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Video of panel discussion and links to resources. This briefing was sponsored by the Office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), in partnership with the Coalition for Teaching Quality.

A commentary on the op-ed by Frederick Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond from @teacherken.

Mulgrew expressed hope that Governor Cuomo's call to school districts to adopt new evaluation systems for teachers or risk losing a portion of their state funding would put pressure on the mayor and the DOE to return to the bargaining table and negotiate an evaluation system for 33 restart and transformation schools.

The UFT released a television ad the week of Jan. 23 that is bluntly critical of Mayor Bloomberg's management of our schools. As I travel around the city and visit schools, educators and parents who have seen the ad have thanked me for taking on the mayor and sounding an alarm about the state of our schools. But people who aren't in schools - and who don't get to see every day the consequences of the mayor's policies - have asked me why I decided to run such a "negative" ad. We created this ad to help people understand that Mayor Bloomberg is running our school system into the ground.

The UFT on March 5 issued a subpoena and notices of deposition to compel the testimony of former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, along with 11 Department of Education officials, in a continuing lawsuit over the DOE's plans to close a group of city schools. The orders seek the testimony of the current and former DOE officials as part of a lawsuit filed by the UFT, NAACP, parents and elected officials in March 2011. That lawsuit charges that the DOE failed to provide the additional services it had promised to help 19 schools, 2 of which the DOE has since closed and 15 of which it voted to close last year.

"As charter school proponents go to Albany this week to plead their case, let's examine the realities behind their claims of stretched resources, unique student demand and stellar academic results."

"How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students"

"Yesterday, The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved The Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act (H.R. 1891), which was originally introduced by Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA-52), permanently eliminates 43 K-12 education programs including Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). Chairman Hunter describes all of these programs as "wasteful" and "ineffective"."

Parent Information Resource Centers are about to be de-funded, writes Steiny, despite being a critical link between parents, schools and communities.

Video tutorial on how the stimulus spending works, particularly in regard to special education.

The original Shanker conception of a public "charter school" was not ideological and political, but educational. In recent years, however, political ideologues opposed to public education and to teacher unions have sought to turn the charter school concept into its opposite, using it as a vehicle to privatize public education and undermine teacher voice and professionalism. To this end, these political ideologues divisively pit school against school, parent against parent, charter against district, using the politics of conflict. That we will always oppose, as educators and as citizens. Our democracy depends upon public schools, both district and charter, which unite us as Americans.

In their original conception, charter schools were to be innovative public schools, freed from the stifling bureaucracy of school districts, professionally led and directed by their teachers and organically connected to the communities they served. Charter schools would be laboratories of educational experimentation, expanding our repertoire of best educational practices. This was the vision put forward by the late UFT and AFT President Al Shanker, when he became one of the very first advocates for charter schools, and it is the vision we relied upon when we started our own UFT Charter School in East New York and partnered with Green Dot to establish a charter school in the South Bronx.

After an Oct. 14 evening panel featuring UFT President Michael Mulgrew, celebrated educator Deborah Meier, Green Dot founder Steve Barr and parent advocate Mona Davids, the more than 100 charter school educators in attendance returned to UFT headquarters on Oct. 15 for a full day of workshops and panels on "building a progressive charter school movement."

In another victory for the UFT's effort to organize New York City charter schools, educators at Fahari Academy Charter School in Brooklyn announced on Oct. 4 that they have organized a union at the school and intend to join the UFT.