Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:
Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
Breaking. Barbara Madeloni elected to head Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Barbara Madeloni was the director of the secondary-teacher education program at UMass. Her contract wasn’t renewed after she spoke out against the Pearson teacher performance assessment. This weekend she was elected to head the Massachusetts Teachers Association, an AFT affiliate. [yourtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7gBgHR-xDQ#t=47%5D
Keeping retirement weird. Appreciation.
To wrap up this year’s Teacher Appreciation Week I went up to Park Ridge to have lunch with some of my best teacher pals. The Friday lunch group that I was a member of for years has been decimated by retirements. Well. Not decimated exactly. Two of us retired. But damn if we haven’t been replaced by new teachers. It made me think about all the talk about teachers leaving the profession. The data
YESTERDAY
Corpowriter. “They say “yes!” And “absolutely!” and “please” and “thank you” and they smile and they don’t complain and they will work whatever hours it takes.”
Fred, Meanwhile, students graduating from US public high schools are an international joke. I live and work in San Francisco (my hometown) and believe me, people who got degrees in Vietnam and India and Pakistan, China and Japan had already outpaced the average US high school graduate by the time they were 13. My community college catalog here is FILLED with remedial English/reading courses…we are
Collective bargaining is the right to know and say no.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew. I’ve been at the bargaining table many times. I’ve bargained lots of teacher contracts for my local. I believe in collective bargaining. I believe in being at the table. But collective bargaining is more than an abstract right that being in a union provides us. We bargain something. Wages. Benefits. Working conditions. Teaching conditions. Learning conditions. As a
MAY 08
Sad news from Chiapas, Mexico.
Sad news from Chiapas, Mexico. A teacher was murdered. We have traveled to Chiapas on several occasions. One Christmas in 1997 we arrived in San Critstobol de las Casas just hours after 45 innocents villages were murdered in the town of Acteal, just 50 miles to the north. They were murdered by a pro-government para-military group intending to terrorize those who sympathized with the Zapatistas. T
MAY 07
Chicago Teachers Union adopts resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards.
Today the Chicago Teachers Union passed a resolution opposing the Common Core standards. A similar New Business Item was not permitted to be voted on at the recent Illinois Education Association state convention. It was ruled out of order by IEA President Cinda Klickna. The NBI had been introduced by veteran Park Ridge fifth grade teacher and delegate, Jerry Mulvihill. From CTUnet: Today, members
Jose Vilson’s This is Not a Test is released today.
Jose Vilson’s book, This is Not a Test, was released today. I thought I would repost the review I wrote last March. This is Not a Test. Jose Vilson. Haymarket Books My friend Professor Bill Schubert, who is also my professional mentor, advocated the very Deweyian idea of teacher lore as a basis for educational research. Schubert’s idea is to extend to teachers “a progressive faith acknowledging t
Sunday book review section. This is Not a Test.
Originally posted on Fred Klonsky: This is Not a Test. Jose Vilson. Haymarket Books My friend Professor Bill Schubert, who is also my professional mentor, advocated the very Deweyian idea of teacher lore as a basis for educational research. Schubert’s idea is to extend to teachers “a progressive faith acknowledging that they are researchers and theory builders in their professional lives.” In a
Getting rid of the wiener on the Fifth Floor.
The news hasn’t been great for Rahm this week. There was the story that his motorcade regularly speeds through school zones and red lights. His sexist snub of the great Whitney Young High School girls basketball state champions. The arrest of his fugitive money-laundering Comptroller in Pakistan. The editorial in the Tribune that called him a “walking personality disorder.” And that was just THIS
Tuesday night with Karen Lewis and Chicago’s political nerds.
Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke are members of that very small circle of people that can justifiably claim the titles of Chicago journalists. They both write for the Chicago Reader. Full disclosure. Joravsky is an old friend. Old enough that I think twenty years ago he threw me off his bowling league team. They weren’t very good. Clearly, I was worse. Joravsky and Dumke have now created something uni
MAY 06
Maybe I’m amazed. Rahm can’t afford to buy his own Paul McCartney tickets. And no lunch with Rauner.
Fresh on the heels of stories about Rahm’s law-breaking motorcades and his snub of the great Whitney Young girls state championship basketball team comes the latest scandal. Actually, it’s not a scandal. I’m not even amazed. I just think it’s funny that Rahm, who is a millionaire from his Wall Street days, doesn’t buy his own Paul McCartney tickets. I’m somewhat amazed that people still go to Pau
MAY 05
Karen Lewis. The pension heist. Must read.
KAREN LEWIS PUBLIC ADDRESS: IT’S ABOUT THE MONEY CITY CLUB CHICAGO Monday, May 5, 2014 On behalf of the members and staff of the Chicago Teachers Union, I want to thank you for inviting me to the City Club again. I am always honored and pleased to stand before you. One of my fondest memories of growing up in Chicago was when I was about seven years and my father would take me out on Saturdays for
Public pension theft is a national scandal. A story that goes way beyond one state.
David Sirota, Pando Daily Thanks to confidential documents exclusively obtained by Pando, we can now see some of the language and fee structures in the agreements between the “alternative investment” industry and major public pension funds. Taken together, the documents raise serious questions about whether the government employees, trustees and politicians overseeing major public pension funds a
Karen Lewis. “I’m not looking to make anybody’s election year easy.” No contract extension.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said today that the union likely will not agree to a one-year extension on the three-year contract that was signed after a seven-day strike in September 2012. That means contract talks between the union and the Chicago Public Schools could be underway during the campaign leading up to the February 2015 mayoral election. Lewis long has
John, Glen, Ken and I discuss. What should we do about Quinn and Rauner?
John Dillon, Glen Brown, Ken Previti and I are all retired teachers, activists, advocates for pension justice and bloggers. Today we discuss the issue of what our union and the members of the Illinois Education Association, should do in the Illinois election for governor. This will be cross-posted on all four blogs. Voting for Quinn in November: Seeking HazMat Suit on EBay There is the old clic
MAY 04
Rauner’s tip-line is a fraud and will Rauner fear push our union leaders into the arms of Michael Madigan.
It turns out that Bruce Rauner’s tip-line is a fraud. Like everything else about the guy. The caucus, as I like to call John, Glen, Ken and myself, heard about Rauner’s campaign ploy of setting up a state corruption tip-line phone number. He meant it as a dig at Squeezy. But we thought it would be good to encourage people to call that number to report on the biggest state-sponsored theft of them
Todd Mertz. Billionaires Persuade Pension Reform Judges. What?
- Todd Mertz is a teacher and IEA political activist. Now this is the craziest thing I have heard. In fact, I would have bet this wasn’t even legal. Many teachers and public employees have been worried about their fate in the hands of the Illinois Supreme Court Justices because they believe Michael Madigan has several of the Supreme Court Justices in his back pocket. But the craziness gets crazie
Sunday reads.
This week teachers at Brooklyn’s International High School at Prospect Heights said no to pointless and testing. Veteran New York teacher and union Chapter leader Arthur Goldstein explains why he is against the contract to Diane Ravitch who wrote that it was a good deal. The Sunday New York Times Magazine money issue is all about income inequality. The ad on the first page is for the Baccarat Hot
MAY 03
Support the people who serve the NEA staff.
- From UniteHere Local 23. Seasons Culinary, the food service company that operates the cafeteria in the National Education Association headquarters building in Washington DC, is refusing to accept a contract that would give its workers the same benefits and protections as at other DC UNITE HERE Local 23 cafeterias.* We recognize NEA Executive Director John Stocks for his national leadership on i
Keeping retirement weird. Pensions are a promise. Everywhere in the world.
Last night we went to a Pete Seeger sing-along at the Old Town School of Folk Music. That’s what they called a hootenanny back in my day. I left my uke at home, but plenty of folks brought instruments. The OTS projected the words and chords up on the screen and different staff members came up to lead us in songs Pete had written or sung or both. Including Frank Hamilton, one of the original found
John Dillon. Reporting pension corruption. Where to begin?
John Dillon is a retired blogger, pension activist and blogger at Pension Vocabulary. The Illinois Review, always a purveyor of items Tea Party, announced a short time ago that GOP candidate Bruce Rauner has “launched a statewide whistleblower tip line for citizens” who want to report corruption, misuse of state funds, etc. Where to begin? You’ll remember that in his televised political commercia