Until This Week's Rally, Quinn's Message to Low Wage Workers Wanting Paid Sick Leave: Drop Dead

Basically, work 'til you drop is what Christine Quinn was telling low-wage hourly workers. For the great majority of the city's low-wage workers, plus New York City substitute teachers, and other per diem workers, blue collar and professional (with the business-friendly euphemism, "independent contractors") there is little choice: if you do not show up for work the employers might not hire you again. As the municipal elections approach, this page will carry more articles on how New York City Council Speaker Quinn has been attending more to the interests of the powerful one percent (given New York's tough real estate market, it might be more like ten percent in Manhattan) than the interests of ordinary working class and middle class New Yorkers.

Word is slowly getting out in the media about Quinn's weak record for working people. Salon featured Quinn in its article, Thursday, "Are female pols good for women?" by Irin Camron. As Camron notes, Quinn eventually blinked, but we must note that this is only after protests earlier this week by low wage workers, many still earning less than 10 dollars per hour. First, the opening of Juan Gonzalez' column for some backgroun, then Camron's column. It is interesting that Quinn blinked on the same day (April 4) that several hundred low-wage fast food workers rallied in New York City's midtown for higher pay. (Most of the workers earned the minimum of $7.25 an hour and were seeking to double their pay.) Juan Gonzalez, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

March 19, 2013:

It's time for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to stop stalling a vote on mandatory sick pay for workers More than 1 million New Yorkers face the injustice of docked pay if they stay home to tend to an illness. That's four out of 10 workers. Other officials have compromised to placate business-first Quinn, but she won't budge as she mounts her mayoral campaign and remains loyal to ally Mayor Bloomberg.

Speaker Christine Quinn has referred to mandatory sick pay in patronizing terms, such as “a worthy and admirable goal,” as she has blocked a simple up-or-down vote for three years now. The measure, with 38 backers, has more than enough support to pass, and the prime sponsor [Gale Brewer] has cut back the proposed sick days from nine to five to satisfy her.

Now that Albany lawmakers have agreed to raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour, the City Council should end another blatant injustice faced by more than a million New York workers.

For three years now, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has blocked legislation that would require employers to provide paid sick days to their workers.

Quinn has prevented a simple up-or-down vote on the proposal. She has done this even though 38 of her 51 colleagues back the bill — more than enough to override a threatened veto by Mayor Bloomberg — and even though polls show the measure has overwhelming public support.

For more of Gonzalez' column in the Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gonzalez-stalling-sick-pay-vote-injustice-nyc-article-1.1293432#ixzz2PYNDvFyB

Irin Camron, Salon, April 4, 2013

For about as long as women have been running for office, people who care about women’s lot have wondered whether one at the top would improve life for the rest of us. And last week’s skirmish in the New York City mayoral race was an object lesson.

The feminist bragging rights of Christine Quinn, the only female candidate in the New York race — the front-runner, potentially the first female and the first lesbian mayor of the biggest city in America — were being questioned. Using her power as speaker of the City Council, Quinn was blocking a sure-fire vote mandating paid sick days.

She faced a clear choice. While the bill was opposed by her key ally, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, lack of sick days disproportionately affects low-wage female workers, who also tend to have more care-giving responsibilities — and the coalition including the Working Families Party and union leaders made sure everyone knew it. Just as Quinn needed the support of people like Gloria Steinem and other high-profile feminists for her campaign, they were holding firm in demanding a vote on paid sick leave as a women’s issue. And it all came at a time when people who might vote on feminist bona fides were arguing over a central question raised by Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In”: whether more female leaders would improve the lot of all women.

The Quinn case — she eventually blinked, and made a deal — seems to suggest the answer could be yes. But only if there are enough women and allies who care to shame her into doing it.

Even some business community reps parted from Quinn and Bloomberg's opposition to such legislation. As reported by Stephen Johnson in the "Amsterdam News,"

However, Carlo Scissura, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, stated in a letter to fellow members, that small businesses would not be hurt by paid sick leave.

“This legislation in no way impacts small businesses—such as mom-and-pop stores with less than 20 employees—that could not otherwise afford to compensate their employees with sick pay,” said Scissura. “In addition, we agree that the Department of Consumer Affairs enforce the bill and that it is to be phased in over time. Another victory is that we fought to move enforcement from the Department of Health to Consumer Affairs.”

UPDATED: Mulgrew addresses chicken to debate controversy

(Updates at end.)
I'm Michael Mulgrew. I'm a big Chickenhawk.
I don't have to debate anybody. I'll have one of my minions debate MORE's UFT presidential candidate, Julie Cavanagh.
I don't care if it looks like Barack Obama sending out Gary Locke to debate Mitt Romney. Maybe let her speak for 90 seconds at my delegate assembly, where roughly a solid two-thirds are Unity die-hards, well-prepped to explain my sell-out moves that would fill an old S.I. telephone directory.
I don't care if I'm ignoring Cavanagh's diplomatic request in a letter, motion at the Delegate Assembly or statement at her caucus' blog.
I don't care because I'm a big, bad Chickenhawk, lord of the Unity Caucus.

Now, some reality-based commentary on the United Federation of Teachers presidential debate controversy, Norm Scott, commenting at Perdido Street blog:

With Julie being so inexperienced and unqualified to be president according to Unity flacks, a debate should be a slam dunk for Mulgrew. I've been challenging ANY Unity person to debate ANY MORE person and so far they all duck. When they were going to send Janella Hinds to debate Julie at FDR MORE said she would only debate Mulgrew and offered another MORE person and Leroy Barr pulled her out saying she would be on UFT time and couldn't debate until after 6PM.

Statement by Red Hook, Brooklyn special-education teacher, Julie Cavanagh and original letter requesting to debate, from MORE's website:

Cavanagh Defends Her Record and Asks Mulgrew to Debate His

25 MAR, By Julie Cavanagh

Wow. While having breakfast with my husband and almost nine month old son (who is finally on the mend after more than a week of a fever ranging 102-104 every day, during the same time my best friend’s 18 month old daughter was in the hospital, who by the way, is also a teacher and a single mother of two young children), I picked up my phone to see a mention on Twitter from Arthur Goldstein (teacher and chapter leader in Queens). I frankly couldn’t believe what I was reading. Usually a mention from Arthur has me in stitches. Not this time.

Now instead of relaxing while my baby takes a nap, I am writing this in response to comments on the ICE and MORE blogs attacking my commitment as a unionist and chapter leader and questioning my worthiness as a candidate for UFT President. All of this because I, and the caucus I represent, had the nerve to insist that Michael Mulgrew engage in a forum or debate with me so that our members can be fully informed and engaged when it comes to their voting choices in the upcoming election.

First let me say that I do not feel I need to defend my role as a chapter leader. Nearly every UFT member in our school, signed my petition for UFT President, and many of my colleagues are actually running in this election with MORE.

Second, I certainly do not need to defend my attendance at Delegate Assemblies. While I do attend, often, DAs are not a democratic forum. As I am sure the commenters on the ICE and MORE blogs know, and as all Unity folks know, the room is not even large enough for all of the CLs and delegates to be seated and when you do go and sit, you listen to Mulgrew practice his stand up routine for an hour or so, after which you *might* have the chance to ask a question or bring a resolution to the floor if Mulgrew recognizes you. Regardless, it is an effort in futility because it really doesn’t matter what you say, ask or bring to the floor; the ruling Unity caucus will disagree with it or vote it down, since they control the DA. If the UFT leadership actually held Delegate Assemblies each month that were informative and provided fair and ample time for discourse and discussion, I would be there in a New York Minute. As this is not the case, I attend as many Delegate Assemblies as I can, but sometimes other events such as a childcare issue, my son being ill or an important meeting in my community to bring a new partner into Red Hook to service children and families with disabilities will take precedence. I do not need to go to the delegate assembly to prove who I am or that I am committed to my union; I act every day in a way that highlights why I should be president of the UFT.

I am a mother and a teacher. I have been a teacher for thirteen years, and have been working with children with special needs and their families for even longer. I have stayed in the same community and school since moving to NYC in 2001, because I am committed to the process of leading school change and improvement from the school level. I became chapter leader at the request of my colleagues a few years ago and have worked hard with them, our parents, and our principal to make sure our children and our teachers have the best learning and working conditions possible. I fought for my school during the dictatorship that my union handed to the mayor, during a co-location of a charter school in my building that my union didn’t adequately help fight (which is difficult since the UFT leadership chose to co-locate its own charter), while our class sizes rise steadily and our budgets are slashed, while teacher’s choice was eliminated and insultingly reinstated to cover no more than a few boxes of pencils, while ATR’s rotate in and out of my building- some of whom have approached me on the brink of tears desperate for someone to listen to their struggle, during a time of a tidal wave of assaults on our children, our schools, and our profession.

Throughout this time, I not only worked in my own school community, I worked with parents and union members across the city and the country to fight back. You can find links to some of my work here, but I will list a few highlights: I co-wrote/edited/produced/and narrated a film that stood up to corporate education reform, a film that has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people in every state and on every continent (except Antarctica); I have appeared on several TV and radio programs and written several articles where I have spoken out forcefully against corporate education reform and for the schools our children deserve – and I was invited or asked in every single case to participate, so while those in Unity caucus pretend to not know who I am or what I have done (but yet ”know”, falsely, that I am not at DAs) apparently the national media does; I have also worked with other union members in the city and nationally – I helped organize a conference, and attended and facilitated, in Chicago in the summer of 2011 with other teacher union members; I helped lead the solidarity efforts with Verizon workers at the end of that same summer. I have sued, with a parent and a student, Mayor Bloomberg for the right to protest school closings and co-locations on his block and successfully organized and co-led that protest. I was the only teacher petitioner in the effort to stop and overturn the appointment of Cathy Black and also recently the only teacher on record to join with parents in sounding the alarm of student and teacher data privacy issues regarding SLC/inBloom data systems (Randi Weingarten, by the way, sits on inBloom’s advisory board). I say all of this not because I think anything that I am or that I do is so special, I share this information to highlight the outlandishness of the attacks from people whose usual line is there should be no attacks on union folks because we are under attack from outside forces and therefore need ‘unity’. I also share this because these are the things the president of a union should do.

Beyond of all of this, if Unity caucus can attack me for the number of times I went to the DA (this year I believe I have been to four DAs), the number of grievances I have filed (none), the number of UFT trainings or committees I have attended (none), then I wonder why they nominated Randi Weingarten as their presidential candidate, since she never attended a DA as a chapter leader, was never a chapter leader, and therefore never filed a grievance, attended the trainings, etc.

I personally do not think any of those things are what makes someone qualified to run our union. What matters is leadership. What matters is vision. What matters is the philosophy by which one will govern and represent the membership. I believe in a union that is member led and member driven. When I, or a candidate from MORE caucus, become president of the union, you will not have to attend a DA and sit idly and listen. The DA will be yours. When we take over leadership of our union, we will organize, support and build fighting chapters at the school level with elected district representatives who are trained organizers. When we run the union, leadership and staffers will make salaries equivalent to the teachers we represent — there will be no extra perks, no double pensions. When we lead our union, you will not go more than three years without a contract, at least not without organized job actions and a fight.

When Unity’s stranglehold of the leadership of our union ends, the members will have representation that believes in solidarity with other unions and in the power of our collective action. You will have a union that educates, mobilizes, and organizes our members and the public and who organically partners with parents and young people. You will have a leadership that truly understands that our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions, that a harm to one is a harm to us all, and that we must stand side by side with deep roots in the communities we serve to fight for social, racial and economic justice in our schools, in our city and across the country.

I am more than ready to share who I am with the members of the UFT and I am happy to answer their questions. In fact, that is precisely the reason I sent the email below to Michael Mulgrew. I believe a union membership with a less than 30% voter turnout needs to be engaged and exposed to open discourse and conversation between the two people who seek to represent them.

Mr. Mulgrew, I am still waiting for a response.

***

Sent: Mar 14, 2013 8:01 PM

Michael,

I hope this email finds you well.

While we have differences and disagreements concerning education policy and union democracy, we both are committed to our union and the children we serve. In that spirit, we should be able to engage in an open conversation during election season so we can ensure our fellow members are informed and engaged.

To this point you have ignored outreach regarding your participation in a debate or question and answer town hall with me. I would like to directly and formally ask you to participate in such an event.

I believe that our members deserve the opportunity to ask questions of their presidential candidates and I strongly believe this kind of open and honest discourse strengthens our union: an educated and engaged membership that is listened to and participates makes us stronger.

There is precedent for an event such as this between presidential candidates during election season. As you know, Randi has participated in presidential debates in the past: one in 1999 and again in 2001.

I am open to a debate format with a third party moderator or a town hall question and answer event with the membership. My only specific asks are that the event be filmed and/or livestreamed so that we can maximize member participation, that the date, which I am open to any, be agreed to a few days in advance, so that I can secure child care and that the date be as close to April 3rd as possible, so that we provide a fair amount of time for members during the election timeframe.

I look forward to your response.

In solidarity,
Julie Cavanagh

Some added considerations:
Unity partisans attacked Cavanagh, as discussed above. Yet, in doing so, they opened Unity to criticism on the undemocratic and pre-orchestrated nature of the Delegate Assemblies (DAs). Note these issues in the comments Norm made at the MORE site, including the note on how comparatively little classroom experience the last three UFT presidents have had:

I notice you get called on at every single DA while people never get called. Please try and tell us this is just an accident and not that you are part of the Unity speaker bureau that plans out scenarios at the DA in advance. (And you played the same role at the AFT). So Julie could attend a hundred DAs and never get recognized. Julie has more years of teaching than the last 3 UFT presidents combined. And more years as a chapter leader than Shanker, Feldman and Randi combined. And we haven’t even explored the stories about how well Mulgrew defended people as chapter leader at Grady.

Why does Eli Broad want to destroy public education? --& Weingarten's collaboration role detailed

Defend Public Education has an important article on Eli Broad, the Broad Foundation and Broad's influence on policy, politics and here's where it hurts, labor unions. Note the United Federation of Teachers's Unity Caucus' Randi Weingarten's connection with Broad.

This is something to consider during our current election. Union members should take into account Weingarten's close cooperation with Broad and her connection with the Teacher Union Reform Network, see below, Democratic Underground and this link at Schools Matter blog. What is this collaboration between Weingarten and the "reformers," doing for the conditions of our students' learning, the conditions of our profession and moreover, the long-term viability of our profession? While she has moved on to head the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and has pursued her high-profile collaboration practices on the national stage, her in house hand-picked successor Michael Mulgrew has continued this kind of collaboration, as we can see with his relations with New York governor Andrew Cuomo. See his endorsement of the state government's imposing a high stakes test based teacher evaluation system outside of collective bargaining procedures.


Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education? (Click to link for all the hyperlinks.) February 24, 2013
Major excerpts:
Beginning:

Introduction
The historically unprecedented explosion of wealth in recent decades for the top one percent of the American populace is leading to a reshaping of the American economy in the interests of this one percent. Having more wealth than they know what to do with, many of the corporate leaders, hedge fund managers, and bankers are putting their wealth into “venture philanthropies”. They hope to advance an unregulated, free market economy which requires the destruction of the advances towards social equality made in American society during the 20th century due to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the sixties and the labor movement in the thirties. Incubated in the economic Wild West days of the G. W. Bush administration until the financial crisis of 2008, these “venture philanthropies” continue to seek to bring the business practices of the banking, corporate, and hedge fund manager world to all sectors of the U.S. economy through privatization.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the full-scale assault on public education that has been escalating for the last ten years since the Bush administration instituted the No Child Left Behind law in 2001. Basing itself on rating schools by high stakes testing, combined with declining federal support for education, NCLB has led to wide scale vilification of public school teachers for social conditions over which they have no control. This is being used all over the country as a pretext for closing schools in mostly urban school districts with large numbers of low-income families. As a result, we once again are faced with an increasingly segregated educational system where the children of middle class and slightly better off working class families are transferred into charters which are given advantages in student selection and funding, while the children of low income families are increasingly being left behind in deteriorating public schools. These ever worsening urban public school systems which, already having been inequitably funded for decades compared to wealthy suburban school districts, are being systematically starved of funding.

The promoters of the corporate reform of public education can be divided into two major groups, conservative and liberal political action committees which believe in an unregulated free enterprise market; and “venture philanthropies” which pour money into various causes that promote the free market and, not coincidently, the profits of the 1%.

Conservative corporate education reform
The major conservative political action committee is the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC). ALEC’s membership is made up of rightwing politicians in legislatures all over the country who propose ALEC created legislation promoting tax benefits to corporations, banks, and the wealthy, and advance the privatization of public institutions such as public education, public transportation, public utilities, state lotteries, and other municipal and state services. In education funding, these legislators directly represent the interests of corporate and banking institutions, introducing legislation promoting the privatization of public schools through charters and vouchers.

Liberal corporate education reform
The liberal political action committees that support corporate education reform are various and ever changing. Wealthy philanthropists and hedge fund managers fund them. Here are just a few:

• Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and state based affiliates, funders include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and hedge fund managers David Tepper and Alan Fournier. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, funded by hedge fund manager John Arnold, has also pledged $20 million to Rhee's organization over five years. The Broad Foundation provided $500,000 in start up funding.

• Parent Revolution, promoters of the “parent trigger”, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family, and the Broad Foundation.

• Al Sharpton's National Action Network, funded by Plainfield Asset Management, the hedge fund of former NYC Chancellor Harold Levy and various corporate sponsors.

• Democrats for Education Reform, funded by various hedge fund managers and investment groups.

• Teacher Union Reform Network, started by the American Federation Teachers, later heavily funded by the Broad Foundation and the Gates Foundation

• Black Alliance for Educational Options, funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, and the Walton Family Foundation.

• Teach for America, funded by dozens of corporations and hedge fund managers.

• The films “Waiting for Superman” and the recent box office dud “Won’t Back Down” , directed by directors who are liberal Democrats, financed by conservative entrepreneur (oil, entertainment, newspapers) Philip Anschutz.

• Dozens of national charter management companies, funded by a combination of public funds and private donations.

"Venture" philanthropies

Of the “venture philanthropies” there is a triumvirate that make up the major funders of the philanthropies of corporate education reform: the Bill Gates Foundation (Bill Gates is currently worth $59 billion), the Walton Family Foundation, established by the owners of Wal-Mart (The Walton family is currently worth $16.3 billion) (see Forbes for their ranking), and the Broad Foundation (Eli Broad is currently worth $6.3 billion) Of the three, the Broad Foundation is the smallest in financial assets, but it has had a far-reaching impact in the assault on public schools through a careful targeting of its resources. According to their website, the Broad Foundation claims to have spent $370 million on their “education philanthropy” since 1999. Based on their level of activity in local school districts, as this article will detail, it is probably much higher.

Venture philanthropy treats schools as a “private consumable service and promotes business remedies, reforms, and assumptions with regard to public schooling. Some of the most significant projects involve promoting charter schools to inject market competition and “choice” into the public sector as well as using cash bonuses for merit pay for teachers and to “incentivize” students. (See “The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education", page 54)

The Broad Mission Statement
The 2008 Mission Statement of the Broad Foundation (Page 4) states its goal is: “Transforming K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition.”

Note the targeting of “urban public education”. Eli Broad considers himself a liberal Democrat, as does Michelle Rhee of Students First, who has been on the Board of the Broad Foundation since at least 2008; and Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation. They claim their attempt to restructure American education is the next civil rights movement. They target urban school districts with the highest poverty by having Superintendents from their Broad Superintendents Academy appointed who are prepared to starve public schools in order to make charter schools appealing to parents. The hemorrhaging of students from public schools to charters has led to urban school districts closing public schools all over the country due to “under enrollment”.

Broad Foundation board members, where Joel, Arne, Wendy and Michelle meet

The Board of the Broad Foundation
Members of the Board of the Broad Foundation have included a veritable Who’s Who of corporate education reform. According to the 2009 Broad Annual Report (Page 25), in 2008, they included:

• Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City Schools

• Barry Munitz, board chair, trustee professor, California State University, Los Angeles

• Arlene Ackerman, Superintendent of Philadelphia Public Schools

• Richard Barth, chief executive officer of the KIPP Foundation

• Henry Cisneros, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration

• Arne Duncan, Chancellor of Chicago Schools until he became U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration

• Louis Gerstner, Jr., senior advisor to The Carlyle Group

• Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools

• Dan Katzir, board secretary/treasurer, managing director of the Broad Foundation

• Wendy Kopp, chief executive officer and founder of Teach for America

• Margaret Spellings, former U.S. Secretary of Education in the second George W. Bush Administration where she oversaw the implementation of No Child Left Behind

• Melissa Megliola Zaikos, Autonomous Management and Performance Schools Program Officer, Chicago Public Schools

• Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Schools

• Lawrence Summers, Chief economist for the World Bank 1991-1993; U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, later on the Broad Board until he became the Director of the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, rejoined the Broad Board on July 25, 2012

• Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. News and World Report; Publisher of the New York Daily News

Added to the Board in July, 2012 were:

• Andy Stern, former President of the Service Employees International Union

• Representative Harold Ford, five-term Congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council

• Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education and former president of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who oversaw the post-Hurricane Katrina privatization of New Orleans public schools.

Residents, Superintendents, school closings

The Broad Residency program
The Broad Residency program is part of the management of the day-to-day operations of the Foundation that is carried out by the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. Broad employees are trained at the Broad Residency in Urban Education which is a two-year management development program that trains recent graduate students, primarily with business and law degrees, who have several years of work experience in the business world and places them immediately into managerial positions in the central operations of urban school districts. As on the Board, almost all have no training in pedagogy or child development, and no classroom experience. Most are people in their 20’s and 30’s who see promoting the corporate education reform agenda as a stepping stone in a career path which they began in the business world. Some come from such organizations as the Boston Consulting Group, a leader in corporate downsizing, and Harvard's Strategic Data Project that is heavily involved, along with The Gates Foundation and Murdoch’s Wireless Generation (headed by Broad Board member Joel Klein), in the collection of student and teacher data.

According to the 2011-2012 Broad Foundation Annual Report (Page 34)

“Since 2003, the program has recruited and placed early-career executives with private and civic sector experience and advanced degrees into two-year, full-time paid positions in urban school districts, state and federal departments of education and top charter management organizations. More than 250 Broad Residents have been placed in 39 school districts, 30 public charter school management organizations, seven state departments of education and the U.S. Department of Education.”

The Broad Superintendents Academy
The other part of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems is the Broad Superintendents Academy, begun in 2002. It trains eight to twenty-five candidates per year in six intensive four-day sessions spread over 10 months. According to the 2011-12 Annual Report (Page 24), from 2002 through 2011 there have been 144 Broad superintendent graduates.

A key part of corporate education reform is to reshape public schooling on the market model that involves remaking administrator preparation for education like the corporate model. Of the Superintendents, about half come from education, the other half come from business and the military. The Broad Foundation frequently pays cash-strapped school districts part of the new superintendent’s salary if the districts select a Broad Superintendent Graduate.

Looking at the toolkit of resources for trainees on their website, you find such things as their 2009 "School Closure Guide: Closing Schools as a Means for Addressing Budgetary Challenges". This 83 page Guide gives a detailed breakdown and timelines of how to manage school closures and community opposition to the closing of community schools. A favored tactic in various cities has been to announce a proposal for closing a large number of schools; hold community meetings to give the appearance of democracy, but actually for the purpose of using the information gained to hone their tactics for carrying out a list of community schools to be closed despite community opposition. Then they take a few schools off the closing list to give the appearance that they are listening to the community. This is a form of the common practice in labor negotiations where management proposes some draconian cuts, and then, when a compromise is reached with the union leaders, the rank-and-file is relieved that the cuts are not as drastic as first proposed and votes to accept the contract even though it is less than they deserve and need. The difference with school closures is that there is no relief for the majority of communities where schools will be closed if just a few schools are taken off the closure list. This school closure method has been used in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, where large numbers of community schools have already been closed. The closings are done in phases to transform large numbers of public schools into a private system run by charter management companies over a period of years.

The criteria for the selection of schools to be closed is a mystery to the community that is trying to find what must be done to the keep their community school open so their children do not have to walk or travel long distances to school. Parents are told their schools are not cost effective because of under enrollment (which are largely due to student transfers to charters), the building is too old, or they are given no clear reason for the community school being closed. At some point in the process, charter schools are offered as an option to distressed parents.

In cities where this process has begun, vacant closed schools are blight in already impoverished communities, or they are turned over to charters, or they are sold to real estate interests at bargain basement prices. This is the script being followed by graduates of the Broad Superintendents Academy all over the country.

Other guides and toolkits have been created by and “for school districts and charter management organizations with support from The Broad Foundation to help with some of the most pressing and complicated issues facing school systems.” Most were written in 2009 and 2010.

These include Administrative Career Path and Performance Evaluation Guide: “This guide will help charter management organizations (CMOs) and school districts – and their human resources staff and line managers in particular – that are looking to develop a systematic approach to evaluating and promoting employees.”, Rubrics for Charter Evaluations, "Bain Chicago charter school involvement summary: 2007-2009", and more.

In 2011, Parents Across America described the management method of Broad Superintendents like this:

“Broad and his foundation believe that public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his philosophy is to produce system change by “investing in disruptive force”. Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.”

Many of their Superintendents last only a few years in their highly paid positions until communities that want to be rid of them give them six figure buyouts which the Broad candidates are careful to have written into their initial contract. Frequently, other graduates of the Broad Superintendents Academy replace them. The Broad Foundation does not see the termination of a contract as a defeat for its overall objective of privatization of public schools, but part of “churn.”

True to the Broad Superintendent Academies undemocratic nature, the Broad Superintendents prefer to operate in secrecy and stealth. Candidate’s graduation from the uncertified Broad Superintendents Academy is not listed on resumes. Usually only an inner circle of politicians and school administrators know of their promotion of the Broad agenda. In Philadelphia, for example, Dr. Arlene Ackerman sat on the board of directors of the Broad Foundation while she was Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia from 2008-2011. This was not known to the general public and only came out after she came into conflict with local politicians over the disputed selection of a charter operator for Martin Luther King High School. Having poured money into charters and Renaissance Schools while starving public schools, she left the District with a $1 billion deficit over the next five years. On August 25th, 2011, she was given a $1 million buyout of her contract after threatening to reveal “secrets”. Her replacement, Dr. William Hite (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2005) took office in September 5th, 2012. During the yearlong interim between Ackerman and Hite’s administration, private philanthropies hired the Boston Consulting Group to develop the plans for the reorganization of the School District. On July 18th, 2012, the School Reform Commission, the state agency that has run the School District for ten years, allocated $139 million for 5,416 new seats in existing charters. On December 12th, 2012, Hite announced the proposed closing of 37 schools due to “under enrollment” at a “savings” of $28 million.

On February 19, 2013 this school closing list was revised taking off ten schools, and adding two more which means 29 schools are now slated for closure. However, it was announced a few days later that nine schools, including two schools that had just been taken off of the closing list, will be “transformed” into Renaissance charter schools, three to be run by outside charter management companies.

LABOR UNIONS

The Broad Foundation and the unions
The Broad Foundation Mission Statement states that one of its goals is the transformation of labor relations. The Broad Foundation is not anti-union. Rather, it seeks to transform unions into a form of company union. A company union is a union located within and run by a company or a national government, and the union bureaucracy is incorporated into the company’s management. This opens up the workforce to unfettered exploitation for profits of the owners. Many right-wing governments internationally use company unions to suppress worker struggles against low living standards. In 1935, during the labor struggles of the Depression, the National Labor Relations Act was passed which outlawed company unions in the United States.

Broad has found no shortage of former or current union leaders who are willing to be bought and join his venture philanthropy to foster labor/management “collaboration”. Former President of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, is just the most visible on the board. In education, the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN) fosters this collaboration.

American Federation of Teachers President Helen Bernstein started TURN in 1996 with a grant from the PEW Charitable Trust. Leadership of TURN was taken over by current AFT Vice President Adam Urbanski, when he was head of the Rochester, New York local in 1999. By 2001, TURN had formed a partnership with the Broad Foundation. According to the Los Angeles Times, on April 5, 2001, Eli Broad announced his Foundation was donating $10 million to TURN to foster labor/management “collaboration”. In 2009, Broad invested $2 million in TURN, a “a network of National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers locals”. Broad's 2009 Annual Report (Page 15)

In the early days of this collaboration, labor leaders joined leaders in politics, business and non-profit organizations in staffing the faculty at the Broad Superintendents Academy, training the future Broad Superintendents. According a 2002 Broad press release (Page 2) participants included:

• Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education in the G.W. Bush Administration

• Henry Cisneros, Secretary of HUD in the first Clinton Administration and now CEO of American CityVista

• William Cox, Managing Director of Broad, School Evaluation Services

• Chris Cross, Senior Fellow, Center on Education Policy

• Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

• Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, The Drucker Foundation

• Don McAdams, Founder, Center for Reform of School Systems

• Donald Nielsen, President, Hazelton Corporation, Chairman of the 2WAY Corporation

• Hugh B. Price, President and CEO, National Urban League

• Paul Ruiz, Principal Partner, Education Trust

• Adam Urbanski, Director of Teacher Union Reform Network

• Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers.

In 2005 the Broad Foundation made a $1 million grant to help the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, at that time headed by Randi Weingarten, open two union-run charter schools in Brooklyn, the first such schools in the country. In October, 2012, it was announced these schools are in academic and enrollment trouble and will probably close at the end of the school year. This became another opportunity for another round of teacher bashing by the right-wing media. (Note: This column is written by Micah Lasher, executive director of StudentsFirstNY.)

In its 2009 Annual Report (Page 10), the Broad Foundation said,

“Teacher unions have always been a formidable voice in public education. We decided at the onset of our work to invest in smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi Weingarten, head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City for more than a decade and now president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). We partnered with Weingarten to fund two union-run charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New York City’s first incentive-based compensation program for schools, as well as the AFT’s Innovation Fund. We had previously helped advance pay for performance programs in Denver and Houston, but we were particularly encouraged to see New York City embrace the plan.” (See the picture in the 2008 Broad Foundation Annual Report, pages 14 and 15.)

On the same page the 2009 Annual Report also boasted of being one of the earliest funders of Teach For America stating “our investment in this innovative teaching corps has grown to more than $41 million.” The same page also says, “Since 2000, our CMO (charter management organization) investments have swelled to nearly $100 million, creating 54,474 charter seats in 16 cities. We provided early start-up capital for charter operators like KIPP, Aspire, Green Dot and Uncommon Schools. They have since become the models for other CMOs to emulate.”

In April, 2009, the AFT teamed with four venture philanthropies: the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation—to create the Innovation Fund. The private-foundation contributions, in addition to the AFT's down payment of $1 million, brought the fund's total to $2.8 million. Weingarten said its funds were made available for local affiliates to "incubate promising ideas to improve schools."

In an April 28, 2009 article, Education Week’s Teacher Beat described the purpose of the Innovation Fund this way:

“Both Weingarten and the foundation folks spoke a lot about the importance of working together and collaboration... Both she and Adam Urbanski, the president of the Rochester, N.Y., affiliate who will serve as the fund's executive director, were quick to minimize the fact that AFT's education-reform objectives haven't always been in line with those of the private foundations. (Broad and Gates, for instance, were said to be primed to offer financial support behind D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's two-tiered pay proposal, although as far as I know, neither foundation ever confirmed that on the record.)”

On June 3, 2010, at their union leader’s urging, the Washington D.C. Teachers Union ratified a contract with the Washington D.C. School District, headed by Chancellor Michelle Rhee, which included performance pay linked to test score growth, and a weakening of seniority and tenure. Union President George Parker called the ratification of the contract “a great day for teachers and students.” On November 10, 2010, Parker was voted out of office by the union rank-and-file. On May 20, 2011, Michelle Rhee announced that Parker was joining her corporate reform organization StudentsFirst. Rhee had resigned as Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools on October 13, 2010, and started StudentsFirst soon after. Rhee’s Deputy Chancellor and chief negotiator of the 2010 teachers’ contract, Kaya Henderson, replaced her. Henderson recently announced the proposed closing of 20 schools due to “under enrollment”.

On July 8th, 2010, Randi Weingarten welcomed Bill Gates as the keynote speaker at the national AFT convention. Subsequently, in April 17th, 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $2 million to five of the AFT’s TURN regional networks through the Consortium for Educational Change, “an Illinois-based network of teacher unions, school districts, and professional organizations that work to make school systems more collaborative, high-performing organizations.” Of the grant, Mary Jane Morris, executive director of CEC said, “There is clear evidence that policies and programs that truly impact teaching effectiveness result when teacher unions and management collaborate as equal partners. Each stakeholder brings a unique understanding and knowledge-base that must be considered.”

An article in Reuters, right after the 2012 AFT convention reelected Weingarten to a third term, began: “In the maelstrom of criticism surrounding America's unionized public school teachers, the woman running the second-largest educator union says time has come to collaborate on public school reform rather than resist.” "U.S. teacher union boss bends to school reform winds", Reuters, July 31, 2012

After the Chicago teachers strike in September, 2012, to which the AFT gave tepid financial and verbal support (not rallying locals nationally to support the CTU), ended on September 19th, 2012; on September 22nd, Weingarten joined Secretary of Education Duncan, who was on a bus tour through the Midwest to promote Race to the Top. She joined Gayle Manchin, wife of West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, on a panel to discuss “how to build public-private partnerships to support educational improvement as the path to a brighter future.” The state run McDowell County, West Virginia school system and the AFT had created the philanthropy "Reconnecting McDowell” in 2011 to foster “collaboration between business, government and nonprofit organizations to establish programs that address the challenges faced by this community.” The AFT has given the fund hundreds of thousands of dollars from the dues of the AFT rank-and-file.

On November 17th, 2012, Weingarten teamed with New Jersey Education Secretary Chris Cerf (Broad Academy Class of 2004) to successfully promote the ratification of a contract for Newark teachers that included merit pay based on performance (including high-stakes test scores). On December 13, 2012, the New Jersey Education Law Center announced it had found that Eli Broad was offering a $430,000 grant to New Jersey contingent on the reelection of Governor Chris Christie. Terms of the grant include a requirement that the number of charters be increased by 50%, requiring that all public announcements of the program by the state have to be cleared with the Broad Foundation, and it contained a lengthy provision about making documents, files, and records associated with the grant the property of the Foundation. New Jersey bloggers speculated that Broad’s real concern was the keeping Cerf as the New Jersey Secretary of Education.

On December 13th, 2012, Weingarten held a press conference with Bill Clinton and Obama’s housing secretary Shaun Donovan to announce the AFT would invest $1 billion from the NYC teachers pension fund for Hurricane Sandy relief for the NYC area. NYC Mayor Bloomburg criticized the investment because taxpayers would have to bail out the pension fund if the investment failed. 
One month later the U.S. Congress allocated $50.5 billion dollars for Hurricane Sandy relief.

On January 29, 2013, Weingarten was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered. She continued her campaign for a teacher’s “Bar Exam”. This year long campaign is an endorsement of the corporate education reformers campaign against teachers that says the problem with schools is “bad teachers” and tenure. Arne Duncan and New York Governor Cuomo have been aggressively supporting this proposal. Weingarten did this NPR interview at the same time as New York City teachers are in a battle against an unfair and flawed teacher evaluation system which Cuomo was threatening to impose through drastic cuts in state funding for NYC public schools if not agreed to or dictatorially imposing the teacher evaluation system outright.

On March 11, 2009, in an article in the NYC education website Gotham News, in the article "Eli Broad describes close ties to Klein, Weingarten, Duncan", Broad described his education philosophy and his collaboration with Klein, Weingarten, and Duncan. The article did not state that Weingarten’s relationship with Broad dates back to at least 2002.

Click to link for full DefendPublicEducation.net article and incidental hyperlinks.

How will Unity explain itself when U-rating appeals like this become a flood with Danielson?

THE ASSAULT WEAPON BAN THAT MULGREW WILL NOT AUTHORIZE

In 2011 United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew and the UFT's ruling caucus, the Unity Caucus, enthusiastically endorsed the Danielson Framework as something constructive. However, many teachers are seeing the Framework as an assault weapon, that has many rounds of ammunition available for taking down the careers of so many teachers. This sentiment was echoed in the comments of respondents to the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) caucus' online survey of teachers' experience with the Danielson Frameworks, "Reports From the Field." This was reported early on at some Queens high schools, such as the one reported in this case. Unity and the New York City Department of Education are truly having it both ways with this one, with the DOE constantly reciting this as THE basis for assessing what good teaching is, and Unity trying to save face by pretending that it is just being misused.

So, a post at EdLawFaqs poses an unsettling case of an administrator going all out against a teacher, and sinking her career after 33 years of illustrious service. The casual manner in which the judge reflexively deferred to the DOE's decision.

Will a court overturn two U-ratings of a 33 year veteran teacher who claims the ratings were a pretext and part of continuing harassment?
Posted on February 21, 2013

No. Margaret Poplinger was a 33 year veteran special education teacher when the administration of her school changed. Despite 33 years of satisfactory ratings and numerous complementary letters in her personnel file the new principal began to closely observe her. In a series of observations, both formal and informal, Poplinger was rated unsatisfactorily. After two years of what she claimed was consistent harassment and poor treatment due to her allegiance to the prior administration Poplinger retired and sought to have the ratings reversed by the court.

Justice Donna M. Mills found that although she sympathized with Poplinger great deference was required to be accorded the DOE. Mills wrote, “Petitioner has failed to show that the U-Ratings were arbitrary and capricious or made in bad faith.

For the rest of the post and the conclusion of the story, go to "Will a court overturn two U-ratings of a 33 year veteran teacher who claims the ratings were a pretext and part of continuing harassment?" at EdLawFaqs. Unity's Leo Casey said that only three of 1100 U-rating appeals were successful.

So, just how will the Unity group explain away the apparent use of Danielson for U-ratings. Note how the admin made a subtle omission, in this testimonial from MORE's "Reports from the Field" last month.

Francesco a middle school teacher in Staten Island shared his experience from last year:

“After being out for a week for jury duty, [the] first period bell rang, in walks in an AP and Children First Network rep with clipboards. It was a “short” frequent observation that lasted 90 minutes. Short right? During post observation meeting, AP started by saying we were looking at Danielson Framework Domain 1e. She however omitted that wording from the write up that became “unsatisfactory”

This way, the DOE and the Unity enablers can say that the Danielson Frameweork was not really the basis for the U.

Help MORE's Video Ad to Go Viral

Please share this the new Movement of Rank and File Educators (United Federation of Teachers, UFT) caucus' new video ad with all your friends, family and work associates.

From the MORE-UFT caucus' website:

New Video Ad

Help us take our 2nd video viral. Share on your social media, blogs, and email to all your friends and family. Ask your UFT colleagues to check it out and share it too! The ballots will be sent out April 3rd by USPS. The time is now to expect MORE from our union. We have a choice for a new positive leadership of the UFT which will build a strong union movement along side parents, students, community groups, and other workers’ groups.

Here is the video link to watch and share http://youtu.be/mN5cSbD4TTw

MORE believes that Unity co-signed on to government policies which are leading to the deterioration of our student’s learning conditions; Mayoral control, privatization of schools, over reliance on high stakes exams, and evaluation schemes based on testing which does not take into account our children’s socio-economic conditions, are just some of the harmful polices that Unity caucus has agreed to.

MORE’s UFT Presidential candidate Julie Cavanagh states; “For more than fifty years, one caucus and one caucus only, has led the UFT. In the last ten years, in a departure from the roots of our union’s founding, the leadership has failed to organize and mobilize the membership at the time we have needed their leadership the most. The tidal wave of unprecedented attacks on our profession, our schools and our children will not stop with a new mayor. It is time for change. It is time we demand MORE from our union.” MORE believes that a democratic, member-driven union will better address the needs of students, parents, educators, and the communities we serve.

In addition to running in the UFT elections, MORE organizes events ranging from educational forums and protests to social gatherings. For information about MORE visit www.morecaucus.org. www.facebook.com/MOREcaucusNYC www.twitter./MOREcaucusNYC

Social Class Matters in College Success as Well as High School Success

Here is a New York Times Story by Jason DeParle from last December on how three south Texas triplets tried to buck the odds and finish college. The Times addressed the huge financial hurdles that low income students face, even at public colleges. Note how upward mobility is more difficult for American youths than for counterparts in Western Europe or Canada. The beginning excerpt from "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall":

GALVESTON, Tex. — Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself after a metal band and vowed to become the first in her family to earn a college degree.

Graphic
Affluent Students Have an Advantage and the Gap Is Widening

  “I don’t want to work at Walmart” like her mother, she wrote to a school counselor.

  Weekends and summers were devoted to a college-readiness program, where her best friends, Melissa O’Neal and Bianca Gonzalez, shared her drive to “get off the island” — escape the prospect of dead-end lives in luckless Galveston. Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her father’s death. They stuck together so much that a tutor called them the “triplets.”

  Low-income strivers face uphill climbs, especially at Ball High School, where a third of the girls’ class failed to graduate on schedule. But by the time the triplets donned mortarboards in the class of 2008, their story seemed to validate the promise of education as the great equalizer.

  Angelica, a daughter of a struggling Mexican immigrant, was headed to Emory University. Bianca enrolled in community college, and Melissa left for Texas State University, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s alma mater.

  “It felt like we were taking off, from one life to another,” Melissa said. “It felt like, ‘Here we go!’ ”

  Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic inequality. Not one of them has a four-year degree. Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store.

  Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school added complications. With little guidance from family or school officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety net.

  The story of their lost footing is also the story of something larger — the growing role that education plays in preserving class divisions. Poor students have long trailed affluent peers in school performance, but from grade-school tests to college completion, the gaps are growing. With school success and earning prospects ever more entwined, the consequences carry far: education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying them.

  “Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer — the place where upward mobility gets started,” said Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine. “But on virtually every measure we have, the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening. It’s very disheartening.”

  The growing role of class in academic success has taken experts by surprise since it follows decades of equal opportunity efforts and counters racial trends, where differences have narrowed. It adds to fears over recent evidence suggesting that low-income Americans have lower chances of upward mobility than counterparts in Canada and Western Europe.

  Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees, according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.

  While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead.

Read the rest of Jason DeParles' Times story at "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall."

An Open Challenge to Michelle Rhee and the Corporate Education Zombies

An Open Challenge to Michelle Rhee and the Corporate Education Zombies Boycotting standardized testing in Seattle was a stand for students and a better education

by Jesse Hagopian

Maybe I shouldn’t have stood up and said, “Welcome to Seattle,” while wearing my Garfield High School hoodie when Michelle Rhee took the stage at a recent Town Hall event in Seattle. Students, parents, teachers and community groups protest outside a talk given by 'corporate education reform' darling Michelle Rhee last month in Seattle. The high-profile former DC school chancellor champions charter schools, high-stakes testing, and other corporate school policies but refuses to acknowledge the substantial damage being created by this approach. (Photo: greatschoolsforamerica.org)

Rhee, the prominent corporate education reform advocate, former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor, and CEO of the ironically-named “Students First” organization, now has Seattle in her crosshairs. In her March 5th op-ed for the Seattle Times, Rhee berated teachers at Garfield and other Seattle schools for their boycott of the district required MAP test.

She began her piece: “Seattle public school students should pay attention. They’re getting a front-row, real-world lesson in how the actions of adults can distract from what’s best for students.” But don’t get your hopes up—this wasn’t a long overdue acknowledgment of the events surrounding the testing scandal when she was commanding the DC public schools.

With only a little investigation of the news of the MAP test boycott, Rhee would have found that the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) and the Associated Student Body Government (ASB) at Garfield High School—the school where the test boycott of the test began on January 10th—had voted unanimously to support teachers in the boycott of the MAP test. When the Seattle School District attempted to go around the teacher boycott of the MAP by forcing the school administration to pull kids out of class and march them off to the library to take the computerized test, hundreds of students showed letters from their parents opting them out, while many of the rest simply refused to participate on their own. Of the 810 tests scheduled at Garfield, only 184 valid tests were recorded.

In the end, the boycott of the winter round of the MAP primarily reflected the will of students and parents, who agreed with teachers that student time was better spent learning in the classroom, and that library computers were better used for student research and writing rather than testing. Had she acknowledged this, Michelle Rhee would have had some difficult questions to answer.

If students vote unanimously to boycott a test, is it still okay to put their demands and interests first, or does putting students first mean ignoring their democratic decision making?

If the parent organization at a school votes unanimously to support the teachers in boycotting a flawed test, is it okay for the parents to guide their children, or should students disregard their parents and instead follow an astro turf organization called “Students First”?

What happens when students, parents and teachers around the nation join together in common cause and protest for a meaningful education rather than the overuse of standardized tests? Is it okay to put “students first” when they agree with their teachers about what constitutes a quality education?

Rhee's inability to ask these critical thinking questions is a demonstration of the very cognitive problems that can arise from an over reliance on standardized testing.

The boycott of the MAP test has spread to five schools in Seattle with a dozen other schools actively supporting it. In Portland, students have initiated their own historic boycott of the standardized OAKS tests. In Providence, R.I., 50 high school students staged a "zombie protest" against high-stakes testing, marching to the state Department of Education, chanting "No education, No life." The New York State Principals Association recently issued a scathing letter, signed by 1,536 of its members, denouncing rampant state testing as a negative influence on the educational and emotional health of students. In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing. More than 500 school boards in Texas have passed resolutions demanding a reduced focus on standardized tests and on February 23, an estimated 10,000 parents, students and teachers from around Texas marched up Congress Avenue to the state Capitol in Austin to oppose the overuse of testing.

This nationwide solidarity against standardized testing represents a high stakes test for Rhee, and perhaps the anxiety is interfering with her ability to think clearly. Rhee wrote in her Seattle Times op-ed, “We know standardized testing works. For example, look at the District of Columbia, where I was school chancellor.”

It’s almost impossible to believe, but she really did write those words.

Yes, let us take look at the standardized testing in D.C. when Rhee was chancellor. In a scandal now known as “Erasure-gate,” massive test cheating was uncovered by USA Today, along with the failure of then-schools chancellor Michelle Rhee to investigate. As USA today wrote,

“In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its ‘shining stars.’ …. A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones. Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That's more than half of D.C. schools.”

Rhee went on to write in her Seattle Times op-ed, “Astronomically high dropout rates and subpar math and reading-proficiency levels in lower-income, inner-city schools ought to jolt us as especially immoral."

When Rhee refers to “inner-city” schools, she’s attempting to discuss Black students and other students of color. Yet she is scared to use the word “racism” because that would open up a conversation about the relationships between race, poverty and school performance. Rhee laments the educational outcomes of students living in poverty without ever questioning the causes of poverty. Perhaps that’s because her sponsors are the corporations and super-rich who profit from under-paying the poor for their labor, and whose policies perpetuate poverty. She is right about one thing--it’s appalling that low-income students have the worst outcomes in our schools. You won’t hear her say anything, however, about how corporate profits should be taxed to reinvest in our schools, or the fact that our nation prioritized finding trillions of dollars to recapitalize the same banks that sabotaged the global economy.

Moreover, Rhee has no understanding of the history of standardized testing or its contribution to the reproduction of inequality. As University of Washington education professor Wayne Au has written, “Looking back to its origins in the Eugenics moment, standardized testing provided…ideological cover for the social, economic and education inequalities the test themselves help maintain.” The stability of testing outcomes along racial lines, from the days of Eugenics until today, demonstrates standardized testing has always been a better measure of a student’s zip code than of aptitude. Wealthier and whiter districts score better on tests. These children have books in the home, parents with time to read to them, private tutoring, access to test-prep agencies, healthy food, health insurance, and similar advantages. Standardized testing has from the very beginning been a tool to rank and sort people, not to remove the barriers needed to achieve equality.

The Seattle boycott of the MAP test opened up our understanding of how the test exacerbates inequality:

English Language Learners and special education students are the populations pulled out of class most often to take the MAP. On average, each test taker loses 320 minutes of instructional time. MAP tests are administered on computers. Our computer labs are commandeered for weeks for test taking. Students can’t access the computers they need for research projects, which especially hurts students without computers at home—predominently low income and students of color. The Seattle NAACP supported the boycott because the MAP is used to track students into the city’s Advanced Placement Program—a program overwhelming made up of white students. The Superintendent’s Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Committee for the Seattle Public Schools supported the boycott, too, saying, “…our children are regularly denied their accommodations for the MAP. How does MAP testing somehow take precedence over the necessary accommodations on the IEP?” Rhee says the MAP boycott is a play by teachers to avoid accountability. Teachers and their unions, though, are simply fighting for the same kind of schools that the wealthy enjoy. Elite private schools do not inundate their students with standardized tests. What they do offer are great enrichment programs in physical education, drama, art, music, and field trips. They enjoy low student-teacher ratios, and a curriculum that stimulates students' interests and creativity.

If Rhee truly believes in the innate value of standardized tests, she should protest the fact that expensive private schools have been boycotting the MAP test for a long time.

Can you imagine Rhee (the self proclaimed “radical”) standing outside Lakeside, Bill Gates’ high school alma mater, chanting “1-2-3-4 your child IS a score! 5-6-7-8, standardized testing is really great!”?

Lakeside doesn’t march their students off to the library to take the MAP three times a year. Still, it’s a pretty good school. The student/teacher ratio is 9 to 1. Average class size is 16. The library has some 20,000 volumes, and is open until 6:00 pm. There’s a sports facility with a hydrotherapy spa. The service learning program has taken students to India, Peru, and China, and the School Year Abroad program enrolls students in their junior year to such programs as Mountain School, the Rocky Mountain Semester, the Maine Coast Semester.

Washington State ranks first among states in the number of standardized tests our K-12 public school students take. Besides the district’s MAP test (administered up to three times per year), the state mandates five additional standardized tests (but not for private school students). Our state spends more than $100 million on standardized tests, yet ranks 42nd in the nation in per pupil spending and its class sizes are among the largest in the country. These are the intolerable conditions that provoked educators in Seattle to put their livelihoods on the line and boycott the test.

The destination at which Seattle’s students, parents and teachers want to arrive is not on the MAP. Our desired destination is graduating students who demonstrate creativity, social responsibility, critical thinking, leadership, and civic courage. Seattle’s teachers are not afraid of assessment, but many of us know that to reach those goals, we will need to venture off the well-worn and narrow path of selecting from answer choices A, B, C, or D.

Michelle Rhee, I’m afraid you are lost. Come debate me in public, and I can help you find your way.

Jesse Hagopian is a public high school teacher in Seattle and a founding member of Social Equality Educators (SEE). He is a contributing author to Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation and 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed US History (Haymarket Books). Hagopian serves on the Board of Directors of Maha-Lilo—“Many Hands, Light Load”—a Haiti solidarity organization. He can be reached at: hagopian.jesse@gmail.com or you can follow him on Twitter.