madflo that got ravitch involved, imo, & not the other way around. why is the $64K question.
In fact, if I were to use one word to describe ravitch's associations & career until she 'got religion,' it would be 'neoconservative'.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Ron Poirier
July 12, 2013 at 9:00 pm
Could anyone tell me a theoretical way in which the incumbent AFT president (and I fear that I use the term loosely here) could lose her office? It seems to me that it would have to involve every delegate uniting behind a common opponent AND at least some of her hand-picked delegates breaking their oaths by voting against her.
norm scott
July 13, 2013 at 9:46 am
Ron. Given the political realities which are too deep to go into here, this is pretty much an impossible task. And it is not the big battle. The battle is in the locals.
Robert Rendo
July 13, 2013 at 10:17 am
From what I understand, there would have to be enough locals from the most dense clusters of delegates (I think THE most dense once comes out of New York City Schools) who would be of a mindset different from Randi’s, and the problem is that her union and other more local unions reward and incentivize these delegates with separate slaries, stipends, and pensions. Those not in the Unity Part or who are opposed to it are given little facilitation in getting elected and are not given cushiony or profiteering union position jobs.
Michael Fiorillo
July 13, 2013 at 11:23 am
Like most one-party states, the UFT/Unity caucus as currently constituted is nearly impermeable to internal reform. It even has a captive fake opposition caucus, New Action, that it uses to divert and divide opposition energies.
It’s very ironic that much of the genealogy of the UFT goes back to struggles and competitions within the union between the Communist Party – represented back in the day by the Teacher’s Union – and more conservative elements represented by the Teacher’s Guild, which was ultimately chosen by the membership as its bargaining representative.
The irony is that the UFT/Unity Caucus, though led for years by true believer Cold Warriors such as Albert Shanker, in fact functions very similarly to the Communist Party of old. Internal discussions are held – although there’s very little policy debate in the UFT, even in the upper echelons – and once a decision is made, members are expected to promote the party line.
This plays out on the school level, where Chapter Leaders are expected to sell the issue of the day – currently, that would mean new evaluation procedures designed to effectively end tenure – to the rank and file, rather than educate and activate them.
The danger with this lack of internal democracy is the same as that faced by the Soviet Union: resistant to change, feedback and democracy, it becomes sclerotic, increasingly irrelevant to its members, and vulnerable to collapse. In this case that would likely mean decertification efforts by Randi’s pal Bill Gates-funded fifth columnist groups like Educators for Excellence.