School problems were not Randi's concern

From City Journal:

Thompson’s education speech didn’t identify what was wrong with Bloomberg’s “curriculum” except for the old saw about “teaching to the test.” Thompson still hasn’t noticed that the biggest problem in Bloomberg’s schools is that there is no grade-by-grade curriculum emphasizing a core body of knowledge. Nor is there an approach to teaching reading based on proven methodologies.

Thompson’s focus on issues like lowering class sizes might have worked in the old days to secure political support from the powerful United Federation of Teachers, with all the phone banks and campaign workers the union usually mobilizes for its favored Democratic candidates. But the advent of mayoral control, coupled with Bloomberg’s success in buying off potential opposition, has made the Democrats’ traditional union-based political strategy inoperable. In the early days of mayoral control, the UFT was one of the mayor’s only institutional critics on education. Union president Randi Weingarten regularly blasted Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for trying to dictate what teachers should be doing in the classroom. Of late, however, the billionaire mayor has domesticated and co-opted the union, partly through taxpayer funds, which have so far produced 43 percent teacher salary increases and the promise of more to come. The salary hikes have swelled the union’s coffers, since member dues go up in proportion to any pay increases.

Confrontation has changed to cooperation, and Weingarten has been at the mayor’s side offering support during his periodic press conferences announcing spectacular test score improvements, which the union knows are questionable. Right now the UFT takes in about $140 million per year; that will go up by $10 million more if, as is rumored, teachers get another 8 percent pay increase in the new contract starting October 31st. Top union operatives will thus have seen a 50 percent increase in their own salaries since the advent of mayoral control.

The UFT and the Bloomberg administration have increasingly developed a cartel-like working relationship, with New York taxpayers paying the price. Combine the effects of that arrangement with a desultory mayoral campaign, and soon there will be no “public” in New York City’s public education.

Randi not going out quietly

From the NY Post:

The United Federation of Teachers blocked City Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn) from receiving an "early endorsement" from the 1.3 million-member Central Labor Council to get even with him for exposing the union's arm-twisting during a City Hall hearing on charter schools, sources said.

Felder disclosed that union reps brazenly distributed cue cards with prepared questions that legislators were supposed to ask at the April hearing. Union witnesses got the softball questions. The tough queries went to administration officials.

So when the labor council last week released a list of 33 council members it was endorsing without screenings, Felder's name wasn't on it.

"It was because of the cheat sheets," said one source.

And from Room Eight:

Under recently announced deal, the United Federation of Teachers and its members will make the selfless sacrifice of reducing the take home pay of future teachers, not themselves, by 5 percent for 27 years, rather than ten. In exchange the existing teachers, who give up nothing, will work two fewer days per year. This is sure to be the first of many similar deals in the inevitable return to a “you will pretend to work and we will pretend to pay you” school system. This time at a vastly greater cost with higher taxes, and all the additional money going to those who retired to Florida at age when most of us will have to work an additional ten to twelve years. "This agreement is a win for everyone," UFT president Randi Weingarten said. She had called the initial deal a “win for children.”

Under the deal teachers, who previously arrived at school a day or two early to set up for the year, will show up for work unprepared on the same day the students do. Including those who were just hired and never set foot in a classroom before. Unless the school year is changed and two days of instruction are cut.

In reality, the days of instruction are going to be cut anyway. How many days will pass before the teachers provide a competent lesson? How many days before they assign, collect, and go over so the children can learn, homework? Or, let’s say a principal were to ignore the rest of the school and sit in one classroom for the first few weeks, collecting the massive documentation required to actually remove a teacher from their job. How many days, weeks or months would have to pass without any teaching, given the excuse by a teacher that they needed time to prepare for the year, before the UFT would say a fired teacher didn’t have a legitimate case for a grievance?

Photo from the Daily News.