Mr. Eterno and I Go to Melville
We are not used to being in places like the forum in Melville. We go to a lot of meetings together, but there's a brick wall that UFT leadership has built around us, and they don't very much want us to get out. You see, James and I oppose mayoral control. We opposed it when it began, and after it proved to be an unmitigated disaster, we opposed its renewal. I wrote in the Daily News against it. UFT leadership, for reasons that eluded me utterly, supported it both times. And every member of the Unity Caucus who signed a loyalty oath to support whatever leadership supports supported it too.
Education historian Diane Ravitch opposes mayoral control, and wrote about it extensively in The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She thinks it's a tool of the billionaire boys' club. So do I, and while I can't check with James right now, I assume he does too. Why should Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walmart family have to suffer through all that messy democracy when the likes of Michael Bloomberg can simply rubber stamp whatever he wishes via some fake board of education?
We also oppose Common Core, like Diane Ravitch does. Any system that fails 70% of our children is 100% failure, and I wrote that in the Daily News too. In fact, it appears to me this failure rate is deliberate, and that's reinforced by the idiotic remarks of Arne Duncan about white suburban moms. Though Bill Gates can spend millions and millions promoting this corporatist program, he's yet to persuade suburban moms of any color that their
