Telling the Truth
A liar is someone who tells lies. That’s not the same as someone who always tells lies.
Can you imagine that? Someone who always lies, every single thing they say? That would lead to amusing logic puzzles:
– but not be very practical in the real world. In my life I’ve known two horrible liars. They have altered, twisted, falsified, subtly reimagined, or created from whole cloth story after story. “She wouldn’t tell the truth if a lie would do” said the mother of one of them. But both actually told the truth the majority of the time. What’s the weather like, are you hungry, do you have time later today… there are many mundane everyday answers that even the inveterate liar doesn’t bother to confabulate.
Many politicians are practiced liars – not as prolific as my two friends, above, but for them it is an art. They often tell the truth. And sometimes they have to tell the truth, a defensive truth, when cornered by their instinct for self-preservation.
New York State’s budget was delayed for a day last week, when Brooklyn State Senator Simcha Felder tried to exempt yeshivas from state testing standards. Felder is a Democrat from Brooklyn. He caucuses with the Republicans. And in the cesspool of New York State politics, no one better represents some of their constituents to the exclusion of the others than Felder, who is a champion for ultra-orthodox and Hassidim throughout the state (and beyond New York’s borders) at the expense of the non-Orthodox and non-Jews he nominally represents.
Felder has voted for “standards” again and again. They don’t really measure much, but they selectively pressure urban districts. Urban districts are poor, and they have large populations of Black and Hispanic students. “Standards” are a key component of the system that uses standardized tests to intimidate students, threaten teachers, and destabilize schools. Some of these include Felder’s own constituents – the ones he doesn’t represent. Felder has happily acted as part of the machine targeting other people’s kids.
But this was different. The State Education Department was planning for superintendents to visit private schools, including yeshivas. And they weren’t going to enforce “test accountability” that terrorizes the rest of us. They were going to check that the kids were receiving instruction in English, Math, and Civics.
Bravo Mr. Felder, for announcing that even the most minimal rules are to be enforced against strangers, not against our friends. Such honesty.
February 5
Yesterday was my birthday. I woke up in Boca Raton, and had coffee in the sun, by the pool.
I engaged, a bit, in a conversation: If there should be consequences for administrators who bring false charges against teachers, what should those consequences be? It’s obvious that there SHOULD be an answer, but not as obvious what that answer should be.
I know how many ways a polygon can be triangulated (Catalan). But a student proposed investigating dividing polygons into a mix of triangles and quadrilaterals, or only quadrilaterals. I played with her questions and related questions on the plane home. To make a larger n-gon I made a rough circle and then spaced out the right number of points. I didn’t bother connecting them (since I only want diagonals, anyway, and since my sketches are not very neat). So it looked like I was drawing lines in circles. Flight attendant asked – he likes circles and was hoping this was geometry.
Arrived in a cold rain, and before I reached the bus stop my foot found a huge puddle. 54, in the book.
Lack of knowledge, lack of experience
Chalkbeat pays young journalism majors with school reform money, and uses school reform money and influence (directly or indirectly) to gain access to sources. But this just doesn’t add up to real journalism, not when there is a lack of knowledge about New York City an New York State, a lack of knowledge about education in general, a lack of knowledge about teaching, even, quite frankly, a lack of knowledge about school reform. We end up with school reform cheerleaders, (who may in the case of the ‘reporters’ not know they are cheerleading – the ‘editors’ probably know).
But the lack of knowledge, the lack of experience, the lack of historical context, they all slip through. Here’s an example from last week – “Traditionally, students have had to pass five “Regents” exams in order to graduate. ” How do they write that? Don’t they know that traditionally there were two kinds of diplomas, and that one did not require Regents exams? That in the late 90s school reformers pushed for doing away with the “local” diploma, and that there have since been 15 years of battles over trying to reopen some non-Regents pathway?
And when they whine that these are just details, notice that a regular local newspaper easily doesn’t screw up the details.
School reformers don’t believe that experience and knowledge matters for teachers. Glass houses. They don’t seem to believe that experience or actual knowledge matter for ‘reporters’ or ‘editors’ either.
Teacher Evaluation
At Wednesday’s Citywide Chapter Leader Meeting, UFT President Michael Mulgrew gave his version of the history of the current teacher evaluation system in New York City. Here’s his main points, and I think observers who like it and don’t like it will all agree that this is a fair summary:
- The old system, satisfactory/unsatisfactory, was not the “good old days” – you were at the principal’s whim
- The UFT was looking for a way to improve the system and improve teaching, and S/U was not going to do it
- Using straight up test scores made NYC look bad, when teachers here actually do a good job
- We got the state to use a “growth model” which measures what we really do
- The number of negative ratings is substantially down
- We are fighting for more options for the “growth” score, so that it can be based on performance, and not necessarily tests.
Omissions. Misinterpretations. And the deeper story. In six points.
- Why is Mulgrew still arguing against S and U? It’s been 3 years since my last S rating. But we all know why he’s arguing. Members in New York City still don’t buy it. At the Chapter Leader meeting, CLs sitting near me (not people I know) were saying NO and scowling when Mulgrew was trying to make the point. There is pushback, probably coming unevenly, but from all districts. Also, the UFT helped impose this on all of NY State, and there is likely more unhappiness out of the city than there is in the city (NYC has high turnover, newer teachers have nothing to compare Mulgrew’s system to)
- Being at the whim of the supervisor is not necessarily a bad thing, if s/he is a capable, trained, reasonable educator. This is the fight the UFT refused and refuses to take on. Where members were at the whim of an unqualified or malicious principal, we should have fought to have that principal’s judgment reversed, and to have that principal removed. Instead the UFT fought to have us judged on test scores. This is not a small mistake. And it continues. Because HEDI did not clear out the malicious and incompetent. Bloomberg/Klein’s small school policy created hundreds of admin vacancies when there was an admin shortage. Result? Literally hundreds of incompetents/abusives. And the incompetent? When things go badly? They take it out on subordinates. The categories overlap. There is still a need to weed them out, and it is still a fight the union is bizarrely reluctant to take on. They have even accepted an evaluation system where challenging the principal’s judgment is not allowed!
- Whoever thought of tying teacher training and teacher rating was either an enemy of public education, or an idiot. I can imagine this conversation: “Members are resistant to PD, but they should love PD so we can say that teachers love PD and thereby ‘teachers are trying to improve the profession'” “I know, let’s make the PD high stakes and tie it to their ratings, that’ll make them love it” If you can imagine the people having this conversation (and something like it likely took place), then you can begin to understand how the UFT leadership doesn’t get the resentment that much PD generates.
- And mixing rating and professional improvement? Bad idea. And by the way? I like learning about math pedagogy. I do it, willingly. But it has nothing to do with whether I am an ok teacher. Rating and Growth are naturally separate parts of teaching, and should have never been mixed.
- The “growth” model pretends to measure growth. In fact, it produces fairly random numbers. Good for you if you get a high number, not so good if you have a low one, and don’t believe for a second that your teaching really controls the outcome. There is no way to use test scores to rate teachers that actually makes sense.
- The number of negative ratings is down. I like that. But that’s not a system that makes sense; it’s a system that for 2016-17 didn’t do much harm. We got lucky. And for the teachers who got the bad ratings and didn’t deserve them?
Protest Charter High School for Law and Social Justice unfair labor practice
There are things we know that apply to all schools.
- Everyone must feel safe in their own school.
- Curriculum must engage students and meet their academic and social needs.
- And all voices – parents, students, staff and administration – must be heard.
The Charter High School for Law and Social Justice at 1960 University Avenue (by Burnside) denies voice. Worse than that – they fired three quarters of their teachers – precisely for trying to discuss conditions in the school.
The United Federation of Teachers moved to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. This was the correct and necessary first step.
But we must do more. We must rededicate ourselves to helping all teachers and staff in New York City schools gain or maintain voice. We must organize the unorganized, and stand stronger in the face of injustice.
And we must bring pressure to bear on this charter school in particular. I am writing to the UFT leadership today, proposing we begin informational picketing at the school.
Richard Marsico, the president of the Charter High School for Law and Social Justice is director of the “Justice Action Center” at the New York Law School. Two more officers and several board members are associated with the Justice Action Center, or with the law school itself. I will also be proposing a UFT campaign directed to the “Justice Action Center” and its association with these damaging actions and unfair labor practices.
I am a strong supporter of public education. Public schools are a pillar of our republic. The current infatuation with charter schools will pass. But I recognize that we have a lot of work to do improving our public schools – what we teach, whether we test, and the environment inside many of our schools before we reach that point.
In the meantime we should continue to advocate for improvement in ALL schools. That includes making sure that all stakeholders have voice.
Cowardice in the Face of Hate – or how someone made me miss Randi Weingarten
Randi Weingarten was a lousy UFT president. We never should have had a non-teacher as president. But that’s relatively minor. When she left, the union was far weaker than when she arrived. And that is huge. Some of the details: Under her tenure our big high schools were broken up, weakening the union, and making education WORSE for many students. And she didn’t just watch it happen, she participated. Under her tenure, we had the 2005 contract, full of give-backs, rammed down our throats. The damage done in that “deal” lives with us today; seniority, innocent before being proven guilty, right to grieve… and the list goes on.
But there were positives. And one that stands out: on political endorsements we started considering where politicians stood on “human rights” (mostly revolved around gay and lesbian issues). We stopped supporting Dov Hikind and Serph Maltese and their ilk, just because they voted the right way on Political Action’s checklist. If they stood for hate, we wouldn’t stand with them. This was a battle. Previously the UFT supported incumbents mostly for being incumbents, checking a small number of votes, and not looking at their record beyond. That’s pretty lousy. But under Randi, we fixed that. Or I thought we did.
Fernando Cabrera peddles hate. I’m not going to say “homophobic” – let you decide. Maybe we should have known in 2009 when we endorsed him for City Council. Maybe we should have known in 2013 when we endorsed him for City Council. But in 2014, he announced it loud and clear. In Uganda.
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSs8UQQgOVc
“Godly people are in government. Gay marriage is not accepted in this country. Even when the United States of America has put pressure and has told Uganda, ‘We’re not going to fund you anymore unless you allow gay marriage.’ And they have stood in their place. Why? Because the Christians have assumed the place of decision-making for the nation. Abortions are illegal here. Things that Christians really stand for. Why? Because the Christians here took the opportunity to take their rightful place. So now the city here is rejoicing.”
Here’s gay city councilpeople denouncing Cabrera: http://observer.com/2014/09/lgbt-council-members-lash-out-at-cabrera-over-uganda-comments/
I spoke at the UFT Exec Board on June 5, 2017, against the proposed endorsement of Cabrera for the 14th City Council District (west Bronx, roughly Kingsbridge down to Tremont). Paul Egan’s defense of Cabrera was weak, and came down to saying that we don’t endorse on a candidate’s personal beliefs, but on where they voted on the checklist. But members of the Exec Board, Unity members who usually vote lock step as their superiors tell them, remembered that we no longer use the checklist method of endorsement when “human rights” is at issue. Several abstained (silently). And one broke ranks and voted no, a rare act from a member of this top-down caucus. The endorsement of Cabrera must have passed about 45 – 7, far closer than they are used to.
At the Delegate Assembly Wednesday June 14 I raised the same objections (some smaller issues, but essentially, he does not share our values, and in the age of Trump he will be empowered to act on his hate). This time Mulgrew was chairing, and he did not call for a separate vote on Cabrera, instead voting simultaneously on a dozen races, mostly non-controversial. UFT practice is to call for a separate vote when there has been an objection. I tried to call a point of order, he called me out of order. Afterwards he said he realized he should have divided the vote.
Occam’s Razor. Which is more likely? The UFT president momentarily forgot a procedure that he has watched others carry out, and that he has carried out himself, many times? Or, having heard that Unity had trouble keeping its votes in the Exec Board, he was afraid to allow delegates to vote on Cabrera alone, fearing an embarrassingly close vote, or even an overturn of Political Action’s choice?
You can decide for yourself. Me, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I miss Randi.
Breaking the Fundamental Rule of the Math Class Game – and paying the price
The Fundamental Rule of Math Class: I teach something, you go home, open up the homework, do what I showed you in class, and you’ll be fine. Same thing on the test.
If a student gets some math published, should that hurt the teacher’s evaluation?
Many teachers never deviate from the rule. And me? I obey the rule, too. Most of the time. Even those of us who don’t always do it, we do it more than we used to. (thanks to standardized testing and the insane link between standardized test scores and the teacher’s evaluation score.)
I taught you how to simplify square roots? When you look at the home work, you’ll be asked to simplify square roots. Do what we did in class, and you’ll be fine.
Breaking the Rule
But some days are different. I introduce “problems” – little ones that take a few minutes, and big ones, where I have moved ahead in my curriculum so that we can carve out a day or day and a half here or there. I offer problems that do not fit the Math Class Game – always off-topic, usually using skills from prior units, or prior years. How many games will there be in a single elimination tennis tournament (singles) with 73 players? How many times a day do the minute and hour hands point in the same direction? What’s the biggest perfect square with only even digits?
“… I ask a group of you a question, unrelated to what we did yesterday, seemingly out of left field, that requires only math that you already know, but without any of the usual cues about what tool to use… Questions mix counting, arithmetic, organization, and visualization skills. They require reasoning, planning.”
Going Further
And for the last three years, I have asked the students to do more, and more. Take one of the “problems” that you already solved, and propose an extension. Change it up to make a new problem, and solve that one. Mostly I get variations of the checkerboard, how many subsets, and Ghost the Bunny.
The Price or the Payoff?
As these are the same students whose standardized test scores determine my year-end rating (Thank you Obama, Duncan, Cuomo, Weingarten, and Mulgrew), giving up teaching days is a risky venture. Last year my test scores were “effective” but this year they a) count more than twice as much, and b) could easily end up “developing.” I’m guessing I’ll be ok, but if I am not, and I get TIPped, they’ll pretty much have to put “increase regents scores” in the plan and the first thing they’d look for is “stop throwing away days teaching off-curriculum.” And that’s on top of the TIP already being an unpleasant and fairly useless process. Do I really need to face that so late in my career? Because of test scores that are fine, but do not reach some expectation that is kept secret from me, is set by no one I know, and that no one directly involved actually cares about?
Of course there’s payoff. Kids have fun doing math. That’s worth something. They persevere with an extended task, with the finish line not in clear view at the beginning. That’s big. They propose a new problem, not knowing if they can finish it, and they plow in, hoping to make progress. In some cases students do not complete their problem – in their write up they include advice for the next students to try the same problem. Some finish their problem – they often make suggestions for further inquiry. You know, they are behaving – just a little – like little mathematicians. That’s payoff.
And then there’s M. Her problem this fall generated an alternate interpretation for a known sequence, and will have to be submitted to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Like, published. I want to work with her to help her understand more fully what she’s done before she sends the math in for review. At that point I will share the details in this space.
Hmmph. I’ve been doing math, in one form or another for 40 odd years, and nothing of mine has been published. I’ll take credit for asking the kids to be creative, and for recognizing that her sequence seemed unusual, and for knowing a few combinatoricists. Still, not my name going on the entry.
Thing is, M is a good math student, but works a bit slowly on tests. If we could have the problem solving days back, and turn them into test prep, we could probably raise her score a few points. And given the unpredictability of “growth scores” those few points could make the difference between her hurting my score or helping my score.
As long as I don’t get a “Developing” I will claim I don’t care. But if I get a D? Who knows. It raises an interesting question: If a student gets some math published, should that hurt the teacher’s evaluation?
Has UFT Leadership stopped censoring T*#^@&’$ name yet?
The headline in the NY Teacher (online, January 19, 2017) reads: “DeVos flunks first test”
But more interestingly, in the first line: “Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. education secretary…”
In fact, Trump’s name and actions have been popping up in UFT and New York Teacher stuff since the New Year. But that was after an unofficial moratorium since the election. Over a month of the UFT leadership avoiding his name.
Are we there yet? After two months of confusion? cowardice? caution? is the UFT Leadership now ok using his name, or is it not?
We are worried here. Two stories.
Story Two
On the UFT Website, a new article (last week?), with a fascinating title: “Mike Pence & Betsy Devos: The Threat to the Nation’s Public Schools”
I’m not making this up. Go look. You can see his name once, as if he were tangentially connected to the people he appoints. Who let this get published like that? What warped mind doesn’t say “you know, any member who reads this is going to think we are complete idiots, or that we are totaled scared of Trump, and neither of those is the best message to send just now”?
Story One
Right after the election, remember those days? Remember how scared so many kids and adults were in school – worried about the future? Worried about tomorrow? Worried about women’s rights? LGBTQ rights? About deportation? About harassment by thugs? Violence by police?
Anyway, this story is then. Right after the election Unity leadership brought New Action and MORE a resolution about the atmosphere of hate that Trump’s candidacy had generated. I signed it. Exec Board voted it up, unanimously.
Then the leadership e-mails. Someone wants to change it. They don’t even say who. Here’s the language from the e-mail: “Several executive board members asked that we amend the resolution. The presidential campaign has provided the current tenor in this country, and the resolution below addresses those concerns.”
But look at the change they wanted:
WHEREAS, president-elect Donald Trump targeted communities on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion, and displayed abusive behavior toward women, has threatened the nation’s promise that all people are worthy of respect; and
WHEREAS, president-elect Donald Trump has outlined an education agenda overtly hostile to public schools and teachers, promising to prioritize vouchers and charter schools at the expense of public schools ; and
becomes
WHEREAS, the presidential election targeted communities on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion, and displayed abusive behavior toward women, has threatened the nation’s promise that all people are worthy of respect; and
WHEREAS, the presidential election has outlined an education agenda overtly hostile to public schools and teachers, promising to prioritize vouchers and charter schools at the expense of public schools ; and
They didn’t even have the decency to say they were taking out his name.
To their credit, they allowed debate at the next Exec Board. And they took responsibility for making the change (the e-mail says “several exec board members” – I called them on it and the Secretary corrected it to “the leadership”). But every argument they made was an argument against ever endorsing a candidate. And they voted, party line, to keep his name out.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——————— ————- ——– —– — — – –
I wonder why they did it. My first thought is that they had not allowed the AFT to vet the reso, and that the AFT wanted to play footsie with the Trump. Certainly the Bloomberg era taught has how susceptible Weingarten is to not very subtle flattery, and we know how little Casey is to be trusted. But no, the AFT had one cautious statement, and then started using his name. NYSUT, right off the bat was critical. So this was the UFT. Maybe pressure from the pro-civil rights in Washington but not in my neighborhood wing of Unity Caucus old-timers? Possible. Or maybe some half-baked idea that calling Trump “Trump” would alienate conservative UFTers (but without much logic – if they could be turned off to the union for a political stance, that would have been the Hillary endorsement). Or maybe it was just cowardice. If we stand up, we become a target. Silly, of course, because being a union makes us a target, no matter what we say about Trump.
Bill de Blasio for a second term?
It looks likely that he will get the UFT endorsement. He already has endorsements from many unions – starting with the sanitation workers.
Still, bad optics on AFT President Randi Weingarten hosting a fundraiser for de Blasio, using AFT facilities, before the UFT has run through its endorsement process.
After a decade of misplayed mayoral endorsements (Alan Hevesi, failed to make run-off, Fernando Ferrer, lost run-off, Mark Green, lost election, all 2001, Fernando Ferrer lost election 2005, no endorsement 2009 when Bill Thompson actually had a chance to end the Bloomberg education calamity) a less confident leader might have concluded that her “endorsement radar” was bad. Randi is not burdened by such useless introspection.
Nor is she alarmed by her presidential record (2008 way way early endorsement of Hillary, last union to stick with her, even as Obama wrapped the thing up; 2012 even earlier endorsement of Hillary…)
Nor is she constrained by correct process – local endorsements belong to the locals.
I didn’t vote for her. That doesn’t stop me from being embarrassed for my union.
OEIS
Who can tell me anything about submitting to the On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences? Not a new sequence, but a new interpretation for an existing one.
And yes, it is a real thing.
And yes, I am serious.
Rumor: DeWitt Clinton HS Principal Santiago Taveras removed
Is this true?
Any confirmation? Sources?
Details?
When the Department of Education (still under Bloomberg) failed in its attempt to shut down Clinton four years ago, they didn’t give up. They planted two mini-schools in the building, eating up a floor and isolating the library. They discouraged middle schools from sending their students, causing enrollment to plummet. And they brought in Santiago Taveras, with a checkered pedagogical resumé, to demoralize the staff. Which he has done. Nice, smiley guy, who empowered arbitrary, impossible, unreasonable hatchetmen.
Last Spring he manipulated a personnel issue (Clinton has faced multiple years of down-sizing) to “get” the then-UFT Chapter Leader out of the building. We, the whole union, should have gone to war over that. Mentioned indirectly here.
So today, if he really was removed, we should want to know more. What for? Why? And what changes does this signal for the school, and for high schools in general?
Until we know more, it is not possible to know if this change (if it happened) will help bring DeWitt Clinton back, or push it deeper into the hole. Stay tuned.
Advice for myself
From the Spring: Speak the truth. Work for Change. It’s not about you.
Needed additions: Act against racism. Act against anti-immigrant bigotry/hatred. Act against sexism. Act against homophobia.
Also: Act for fairness. Act in solidarity.
Looking away = acquiescence (and is absolutely unacceptable)
What to watch for Tuesday (and still get to sleep)
many of you care deeply about Tuesday’s results. And in the rush, you may find yourself hanging on every update, trying to figure it all out. The stress will be unreal. Teaching Wednesday will be hard.
What you need is a crib sheet.
At 7:00 Virginia polls close. Look for a quick call for Clinton. If it takes them a while, try to be patient. But if they call it for Trump, start studying how to speak Canadian. It’s probably over, and a disaster.
At 7:30 Ohio and North Carolina polls close. If either of them is called for Clinton, go read a book, drink something soothing, and turn in early. It’s done. Clinton won. And if neither OH nor NC goes her way, it’s still ok.
At 8:00 Pennsylvania polls close. Assume for the moment it goes for Clinton (probably will). Also at 8:00, New Hampshire and Florida polls close. If either of them go for Clinton, go read a book, drink something soothing, and turn in early. It’s done. Clinton won.
If some of those four, Ohio, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida go Trump, not a problem. If all of them go Trump, then you have to keep watching, it’s going down to the wire.
At 9:00 PM, Michigan polls close. Should go for Clinton. But let’s look at the two potential trouble spots: If Michigan goes Trump, then Clinton can make up for it by winning North Carolina or Florida. If not, that’s probably a Trump election. If Pennsylvania goes Trump, then Clinton can make up for it by winning Florida. If she loses PA, and wins NC but not FL, then it’s down to the wire. If she loses PA and Michigan, then she needs Florida, or it’s all over. Add NC, and she wins, or else add NH and it’s down to the wire.
Review. By 8:30 or 9:00 if – [remembering that (Michigan) is a 9PM close]
- C: Clinton has VA, PA, (Michigan) and at least one of: Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, or North Carolina, that’s a wrap.
- C: If Clinton has VA, PA not (Michigan), and has Florida or North Carolina, that’s a wrap
- C: If Clinton has VA, (Michigan), but not PA, and has Florida, that’s a wrap
- C: If Clinton has VA, but neither PA nor (Michigan), but she has Florida and North Carolina, that’s a wrap.
- IDK: If Clinton has VA, PA, (Michigan) but none of: Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, or North Carolina, it’s down to the wire.
- IDK: If Clinton has VA, (Michigan), but not PA, and has NC, but not Florida, that’s down to the wire
- IDK: If Clinton has VA, but neither PA nor (Michigan), but she has Florida and NH but not North Carolina, that’s down to the wire.
- T: If Clinton has VA, PA but not (Michigan), not Florida and not North Carolina, that’s a Trump win
- T: If Clinton has VA, (Michigan), but not PA, and not Florida, and not North Carolina, that’s a Trump win
- T: If Clinton has VA, but neither PA nor (Michigan), and not Florida, that’s a Trump win
- T: If Clinton lost VA, you should have stopped watching.
What does “down to the wire” mean? Mostly it means, Nevada, whose polls don’t close until 10PM. Sorry. It also might mean the stray single electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska. It might mean Iowa, but if Clinton has lost Ohio, she’s probably already lost Iowa.
By the way, can Clinton lose PA or MI and make it up in Ohio? Highly unlikely – if she loses PA or MI she’s probably already lost OH.
In summary, watch 7 states (or 8, if it goes down to the wire):
- 7PM Virginia (must win)
- 7:30 Ohio
- 7:30 North Carolina
- 8PM Pennsylvania
- 8PM New Hampshire
- 8PM Florida
- 9PM Michigan
- 10PM “down to the wire” Nevada
If they talk about Clinton losing Georgia, didn’t matter. If they talk about Clinton winning Connecticut, didn’t matter. It’s just the 7 (or 8) above. That covers about 97% of what might happen. And it probably gets you to sleep soon after 9.
Election Trivia Question
When was the last time 4 candidates each got 10% or more of the state vote in a presidential race?
A Current poll (Y2 Analytics) has an interesting race in Utah:
Trump: 26%
Clinton: 26%
McMullin: 22%
Johnson: 14%
McMullin, in case you didn’t know (I didn’t) is a Republican running as an independent, on the ballot in 11 states. He is also a native Utahan, and a Mormon, and is polling well enough to get some interesting attention. (I wonder if he is having any impact in Idaho, Colorado, or New Mexico)
Anyway, here’s the question:
When was the last time 4 candidates each got 10% or more of the state vote in a presidential race?
October Surprise – in Iraq
Off-topic, since I haven’t been writing on topic.
But there is an “October Surprise” coming. Not only that, it’s not a surprise.
ISIS has been losing ground in Syria. Since June they lost the entire Turkish border, hundreds of miles, mostly to a coalition militia (SDF) dominated by Kurds (but with other ethnicities, including Arabs). The rest of the border they’ve lost to the Syrian opposition (FSA), with direct backing by Turkey. That offensive continues, winning a town or village at a time, heading towards a large town, Al Bab. The SDF now holds Manbij (pop 100,000). The next obvious move in Syria would be towards Ar Raqqah, with a quarter of a million people and ISIS’s organizational leadership.
But none of that makes an October surprise. For the surprise, we need to look to Iraq. Over the last two years the Kurdish forces (Peshmerga) and the Iraqi Army have an impressive list of victories. One at a time. With gaps in between. Of months. The Iraqi Army has taken Tikrit, Hit, Fallujah, Ramadi. The Peshmerga have taken areas around Mosul. They took Sinjar. They have linked up with the Kurds in Syria, creating a continuous front.
All of this was spread out, over the last two years. Progress has not been regular front page stuff. But it’s about to be.
There is a massive offensive planned, could start any day, against Mosul. Mosul is a huge city. It used to have 2 1/2 million people. It’s an “oil capital.”
It’s not a secret, here’s a few 1, 2, 3, 4, descriptions of what’s coming up. And week by week the different armies and militias report moving men and materièle into position. Pre-offensive bombing has been ramped up. And political leaders say soon, or sooner. And ISIS is preparing defenses, and bracing for it.
And that’s it. Two weeks, or ten days, or five days before the US election, a massive offensive against ISIS will begin. Front-page, evening news stuff. Fighting will be raging as Americans go to the polls. The photos and video on tv will be of ISIS soldiers dying on one side, and “our allies,” but not Americans, on the other. The pictures of Americans will be limited to Obama, Generals, Diplomats, members of the State Department, and pilots, returning, giving thumbs up.
Donald Trump, already pretty much dead in the water, will watch as ISIS takes a beating on a huge, front-page stage. Even without him contributing stupid tweets (and he probably will) that counts as an October surprise.
After primary loss, Robert Jackson is still fighting for public education
Robert Jackson is not the typical politician. He did not support public education so he could win elections, no, it was the reverse – he ran for office, in part, to help public education. And in defeat (he lost but a few hundred votes last Tuesday) he remains committed to public education in New York.
Here’s the classy letter he sent out:
| Jonathan — Thank you for standing with me in this incredible campaign and giving me the opportunity to run for State Senator.I am deeply grateful to each and every one who came to our Headquarters to make calls and those who reached out to their friends with “Dear Neighbor” letters or Facebook posts; or stood outside a subway station, an elementary school or polling site to hand out campaign literature; or read these emails and time and again helped us meet our funding goals; or simply greeted me with a smile at my daily morning and afternoon subway stops, on the street or at a senior center. Thank you also to the many labor unions, education and community activists and progressive groups who worked so hard on our behalf. And I especially want to thank our great interns who did so much to propel this campaign forward and hopefully were inspired to be part of the political process. While we finished 693 votes — out of more than 25,000 votes cast — short of winning, we can all hold our heads high and be proud of the race we ran. We worked hard, put together an amazing and diverse coalition of support and ran with energy, heart and integrity – standing up for the right priorities, staying true to the principles in which we believe and never wavering in support for better schools, affordable housing and more jobs and opportunities for all. While this campaign has ended, the work goes on and the challenges continue. My commitment to the community and causes came long before I decided to run, and will continue now that this race is over. I will continue to fight for a real Democratic majority in the State Senate, to reform Albany and our campaign finance laws and continue my lifetime fight for education, hope and opportunity to give every child the chance to succeed. In fact, starting October 2nd I will once again walk to Albany on behalf of our children as part of the AQE Education Walk to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision which ruled that the state is systemically underfunding Black, Latino, and low-income students in many districts. We will demand that NYS finally fully fund education in every district in NY. And while I had hoped to go as a Senator-elect, I am excited to participate as a parent leader, just as I was when we first made this walk. (read more here) I am proud of all we have accomplished and look forward to continue working with you for our community. You can email me at RobertJacksonNewYork@gmail.com with your thoughts, ideas and concerns. I hope you will stay in touch. Sincerely, Robert |
| -=-=-Jackson for Senate 2016 · United States |
By the way, those great interns? One was a former algebra student of mine. I was so proud!
The Day After – Looking Back
August 1998 Rudolph Giuliani put a fence around City Hall with police checkpoints. The public could no longer gather by City Hall steps, not to watch press conferences, not to demonstrate, and not to hang out.
Why was Giuliani taking 9/11 countermeasures three years before 9/11 occurred? He was not. There was a movement afoot to restrict freedom, to restrict the press, to restrict the right to assembly, and that movement was pressing hard and limiting our freedom before 9/11.
Airport Restrictions, The Department of Homeland Security, preventing the public from accessing public buildings – there was a blueprint for all of these things BEFORE 9/11. They were just waiting for a good enough excuse. (City Hall steps were blocked to the public ‘because’ the US launched missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan. Pretty flimsy excuse).
On 9/11 our city was attacked. It was personal. Many of us lost friends or family. All of us lost some sense of security in our own city. We know who attacked us, and in our country’s way, it got even (killed bin Laden, invaded a few countries that had not attacked us). Slowly those of us who survived and did not breathe the poison recovered, some of us continue to recover.
But on 9/12 Giuliani and his ilk launched an assault on our freedoms that continues to this day. There is no wall that will keep Tom Ridge out. Chris Christie need not fear a Seal Team. The damage done to us on 9/12, we need to begin addressing that.
Robert Jackson and Tuesday’s other Primaries
Democratic Primaries in NYC for State Assembly and State Senate are usually ho-hum affairs, pitting local organizers who have become insiders against local organizers who would like to become insiders. The winner of most of the primaries then win the general election, many unopposed.
This time there’s a few interesting races.
State Senate 33rd District. Bronx. Gustavo Rivera, incumbent, you might yell at me for saying so, but relatively undistinguished, faces an opponent who has a reputation as a social conservative, including some anti-gay history, and doesn’t deserve any votes against Gustavo, who is also running on the Working Families Party line.
State Senate 36th District. Bronx. Wide open, with the incumbent having moved on to the Cuomo administration, with five? choices. Jamaal Bailey is close to speaker Carl Heastie, has a bunch of labor endorsements, and has the WFP line. I suspect he will win, but low turnout may be a factor.
But one race really has my attention: In the NY State Senate 31st, Inwood, Washington Heights, West Side of Manhattan and Marble Hill, Robert Jackson, champion of the children of New York City, is running against a school reform scumbag and a candidate who wants the right-wing to run the senate. These two might be worth voting against, no matter who their opponent was. But this is not a least of three (really four evils) situation.
Robert Jackson is a hero of public education. He walked to Albany in 2003 – 150 miles with a group of public education advocates. They demanded fairer funding for NY City schools. And they won.
Robert Jackson as a city council member fought fiercely for education. But that’s not all.
Robert Jackson stands for the best sort of immigration reform. He is a tenants’ advocate of the first order. His environmental record is superb. I’m not going on, but I could.
If you are a registered Democrat in the 31st NY State Senate District, get to the polls Tuesday and support Robert Jackson.
Contest: Telling Student Growth Percentiles and Random Numbers apart
NYC Educator kindly posted my results. (CLICK HERE)
And a list of random numbers.
And my students’ ID numbers (last two digits)
Each list is sorted small to large.
Can you figure out which is which?
Can you figure out why numbers which determine my rating look completely random?
Good luck!
And good luck to each and every one of us subjected to this arbitrary system.
Free IFC Memberships for Teachers
Reduces ticket prices $5, from $15 to $10 for most movies. (And no service charge for on-line ticketing) Click for form for free educator membership.
Free previews and special members-only screenings.
IFC New York is in the old Waverly Theater, Sixth Avenue at 3rd Street, across from the basketball courts.
They show an eclectic mix of documentary, independent and foreign stuff. And classics. They are one of the hosts of the Doc NYC Festival.
Disclaimer: I’ve had a membership for a few years, and sometimes wander in to see offbeat stuff.
Yesterday, when I noticed the “free for k-12 teachers” in the previews, I was seeing Miss Sharon Jones. Apparently I’ve been enjoying Sharon Jones and the Dap-kings for quite a while, without knowing anything about them.
A fan page on MySpace (remember MySpace?) says: “By the sound of them, you would think Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings started making funk-threaded soul music together in the 1960s.”
100 Days and 100 Nights
might be the catchiest. I’m Still Here
is autobiographical. But they do This Land Is Your Land
that is funked out, and totally enjoyable.
A rectangle question
If you take any rectangle, and take the midpoint of each side, and connect them in order, the result is a rhombus (quadrilateral with four equal sides). Cool, and pretty easy to show. (Lots of options – maybe the most accessible is to use the Pythagorean Theorem, since we have right angles, four times, and get four equal hypotenuses)
But what if someone gave you a rhombus, and told you that they formed the rhombus by connecting the four midpoints of some quadrilateral, BUT ONE THAT IS NOT A RECTANGLE. Could they be correct?
(Inspired by Patrick Honner’s cool post on proving the Varignon Theorem, with details that were new to me, including the name of the theorem!)
Below, precinct house around the corner from me. The boxes below the windows show the midpoints of rectangles forming rhombuses.
Jagged arc of lights
Did you know what an ocular migraine is?
I went to a colleague’s birthday party last month. I don’t know why I wore my back-up glasses, but I did. And standing out in her yard I saw a little distortion in the right corner of my field of vision. Damned progressive lenses. I took them off to look at them. But the distortion was still there. Not floaters. A few zigzagging parallel lines, translucent, they didn’t obscure my vision. And they went away in a few minutes, and I forgot about them.
Two weeks later they reappeared, on the right, but closer to the center of my field of vision, and with light and color on the edges. More angular, and brighter. They faded as they got bigger, moved to the right periphery of my vision, and disappeared. Took maybe 20 minutes.
I mentioned it to a friend, who said I needed to go to an ophthalmologist. This could be the beginning of something serious. By the way, did you know there were 2 Ls in ophthalmologist? And 2 Hs. Freaky. But not as freaky as getting a random electric light show.
I meant to go. I did. But it wasn’t until the third episode this week that I jumped up and took care of it. Twenty minutes again. Started right center and grew and faded.
I called the ophthalmologist the next day (but I think I called him an opthamologist because I hadn’t learned to spell it yet), and he took me later that day. Dilated the eyes. Found I see 20/20, with my current correction. Checked the field of vision for blind spots. None. Checked peripheral vision. Good. Imaged the blood vessels and the optic nerves. Good and good.
Was I the only one who didn’t know there are “optical migraines”? This, apparently, is what I have. It’s in my brain, not my eyes. And it’s weird.
My last two were sort of halfway between these two images I found on
the internet.
It’s time to push Fariña on unfair funding, bad principals
There are a ton of major issues to push with the NYC Department of Education. But my gut says these two should be priority. What do you think?
Unfair Funding Formula
The unfair funding formulas pressure principals to discriminate against experienced teachers. This hurts teachers, schools, kids, and, well, principals. There is no benefit to the schools, and no benefit to the system. Every teacher should be charged the same amount against every school’s budget (or we should use units).
A teacher who is not hired under the current system, they are already in the system, there is no actual cost savings. And a lower cost, brand new teacher? That’s someone who was not already on the books. That brand new teacher costs the system extra.
By linking teachers’ actual salaries to the individual school “budget” (really paper internal accounting, not an actual budget) Bloomberg and Klein created a system where schools, principals, kids, and teachers all lose. We should end this.
The UFT Unity leadership agrees. And Fariña will not take action. She needs to feel pressure. Getting the UFT to apply this pressure should be a priority. This should be the last year of this unfair system.
Incompetent Administrators; Abusive Administrators
We have always had a mix of good and bad principals. But post-Bloomberg our system is littered with administrators who are incompetent, abusive, or both. Many have had inadequate experience. Some never taught, or only spent a year or two in the classroom. Some had poor training. In the last 20 years we have moved away from a system where an administrator would work under an experienced principal for years before taking the reins him or herself. Instead, beginning teachers did a one year boot camp to get ready. The “Leadership Academy” took candidates with zero pedagogical background.
The abuse often follows the incompetence. A principal who does not know what to do may feel threatened by subordinates who do, and last out. The abuse sometimes follows insecurity. If the position was not earned through years of hard work, but rather handed to someone with little experience, that person may treat their authority as a gift, and not something that was earned, and see almost any assertive act as a threat to that (arbitrarily granted, now arbitrarily exercised) authority. And some administrators just don’t have the kind of temperament we would expect from someone supervising adults and children.
Whatever the cause, incompetents and abusive administrators should not be in the those positions (or, in some cases, might be retrained). In theory our union leadership agrees, but is frustratingly unwilling to press the issue. Certainly Fariña has not challenged the Bloomberg/Klein ethos that the judgment of a principal cannot be challenged (despite case after case affirming that we have people with bad judgment, poor tempers, and lack of necessary knowledge and/or experience running our schools). She needs to feel pressure to act correctly.
Push Fariña? We need to motivate our leadership
Both of these issues can be addressed, immediately. Neither is part of contract negotiations. Both would help many, many teachers, and many many schools. And our union leadership is not opposed, in theory, to addressing either issue. They have been, however, bizarrely reluctant to press either issue with the Chancellor.
Yesterday our allies in MORE met and set priorities for the coming year. Likely these two were highly ranked on their list.
There are other issues of importance to the members of our union. But in theory these two would be 1) relatively easy to make progress on and 2) would impact a great number of members, and 3) would shift the “tone” of the current administration. They seem to be good places to begin the new school year. What do you think?
Xenophobia and Cowardice
In the context of race I recently advised someone:
- Speak the Truth
- Work for Change
- It’s not about you
I need to heed my own words. Primarily about race. But about other forms of discrimination as well. Given the current political climate, how could I see xenophobia and anti-immigrant propaganda, from allies, and not speak?
A week ago there was a coup-attempt in Turkey. And a counter-coup by the government, clearing opponents out of the armed forces, the judiciary, higher education, and schools. And the government named the supporters of Fethullah Gülen as being behind the coup, and demanded his extradition from the US.
Now, Gülen runs charter schools in the US. Many of us oppose charter schools – White Hat, Success, Democracy Prep, etc, etc. No issue so far.
But when public education advocates don’t write “There should not be charter schools” and instead write “Fethullah Gülen should not be operating American charter schools” – I need to call that out. Anti-immigrant appeals are fashionable in some places. NOT HERE.
The link is to Mercedes Schneider, but there has been much more of this on Twitter and Facebook and listserves and I assume just about everywhere. And it should stop.
JD2718 