My thoughts on Weinergate.

I've been watching the endless coverage of the Anthony Weiner twitter fiasco for the past week, culminating with Monday's embarrassing spectacle of apologies and admissions, and experiencing the full range of emotions.  Having taken a deep breath, I've got a few comments. 

A virtual horde of disgusting people and organizations, the NY Post, Andrew Breitbart, Fox News to name a few, will be taking a victory lap for the next few days and it will be hard to watch.  If Weiner survives, I think the hardest thing for me to forgive is his vindication of these media parasites.  The fact is, Weiner was crazy to think he could conceal this pattern of behavior once it was in the public domain.  And while I applaud the instinct to tell the press to go fuck itself when questions of private conduct arise, I am surprised at how amateurish  his response was.  Having watched Anthony up close on a number of occasions, I think he was caught truly off guard and was as much trying to protect his marriage as his public reputation -- pretty normal human response if you ask me.

I know reporters are bored -- Chris Matthews said as much last week when the story broke noting that the old press corps guys love this kind of stuff because it serves as the comedy relief to the more serious subjects they cover.  But, to my memory, we already litigated the issue of whether or not voters care when politicians lie about sex.  They don't.  In New York, they especially don't.  Bill Clinton is a beloved figure in retirement, Newt Gingrich is the modern equivalent of a troll under a bridge.  I think the standard is pretty simple; if a politician 1) uses his office to engage in abusive or illegal sexual behavior or 2) engages in behavior that he publicly decries then their private conduct is on the table.  If not, then legal conduct is not the public's business.  Simply put, Weiner's sexting habit is Huma's problem, not mine and not any of his constituents' either.  Would anyone allege that his private antics have distracted him from his duties?  Or that he hasn't worked hard for his district?  No one could with a straight face.  But wait, I hear the cries of "but what about all the lying?"  I've seen Anthony Weiner walk into a public forum loaded with the most conservative constituents in his district and tell them honestly, without equivocation of his belief that terrorists could and should be tried in New York.  It was a subject he could easily have avoided, but he opted to tell the truth because he was making a point he believed in.  I draw a bright-line, as most adults do,  between lying about public matters and lying about private matters.  We wasted two years in the 1990's figuring this out and I can't imagine that opinions have changed.  If a reporter asks a question they have no business asking, they shouldn't be surprised if the response is a lie or an insult.  Throw in the fact that the questions from the press are motivated either by prurient interest or personal animus, and I give Weiner a total pass on lying to the press on this.  Also, the lines being drawn between NY-26 former congressman Christopher Lee and the Weiner situation are nonsense -- Weiner never ran for office on a pro-marriage, family values platform as Lee did.  Frankly, I laughed when Lee was exposed, but could have cared less whether he resigned or not -- that was his and his constituent's business.  It is also significant that Lee's photo was turned over by the creeped-out recipient not a political hack. 


Speaking of the press, I find it amazing (depressing) that none of them can successfully unravel the mysteries of health-care (by simply reading) but they can scrutinize every pixel of Weiner's cock shot like it was smuggled intelligence in a micro-dot.  This case shows once again, that an outspoken democrat will be run to ground by the New York press and that dubious sources such as Breitbart and the Post will be instantly believed and repeated regardless of their past track record of inaccurate or misleading stories.  Don't agree?  Look at the difference in coverage that the New York papers gave to the very public lies of Councilman Dan Halloran (subsequent posting).

Amazing Republican Talking Point

How many weeks in a row do I have to hear Susan Del Percio repeat the same ridiculous talking point that somehow it is the Democrats' and Governor Cuomo's fault that gay marriage may not pass the Senate again this year?  Sure, it would give some Republicans who might want to vote for the bill cover if all the Democrats jump on board, but ultimately, if the bill fails it will be because the vast majority of Senate Republicans vote against it.  They continue to oppose it overwhelmingly despite clear polling evidence that New Yorker's are solidly in favor of finally changing the law. 

The second part of this ridiculous talking point is that, if the votes aren't there and Cuomo never actually drops the bill that it is his "first defeat" and will hurt him in the eyes of the voters.  Which voters?  Pro-gay marriage voters will not hold him responsible for Senate intransigence and those that oppose it probably have no love for him to start with.

Seems like the Republican's would like New Yorkers to hold someone else accountable for the fact that they have yet to develop a social agenda that has evolved out of the 1890's. 

Yep, It's even more disgusting when it happens in your own state.

Sat down this morning to feed my kid and eat my Joe's O's when something on NY1 caught my eye.  It was an ad calling on New Yorkers to call their State Senators demanding that they oppose gay marriage.  It's an ad paid for by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), and that fact that it's running is not really surprising.  What is hard to take is that the ad is clearly targeting African Americans.  I know that minority communities voted heavily for the Prop 8 proposal in California which ended legal gay marriage.  So NOM's strategy is to play on that same theme here in NY rather than focus it's energies on activating their more traditional cultural conservative base.  I've read about this type of effort to enlist specifically church-going minority communities against gay marriage in Ohio in 2004 and California in 2008 so it's not new...it's just more sickening when you see it up close for some reason.

I've avoided Saying "Ha ha!" To this point but...

Sure it's old news, but you've got to get a chuckle out of the lawsuit brewing against Mike Bloomberg over the Cathy Black hiring.  You can read about it here.  A few comments about this sloppy abuse of power:

1.  A few pundits have tried to give Bloomberg credit for realizing his mistake and moving expeditiously to correct it.  I suppose its true that he could have compounded the error by digging in his heels, but I find it hard to award points for correcting an error that was obvious to all before it was made.  How could her complete lack of knowledge about education -- even the basic nomenclature -- or her intemperate nature not have been a red flag?  Could no one on Bloomberg's staff talk him out of it?

2. It bothers me that no one has really considered why Black was chosen in the first place.  It seems that the press simply accepted the idea that, well, she and Bloomberg were close and she was supposedly skilled as a manager.  But it had to be more than that. There were numerous people in the Department of Education, including Dennis Wolcott, who were known to be both close with Bloomberg on policy and talented managers.  So why make a pick so likely to prove an embarrassment?   I don't pretend to know.  But I think the answer lies in Bloomberg's sympathies for the idea of privatizing public schools.  Just look at what became of his past Chancellor Joel Klein.  Perhaps he wanted to prove that any schlocky administrator from the private sector could be successful in education -- that's my crackpot theory anyway.   

So what was the point of Cuomo's deep budget cuts again?

I get that this year's budget was going to be a rough one and that a lot was going to be sacrificed to put the state on a sustainable economic footing.  I also understand Cuomo's desire to get off on the right foot with the general public by not raising taxes and pushing for an on-time budget even if a lot of the state's varying constituencies were going to be hurt.  I don't get his absolute refusal to put some kind of surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers on the table.  In fact, I didn't even see much in print about why this was the case. I spent some time today scanning a number of articles on budget fallout and I really didn't see any kind of justification either economic, moral or otherwise made for this position.  I know the traditional argument is that "we're driving wealthy people and businesses out of state" (can't you just see the "for-sale" signs all over Central Park West as boatloads of wealthy New Yorkers abandon us for Hoboken?) but even that argument was only alluded to and mostly by Skelos and the republicans.  I'm really straining to see what benefit the state got out of it to compensate for the loss of revenue.  It's not as if the wealthiest didn't already get a wonderful tax package on the federal level.  It seems to me that the only thing we got out of it is that our Governor can claim at some point in the future that he balanced the budget without raising taxes.  Great for him.

$125,000 teacher salary Charter School: advice for Katie Couric

I just caught last week's 60 minutes story filed by Katie Couric on the NYC charter school that pays teachers $125,000 in salary.  I expected the piece to be a total disaster, but in the end it wasn't all bad -- in fact with a tiny bit of help Couric could have done a really good report.  It amazes me, by the way, that none of the big time network journalists can find anyone --even a relative who teaches -- to prep them on education issues so they can ask even elementary questions about how a school functions.  But to Katie, Lindsay Crist and all the other journalists out there who won't be reading my article -- I offer these observations and questions for free.

First the observations:
1.Does anyone believe that if this model is successful, even wildly successful,  that districts across the nation would start paying teachers $125,000?  Some places wouldn't so it simply out of spite.

2.  The Principal struck me as someone looking to create a business model for duplication in a for-profit scenario rather than an educator.  I tend to think this is what a good many charter schools are about -- in fact, one of the only ways this model makes sense is for privately run schools to use the higher pay to poach talent from public schools and leave a wrecked system behind.  Well, that's just the cynic in me talking -- I suppose if we really wanted to do things right in education in this country the highest paid and, hopefully the best, teachers would be working with the most challenging students.  We have virtually the complete reverse of that situation now -- and it probably will never change.

3. I actually loved the fact that much of the teacher evaluation was done by the other teachers in the school and that they seemed to have time scheduled into their day to work together on teaching methods and management techniques.  This virtually never happened in any of the schools I worked in and would have been invaluable.  Why?  Because all teachers face the same sort of management challenges with students, and seeing particular situations or personalities being handled by another teacher is an incredible learning experience.  Also, being evaluated by a peer is far more productive than by an administrator.  First, people tend to perform unevenly in front of an administrator because of the naturally stressful atmosphere generated by an official evaluation performed by someone with supervisory (and firing) authority.  But second,  administrators have often not spent enough time in the classroom, may be trained in a different subject area than the teacher or are so many years removed from the classroom to have much useful information to impart to a classroom teacher.  At any rate, having planned-for teacher interaction should be part of  any serious reform, this too will probably never happen.

4.  Underlying the whole piece is the tacit assumption that a regular teacher neither makes nor should make anything close to $125,000.  As far as I know, a lot of wealthy suburban districts top out in this range -- all you have to do is hang around for 25 years...

Lingering questions any educator would want answered:

1. I worry about the practical application of this model beyond a tiny number of schools.  It is fine to have an "American Idol" style hiring process to populate one boutique school but what would happen if there were a lot of these schools? If a thousand school districts in the US decided to adopt this model are we to assume that in addition to the giant sucking sound of superior teachers from around the nation switching to these districts, that thousands of recruits from the private sector would also rush in? How else could the whole staff be "above average"?  Also -- the main thing keeping people from teaching isn't the pay, its the extremely difficult workload and awful working conditions.

2. Does the school get to boot or not accept kids who have behavioral problems?  Any model seeking to improve the performance of America's worst schools has to answer this question.  Having taught one year with virtually no students with real behavioral issues and six years with a normal distribution, I can tell you that the year without the behavior problems was exponentially easier than every other; and it showed in the kids' performance.  This is a basic question that should have been asked right up front.

3.  What happens if the school gets to its 5th year and can't show any improvement in testing?  Does this mean that having a great teacher for every class makes no difference? Or does it mean that student performance hinges on many more variables than teacher alone? Or does it mean that, maybe, student learning and development can't be measured with test scores alone?

Laughable Media Double Standard on Nuclear Power

I don't know anything about the safety of nuclear power plants, not really, but what I do know is that the entire New York Metro area lives within the potential danger zone of the Indian Point plant. Should we consider decommissioning it in light of the disaster in Japan?  Seems like a legitimate question, so what do I hear on MSNBC this morning?  Nothing but serious warnings that we can't make policy based on a panic reaction to a crisis.  Great idea!   Maybe we should have used the same reasoning with regard to the financial crisis or the Patriot Act or the invasion of Iraq.  Stunning that a station part-owned by GE would take such a tack...

BTW I hear Governor Cuomo's position is that the plant's safety should be reviewed and denied an operating license eventually.  I agree, but his position seems nuanced enough to never actually come to pass...I hope I'm wrong on that.