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Friday, January 14, 2011

NYC Educator: Deals with the Devil

NYC Educator: Deals with the Devil

Deals with the Devil

After years of the DOE reneging on promises, stabbing us in the back, planting nonsense in the tabloids, complaining about contracts it signed, deals it made, UFT leadership still shows far too little evidence of having learned anything. Months back, UFT President Michael Mulgrew made a deal to incorporate value-added metrics into teacher ratings. This has great potential to backfire, just as Ms. Weingarten's deal to examine value-added has, rather spectacularly, blown up in the faces of all the UFT experts who deemed this a good idea.

Ms. Weingarten was determined not to be a stereotypical cigar-chomping union boss, forever demanding more money and better working conditions. And indeed, with inflation, teachers are not making more money. Ms. Weingarten didn't hesitate to toss away decades of hard-fought professional rights for a compensation increase that failed to match the NYC inflation rate. For this, she won accolades from anti-