Yes, The NEA is bloated and useless but...

 The comments NEA submitted to the U.S. Department of Education regarding the Race to the Top fund eligibility criteria. NEA has finally noticed that the Obama administration's proposed education reforms are in direct conflict with the union's agenda.

At Flypaper, Jamie Davies O'Leary calls this the "least surprising news ever" (emphasis in original) and who can argue? But stating it so flatly underplays the unceasing cloud of swamp gas that emanated from NEA headquarters ever since candidate Obama first mentioned performance pay in front of union delegates in 2007.

Obama had more than two years of opportunities to pull a John Kerry and back off from his statements. I, for one, expected him to. But he hasn't, and he continues to repeat exactly what reforms he has in mind. NEA, for its part, emphasized how the union and Obama were essentially in agreement and how such differences were inevitable and unimportant.

The day before the 2008 election, I wrote: "As we have seen with Gray Davis and various other Democratic governors across the country, NEA and AFT may not react well when the time comes for Obama to say 'no,' when they see his primary job as saying 'yes.'"

I kept beating that drum this year.

March 11: "I think President Obama's notion of performance pay falls well short of replacing the traditional salary schedule. But after hearing him speak on the issue several times, I am persuaded he does actually mean performance pay, and he is in fact at odds with NEA on the matter. Despite the union's public statements that they're all on the same page ('He means national certification. No, really!'), either the President or the NEA will be forced to blink on this one."

March 16: "Now we have President Obama, and in his first major education policy speech last week, he once again mentioned performance pay, plus supported lifting charter school caps, decried America's 'educational decline,' demanded accountability, and called for getting 'bad teachers out of the classroom.' NEA issued talking points on the speech the same day, and they emphasize that 'President Obama's plan calls for proposals we've been advocating for quite some time.' This will come as news to former President Bush."

March 23: "Subject matter differential pay has the potential of causing more divisiveness between NEA and the Obama administration than does performance pay. A lot of school districts may talk about performance pay, but most will be happy to continue without the bother of creating a new system. Districts everywhere would like the freedom to pay more to hire teachers in shortage areas, which would require very little change."

July 2: "It's hard not to root for Obama and Duncan, who continue to pitch the 'let's collaborate and come up with something that works' message. The problem, it hardly needs repeating, is that we don't all agree about 'what works.' And some people don't care if it works or not, as long as the checks keep coming.... The real test will come when there aren't enough carrots and NEA files suit against the sticks. Being Democrats buys Obama and Duncan time and the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't buy them invulnerability."

That's an awful lot of restating the obvious, but NEA's only response was to claim the press was distorting the issue. At the very least, the union owes Education Week's Stephen Sawchuk an apology for hammering him after he wrote about NEA's spin...

On this, the NEA finds itself blowing hot air on the right side for its members (much to everyone's surprise) with regard to Obama's thinly veiled extension of the real purpose of NCLB through his project  RTTP. (Race To Topple Progress) for disadvantaged children.


Though the goals espoused by Obama and Duncan are noble and tantamount toward getting the best education possible for all our children per tax dollar spent. Here’s the problem that nullifies the intention. NOBODY has yet to offer a valid, reliable and empirically sound way to use these test scores to measure teacher performance. We are forever complaining about the system, some can even identify what needs to change BUT WHERE are the blue prints to the solution? Not in RTTP. Each year a teacher has an entirely different set of kids with different backgrounds, temperaments, abilities, and disabilities. This Proposal insists that all children are the same and learn the same. Unfortuneatly for Obama, the very nature of a child (for whom public education is supposed to exist) muddies the waters of what all American’s expect: a fast simple solution. 8/30/09 9:30pm   Praetorian

Six Years in the Making - An American Deflation

Saturday, August 29, 2009

An American Deflation

In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services.^[1] Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below zero percent, resulting in an increase in the real value of money – a negative inflation rate. This should not be confused with disinflation, a slow-down in the inflation rate (i.e. when the inflation decreases, but still remains positive).^[2]Inflation reduces the real value of money over time, conversely, deflation increases the real value of money. Money refers to the functional currency (mostly unstable monetary unit of account) in a national or regional economy.

Currently, mainstream economists generally believe that deflation is a problem in a modern economy because of the danger of a deflationary spiral.^[3] Deflation is also linked withrecessions and with the Great Depression. Additionally, deflation also prevents monetary policy from stabilizing the economy because of a mechanism called the liquidity trap. However, historically not all episodes of deflation correspond with periods of poor economic growth,^[4] while there are many examples of how strong rise in CPI immediately precedes or accompanies an economic downturn, such as Great Depression, the 1970-80's, and the 2008 economic crash.

SERIAL CRIMINAL LIVING NEAR BOX SPRINGS ELEMENTARY?

The Most Honest Man in Moreno Valley

AND topix.com,
MvGordies blog

Isn't this the same school where the night security guard (a moon lighting US Marine) was shot and killed while patroling the school?


Could the robbery of the three earlier teachers be a convenient stop for some cash by a nearby murderer?

Three teachers robbed at gunpoint at a Moreno Valley elementary school

10:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, August 19, 2009

By JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

Education officials plan to re-evaluate security procedures after a gunman stormed a teacher's lounge at a Moreno Valley elementary school early Wednesday morning and robbed three teachers.

Officials want to enhance security procedures, including adding security patrols and closing certain access points to schools, said Superintendent Rowena Lagrosa, of the Moreno Valley Unified School District.

Box Springs Elementary School Principal Sam Stager said the man entered the open-access campus at 6:50 a.m., before students arrived. The man got into the teacher's lounge from a side or rear entrance where he robbed the teachers at gunpoint, demanding their purses, Stager said.

The women gave him their purses and he ran off the campus carrying a small handgun.

No one was injured and no arrests had been made as of Wednesday evening.

Police are not sure if he ran through the neighborhood or to a waiting car on Athens Drive, which runs past the school and homes, Stager said.

Moreno Valley police officers arrived within minutes after a school custodian called them but the suspect had already fled.

The three teachers were sent home for the day; substitutes took their places. The school district's crisis management counseling team was also called to the campus, Lagrosa said.

Parents were notified of the incident through an automated call system, Lagrosa said. Students were not told of the robbery and continued their normal school day.

"It's terrifying. We're a very close-knit community and school," Lagrosa said. "We're just in disbelief that this could happen. We want this to be a safe haven for our students and staff."

The Moreno Valley Educators Association was unavailable for comment.

Moreno Valley's elementary schools have a private security firm that patrols the area after hours until 6:30 a.m. One school resource officer patrols each of the district's middle schools and each high school has a full-time Moreno Valley police officer on campus.

Reach John Asbury at 951-763-3451 or jasbury@PE.com

Following editorial content by I Praetorian


Ladies and Gentlemen. If you heard the crack of bone, numbness and the eventual smell of Gangrene fills the air, would you wait for more information (in a lesser format) to motivate you to seek out a doctor? Folks the stench has been progressing for years. How much more will it take? The tide has turned. Thousands of jobs lost every week. The millions of unemployed are a mask for the millions more that have fallen off the meager unemployment subsidies and thereby left out of the count and left out in the cold.


READ THIS - YOU ARE GOING TO LOOSE YOUR JOB. Our professional association... I mean union... No I was told we're not that... If not this year (2-3 more rounds of cuts this year.) Then within the next two years. By the time the California Deficit is fixed in reality not just on paper, the still out of control national economic recession, (how many times did Bush say "there is no recession"?) will have spiraled down down to depression. Or worse yet, fostered by years of artificially maintained ultra low interest rates, a cycle of prolonged deflation. Ask a real economist. One without a personal political bend or trying to sell a product and you will see that this is not just possible. Probable? More economic variables than I know or care to list have come together in existential harmony to make a shambles of the American Dream and Our middle class. Do you know that the American Middle Class has been steadily decreasing since the Johnson administration. With the exception of a couple of years during Clinton's? Do you know we are dependent on a bloody debauched dictatorship for our national economic future? The Saudi's. Saudi Arabia has by virtue of it's huge oil reserves (read power and dependence related access to our military) keeps OPEC from raising prices or switching payment for that oil from the US dollar to the Euro. Either would bring us to our knees. Either would greatly increase the wealth of the other OPEC nations. Most of which have a burning axe to grind for the U.S.


As for the Saudi's every spare bit of capitol not spent on devaluing US assets to try and maintain some value of their previous investments, is spent paying for US military protection and keeping their own people from over throwing the Saudi family. And for some vary good reasons. According to the organization "Human Rights Watch," the Saudi family which is estimated at over a hundred individuals, still require women to obtain permission from male guardians (usually husband or father) to conduct their most basic affairs, like traveling or receiving medical care, even speaking in the presense of another man. A Juvenile death penalty. Currently, judges evaluate a suspect's signs of puberty... to determine whether to try him or her as an adult. No examination of a child's mental capacity takes place. There is NO minimum age. They import 1.5 million Asian workers each with promises of decent wages to take back home but most are treated and live worse than they did in their native countries. The wages turn out to be grossly substandard and each takes away job that Saudi workers desperately need. Poverty is rampant in SA. Because of the ultra secretive and inaccessible inner circle of the government let alone the Saudi family, it can not be confirmed but some human rights investigators believe that within the Saudi inner circles, men still buy female slaves kidnapped from brothels and off the streets of foreign countries.


NOW, WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE CTA/NEA? Please read the story linked to the title at the top. I am not a Democrat or Republican but I find myself wading through the propaganda of both to assemble bits and pieces of the truth.

Teach for America: Elite corps or costing older teachers jobs?

USA TODAY
By Greg Toppo,

BALTIMORE — In 2007, fresh out of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Chris Turk snagged a coveted spot with the elite Teach For America program, landing here at Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle School in a blue-collar neighborhood at the city's southern tip. For the past two years, he has taught middle-school social studies.

One recent afternoon, during a five-week "life skills" summer-school course, Turk tells his five students that their final project, a movie about what they've learned, has a blockbuster budget: $70.

"We can go big here," he says. "We can go grand."

He might as well be talking about the high-profile program that brought him here. Despite a lingering recession, state budget crises and widespread teacher hiring slowdowns, Teach For America (TFA) has grown steadily, delighting supporters and giving critics a bad case of heartburn as it expands to new cities and builds a formidable alumni base of young people willing to teach for two years in some of the USA's toughest public schools.

Baltimore Superintendent Andres Alonso — who says he has seen "fewer retirements, fewer resignations and just greater stability in terms of our teaching ranks," much of it because of a reluctance to leave a secure job in a recession — has doubled the number of TFA teachers, known as "corps members," in city schools over the past two years.

Next week, more than 160 new TFAers arrive in Baltimore, up from 80 in 2007. They'll make up about one in four new hires.

Nationwide, about 7,300 young people are expected to teach under TFA's banner, up from 6,200 last year. TFA is expanding from 29 regions to 35, including Dallas, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

But critics say the growth in many cities is coming at the expense of experienced teachers who are losing their jobs — in some cases, they say, to make room for TFA, which brings in teachers at beginners' salary levels and underwrites training.

FULL COVERAGE: Latest news, in-depth reports at schools.usatoday.com

TWITTER: Follow reporter Greg Toppo @gtoppo

In Boston, TFA corps members replaced 20 pink-slipped teachers, says Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman. "These are people who have been trained, who are experienced and who have good evaluations, and are being replaced by brand-new employees."

This month, he met with about 18 other local union presidents, all of whom said they'd seen teachers laid off to make room for TFA members.

"I don't think you'll find a city that isn't laying off people to accommodate Teach For America," he says...

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Massachusetts | Baltimore | Princeton University | National Education Association | Amherst | University of California, Los Angeles | Cherry Hill | Teach for America | John Wilson | Michelle Rhee | Wendy Kopp | KIPP: the Knowledge Is Power Program

"Coming to your town soon thanks to the all consuming impotence of the NEA"

Public Education Research, Analysis and Investigations

July 27, 2009

Indiana AFT Affiliate to End No-Raid Agreement with ISTA. Sources within both teachers' unions inform EIA that the Indiana Federation of Teachers (IFT is a branch of the AFT American Federation of Teachers) will opt out of the no-raid agreement it currently has with the NEA-affiliated Indiana State Teachers Association. The decision removes impediments to persuading current ISTA members and locals to switch unions and join IFT. ISTA has a host of financial problems and is under an NEA trusteeship. (read all state monies go to the national's coffers) IFT is only about one-tenth the size of ISTA, but could make a significant dent in the wake of the larger union's $40 dues increase coupled with staff layoffs and consolidation of regional offices. (CTA is about to do the same to us) Under normal circumstances, any battle would be strictly a Hoosier State affair. NEA and AFT have a national no-raid agreement, preventing either from lending assistance to the combatants. However, with an NEA trustee handling all of ISTA's finances, it's hard to see how the national unions can avoid knocking heads over the issue. A further complicating factor is the presence of the long-established Indiana Professional Educators, a non-union teachers' association. Outside of the NEA board of directors rubber-stamping the trusteeship during its meeting in San Diego prior to the opening of the representative assembly, the Indiana situation was not discussed on the convention floor, nor was it discussed in the state caucuses, if the delegates I spoke to are any indication. In the coming year, they may wish they had been let in on the secret. NEA and Private School Educators. At the 2008 NEA Representative Assembly, delegates approved New Business Item 79, which directed the union to "study the potential impact of opening Active membership to private school educators." A special committee examined the issue and presented its findings to the 2009 RA delegates.The report deals mostly with internal issues and contains no recommendations for a policy change, but it does have a couple of interesting paragraphs worth passing along: * "Although the size of the K-12 private school employee workforce is at the present time relatively small, that may not be the case in the future. Because of advances in technology, alternative financing arrangements, and other innovations, the way in which the nation's children are being educated is changing, and the line between the public sector and the private sector is becoming increasingly blurred. The emergence of 'virtual' elementary/secondary schools in some states, and the nationwide push for more charter schools (which the United State Department of Labor has asserted – incorrectly, we believe – are private sector entities for purposes of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act), are illustrative. Allowing K-12 private school employees to become NEA Active members would provide the flexibility necessary for NEA to deal with the foregoing situations and other situations that cannot now be fully anticipated." * "A desire to avoid LMRDA coverage is at least one of the reasons why some forty state affiliates do not at the present time seek to organize and represent any private sector education employees – even those who currently are eligible for NEA Active membership." * A Dose of Reality. Chances are you won't be seeing a list like this in the future.

Labor exec in Portland to address union dispute

by Bill Graves, The Oregonian

Monday July 20, 2009, 6:23 PM

Randi Weingarten, one of the nation's top labor leaders as head of the 1.4 million-strong American Federation of Teachers, was in Portland on Monday to help settle a conflict with one of the union's Oregon affiliates.

The AFT on July 7 removed three senior officers and the 17-member local executive board of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals Local 5017 and seized the local's finances through a "protective order."

The AFT has charged that local leaders violated union bylaws by meeting in July and improperly using dues money to promote a move to sever from the teachers union. The action marks the fourth time in AFT's 93-year history that it has placed a local union under a temporary administratorship.

A three-member committee composed of three of AFT's 36 national vice presidents will conduct a hearing in about a week to decide whether the temporary takeover is warranted and to determine how local leadership should be restored. Weingarten appointed Mark Richard, a Florida labor lawyer, as trustee of the local.

AFT locals have the right to break away, but they must follow proper procedures in doing so, said Weingarten in an interview with The Oregonian.

"The goal here is to make sure members have a right to make a decision," said Weingarten, who just completed her first year as AFT president. "It is not about the leaders. It is about the members' democratic rights and their economic rights."

Kathy Geroux, who was removed as president of Local 5017, declined to comment. But she and union leaders released a statement defending their actions, saying the bylaws allow special meetings.

"We believe that everyone on the executive board will be vindicated of all the charges made," Geroux wrote.

The local represents about 3,000 registered nurses and health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon and Washington and another 125 at Providence Milwaukie Hospital. Weingarten says she wants to swiftly settle the internal union dispute so the local can focus on upcoming labor negotiations with hospitals in 2010.

Most of AFT's members are public school teachers. The union also represents some university professors, and it has an AFT Healthcare division that represents 70,000 workers nationwide.

The national union has become heavily involved in health care reform efforts underway in Congress, Weingarten said, noting that she and other labor leaders met with President Obama last week. AFT members also lobbied 50 congressional offices representing 25 states last week, she said.

The union is pushing for a health reform plan that includes a public health insurance option, a controversial proposal opposed by health insurers and many members of Congress. The AFT also knows "the hidden costs of cost cutting" in health care can mean overworked nurses, Weingarten said.

"We push very hard for safe staffing levels and push against mandatory overtime," she said, "because we know what that does in terms of deleterious effects on patient care."

The important fact not mentioned in this particular article was the Oregon local's Executive Board was acting against the expressed wishes of it's constituents. Further, I have to believe this could happen in California. Maybe to a near by district. CFT has a better reputation amongst the people I've talked to and after finding out that Sanchez came to our board meeting and did little more than beg his position (see below.) I am embarrassed by that. He made no aggressive speeches didn't talk about confrontational out comes. He came, was politely ignored and the DO and board will do what they want they no there will be no repercussions. The CTA exists in support of itself for the its own benefit at the expense of the locals and the members. No wonder the AFT feels the need to break their "no raiding" agreements.

I would lead that parade!

Maybe some good news

Great news! Finally after a year, the MVEA has agreed to furlough days instead of pink slips. Still, Basically a loss in pay: in exchange for saving jobs. I applaud you all. I am a bit confused, though, by some statements in the Press,the MVEA web site and in the Board minutes (still unfinished):

1 Why was David Sanchez, President of CTA down here at the Friday meeting before this unscheduled Monday Meeting 7/13/09? Out of the hugh number of CTA districts through out Southern California? Has something seriously changed in negotiations that would require his attention? Or did Ann just charm him?

2 My understanding was Sanchez made a plea for the DO to use of the districts remaining stimulus moneys? Of course the state will be financially sound by next year so we won't need them.?! I don't recall hearing of sudden support of furlough days from CTA.

3 Who ever brought up and pushed through the furlough idea (my hat's off to you) Especially when it's been shot down so many times. A lot of People got pinked because of that. Who ever you are - Job well done! MVEA said there was a previous agreement with the MVEA, the CSEA and the DO but it was nixed by the board. Why?

4 The Press indicated there was an agreement with teachers? The same article said there was a vote. Was this based on a previous vote?

5 Are all three bodies in agreement now? If so, why is there no mention anywhere? May be everyone is waiting on the official Board vote. Under the best of circumstances, which rarely occur in education, how long before this becomes a reality?Monday's agenda still shows the district readying for almost one hundred lay-offs. see attached.

Moreno Valley teachers agree to furlough days

Moreno Valley teachers

agree to furlough days!

5:26 PM PDTon Tuesday, July 14, 2009

By SONJA BJELLAN
The Press-Enterprise

A tentative agreement reached Monday means 87 Moreno Valley teachers may return to their classrooms next month.

In a packed board meeting, the Moreno Valley Board of Education announced that the district's approximately 1,850 teachers had agreed to each take two furlough days to save jobs threatened by layoffs. Further budget cuts caused the district to consider the layoffs again, officials said.

The agreement reached Monday morning calls for teachers to take two unpaid days off when students are not in school. The association also will work with the district to find money for 9.5 nonteaching positions that otherwise may still be cut this summer.

"This is a first," Moreno Valley Educators Association President Janet MacMillan said of the furlough days.

The school board made $23 million in cuts before approving the district's $284 million budget on June 30. District officials still needed to trim another $20 million because of state budget woes.

The agreement reached Monday came after a teachers rally Friday and letters to school board members.

Sixth-grade teacher Laurie Warner wore a pink shirt Monday as a reminder of the pink slips. "I think in the end, what came through was they cared about their employees," she said.

"Tuesday, July 14th: School District’s Future at Risk"

Board will consider motion to hand over new schools to outside groups

On Tuesday, July 14, the Los Angeles School Board will be considering a motion sponsored by School Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, Richard Vladovic, and Monica Garcia creating a process, funded and managed by outsiders, which basically gives away new schools to non-LAUSD groups under the guise of improved education. An outside "leader" will also "develop a template and process" for plans to operate new schools, including instructional practices.

See motion text (Item #33) from School Board agenda as of 11 am, 7/13/09 (4 pages)

Instead of passing off their duties to outside entities, the LAUSD Board should accept accountability for what the motion calls the "chronic academic underperformance of public schools" and take responsibility to establish and run quality schools for the community.

It is imperative that many of our members attend the Tuesday, July 14, School Board meeting to protest and block the "giveaway" of our schools. If passed, this motion will start the process of privatization of public education.

LAUSD School Board Meeting
at LAUSD Headquarters
333 So. Beaudry, Los Angeles
Board of Education Meeting Room

The motion is expected to be heard around 5:00 pm.

.

Tomorrow - interesting reading

My Favorite Links:

• U.S. Department of Justice
• Fedeal Bureau Of Investigation
• CNN Crime
• National Sex Offender Public Website
• Association for the Recovery of Children
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Chidren
• Talk it Over
• Huffington Post
• Art Harris.com
• I Can Has Cheeseburger
• My BedHead
• Voice 123.com
• MVGordie.wordpress.com
• Dial 211 - United Way
• Food Stamps and Emergency financial Assistan
  

Americans with Disabilities Act

 (office of civil rights - Education)