Unions Muster A Feckless Response to Vergara Ruling

Just as I Expected No Resistance!

Among the fallout of Vergara vs Teachers, errrr I mean California I am not surprised nor encouraged to hear various union apparatchiks mouthing incredibly inane, pointless remarks and essentially crapping their pants and doing nothing constructive as we all wait passively for some other billionaire to file a similar lawsuit in New York and elsewhere.

Carl Korn Chief Press Officer of NYSUT was on WBEN radio here in Buffalo Thursday morning essentially announcing his plans to do nothing. Apparently the plan is to keep going for lunch at the club and angling for good seats at the track until lawsuits are filed here. Glad to know my dues are going to a good cause.

NYSUT President, Karen Magee is assuring us all that she and Sheriff Andy's negotiation team are in a really nice place. See, Karen thinks the way to go with this Common Core all the kids are talking about on the Twitter and the Facebook is to call for a 2 year moratorium on testing. Status Cuomo has no plans of backing down or capitulating anything to these feckless unbillionaire teachers even though he damn well expects their endorsement come fall. I guess my question to President Magoo is even in her best case scenario how does a 2 year delay of implementing invalid, unreliable and teacher terminating testing benefit anyone in the real world or the long run? Oh, it doesn't but it buys a few people some breathing room they might hope to use to get themselves or some friends elected. Now I get it...

Locally, my union President Phil Rumore has sent us another email. That might bring the total to 3 this week. Though I am still not convinced Phil is writing these missives and if you try to reply to them you get the big NO REPLY logo, I am convinced someone on Porter Avenue is feeling as though they need to create the appearance of stepping up their game. If I were the paid consultant working in Phil's corner though I might advise him to address some of the glaring sore spots included in these emails he is forwarding to the troops. Today's mailing tells how Mrs. Gates and her idiot Billionaire mate are calling for their own moratorium. Is this an attempt to make NYSUT and Magoo look ahead of their time? Contained in the article is this cringer: 

The Common Core, originally adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia and supported by the Obama administration, was devised by a group of educators and experts convened by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. 

What union president reads the above and is able to fight off the reflex action of responding to this outrageous canard? Well I know one...

Further along we get this gem from none other than the Vichy Quisling poster girl of Union Collaboration AFT President Randi Weingarten:


Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, said that “testing fixation is the problem.” She said that evaluations should be based more on project reviews or portfolios of work.

Yes, the same Randi Weingarten President of AFT, personal friend of Bill Gates and recipient of his millions has slavishly pimped the CCSS and done everything humanly possibly to aid Gates in cramming them down America's throats. Weingarten is now claiming the inseparable testing component of the standards she loves so dearly is not who it was when she married it. Somehow it's changed or maybe it's Randi not you CCSS. Fact is Randi Weingarten knows as well as anyone that these Standards don't come without billions of dollars of high stakes standardized tests. And if Phil is going to forward this garbage to us the least he can do is make like the Core and annotate it so we know he gets it. As things stand those of us who do get it are fairly certain the guy running our local doesn't get it.  Which puts him in pretty good stead with the lady running our national union and the one in charge of our state union too. They are all on the same wrong page.  It's not doing the rank and filers much good but then when was the last time anyone gave a shit what they think?