Last Wednesday night, following a closed meeting of the Unity Caucus at the N.Y. Hilton, private comments made by U.F.T. President Mulgrew went public at Chalkbeat.org. He railed against educational reform and charters. He also explained that the 22 evaluative elements he demanded last year were intended to "to gum up the works."
Some parents took extreme offense at his comments, most notably that "we are at war with reformers." Mulgrew further stated, "Their ideas will absolutely destroy--forget about public education--they will destroy education in our country." Parent Jennie Collazo, quoted in the New York Post, remarked, "He should be fired. There is no place in the education system for a statement like that."
The problem, of course, is one of semantics. When the likes of Michelle Rhee co-opted the term "reform," the debate was framed in a way that could only hurt opponents. After all, who could oppose educational reform? Schools need improvement. Who can argue that point?
Of course, the reforms sought by these "reformers" are anything but helpful, and I believe any teacher who has been in the classroom longer than a T.F.A. recruit would have to agree.
When Jenny Sedlis of StudentsFirstNY claimed that school children get nothing from the current contract deal, it naturally begs the question: What in heaven's name does she want?
Since she has worked hand in hand with Eva Moskowitz in the past, I think I can safely guess what she wants. She, doubtless, wants to destroy public schools. She wants to close them and replace them with privileged charters (which fail to accept many special needs children and readily evict under-performing students). She wants to crowd out public-school children. She wants a transient non-unionized workforce, overworked, underpaid and harassed. She wants purely public-school children to get nothing and charter-school children to get it all.
I am sure Sedlis thinks school children would thrive with a strict educator evaluation system, putting a premium on test prep, enshrined like a gun emplacement in the contract. Before Sedlis decides upon the "spiffiness" of this system from atop her ivory tower, I think she should serve for a few years in a "hard-to-staff" school. I wonder if her Scripps College education has prepared her for that. She could star in her own reality show. We could watch her on a daily basis turn her struggling students into superstars and then marvel at her fantastic metrics. Let her do this for ten years or so, and I'm sure we'd all love her and respect her a heck of a lot more. I'm guessing somewhere along the way she would drop this "reformer" stuff like a hot potato.
It was awhile back that I began calling these "reformers" educational deformers. I certainly was not the first. And, each time I have used the term, my spell check has given me the thumbs-down. But that is the beauty of creating a new word. The more we use it, and I would surely recommend it to Mulgrew, the more likely it will enter common usage and someday lose the sinister red underlining of spell check.
The fact that some City papers saw fit to cover this whole story extensively only goes to show the wicked slant of the media and the failure of a segment of the population to understand that "reformer" is really code for public-school slayer. Ultimately, the U.F.T. has teachers in every classroom across the City. If the U.F.T. ever sought to use its vast teacher resources to educate children and parents about "educational deformity" (I opted for a student debate last September for a more balanced view, as opposed to a "teach in," but there could also be after-school Clubs to Save Public Education), the biased media might be beat back. Reform might then become truly educator-driven and Deform might be out the door.
Despite whether or not you view Mulgrew's rant as sincere or phony, there can be little doubt that this snafu and Sedlis' reaction does a lot to sell the contract to membership, perhaps more than the sum total of all of Mulgrew's letters home. Of course, there are many issues to be weighed, but count Sedlis' disfavor as one heck of a heavy factor on the pro side!
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