Monday, September 1, 2014
A Great Labor Day Story
If you live in New England, or were paying attention to supermarket labor news this summer, you already know this story.
Almost a hundred years ago, Greek immigrant Arthur Demoulas founded what would become the grocery chain Market Basket. For the last few decades, the company has been run by two grandsons-- Arthur T. Demoulas and Arthur S. Demoulas.
The chain had grown to 71 stores with 25,000 employees. But there was a constant struggle between the cousins. Arthur S. pushed hard to get more golden eggs out of the Market Basket goose, but Arthur T., who did the actual managing of the operation, provided holiday bonuses, hefty retirement packages, and a career ladder that reached all the way down to baggers. He was personable and pleasant and well-known to his customers and his workers.
In June, Arthur S. gathered enough board votes to put a stop to all that touchy-feely crap, and Arthur T. was canned. When eight executives in the company tried to protest the ouster, they were canned, too. And as any qualified website headline writer would say, nobody could predict what would happen next.
What happened next was that the workers and customers of Market Basket shut the place down.
The workers walked out. The customers started boycotting. The suppliers stopped supplying. If you walked into a Market basket in July or August, you felt like you'd wandered into an abandoned building or perhaps time-traveled back to the saddest supermarket in Soviet Russia.
And the workers didn't just walk out. They held pep rallies. They walked with signs of their former fired CEO and demanded his return. Arthur S. threatened to fire them all, replace them with scabs, and the workers felt the pressure. Many of them are part-timers who depend on that check, and even those who didn't walk saw their hours cut dramatically as the stores ground to a halt. And yet a scan of news coverage finds no real signs of backlash-- even the workers who didn't walk did not call for the job action to fold.
By the end of August, it was over. Arthur S. and his cohort sold out to Arthur T. who was restored to leadership of the chain. It's a story so special that the link you just read past connects to coverage in the LA Times.
What are the lessons of the Market Basket story?
For folks in the big offices, the lesson is simple-- treat your people well, run your company fairly, and operate moral, ethical and just plain decent human being management, and there is no limit to how hard your workers will work and fight for you.
For workers, the story is a reminder that people do have power and that, pulling together in the name of a decent cause, they can create enormous pressure for management to do the right thing.
Happy Labor Day!
Squeezing Labor For $$$
If your goal is to get rich in business, labor is a problem you must solve.
I mean, there's that big stream of money. You can see it, right there, fat and full and flowing right toward you and then BAM-- it suddenly gets diverted because you have to pay workers their wages.
Early in human history, rulers established the ideal base level for wages-- $0.00/lifetime. But most countries (even the US-- though not first as we like to believe) eventually recognized slavery as a Bad Thing, and so the scramble was on to see what creative ways could be discovered to drive wages as low as possible.
Unions emerged as a way to exert counter-pressure, and while it will be repeated many times today (Labor Day), it can never be stated too many times-- everything that American workers take for granted from minimum wage to a defined work week to safe work conditions was fought for by unions and not given freely and voluntarily by management. And that most definitely includes the workers' share of that big stream of money.
In education, the financial pressures were traditionally different. There were certainly plenty of pressures to keep costs down, and I get that. As a taxpayer, I'm not inclined to write the school district a blank check, either. Those fights could get plenty ugly. I remember when Cleveland City Schools would shut down in October or November because they were out of money and the taxpayers had voted down the levy. And once upon a time, I was a local union president during contract negotiations and a subsequent strike. Believe me-- I know exactly how angry taxpayers when they think their taxes are going to go up.
But these we're seeing something new. Folks in the financial sector have noticed that the river of money running through education is huge. Huge! And they want a piece of it.
That can only mean one thing. Because that river flows mostly toward personnel. In fact, in runs toward personnel in a way that business people can find absolutely shocking. I remember a local board member who operated a concrete business and who was absolutely stunned by the percentage of the school budget that went to personnel costs. In his whole tenure, he never stopped talking about it, and always in tones that suggested he saw it as proof that the district was completely screwed up from a business standpoint.
But schools are a service sector, and personnel have to be a huge portion of the budget. Yes, there's money to be made in infrastructure and supplies, but that's easy-- you just insert your own business in that particular pipeline.You can't easily bring more money in by, say, raising prices. No, if you want to squeeze real money out of schools, you'll have to squeeze the personnel.
So when you hear reformsters talking about restructuring teacher pay, they're really talking about one thing-- "how do we divert some of that river of money from teachers to us?"
Proposals that follow the same template as TNTP's bogus plan talk about increasing pay for teachers, but they are really about the overall costs of a teaching staff. The basic principle here is pretty simple-- schools can afford to pay beginning teachers a bit more if they can convince them not to stick around. There will be some savings in not having to pay them a top career-level master teacher salary, but the big savings will come from not having to provide them with a pension, ever.
Merit systems are even easier to stack in favor of the school operators; the technique is already well-known in the private sector. You budget a set amount of money for merit bonuses, and that's it. It doesn't matter how many merit bonuses you award-- they are all going to be a slice of that pre-determined pie.
The tier system that some propose is a matter of PR and recruitment. You get one or two Master Teachers per building making a hefty salary. Those allow you to say, "Look at the huge salary our Master Teachers make!" (It also helps with the average salary numbers for your building.) You budget for the number of high-paid Master Teachers you can afford, and never exceed it. For extra savings, promote teachers to the Master slot after six or seven years, wash them out before a decade, and still avoid pension costs.
None of these plans are about making teacher compensation better for teachers. No reformsters are out there proposing to attract teachers with offers of better lifetime career earnings, nor are reformsters talking about how to keep the best teachers around for thirty-five or forty years. The idea is simply to reduce labor costs as much as possible, so that the river of sweet, sweet money can roll on, unimpeded.
I mean, there's that big stream of money. You can see it, right there, fat and full and flowing right toward you and then BAM-- it suddenly gets diverted because you have to pay workers their wages.
Early in human history, rulers established the ideal base level for wages-- $0.00/lifetime. But most countries (even the US-- though not first as we like to believe) eventually recognized slavery as a Bad Thing, and so the scramble was on to see what creative ways could be discovered to drive wages as low as possible.
Unions emerged as a way to exert counter-pressure, and while it will be repeated many times today (Labor Day), it can never be stated too many times-- everything that American workers take for granted from minimum wage to a defined work week to safe work conditions was fought for by unions and not given freely and voluntarily by management. And that most definitely includes the workers' share of that big stream of money.
In education, the financial pressures were traditionally different. There were certainly plenty of pressures to keep costs down, and I get that. As a taxpayer, I'm not inclined to write the school district a blank check, either. Those fights could get plenty ugly. I remember when Cleveland City Schools would shut down in October or November because they were out of money and the taxpayers had voted down the levy. And once upon a time, I was a local union president during contract negotiations and a subsequent strike. Believe me-- I know exactly how angry taxpayers when they think their taxes are going to go up.
But these we're seeing something new. Folks in the financial sector have noticed that the river of money running through education is huge. Huge! And they want a piece of it.
That can only mean one thing. Because that river flows mostly toward personnel. In fact, in runs toward personnel in a way that business people can find absolutely shocking. I remember a local board member who operated a concrete business and who was absolutely stunned by the percentage of the school budget that went to personnel costs. In his whole tenure, he never stopped talking about it, and always in tones that suggested he saw it as proof that the district was completely screwed up from a business standpoint.
But schools are a service sector, and personnel have to be a huge portion of the budget. Yes, there's money to be made in infrastructure and supplies, but that's easy-- you just insert your own business in that particular pipeline.You can't easily bring more money in by, say, raising prices. No, if you want to squeeze real money out of schools, you'll have to squeeze the personnel.
So when you hear reformsters talking about restructuring teacher pay, they're really talking about one thing-- "how do we divert some of that river of money from teachers to us?"
Proposals that follow the same template as TNTP's bogus plan talk about increasing pay for teachers, but they are really about the overall costs of a teaching staff. The basic principle here is pretty simple-- schools can afford to pay beginning teachers a bit more if they can convince them not to stick around. There will be some savings in not having to pay them a top career-level master teacher salary, but the big savings will come from not having to provide them with a pension, ever.
Merit systems are even easier to stack in favor of the school operators; the technique is already well-known in the private sector. You budget a set amount of money for merit bonuses, and that's it. It doesn't matter how many merit bonuses you award-- they are all going to be a slice of that pre-determined pie.
The tier system that some propose is a matter of PR and recruitment. You get one or two Master Teachers per building making a hefty salary. Those allow you to say, "Look at the huge salary our Master Teachers make!" (It also helps with the average salary numbers for your building.) You budget for the number of high-paid Master Teachers you can afford, and never exceed it. For extra savings, promote teachers to the Master slot after six or seven years, wash them out before a decade, and still avoid pension costs.
None of these plans are about making teacher compensation better for teachers. No reformsters are out there proposing to attract teachers with offers of better lifetime career earnings, nor are reformsters talking about how to keep the best teachers around for thirty-five or forty years. The idea is simply to reduce labor costs as much as possible, so that the river of sweet, sweet money can roll on, unimpeded.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
PDK & Marketing for the Core
One of the features of Common Core has always been the ability to market materials on a national scale. A national set of standards should help edubizes get away from having to marker fifty different sets of materials, but it only partially solves the problem of millions of individual teachers who think they have the professional expertise to think and choose for themselves.
We've already covered the creation of EdReports, a site intended to be a Consumer Reports style recommender of education materials. But here comes a puff piece in the Phi Delta Kappan that read likes the advertising insert in a glossy magazine.
"Support the Common Core with the Right Instructional Materials" authors Rachel Leifer and Denis Udall both have nifty education pedigrees. Leifer did stint with TFA in DC ("where more than 80 percent of her students advanced at least 1.5 years in academic skills annually")and is now a program officer for the Helmsley Foundation. Udall graduated from Harvard's Graduate School of Education and went on to found a charter school; these days he works for the Hewlett Foundation. So, big fans and supporters of public education.
Leifer and Udall open with an anecdote about a school in New York that used EngageNY materials and -- whoosh!-- for the first time in years "test data show that nearly every student at Ripley is making substantial learning gains." Or at least test data show that students are generating better test data. But it wouldn't be another day in Reformsterland if we didn't blithely assume that test scores = learning. The conclusion Leifer and Udall reach in this introductory anecdote is that having the right materials makes all the difference!
So advertising point one-- you need good materials.
Point number two-- the good materials are essential, but they are scarce.
Well, damn. If only there were some expert organization that could direct me to the Right Stuff!
CCSS supporters "realized early that they would need to prod the marketplace to respond to the standards." So "working with educators," the Student Achievement Partners (the non-profit profiteering group founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba) decided they would whip something up.
Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool (IMET) is a product of SAP. It is
a set of rubrics designed to support educators and administrators tasked with developing, evaluating, or buying full-year or multi-year curricula. The rubrics distill the standards into non-negotiable criteria for alignment with tangible metrics.
Doesn't that sound grand and technical and like the kind of thing you'd need experts for-- real smart experts and not just classroom teachers? And so we consider the process of suggesting that classroom teachers are not knowledgeable enough to select classroom materials. I know that's not a new idea, but the CCSS marketing plan requires it.
Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products (EQuIP) is from our good friends at Achieve.
This rubric evaluates a lesson or unit on four dimensions: alignment to the depth of the standards, key shifts required by the standards, instructional supports, and assessments. Scores for each dimension classify materials as exemplar, exemplar if improved, revision needed, or not ready.
Achieve has trained a boatload of teachers to use this (because, again, the poor dears certainly couldn't have mastered it on their own) and has a cadre of fifty evaluators ready to give materials a look-see and the stamp of approval (or not).
It's about here, in a small-print paragraph, that Leifer and Udall note that both of these groups being advertised here get grant money from Helmsley and Hewlett.
The author's cite two benefits of using the rubrics. First, they will create "smart demand." In other words, these rubrics are a way for the rubric designers to coach the market, to encourage the market to want what the rubric designers think the market should want. Second, the rubrics will make everyone who uses them more familiar with the Core. Presumably not in the "Now that I understand what the Core is, I do not support it" manner documented in recent polls.
Two shining lights
Leifer and Udall go on to discuss two states that have had super-duper success with this sort of thing: Louisiana (where Leifer worked for a while) and New York.
For Louisiana, they talked to John White as well as touting the use of materials from some of the same folks who helped write EngageNY's lesson plan straightjackets. At any rate, they claim that LA reviewed textbooks so rigorously that only one each for math and ELA made the grade. White is proud of judging publishers transparently. The article does not in any way address that giant regulatory clusterfinagle that is currently LA education.
In New York, we just go ahead and declare EngageNY a success, based on anecdotes from a couple of administrators. This alleged success is due to three factors:
1) Using the EQuIP rubric real hard
2) Training many educators
3) Facilitating adaptions instead of requiring scripts
Because EngageNY is just famous for its lack of scripting and its enormous freedom for teachers. Which, given what I've been hearing for the last year or more, will come as real news to some folks.
The Five Main Steps
So what does it take to come up with great materials? Five steps, it turns out.
1) Build on previous efforts and existing resources. By which they mean, use the techniques that have already worked for places like Louisiana and New York.
2) Make sure educators are involved and trained. The training is important because, remember, teachers are not sufficiently knowledgeable or professional to select their own classroom materials without first being properlyindoctrinated trained.
3) Have non-negotiables. In the dating world, these are called dealbreakers. In this case, it means don't try to make your own revisions to the rubrics-- if the rubric says no go, then listen tot it. Remember, teachers and principals and curriculum directors-- you are not professionals and these sorts of decisions are beyond your ability to make unaided.
4) Provide detailed feedback. To textbook companies, that is. It's your job to help them make the sale.
5) Enable teachers to supplement and adapt material on their own. By which they apparently mean to allow teachers to go to "online libraries of vetted materials" (EQuIP and SAP both have them), not actually write or adapt materials themselves. Good lord, they're only classroom teachers-- how could they possibly do that?
It's a pretty little advertising insert and really, what better message to send out to the members of a society of professional educators that they can relax, because education is in the hands of people more capable than professional educators.
We've already covered the creation of EdReports, a site intended to be a Consumer Reports style recommender of education materials. But here comes a puff piece in the Phi Delta Kappan that read likes the advertising insert in a glossy magazine.
"Support the Common Core with the Right Instructional Materials" authors Rachel Leifer and Denis Udall both have nifty education pedigrees. Leifer did stint with TFA in DC ("where more than 80 percent of her students advanced at least 1.5 years in academic skills annually")and is now a program officer for the Helmsley Foundation. Udall graduated from Harvard's Graduate School of Education and went on to found a charter school; these days he works for the Hewlett Foundation. So, big fans and supporters of public education.
Leifer and Udall open with an anecdote about a school in New York that used EngageNY materials and -- whoosh!-- for the first time in years "test data show that nearly every student at Ripley is making substantial learning gains." Or at least test data show that students are generating better test data. But it wouldn't be another day in Reformsterland if we didn't blithely assume that test scores = learning. The conclusion Leifer and Udall reach in this introductory anecdote is that having the right materials makes all the difference!
So advertising point one-- you need good materials.
Point number two-- the good materials are essential, but they are scarce.
Well, damn. If only there were some expert organization that could direct me to the Right Stuff!
CCSS supporters "realized early that they would need to prod the marketplace to respond to the standards." So "working with educators," the Student Achievement Partners (the non-profit profiteering group founded by CCSS writers David Coleman, Susan Pimentel and Jason Zimba) decided they would whip something up.
Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool (IMET) is a product of SAP. It is
a set of rubrics designed to support educators and administrators tasked with developing, evaluating, or buying full-year or multi-year curricula. The rubrics distill the standards into non-negotiable criteria for alignment with tangible metrics.
Doesn't that sound grand and technical and like the kind of thing you'd need experts for-- real smart experts and not just classroom teachers? And so we consider the process of suggesting that classroom teachers are not knowledgeable enough to select classroom materials. I know that's not a new idea, but the CCSS marketing plan requires it.
Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products (EQuIP) is from our good friends at Achieve.
This rubric evaluates a lesson or unit on four dimensions: alignment to the depth of the standards, key shifts required by the standards, instructional supports, and assessments. Scores for each dimension classify materials as exemplar, exemplar if improved, revision needed, or not ready.
Achieve has trained a boatload of teachers to use this (because, again, the poor dears certainly couldn't have mastered it on their own) and has a cadre of fifty evaluators ready to give materials a look-see and the stamp of approval (or not).
It's about here, in a small-print paragraph, that Leifer and Udall note that both of these groups being advertised here get grant money from Helmsley and Hewlett.
The author's cite two benefits of using the rubrics. First, they will create "smart demand." In other words, these rubrics are a way for the rubric designers to coach the market, to encourage the market to want what the rubric designers think the market should want. Second, the rubrics will make everyone who uses them more familiar with the Core. Presumably not in the "Now that I understand what the Core is, I do not support it" manner documented in recent polls.
Two shining lights
Leifer and Udall go on to discuss two states that have had super-duper success with this sort of thing: Louisiana (where Leifer worked for a while) and New York.
For Louisiana, they talked to John White as well as touting the use of materials from some of the same folks who helped write EngageNY's lesson plan straightjackets. At any rate, they claim that LA reviewed textbooks so rigorously that only one each for math and ELA made the grade. White is proud of judging publishers transparently. The article does not in any way address that giant regulatory clusterfinagle that is currently LA education.
In New York, we just go ahead and declare EngageNY a success, based on anecdotes from a couple of administrators. This alleged success is due to three factors:
1) Using the EQuIP rubric real hard
2) Training many educators
3) Facilitating adaptions instead of requiring scripts
Because EngageNY is just famous for its lack of scripting and its enormous freedom for teachers. Which, given what I've been hearing for the last year or more, will come as real news to some folks.
The Five Main Steps
So what does it take to come up with great materials? Five steps, it turns out.
1) Build on previous efforts and existing resources. By which they mean, use the techniques that have already worked for places like Louisiana and New York.
2) Make sure educators are involved and trained. The training is important because, remember, teachers are not sufficiently knowledgeable or professional to select their own classroom materials without first being properly
3) Have non-negotiables. In the dating world, these are called dealbreakers. In this case, it means don't try to make your own revisions to the rubrics-- if the rubric says no go, then listen tot it. Remember, teachers and principals and curriculum directors-- you are not professionals and these sorts of decisions are beyond your ability to make unaided.
4) Provide detailed feedback. To textbook companies, that is. It's your job to help them make the sale.
5) Enable teachers to supplement and adapt material on their own. By which they apparently mean to allow teachers to go to "online libraries of vetted materials" (EQuIP and SAP both have them), not actually write or adapt materials themselves. Good lord, they're only classroom teachers-- how could they possibly do that?
It's a pretty little advertising insert and really, what better message to send out to the members of a society of professional educators that they can relax, because education is in the hands of people more capable than professional educators.
7 Reasons To Send $$ To Teachout/Wu NY Campaign
Why contribute to a New York gubernatorial campaign when you don't live in New York?
Zephyr Teachout is challenging Andrew Cuomo for the Democrat position on the ballot. While a victory is unlikely, it's not impossible. And you, dear reader, are probably not even a New York resident. Here's why you should support Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu anyway.
Send a message to the Democratic Party
The Democratic party has taken to defining their traditional constituencies as "those people whose interests we don't have to represent because they will vote for us even if we punch them directly in the nose."
"Vote for us," Democrats tell teachers. "We're the ones who like teachers." And then they punch teachers in the nose, and trash education. The Democratic party of New York is so sure they don't have to reach out to Democratic voters that Cuomo has barely pretended to be a Democrat at all. If being a Democrat were a crime, I'm not sure Cuomo could be convicted.
Bottom line-- people will take you for granted just as much as you let them. The Democratic Party needs to stop taking education voters and labor voters and not-actually-rich-guy voters for granted.
The race has national implications
See above. New York is not the only place where Democrats have decided they can turn their back on education. The Obama administration has been as anti-public education as any Bush ever dreamed of being. And since Cuomo has his eye on the White House, lessons from this governor's race are also lessons about 2016. If the lesson of this race is that being a pro-corporate, anti-public ed tool will cost you at the polls, that's a lesson that will affect any Democrat running in 2016.
Teachout doesn't have to win
It would be great if she did. And she still could. But she doesn't have to. Cuomo is supposed to be invincible, untouchable. This supposed to be a walk in the park.
This is like one of those stories in which somebody is pretending to be a god. To bring him down, you don't have to outright kill him-- you just have to make him bleed. He's already showing strain and a hint of flop sweat.
There's another race, here
Quick-- name Cuomo's running mate! Yeah, I can't, either. Tim Wu, on the other hand, is the father of net neutrality. There are two races here, and since only about twelve people in New York pay attention to the Lt. Governor race, mobilizing voters could let Wu walk off with that office, thereby handcuffing Cuomo to his own opposition.
This is what rich people do
Looking across the country and picking out people who stand for your own values is a rich person's game. Thanks to the Supremes, we don't even know how many gazillions of dollars have been spread around the country into various races, but based on what we can see, we know it's not peanuts. Rich individuals like the Koch brothers, advocacy groups like StudentsFirst-- this is what they do. Swoop in, bankroll a guy who Sees Things Your Way, and hope it helps.
So here's a chance to live like a rich person and support candidates in races you won't even vote in. Maybe your contribution will be more Grey Poupon than beluga caviar, but you can still feel fancy.
Teachout/Wu stand for the right stuff
Teachout is Not a Politician in all the best ways. She's not ignorant or naive, but savvy and knowledgeable, and she gets it. This is not a protest campaign or a stunt campaign-- this is a campaign of substance and thought. For public education fans, she sees what is going wrong with public ed in this country, but she sees it in the context of larger issues.
People are out of power now, not just in their politics where they feel that their voices don't matter, but in their workplace and in the marketplace. I want to revive the old American belief -- exemplified by Jefferson (who wanted an anti-monopoly clause in the Constitution), Teddy Roosevelt and FDR -- that concentrated private power threatens democratic institutions.
If you don't ordinarily contribute to political campaigns because it's all political crap and the candidates are all bought and paid for by Big Money anyway, here's a chance to support the kind of politician you wish were running. Here's your chance to say to The Machine, "This is the kind of thing I want to see."
Politics are a free market of sorts. Much of the market is driven by advertising and entrenched power, but the consumer always has the power to demand certain choices, and we exercise that power by standing up for those choices when they appear.
Celebrate Labor Day
I live in Pennsylvania, but I have contributed to the Teachout/Wu campaign, and I will do it again. I will not contribute much, but every reader of this blog chipped in ten or fifteen bucks, it would add up to some real money. Teachout has a real chance to make a real difference, but she is up against fully entrenched and well-financed power. There's just nine days left till the primary, and lots of phone calling, flier distributing, sign posting, and general campaigning to do.
So what better way to celebrate Labor Day than by supporting someone who is trying to put the voice of regular citizens back into the political conversation.
Click on this link, contribute some money. Do it in the next 24 hours. Step up and help out.
Zephyr Teachout is challenging Andrew Cuomo for the Democrat position on the ballot. While a victory is unlikely, it's not impossible. And you, dear reader, are probably not even a New York resident. Here's why you should support Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu anyway.
Send a message to the Democratic Party
The Democratic party has taken to defining their traditional constituencies as "those people whose interests we don't have to represent because they will vote for us even if we punch them directly in the nose."
"Vote for us," Democrats tell teachers. "We're the ones who like teachers." And then they punch teachers in the nose, and trash education. The Democratic party of New York is so sure they don't have to reach out to Democratic voters that Cuomo has barely pretended to be a Democrat at all. If being a Democrat were a crime, I'm not sure Cuomo could be convicted.
Bottom line-- people will take you for granted just as much as you let them. The Democratic Party needs to stop taking education voters and labor voters and not-actually-rich-guy voters for granted.
The race has national implications
See above. New York is not the only place where Democrats have decided they can turn their back on education. The Obama administration has been as anti-public education as any Bush ever dreamed of being. And since Cuomo has his eye on the White House, lessons from this governor's race are also lessons about 2016. If the lesson of this race is that being a pro-corporate, anti-public ed tool will cost you at the polls, that's a lesson that will affect any Democrat running in 2016.
Teachout doesn't have to win
It would be great if she did. And she still could. But she doesn't have to. Cuomo is supposed to be invincible, untouchable. This supposed to be a walk in the park.
This is like one of those stories in which somebody is pretending to be a god. To bring him down, you don't have to outright kill him-- you just have to make him bleed. He's already showing strain and a hint of flop sweat.
There's another race, here
Quick-- name Cuomo's running mate! Yeah, I can't, either. Tim Wu, on the other hand, is the father of net neutrality. There are two races here, and since only about twelve people in New York pay attention to the Lt. Governor race, mobilizing voters could let Wu walk off with that office, thereby handcuffing Cuomo to his own opposition.
This is what rich people do
Looking across the country and picking out people who stand for your own values is a rich person's game. Thanks to the Supremes, we don't even know how many gazillions of dollars have been spread around the country into various races, but based on what we can see, we know it's not peanuts. Rich individuals like the Koch brothers, advocacy groups like StudentsFirst-- this is what they do. Swoop in, bankroll a guy who Sees Things Your Way, and hope it helps.
So here's a chance to live like a rich person and support candidates in races you won't even vote in. Maybe your contribution will be more Grey Poupon than beluga caviar, but you can still feel fancy.
Teachout/Wu stand for the right stuff
Teachout is Not a Politician in all the best ways. She's not ignorant or naive, but savvy and knowledgeable, and she gets it. This is not a protest campaign or a stunt campaign-- this is a campaign of substance and thought. For public education fans, she sees what is going wrong with public ed in this country, but she sees it in the context of larger issues.
People are out of power now, not just in their politics where they feel that their voices don't matter, but in their workplace and in the marketplace. I want to revive the old American belief -- exemplified by Jefferson (who wanted an anti-monopoly clause in the Constitution), Teddy Roosevelt and FDR -- that concentrated private power threatens democratic institutions.
If you don't ordinarily contribute to political campaigns because it's all political crap and the candidates are all bought and paid for by Big Money anyway, here's a chance to support the kind of politician you wish were running. Here's your chance to say to The Machine, "This is the kind of thing I want to see."
Politics are a free market of sorts. Much of the market is driven by advertising and entrenched power, but the consumer always has the power to demand certain choices, and we exercise that power by standing up for those choices when they appear.
Celebrate Labor Day
I live in Pennsylvania, but I have contributed to the Teachout/Wu campaign, and I will do it again. I will not contribute much, but every reader of this blog chipped in ten or fifteen bucks, it would add up to some real money. Teachout has a real chance to make a real difference, but she is up against fully entrenched and well-financed power. There's just nine days left till the primary, and lots of phone calling, flier distributing, sign posting, and general campaigning to do.
So what better way to celebrate Labor Day than by supporting someone who is trying to put the voice of regular citizens back into the political conversation.
Click on this link, contribute some money. Do it in the next 24 hours. Step up and help out.
Why Aren't More Women in Tech? Here's One Thought...
If you need a reminder just how bad misogynistic behavior can be in our current culture, there is news this week to remind you.
Anita Sarkeesian is someone you should know. Her vlog series "Tropes vs. Women" has over the last few years dissected and explained the sexism of the video gaming world. Her videos are thoughtful and scholarly. Situated on the website Feminist Frequency, they provide an intelligent, considered look at how the tropes and traditions of video games reinforce some of the worst sexist attitudes of the culture. Sarkeesian's presentations are calm, clear, and non-ranty; were it not for the subject matter, you could easily imagine her videos running on PBS.
So, of course, she has received constant threats. The level of harassment is stunning, a degree of ugliness that makes you want to just powerwash your computer after you look at it. Beyond the standard fare of trolling (known in the meat world as Being an Asshole) Sarkeesian has been the threatened with violence, rape and death. Trolls created a video game "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" and sent her screen shots of herself being assaulted. All this, I'll remind you, because she is a woman daring to point out sexism in video games. Video games.
Sarkeesian has put up with this since Day One, but last week, things took a turn for the even worse when someone let her know that they had tracked down her home address, as well as the names and address of her parents, and threatened to kill them all. Sarkeesian called the police and moved out of her home.
When discussing the shortage of women in the tech industry, it's standard to observe that the frat boy atmosphere can make them feel unwelcome. Frankly, saying that the tech industry makes women feel unwelcome is like saying being mugged makes people feel uncomfortable. We have example after example-- the launching of the app "titstare," the tinder lawsuit, the endless tales of Comic Con misbehavior. And every example of tech world sexism and harassment comes with its own second helping of "How dare you call us sexist, you ugly woman who probably can't get laid."
The culture in general and teachers in particular have got to update our image of what sexism looks like. The classic sexist stereotype (macho, strutting, physically powerful and confident) is being replaced by a new harasser-- the smart guy using his techy device to blast his ideas and images out into the world, never having to even look his victim in the face, and demanding that no women enter his domain without submitting to him.
It doesn't have to be that way. My son-in-law works in the tech industry, and he and my daughter make a fine feminist couple. But somehow we've raised a whole host of young men who think that it's okay to threaten women with rape and death.
I've taught Kate Chopin's The Awakening for years, and it always sparks some important and revealing conversations among my students. But lately I'm feeling that a discussion of the subtle and powerful ways in which society can pressure women into certain roles hardly prepares us for a world in which women who dare to call out little boys for their misogyny can expect relentless threats of death and rape-- how the hell did we end up with that world?? I should have done it before now, but this year we'll be upping our game when it comes to talking about gender in American lit.
One thing's for sure-- in that world, providing women with access to STEM education is only a tiny part of the solution. We like to think of ourselves as far more advanced than countries where women are threatened, harassed and assaulted for trying to get an education. I wish we were separated from that kind of thinking by a far larger gulf than we apparently are.
Anita Sarkeesian is someone you should know. Her vlog series "Tropes vs. Women" has over the last few years dissected and explained the sexism of the video gaming world. Her videos are thoughtful and scholarly. Situated on the website Feminist Frequency, they provide an intelligent, considered look at how the tropes and traditions of video games reinforce some of the worst sexist attitudes of the culture. Sarkeesian's presentations are calm, clear, and non-ranty; were it not for the subject matter, you could easily imagine her videos running on PBS.
So, of course, she has received constant threats. The level of harassment is stunning, a degree of ugliness that makes you want to just powerwash your computer after you look at it. Beyond the standard fare of trolling (known in the meat world as Being an Asshole) Sarkeesian has been the threatened with violence, rape and death. Trolls created a video game "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" and sent her screen shots of herself being assaulted. All this, I'll remind you, because she is a woman daring to point out sexism in video games. Video games.
Sarkeesian has put up with this since Day One, but last week, things took a turn for the even worse when someone let her know that they had tracked down her home address, as well as the names and address of her parents, and threatened to kill them all. Sarkeesian called the police and moved out of her home.
When discussing the shortage of women in the tech industry, it's standard to observe that the frat boy atmosphere can make them feel unwelcome. Frankly, saying that the tech industry makes women feel unwelcome is like saying being mugged makes people feel uncomfortable. We have example after example-- the launching of the app "titstare," the tinder lawsuit, the endless tales of Comic Con misbehavior. And every example of tech world sexism and harassment comes with its own second helping of "How dare you call us sexist, you ugly woman who probably can't get laid."
The culture in general and teachers in particular have got to update our image of what sexism looks like. The classic sexist stereotype (macho, strutting, physically powerful and confident) is being replaced by a new harasser-- the smart guy using his techy device to blast his ideas and images out into the world, never having to even look his victim in the face, and demanding that no women enter his domain without submitting to him.
It doesn't have to be that way. My son-in-law works in the tech industry, and he and my daughter make a fine feminist couple. But somehow we've raised a whole host of young men who think that it's okay to threaten women with rape and death.
I've taught Kate Chopin's The Awakening for years, and it always sparks some important and revealing conversations among my students. But lately I'm feeling that a discussion of the subtle and powerful ways in which society can pressure women into certain roles hardly prepares us for a world in which women who dare to call out little boys for their misogyny can expect relentless threats of death and rape-- how the hell did we end up with that world?? I should have done it before now, but this year we'll be upping our game when it comes to talking about gender in American lit.
One thing's for sure-- in that world, providing women with access to STEM education is only a tiny part of the solution. We like to think of ourselves as far more advanced than countries where women are threatened, harassed and assaulted for trying to get an education. I wish we were separated from that kind of thinking by a far larger gulf than we apparently are.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
NEA Gets It Wrong Again
I would probably not pick at NEA so much, were it not that I am paying them enough money each year to buy myself a nice toy, support a local food pantry, or get a bit ahead on paying off my kids' college loans. But never have I forked over so much money for the privilege of belonging to an organization that annots me so much.
I say all that because I'm about to bitch about something that, on its face, is a trivial complaint. And yet, it seems completely symptomatic of NEA's problems as an organization.
President-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia used to have a blog; a nice personal site where she infrequently posted. But hey-- she was actually using the internet, which seems to be a technological leap that the NEA leadership is largely unwilling to make. When it comes to technology, this is not your father's NEA-- it's your grandfather's. The NEA continues to closely resemble the GOP of the last two national elections-- they know that the young people are out there playing with their twitters and using those interwebs, but they can't seem to think of anything to do with the technology except either lock it up tight or use it to make cyber-versions of print magazines and glossy brochures.
So LEG's blog was a nice touch, threatening to bring the NEA up to at least a decade ago. But now the blog is gone.
The title is still in place ("Lily's Blackboard") but the website has been replaced with a slick, glossy, cold, corporate website resplendent with press releases and articles. Logos and links mark it clearly as part of the family of bloodless NEA websites. Her old posts have been warehoused in a special category, a section of the website set apart, I guess, for when LEG might actually write something herself. Wowee.
The NEA corporate communication guys seem to have realized on some level that LEG's personal touch is part of her appeal, so they not only kept her original title, but they put it in one of those cute fonts that's supposed to look handwritten.
But one of NEA's problems continues to be a culture at the top levels that comes across as detached, disconnected, aloof, cold, corporate, and far away from the world of classrooms. I'm always left with the impression that my union leaders are far more comfortable talking to an Arne Duncan or a Bill Gates than to an actual real live teacher.
So when you elect a new president whose signature strength is an ability to communicate personally and powerfully with people, it seems kind of dopey to surround her with a bunch of virtual handlers and whisk her off to the boardroom so that the executive assistants can start communicating through press releases.
She has too many important things to do? Bullshit. What does the president of NEA have to do that's more important than communicate with her members? And if you know what you're doing, maintaining a blog or twitter account or social media presence does not take dozens of hours a week.
The bottom line appears to be that the NEA simply doesn't know how to make social media work. Their GPS network, an attempt at running a bulletin board system to discuss and share education materials and topics is still a slick, glossy ghost town. And while I was initially excited that LEG had a twitter account, NEA seems to have no idea what to do with it beyond PR blurbs.
Look, folks. Age is not an excuse. I'm fifty-seven years old. My first lessons in computer programming involve BASIC and punch cards. And yet I seem to have figured out some basics here and there. And here's the most basic thing to get about social media-- it is a way to communicate with people, not to manage them. Lily's New Blackboard is a bummer, because it replaces something that could have been personal and effective with one more piece of shiny impersonal plastic. Wrong again, NEA.
I say all that because I'm about to bitch about something that, on its face, is a trivial complaint. And yet, it seems completely symptomatic of NEA's problems as an organization.
President-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia used to have a blog; a nice personal site where she infrequently posted. But hey-- she was actually using the internet, which seems to be a technological leap that the NEA leadership is largely unwilling to make. When it comes to technology, this is not your father's NEA-- it's your grandfather's. The NEA continues to closely resemble the GOP of the last two national elections-- they know that the young people are out there playing with their twitters and using those interwebs, but they can't seem to think of anything to do with the technology except either lock it up tight or use it to make cyber-versions of print magazines and glossy brochures.
So LEG's blog was a nice touch, threatening to bring the NEA up to at least a decade ago. But now the blog is gone.
The title is still in place ("Lily's Blackboard") but the website has been replaced with a slick, glossy, cold, corporate website resplendent with press releases and articles. Logos and links mark it clearly as part of the family of bloodless NEA websites. Her old posts have been warehoused in a special category, a section of the website set apart, I guess, for when LEG might actually write something herself. Wowee.
The NEA corporate communication guys seem to have realized on some level that LEG's personal touch is part of her appeal, so they not only kept her original title, but they put it in one of those cute fonts that's supposed to look handwritten.
But one of NEA's problems continues to be a culture at the top levels that comes across as detached, disconnected, aloof, cold, corporate, and far away from the world of classrooms. I'm always left with the impression that my union leaders are far more comfortable talking to an Arne Duncan or a Bill Gates than to an actual real live teacher.
So when you elect a new president whose signature strength is an ability to communicate personally and powerfully with people, it seems kind of dopey to surround her with a bunch of virtual handlers and whisk her off to the boardroom so that the executive assistants can start communicating through press releases.
She has too many important things to do? Bullshit. What does the president of NEA have to do that's more important than communicate with her members? And if you know what you're doing, maintaining a blog or twitter account or social media presence does not take dozens of hours a week.
The bottom line appears to be that the NEA simply doesn't know how to make social media work. Their GPS network, an attempt at running a bulletin board system to discuss and share education materials and topics is still a slick, glossy ghost town. And while I was initially excited that LEG had a twitter account, NEA seems to have no idea what to do with it beyond PR blurbs.
Look, folks. Age is not an excuse. I'm fifty-seven years old. My first lessons in computer programming involve BASIC and punch cards. And yet I seem to have figured out some basics here and there. And here's the most basic thing to get about social media-- it is a way to communicate with people, not to manage them. Lily's New Blackboard is a bummer, because it replaces something that could have been personal and effective with one more piece of shiny impersonal plastic. Wrong again, NEA.
First Loser in NY Anti-Tenure Lawsuit
In the end, there can be only one.
Even though it's all about the kids, according to the NY Post only one group gets to stand center stage for the big New York Tenure Takedown Lawsuit.
Previously the Campbell Brown nameplate case was going to have to share the big Caring for Kids spotlight with Mona Davids (of New York Parents Union), but Davids is now saying, none too cheerfully, that her law firm has dropped the case. Davids charges that the firm was chased off by "bullying" tactics by Brown and her camp, but Davids also announced that her lawsuit will continue. So this fight to be the Big Name in New York anti-tenure lawsuits is not over yet.
According to "multiple sources" the firm Gibson Dunn actually pulled out because they have education clients who didn't take kindly to Davids working with the firm. Brown's lawsuit is, of course, is being handled by several big-name lawyers and PR flacks with close ties to the Obama administration, who don't much care if they bother any people in the education world or not.
Students Matter, the Vergara-sponsoring advocacy group composed primarily of David Welch and his giant pile of money, has also withdrawn from Davids' suit.
No news yet about a press conference in which Campbell and Davids stand together and announce that since they are only concerned about what's best for the children and not who gets to be Really Important, they're putting aside all their competition for the best position in front of the camera.
UPDATE: Eclectablog has a more detailed account and timeline of how Brown et al squashed these pretenders to the thrown and competitors for the spotlight like bugs.
Even though it's all about the kids, according to the NY Post only one group gets to stand center stage for the big New York Tenure Takedown Lawsuit.
Previously the Campbell Brown nameplate case was going to have to share the big Caring for Kids spotlight with Mona Davids (of New York Parents Union), but Davids is now saying, none too cheerfully, that her law firm has dropped the case. Davids charges that the firm was chased off by "bullying" tactics by Brown and her camp, but Davids also announced that her lawsuit will continue. So this fight to be the Big Name in New York anti-tenure lawsuits is not over yet.
According to "multiple sources" the firm Gibson Dunn actually pulled out because they have education clients who didn't take kindly to Davids working with the firm. Brown's lawsuit is, of course, is being handled by several big-name lawyers and PR flacks with close ties to the Obama administration, who don't much care if they bother any people in the education world or not.
Students Matter, the Vergara-sponsoring advocacy group composed primarily of David Welch and his giant pile of money, has also withdrawn from Davids' suit.
No news yet about a press conference in which Campbell and Davids stand together and announce that since they are only concerned about what's best for the children and not who gets to be Really Important, they're putting aside all their competition for the best position in front of the camera.
UPDATE: Eclectablog has a more detailed account and timeline of how Brown et al squashed these pretenders to the thrown and competitors for the spotlight like bugs.
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