TFA Becomes Scab for America

I've read a lot of criticism of Teach for America over the last few years. For one thing, they provide a scant five weeks of training, and that's clearly insufficient preparation to teach in urban schools. This is particularly true when you compare it to student teaching, which is basically a full year shadowing and experienced teacher.

But when there are teacher shortages, TFA is the tip of the iceberg. I myself was recruited via a subway ad, with no experience at all. And I watched for years as the DOE conducted intergalactic searches, taking anyone in the universe who could occupy a wooden chair in front of kids.

I don't fault non-career teachers who wish to give back to the community, or even pad their resumes en route to doing something else. If there is a need, and they are filling it, they are helping, even if they have to learn on the job.

But when faux Democrat/ Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fires thousands of teachers and hires TFA grads to teach kids, that's something else altogether. In fact, TFA is now enabling the unemployment of working people. They are making their likely idealistic young college grads into scab labor. Their insane defense, that the jobs were eliminated and they are taking newly created jobs, is nothing more than a semantic game, unworthy of anyone capable of serious discourse.

The more nonsense I read from reformy types like those who have the audacity to muster such an argument, the more I think that objectivity is overrated. In fact, it's reasonable to present both sides of an argument. But like many other things reformy, this is indefensible. The argument is so weak it's ridiculous, and does not merit consideration.

If we're really going to help our kids, we have to raise them to differentiate not only between, say, fiction and non-fiction, but also between logic and BS. Because they're going to need that skill more than ever in the brave new world where people can scab and claim it's "for America."

New Visions from Chicago--Farewell, TINA, We’re Glad to See You Go

By special guest blogger Michael Fiorillo

Though they may not know it by name, public school teachers everywhere have close contact with TINA (There Is No Alternative). TINA is everywhere in the schools, though often changing shape and contradicting itself. The contradictions don’t matter. What matters is that teachers be constantly told There Is No Alternative, and provided object lessons (u-ratings, scapegoating, school closings) in the punishments that await them if they dare not submit. Unfortunately, far too many teachers have discovered that submission is no guarantee that you and your school won’t be punished anyway. TINA is a cruel master.

This expression came into being with the onset of Neoliberal economics, symbolized by the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Thatcher was big on telling workers whose unions she was busting that There Is No Alternative. On the economic policy level, TINA is characterized by deregulation of business, increased dominance of the economy by Finance, loss of national sovereignty in the face of global trade agreements written by and for trans national corporations, and privatization of public institutions and resources.

That last one, privatization, has particular meaning for teachers, since it is the driving force behind charter schools, vouchers, online schooling and for-profit colleges. It’s behind the constant high stakes testing, and the teacher evaluations based on that testing - even our own union tells us There Is No Alternative to test-based evaluations! - and its behind the constant school closings and budget cutbacks.

It’s behind the ongoing destruction of the neighborhood public school, and the attacks on the teacher unions that are the most powerful institution in defense of the public schools.

Always authoritarian, intended to short-circuit thought and debate, TINA ranges from the systemic to the nit-pickingly absurd. I’m sure every reader has their own favorite TINA mandate, gravely delivered by a Principal or AP. As the constantly churned administrative structures of the DOE stagger from disruption to disruption, TINA says there is no alternative to Regions. But wait: now TINA says there is no alternative to Networks, whatever they are. There was no alternative to Cathie Black, until there was. Consistency doesn’t matter, but obedience does. Just ask those PEP members who had the effrontery to think for themselves about Bloomberg’s social promotion policies a few years ago. Of course, a few years down the line, different political optics take over, and now TINA says Everyone Must Pass, and it’s the Teacher’s Fault if they don’t.

TINA says children must sit on rugs; TINA says children must sit in rows. TINA says the hallway bulletin boards must be just so. TINA says last year’s panacea is deleted, but today’s (Common Core Standards, anyone?) commands genuflection and compliance. TINA exists to make you feel small, powerless and alone, while a charter school measures the rooms it will be taking over in your school, rooms your students will be banished from.

But last week, the Chicago Teacher’s Union went a long way towards kicking TINA out of the schools. No matter what the result of the current strike, the discussion about education has been irrevocably changed by the courageous actions of the CTU. Now, frauds like Michele Rhee and  Joel Klein will not have the same unlimited media lines of credit they once did. Their insipid and false stories of miracle schools and (young, white, cheap, temporary) Superman teachers are going to be critically examined for once, and exposed as the self-serving deceptions they are. The lies of the corporate education reformers may have had a twenty-year head start, but they are beginning to have run their course, and will fall apart under the weight of their own dishonesty and un-workability.

The reality is that There Is An Alternative to the willful destruction of the neighborhood school, to the de-professionalization of teaching, to the disenfranchisement of parents and communities in governing their children’s educations, to the disfigurement of children’s educations by high stakes tests that embody the venal worldview that says children are products to be monetized, and that teachers are factors of production to be ruthlessly managed.

The CTU has not only changed the debate, but has given us a road map - http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/SCSD_Report-02-16-2012-1.pdf - to reclaiming the schools for students, with a well-rounded curriculum, smaller class size, broad support services, and acknowledgement that social justice issues - segregation, aggressive policing of minority youth, iniquitous school funding, the writing off of some school populations - are integral to the functioning and performance of the schools. There has been an enforced media lockdown on that debate for years, while brave dissidents like Diane Ravitch keep reporting the truth, insulted and lied about when not ignored. But Karen Lewis and the CTU have blown the lock off that cell door.

TINA is dead in the schools; we should neither mourn nor celebrate, but organize. It’s time to continue what the CTU has started, and drive the money changers from the Temple of Learning.

God Save Karen Lewis

After hearing the CTU strike was nearing a resolution, I was surprised to hear that it was, in fact, going to continue for two more days. I was more surprised, though, at the rationale behind that decision.

“This union is a democratic institution, which values the opportunity for all members to make decisions together. The officers of this union follow the lead of our members,” President Lewis said. 

Have you ever heard of such a thing? She's going to walk the picket line with her members, tell them what's going on, hear what they think, and make a decision based on that. The officers follow the lead of the members. That is leadership. That is democracy. We have a very, very limited notion of what democracy is in this country. It's not, in fact, choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.

Democracy is when we are part of the discussion, when decisions rise from the people. Democracy is not when you get to choose between two people, neither of whom you'd have chosen as a last resort.

Furthermore, democracy is not when you don't even get to do that.

Karen Lewis knows what democracy is. She knows who she represents. She is a beacon in a very dark time.

I am so impressed by her.

A Strong Union Embraces Diversity

UFT has just scored a victory against Mayor4Life, conclusively establishing that even those as rich as Bloomberg need to listen to voices other than those in their heads. CTU has just provided proof that a determined and cohesive union can negotiate a win-win. However, there's work ahead on both fronts. In NY, it's likely an embittered mayor will move toward more traditional school closings, because he needs what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. And Chicago, just like NY, still has not agreed upon a new contract.

A time like this is a time for us to stand firm, and stand together. Yet in Detroit, UFT will be represented only by leadership-selected members who have signed an oath to support what they're told to support. This includes mayoral control, the prime source of city school closings, and also value added methodology, now embedded in NY State law. Value-added has been vigorously opposed by a bold group of New York State principals, and also by prominent education historian Diane Ravitch. It's largely regarded as junk science, and that it can cause teachers to be denied tenure, or even be fired for no good reason.

Yet this weekend, at the AFT convention, there will be not one single solitary vocal critic of VAM from the UFT. Can it really be that 100% of UFT members support junk science? Again, it's because every UFT rep has promised to support what leadership supports, good, bad, or indifferent. Regrettably, that's not the sort of thing that strengthens us. Rather, it encourages and increases the sort of cynicism that keeps all too few of our members from active participation. There's a good reason why fully three quarters of UFT members don't even bother to vote in union elections.

As for VAM, the debate within UFT is not whether or not we will be using VAM, but whether it will entail 20%, 40%, or indeed 100% of the final evaluation. That's an interesting conversation, but it ought not to be the one and only one.

As I've repeatedly suggested, the optimal percentage of junk science in any evaluation should be zero, and it's unfortunate this merited no previous discussion, and that there will be no UFT member in Detroit to point that out. I'm very confident large numbers of our members, given enough info (the kind largely unavailable in MSM), would strongly agree. There are not a whole lot of teachers I know who strongly advocate for junk science--I can't think of a single one, in fact. Yet dissenting voices, in a group that applauded for Bill Gates, will get no consideration whatsoever.

UFT leaders need not agree with us. They need not adopt our positions. But again, they ought to entertain them, reason with us,  rather than simply shut us out altogether. Winning hands, like the one just blooming in Chicago, are not achieved by erecting brick walls across the paths of passionate and active unionists.

To be continued...

Tough Days for Teachers

Open up any paper and look at the madness that's infected our nation. In Chicago, the government has reneged on an agreement to give teachers a 4% pay increase. Instead, they want to raise their number of hours worked, give them 2% the first year of a five-year contract, and have them hope for the best for the next four years. Now, the CTU has overwhelmingly authorized a strike.

That doesn't mean there will be a strike, of course. If Chicago wants to work out something reasonable, it can be averted. Here in NYC, we've been without a raise for four years. All non-educators got raises in excess of 8% for the 2008-2010 round of pattern bargaining, without givebacks. So now, we are headed to fact-finding at PERB, which brought us, among other things, the 2005 contract.

What creative solutions will PERB recommend? Since other unions got a raise giving up nothing, is that suitable for us? It should be, actually, since we had to offer massive givebacks to supersede the pattern in the past. Also, PERB has declared the pattern pretty much sacrosanct. The question is, does that apply when the pattern is attractive, or only when it's total crap? It appears we're about to find out.

A new contract will likely include a new evaluation system, bringing us innovative junk science ratings for teachers, the likes of which have gotten our colleagues plastered on the pages of the NY Post as the worst in NY. Legislation in Albany seeks to restrict access, so that parents will have to go to principals' offices to find out precisely what junk science has to say about teachers. Doubtless principals have nothing better to do than spend hours offering invalid nonsensical information to parents who demand it.

The thing is, what's to keep a parent from calling up the NY Post and saying, "Mr. Educator has the worst rating in the history of time and space and you therefore need to camp out on his doorstep and humiliate him in front of his neighbors?" Nothing. What's to keep parents from telling one another that junk science says this teacher is good, that one is bad, and en masse demanding transfers? Nothing. Is it beneficial to kids to send their teachers to the verge of paranoia, for virtually no reason whatsoever?

And bad as this is, it's worse elsewhere. Read Diane Ravitch's blog and it looks like, nationwide, teachers are public enemy number one. This is because they've become used to due process before being fired, which is now under attack. When the economy is in the crapper, as it is now, our job becomes highly desirable. Never mind that most of our careers we've made way less money than our similarly qualified friends and family in other fields.

The economy can turn, and if teachers continue to be treated poorly, things will revert to where they were in the 80s--municipalities begging for teachers, initiating intergalactic searches, taking absolutely anyone they can find, and then blaming us if their choices prove not to be the best. That's the one constant here. We are always at fault for everything. I've been listening to Mayor4Life for a decade now and that's the only part of his policy in which I've absolute confidence.

In fact, the only time I feel really good about this job is when I listen to the kids, from whom I get a message utterly at odds with what I read in the paper and see in the media. That's what keeps me getting up every day eager to go to work. And make no mistake, the only people in this city and country who really place public school children first are their parents and teachers, those of us who actually work with and for children every day of our lives.