Another Busy Week of Teacher Bashing in the Media

It's been a busy week here in Lake Woebegone... First we had the outta town "reformers" group and local media explaining the outrageous travel spending of the Buffalo Schools. They characterize "The Schools" in much the same way as mainstream media do with SUV's who seem to have a demonic will of their own when they lose control and wipe out other passengers or pedestrians. "The Schools" spent $300K less on travel under Amber Dixon and PamelaCBrown than they did with livin' large Jimmy Dubz who, like Sinclair Lewis, found travel so broadening. Channel Two also pointed out that the Buffalo teachers have a cosmetics rider in their health care that some of them have used to gird themselves against the ravages of time, gravity, not being paid on the correct step and Freshman English post traumatic stress disorders.  Not ALL teachers even  have this plan but you'd never know that from the media and that's the way they want it. Most teachers have been more than willing to negotiate this thing away too but the district drums up far too much anti teacher sentiment from it to simply let it go or convert some of its supposed largesse into an upgraded dental or optical plan. On the Buffalo Schools website where we have to go to report our attendance and etc. on a diurnal basis this  nifty chart appears. Apparently we are now borrowing the language of hysteria from Mainstream media in calling the situation a $59 million CLIFF. Nice touch that, especially when considering the other CLIFF in the news these days is more accurately described by people who know better as a slope. So think of Shawn White on his snowboard not Thelma and Louise in their ragtop. I know it's a little less dramatic but it's also more realistic. And when we consider how little of this money is going to go to "The Children" I think we will do well, same as the Feds will to simply let this jalopy roll downhill and see if any wheels fall off before it comes to a stop. I guess the dramatic language is meant to  infuse teachers with a sense of dread and self loathing because we are not cooperating with an asinine APPR that will fast track getting rid of us so that we can be replaced by the haplessly submissive green hatted worker dopes being cranked out by today's corporate reformer hatcheries. Have a listen as one of the E4E dopes propped up with Gates money FAILS to explain why VAM is a sound assessment tool when used against public school teachers :

Uhhh Yeah. There's the future of privatized corporate education "reform" as explained by the inarticulate tool in the free green (as in rookie, as in unseasoned, as in grossly unqualified and raw)  hat whose group is funded by none other than Bill Gates. They try to pass themselves off as a "grassroots" group but I think maybe they might be more honest if they just stuck with dirt as in dumb as. Norm Scott has links to some awesome coverage of these marching, greentopped dopes who were practically outnumbered by real teachers that showed up to pick their hats about education. There is some awesome stuff here on Raginghorseblog and PerdidoStreet. And as long as we're at it our flatulent elderly Regent and rubber stamp of NYSED's every wish Robert Bennett is also suggesting we don't work hard enough and we need to spend more time failing in our classrooms. Doesn't it make sense if public schools are nothing but fail factories to shorten the time we spend with them making the kids dumber? If we're so bad then why should the kids be exposed to MORE of us? Will this help us on our VAM scores? It's so good of Commissioner King to employ his own personal Wal Mart greeter in the figure of Bennett whose last huff and puff tirade against the dismissal of Amber Dixon resulted in absolutely nothing. It's comforting to know that the Regent Superfluous or whatever he's titling himself these days has all the clout of your average early morning mall walker when it comes to matters educational yet that doesn't prevent him from lecturing teachers on their need to work harder  for free.
Thanks for that input Bob now hustle over to Burger King and get your small decaf before they raise the prices at 10:00 a.m.

 And as if we haven't had enough for one week, leave it to one of our own to get caught driving stupid at Goodyear and East Ferry and get arrested for possession of crack while he's at it. Turns out the guy is a serial partier with multiple license revocations and one instance of bringing Ex to a party where another partier died of a heroin overdose. Seems maybe East Aurora Central's HR Department is asleep at the switch? Channel Two left the tease graphic up for about 5 minutes before they cut to their commercial on the 11:00 News last night. TEACHER ARRESTED had everyone on the edge of their seats to see which cosmetically altered and overpaid Buffalo Public Schools lowlife got caught THIS time but wouldn't you know it was some Tech  teacher from East Aurora of all things? I guess we can thank him for bringing his business to the city which is a lot more than most suburbanites do.

 The Superintendent is threatening layoffs, (shocker there, has that ever been used against union members before? -- and will doubtless go to the follow up meme of "they don't even care about their own, they'd rather see layoffs than agree to an APPR that will get them all laid off (whoops, no not that meme...)So the drumbeat continues to grow louder with each passing day. Buffalo teachers refuse to negotiate until the district agrees to the arbitrator's ruling and abandons the ingeniously untested and unproven Gates created turn around plan known to BTF members as the 50% Stupid Solution. It's amazing that the media sources who've been banging this drum refuse to research the outcomes this plan has generated in other cities. That would be because it hasn't worked anywhere and no record of it's efficacy can be found. The Gates think tankers who crafted it were operating on their own personal theories and hunches, Faith Based Solutions as Bill Ayers calls them, none of which has any merit in the hard and fast world of data that our reform crazy friends claim to love when it suits their purposes. Just today WBFO the NPR affiliate weighed in on Facebook describing the Teacher's union as "defiant" in the wake of The Superintendent's threatened layoffs which she claims will be necessary if teacher's don't agree to the evaluation process designed to facilitate their termination. Ironic that the district is painted as the long suffering adults and the union as the defiant children when in truth the district is breaking the law in refusing to abide by the arbitrator's ruling. At this point I am of a mind to let the deadline pass and let King wear his petty, punitive antics around his neck like an albatross. He and his supporters are desperate to pin this on Phil Rumore and BTF but in the larger scheme of things it simply doesn't wash. BTF has done nothing illegal and is in fact demanding the district follow the law and drop their insane effort to reassign teachers illegally. The district made an absurd attempt to bribe the teachers involved for the arbitrary sum of $2500 to go along with 50% Stupid. They were rightly and swiftly rebuffed.  

Until they act in good faith and in accordance with the law BTF and Rumore have zero incentive to agree to anything else they demand. John King can be the person responsible for stiffing Buffalo's schools out of $56 million. It was his decision to tie the money to every single capitulation he could dream up and it will be his ugly baby to hold up to the cameras when the deadline passes and he's run out of chances to save face. I hope he's proud of his work.