How Many Votes Did Educators 4 Excellence Receive In The UFT Election?

Micheal Loeb, a Bronx teacher and Chapter Leader is a national board member for the education deformer organization, Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) ran on the UFT integrity line and received a whopping 25 votes!   That's right, only 25 votes and I guess many of those votes came from his Teach For America dominated Bronx school.

This should prove to most educators that Educators 4 Excellence has no support from the rank and file at the UFT.  Moreover, its time for the UFT leadership to stop acting like E4E is a legitimate caucus and  admit that E4E does not represent the union or our interests.  Finally. E4E is simply a front for education reform organizations and are funded by the likes of Bill Gates and other anti-teacher groups.

Why I Cannot Support Cory Booker For President

Corey Booker is one of two dozen Presidential candidates for the Democratic nomination.  However, based on Mr. Booker,s history, I cannot support him for President and here's why.

Support for Charter Schools:

As Mayor of Newark, Mr. Booker supported charter schools and was the darling of the education reform movement.  He was also anti-teacher and supported merit pay and weakened tenure laws. Remember what Barack Obama did?  Teacher evaluations, support of charter schools, and a champion for Teach For America two year wonders.

Support for the Palestinians:

Cory Booker was seen holding a sign that supports the Palestinian cause.  He also refused to attend the AIPAC convention.  While Mr. Booker is not anti-Israel, it does bring back how Barack  Obama poorly handled US Israel relations.

Do Nothing Senator:

Mr. Booker as Senator has done little of consequence  except support an education reformer agenda.

While one well respected blogger may support Cory Booker as President he might want to remember that when it comes to education, Cory Booker is another Barack Obama and remember how that worked out?

Will Solidarity Become The Dominant Opposition Caucus?

As expected, the Unity caucus swept all the positions as the opposition caucuses could not agree with each other to form a united front.  The biggest loser was MORE, who lost their moderate supporters and 58% of their vote as they moved to the extreme left.  While the biggest winner is Solidarity which is becoming less of a one man show and more of a legitimate opposition.  Retirees made up 46.6% of the total UFT vote.

For Solidarity to evolve into the primary opposition caucus,  they must get better candidates for the mid level positions and to reach out to the retiree community.  Otherwise, Solidarity will continue to spit into the wind when it comes to winning seats in the next election.

The table below are the election numbers for your information.

2019 UFT Election

Unity...........37,119
Solidarity......3,361
MORE...........2,319
New Action...1,382


Read the JD2718 blog for a complete breakdown of the votes. 

For Experienced Teachers The Open Market Transfer System Is A Joke

The Open Market Transfer System (OMTS) is now open.  However, if you are a veteran teacher, the OMTS is simply a joke since principals are only looking for cheap and "newbie" teachers.  This is because the DOE inspired Fair Student Funding penalizes principals who hire veteran teachers.

While the DOE and UFT will not admit it, the OMTS is only successfully used by untenured teachers.  Few veteran teachers can use the OMTS to transfer to another school.

Ask any veteran teacher if they were able to transfer to another school, using the OMTS  if they have ten or more years of teaching experience and you will find out that the numbers are few.  Many veteran teachers can't even get a simple interview least a job offer!.

The OTMS is only useful for inexperienced and untenured teachers, experienced teachers need not apply.

How Respected Is Teaching Worldwide?

 

A survey produced by a think tank found that China has the highest respect for teaching while Brazil has the lowest.  The study was done for 35 countries worldwide and the top five countries that respect teachers are as follows:

China
Malaysia
Taiwan
Russia
Indonesia

By contrast, the lowest five are as follows:

Brazil
Israel
Italy
Ghana
Argentina

The United States is about in the middle at number 16.

The top three countries, China, Malaysia, and Taiwan show teachers the same respect as doctors wile the lowest five countries treat teachers as social workers, the lowest professional occupation. The United States and most European countries equate teachers with librarians.

As for NYC teachers?  If you ask me, the DOE thinks of teachers as replaceable widgets and probably thinks of them the same way as they treat the mail room employees at Tweed.

Mayor Bill de Blasio Needs To Revamp DOE's Teacher Hiring Process

Back in 2005, the UFT under President Randi Weingarten negotiated the worst contract in NYC education history by giving up seniority transfer and Civil Service protected bumping rights.  By doing so, it allowed  the DOE to impose school based Fair Student Funding (fsf).  The result was that it incentivized principals to hire "the cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school. Consequently, student academic achievement suffered due to the influx of cheap "newbie teachers" who lacked classroom management. curriculum expertise, and the experience to handle different student learning styles.

To fix the problem, the Mayor and Chancellor needs to eliminate school based fsf and restore District-based hiring as it was before fsf.  Moreover, all vacancies must be filled by excessed teachers in their content specialty before "newbies" can be hired.  This will eliminate the 1,000 strong ATR pool that drains the DOE coffers, help reduce class size, and eliminate the need for offering a $50,000 bribe to retire or resign from the DOE.

Until the Mayor and his Chancellor restores the old hiring process,   the DOE will continue to pay 1,000 teachers and other educators to babysit classrooms and that's a shame.

The "Hit Squad"- DOE's Office Of the General Counsel

 
The Department Of Education (DOE) has a group of lawyers who's only job is to terminate teachers by any means possible.  The lawyers are from the DOE's Office Of Legal Services (OLS), now known as the Office of General Counsel (OGC).  The OGC is divided into four departments, two departments primarily go after teachers .  One is the Administrative Trials Unit (ATU) that prosecutes teacher misconduct and the other is the Teacher Performance Unit (TPU) also known as the "gotcha squad", that prosecutes teacher incompetence.

If you ask DOE management the OGC only goes after teachers that commit serious misconduct or are incompetent.  The truth is far different, the OGC will willingly aid and abet unscrupulous  principals to get rid of veteran teachers by any means possible.   Principals know that if they claim that the teacher either committed misconduct or are incompetent, the OGC will eagerly help the Principal charge the teacher under section 3020-a.  Even if the independent State arbitrator finds the DOE charges to be untrue, the arbitrator will still give the teacher some penalty and this allows the Principal to jettison the teacher into the ATR pool and out of the school.

DOE has two main investigative units, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), who investigate corporal punishment and verbal abuse cases, while the semi-independent Special Commissioner of Investigations (SCI) investigate sexual and criminal complaints .   Both  OSI and SCI investigators are not fair minded.  Both investigative agency's mission is to substantiate the allegations against the teacher.  Read my corrupt investigations posts Here.

An example is the lunch teacher, a 20 year veteran, that South Bronx Schools is writing about.  The teacher is an elementary school teacher and she was giving an untimed State Common Core test last year.  She noticed that one of the students was struggling and hungry,  the teacher decided since it was lunch time so she told the students to hand in their tests and she collected them and locked them up.   After lunch, she gave the student who hadn't finished the test to complete.

The Principal found out that the teacher stopped the students from completing their tests and took them to lunch  The Principal contacted OGC who accused the teacher of test cheating and failure to follow instructions.  This resulted in 3020-a charges against the teacher.

There was no cheating and at worst, the teacher should have given a counseling memo not a 3020-a charge.  However, with the Bloomberg era ideology that still dominates at the DOE,  veteran teachers are targeted and this is just one case among many.

Long Island Students Continue To "Opt Out"

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) had hoped that by eliminating the time limit and to make the high-stakes tests shorter, more students would take the tests.  However, when it came to Long Island, a hotbed of the "opt out" movement, almost half of the students (45%) refused to take the State English Language Arts test.

On Long Island the demographics continues to show that the mainly White, middle class school districts have the highest "opt out" rates, while the majority poor and minority (Blacks and Latinos) school districts have the lowest "opt out" rates.  Interestingly, the high income and East Asian school districts in Nassau County also has relatively low "opt out" rates.  This is probably because East Asian parents support testing and send their children to after-school academic programs and Saturday school.

The table below shows the top school districts with the highest "opt out" rates.

School District............................"Opt Out"  

Comsewoque................................85.8%
Rocky Point...................................79.4%
Shoreham-Wading River................77.0%
Patchogue-Medford.......................75.9%
Bayport-Blupoint..........................73.8% 
Sayville.......................................72.8%
East Islip.....................................71.4% 
Greenport....................................71.4%
Lindenhurst..................................69.6%
Eastport-South Manor...................68.8%
Malverine.....................................68.0% 
Lynnbrook....................................68.0%
Bellmore-Merrick..........................67.1%
Miller Place...................................66.1%
Levittown.....................................63.0%




By contrast, here are the school districts with the lowest "opt out" rates.

 


School District............................"Opt Out"  

Hempstead....................................3.3%
Wyaindanch...................................4.5%
Roosevelt.......................................8.2%
East Hampton.................................9.9% 

Other school districts with low "opt out" rates are  Central Islip and Elmont but did not report their numbers.

There Is No Such Thing As A Good Education For Excellence Member.

Another UFT election is approaching and the pseudo-education group called Educators For Excellence (E4E) has, once again, decided not to run a slate of mandates, fearing how little support they would receive.

For people unfamiliar with E4E, this is a so called teacher education group that is simply a front for education deformers.  E4E gets their funding from Bill Gates, and other anti-teacher union education reform organizations who's only purpose is to destroy teacher unions and make teaching a temporary position.

New York City has between 50 and 100 E4E members and less who are full time members.  One of the reasons that E4E does not field candidates is they know how unpopular their organization is and would be embarrassed by their potentially low vote totals.  Apparently, there is one exception to  E4E's failure to  join the UFT election.  His name is Michael Loeb, a Chapter Leader in one of those E4E schools in the Bronx that are dominated by Teach For America "newbies".  Mr. Loeb  a national board member of E4E is running under the UFT Inspire heading and I will be interested on how many votes he receives.

While one blogger may be impressed by Mr, Loeb's tone.  I'm not, and let me remind people of what Mr. Loeb and E4E stands for:

• Supports anti-teachers union organizations.

• Supports the firing of all ATR after two hiring seasons in a school year.

• Supports converting our pensions to a less reliable contribution fund..

• Supported Michael Bloomberg's elimination of  "Last in, first out".

• Supports merit pay.

• Supports Fair Student Funding that discriminates against veteran teachers.

• Supports "mutual consent" that gives principals sole power to hire teachers.

E4E is a cancer in the UFT body and nothing about the organization's white paper on the UFT's 2014 contract changes my opinion.  For more information about E4E read them Here and Here.

Under Chancellor Carranza The DOE Double Standard Continues

Teachers were hoping that Chancellor Richard Carranza would eliminate the "double standard", when disciplining principals.  After a couple Principal dismissals that reached the newspapers, the Chancellor has continues the DOE's long standing double standard. Just ask the Forest Hills High School staff who see Principal Ben Sherman day after day, walking the halls and Namia Dwarka who still in charge at Bryant High School.,

In today's New York Post, we see another example of the DOE's double standard when it comes to principals.  In this case it's a male Assistant Principal who experienced alleged sexual harassment by his female Principal, Ana Zambrano-Burakov at Arts and Business High School in Queens.

 According to the Assistant Principal, he was subject to unwanted and inappropriate touching, hugging, and forced kisses by the Principal.  Furthermore, the Assistant Principal claimed that when he filed a complaint  with the DOE back in 2015, the Principal retaliated by getting SCI involved and they found that the Assistant Principal had traveled overseas (Nicaragua?) while on legitimate  sick leave.  Consequently, the DOE filed 3020-a charges for theft of services but the independent arbitrator give the Assistant Principal a slap on the wrist, with a $1,000 fine that tells me that his reason to go overseas was probably medically related and is now an ATR Assistant Principal.

What happened to the Principal?  Nothing, nothing at all and she is still the Principal at the school.

My Vote In The UFT Election

In the UFT election I voted for the person and not the caucus and that meant that I spent an hour  picking and choosing.  Here are my selections for the power positions on the ballot.

President:  Lydia Howrilka of the Solidarity Caucus

Lydia Howrilka  is a tireless worker and has made the Solidarity caucus relevant and no longer a one man show.  She was rubber roomed because she stood up for her rights and was discontinued before winning in Court and received a new position at another school.

By contrast, present UFT President Micheal Mulgrew is disconnected and arrogant.  He rather suck up to the Mayor and the Chancellor than give his members an adequate raise. The MORE candidate does not reflect UFT membership with MORE turning sharply left with it's Socialist/Communist social justice philosophy.

Executive Board: Arthur Goldstein and Micheal Shirtzer UNITY caucus and Johnathan Halabi New Action caucus. All three have demonstrated their ability to effectively advocate for the members and I'm proud to call them friends.

Secretary: Francesco Portelos Solidarity caucus.

Treasurer: James Calantjis Solidarity caucus.


I also voted for Janella Hinds  of UNITY for High School Academic Vice President and Michael Sill of UNITY for Assistant Secretary.  In addition, I voted for Jay Werner of Solidarity for Assistant Treasurer and Jia Lee of MORE for the Special Education position.

Obviously, for the useless and patronage delegate positions, I only selected the candidates I knew.

Should You Annuitize Your TDA?

One of the options teachers have is to annuitize the TDA when you retire.  There are two ways to annuitize.  The first, is to give it to an insurance company, which under current yields, give you approximately 6% for a 65 year old but be prepared to pay State and City taxes on the annuity.  The second,  is to leave the money with TRS which can give you an annuity, based on your retirement age and with no State and City taxes to pay.  The following annuity interest rate by TRS is as follows:


Age.......................Interest Rate

56.............................8.43%
57.............................8.51% 
58,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,8.61%
59.............................8.82%
60.............................8.93%
61.............................9.14%
62.............................9.43%
63.............................9.74%
64...........................10.07%
65..........................10.42%
66...........................10.79%
67...........................11.20%
68...........................11.63%
69...........................12.09%
70...........................12.59%
71...........................13.13%

The difference between a private annuity of 6% and the TRS annuity of 10.42% for a 65 year old educator shows that the difference is due to the profit the private annuity charges while TRS does not charge for the annuity.

Most retirees do not annuitize but put the bulk of their TDA in the Fixed Income option that gives a guaranteed 7% annually.  By not annuirizing the TDA, the educator retains control of their money while annuitizing the TDA means the educator loses control of their savings and once the educator dies, their is no money available to their beneficiaries except for that money that remained from the educator's contributions, minus the money already paid out in the annuity.

Should you annuitize your TDA contributions when you retire?   That decision is up to the educator.  If you choose the annuity option then keep it in the TDA where you will get more for your money as long as you live a long life since when you die, so does the annuity.

The Real Reason Black And Latino Students Have Low acceptance Rates For The Specialized High Schools

Black and Latino students only had a 10.6% acceptance rate for the specialized high schools.  The question is why so low?  According to Susan Edelman's article, education experts cited three reasons.

1. The reduction and elimination of gifted and talented programs in minority neighborhoods.
2. The influx of East Asian immigrants who emphasized education.
3. The introduction of test preparation courses.

Add to the above three reasons was the elimination of academic tracking that allowed high achieving students to benefit being in with other high achieving students, be it the gifted and talented classes in elementary school and Special Program classes in middle school.. These students were given advanced academic instruction and more academically difficult work to challenge their ability.

In the eighties, student advocates pressured the Board of Education to eliminate academic tracking and the result was that potentially high achieving students in poor minority schools no longer were given advanced academic courses since schools needed to pass as many students as possible and dumbed down the curriculum in both elementary and middle schools to achieve that passing rate.  This resulted in that poor, academically proficient Black and Latino students were at a disadvantage when it came to competing with manly middle class White and Asian schools.

Add to the disadvantage that poor Black and Latino students had due to the elimination of academic tracking, was the overall poor academic performance of their schools,  when compared to the middle class Asian and White schools in the better neighborhood where more academic challenging coursework were offered.  Then there was the test preparation courses that were offered and costs a thousand dollars or more that was not affordable to poor families.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza want to integrate the specialized schools, using the Texas model. (top ten students of each middle school are automatically accepted), not all middle schools are the same.  Adding more Black and Latino students will result in less Asian and White students who are academically superior to those accepted and that's not fair either.

My solution would be to bring back academic tracking by having all elementary and middle schools to have gifted and talented and special programs that have academically challenging coursework that will increase Black and Latino acceptance rates in the specialized schools.

Inexperienced Teachers Are Correlated With Low Student Academic Achievement

It's no secret that the New York City Public School's hiring process incentivizes principals to hire cheap and inexperienced teachers under the discriminatory Fair Student Funding (fsf) program. Despite various studies that show that the more experience a teacher has, the better students perform academically.  Unfortunately,  the DOE ignores these studies and rather shortchange schools of funding (89% of fsf) and resources and push  to "HIRE THE CHEAPEST AND NOT THE BEST TEACHERS FOR THEIR SCHOOL".

A study by the Learning Policy Institute found that the more experience a teacher had the better academically the students did. In fact, the study found the following:

 Based on our review of 30 studies published within the last 15 years that analyze the effect of teaching experience on student outcomes in the United States and met our methodological criteria, we find that:

1. Teaching experience is positively associated with student achievement gains throughout a teacher’s career. Gains in teacher effectiveness associated with experience are most steep in teachers’ initial years, but continue to be significant as teachers reach the second, and often third, decades of their careers.

 2. As teachers gain experience, their students not only learn more, as measured by standardized tests, they are also more likely to do better on other measures of success, such as school attendance.

 3. Teachers’ effectiveness increases at a greater rate when they teach in a supportive and collegial working environment, and when they accumulate experience in the same grade level, subject, or district.

 4. More experienced teachers support greater student learning for their colleagues and the school as a whole, as well as for their own students.


Too bad, the DOE doesn't understand how important experienced teachers are to student academic achievement as they implement policies that encouraged the hiring of cheap "newbie" teachers.  The DOE give principals sole discretion in teacher hiring, while imposing severe financial limitations (fsf) is a colossal mistake and will only result in wide academic achievement gaps between different cohorts.

No Bullying At Hillcrest High School - Yeah Right

Hillcrest High School is notorious for not reporting incidents and even received an award for being a "safe school".  Once again, Hillcrest High School has made the newspapers by not reporting one single incident of bullying, even when 18% of the student body admitted they were bullied by fellow classmates.

Hillcrest High School is not alone, 669 other schools joined them by not reporting any bullying incidents.  That is more than a third of the 1,600 schools in the NYC Public School System.

Hillcrest High School has been in the newspapers before.  One was an Assistant Principal who allegedly bedded female teachers in exchange for professional perks.  Another was the Principal who let students pass online courses without a teacher. Then there was the case of the "Vampire Girl", which was never reported since the Principal claimed it didn't happen in the building.

Hillcrest High School is only one of many schools that fail to report not only bullying incidents but other  other forms of violence and misbehavior as principals do not want their schools labeled as a problem school.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) Supports NYC Public Schools

We all know that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is a dedicated Democrat Socialist and I have little in common with fringe left and tea party politicians, be it AOC or Ted Cruz of Texas.  However, there is one place that I agree with AOC and that is public education.

Despite the misleading New York Post headline, AOC is a strong supporter of public education. According to the article, AOC talked about improving NYC public schools.  “This issue is structural and it is systemic which means we need a solution just like with the Green New Deal, we need a solution on the scale of the problem", said the lawmaker.

She recalled her own experience with the NYC public school  in the Bronx which she was a dual language student and was falsely labeled as needing special education services until she was tested out of the program.  AOC's family moved to Westchester for a better education and only moved back into Jackson Heights, Queens after completing college.

Interestingly, AOC could never have been recruited to the charter schools since they refuse to take Special Education and English Language Learners and AOC knows that  While I oppose most every policy AOC supports, we are in agreement when it comes to public education.

NYC Public School Student Climate Change Walkout Were Mostly White Elites

I was watching both Channel 2 (CBS) and Channel 7 (ABC) and noticed that the vast majority of students who were protesting climate change were White.  Few minority students can be seen at the student protest. Moreover, many of the students identified themselves as coming from the specialized high schools and some of the more selective screened high schools in the City.

Interestingly, the schools who had their students attend the climate change protest made sure that the students reported to school first and only were allowed to leave after attendance was taken in the third period.  Therefore, the schools get full credit for funding for the day.

The NYC Public School system that is only 15% White, based on the pictures and the two television stations, the student protest was primarily consisted of White students from the Specialized and screened high schools.  The bottom line is that the protest consisted of the White elites and are not representative of the student body of the NYC public school system.

The Inconvenient Truth On Why The Renewal School Program Was A Failure

The Renewal Schools program will be discontinued at the end of the school year due to their failure to achieve meaningful student academic improvement.  The question is why did the Renewal Schools fail to significantly improve student academic achievement despite throwing money and additional resources at those schools?  To me, the answer is simple, the additional money and resources did not go into the classroom but ended up with the hiring of additional administrators, consultants, and questionable professional development programs.

I believe that these are the causes for the Renewal School program's failure to improve student academic achievement.

• Large Class Sizes:  Despite various studies that show lower class sizes are strongly correlated to improve academic achievement, most Renewal Schools had class sizes that were at contractual limits. 

• High Teacher Turnover:  Renewal Schools suffer from a higher teacher turnover than the rest of the NYC school system.  This results in an unstable school environment and lower student academic achievement.

• Hiring of inexperienced teachers:  The Renewal Schools were still subject to the DOE's misguided "fair student funding" and hired only untenured or "newbie" teachers to stretch their budget.  In fact then Chancellor Carmen Farina prohibited Renewal Schools to hire ATRs, many of them veteran quality teachers.  Talking about cutting off their nose to spite their face!

• Renewal School's Poor Reputation:  It didn't take long for middle school parents to make sure that their academically achieving students did not include Renewal Schools on their list of high schools to attend.  The result was the Renewal high schools were a "dumping ground" for academically struggling students that nobody else wanted.

•  No Neighborhood Input:  Since the Renewal Schools were subject to citywide open admissions and many of their student body came from other neighborhoods, local input was lacking, both because of neighborhood disinterest and the failure of school administrators to reach out to the community.

•  Poor Leadership:  Schools with strong leadership is a must for schools to improve.  Unfortunately, many, if not all, schools had weak or incompetent leadership.  That includes the Principal and the conflicting and confusing administrative directives from above.  Moreover, many of the administrators were failed principals who found themselves in a position to guide the Renewal Schools principals on how to best run their schools.  What a waste of money and resources. For example having Amiee Horowitz put in charge of the program.

• Cellphones In The Renewal Schools:  The use of cellphones in the Renewal Schools serve as a distraction and hurts student academic achievement.

To truly improve the academically struggling schools, eliminate  citywide open enrollment, by bringing back neighborhood schools and give the community a say in the running of the school,  significantly reduce class sizes, and hire more veteran teachers by allowing academically struggling schools a waiver from Fair Student Funding.

Student Discipline Is Out Of Control In NYC Schools

The Blasio administration crowed that suspensions were down 50% and restorative justice programs were a success.  The truth is that if you ask the teachers, their school student discipline is out of control and that principals cannot suspend a student without the DOE's approval.  Moreover, the restorative justice programs are a joke as the misbehaving students quickly realize that there is little consequence for their misbehavior.  Finally, the allowing of cellphones bring chaos and distractions to the classroom.  Even the usually clueless UFT President Michael Mulgrew agreed that student discipline in NYC schools are out of control.

When I first started teaching a student that curses at a teacher would be suspended.  A student threatened a teacher would be arrested, and a student who was insubordinate to a teacher would get after school suspension.  Now all three student actions result in no consequences.  Combine that with the DOE's "blame the teacher for everything" mindset and the poor quality of administrators, especially the Leadership Academy principals, and the result is a chaotic school environment.

Just read these articles Here and Here. and this teacher won a "substantial settlement" from the DOE because of misbehaving students and incompetent school administrators Here.

You can read some of my previous posts dealing with student discipline Here, Here and Here.

NYC Reaches Its Charter School Cap

The remaining seven openings for charter schools in New York City has been tentatively filled by the SUNY's Board Of Trustees.  This means that, unless an existing charter school closes down, no new charter schools can be located in New York City.

With both the Assembly and Senate overwhelmingly Democrat, raising the charter school cap in New York City is out of the question and the existing 99 open slots for charters in New York State are not eligible to be located in New York City..   Even if Governor Andrew Cuomo supports raising the charter school cap, he will not get the State Legislature to agree to it..

Rather than rehash why charter schools are not the best environment for student academic achievement, just read my previous posts Here, Here, Here, and Here.

You can read all of my charter school posts Here.