Cory Booker Is Betsy DeVos With a Tie

I'm kind of amazed at all the crap I read in the papers. Actually it's not so much what I read as what I don't. Presidential candidate Cory Booker supports absolutely everything DeVos does. He's a big fan of privatizing education.

In fact, he's one of the founding members of so-called Democrats for Education Reform, and helped them raise even more money (as though they needed it). If you don't know who they are, they're a bunch of hedge-funders who support privatizing education. Remember them every time you're observed and judged by junk science, because they're the ones who made it cool and profitable for Democrats to oppose working teachers.

What other qualifications does Booker have? He was on a board with Betsy DeVos, called the Alliance for School Choice. We all know this choice somehow involves abandoning public schools, and indeed, this group thought taxpayers should fund not only charters, but also private and religious schools. If you don't read that as anti-union, you probably don't know a whole lot of people working in such schools. I do. It's a much different culture in charters. Few teachers expect a career, and getting fired from one just means you get a gig in another. It's an everyday thing for them, I'd argue, at the expense of institutional memory and, of course, students.

Sure, Booker voted against DeVos for confirmation. It made him look good to Democrats who didn't know better, as though he opposed her programs, and also Trump's programs. The only thing is he said no such thing in his comments. He just said she was unable to make a coherent argument, a common flaw in fanatical ideologues who believe regardless of evidence. Fortunately for Booker, it was not his day to argue in favor of precisely the same things. The best I can say about Booker is I have faith he could rationalize his flawed positions better than DeVos did.

Booker agreed with former NJ Governor Chris Christie that the system was beholden to the teacher union. There was no daylight between Booker and Christie's education positions. I'm amazed, as I read the papers, that this is not even uttered a little bit. Democrats, supposedly, support working people. For Booker to promote the stereotype that we are some sort of special interest, working against the needs of the children we serve, places him squarely as our opponent.

Again, if you're tired of being observed to death and being rated on junk science, be advised that Booker was a strong supporter of Race to the Top. Man, I am sick of racing to the top. Most days I just want to teach. If you feel the pressure to teach to the test, it's likely because you remember all the school closings that accompanied negative test scores. It's likely you remember the wave of school closings right here in fun city. Who can forget entire staffs being sent out to wander the city as ATRs?

The notion that the only variable in the classroom is the teacher is part and parcel of the reformy philosophy embraced by Booker and his ilk. Bill Gates decided poverty was too tough to deal with, spread a bunch of money around, and opportunists like Booker jumped on the gravy train. Who cares if we end up vilifying working teachers, as long as we pretend to be helping the kids those working teachers serve every day?

Booker's support of vouchers alone should disqualify him as a Democratic candidate. Private schools are largely (if not completely) non-union. They pay considerably less and offer fewer benefits than union jobs. We don't need a Democrat who supports non-union jobs. For the most part, charters follow the same playbook. The best I can say about them is they have to at least pretend to be public schools. Most Democrats, like Obama, drew the line at vouchers. Booker can't even be bothered hitting this very low bar.

There was some funny business back when Booker was Mayor of Newark:

All the while, from 2006 to 2011, Booker was still receiving annual payments, which totaled close to $700,000, from his former law firm—Trenk, DiPasquale, Webster—from which he had resigned once elected mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.” Booker’s campaign spokeswoman, Silvia Alvarez, told me: “He was paid out by the firm as part of his separation agreement for work he performed before he became mayor.” OK, sure, but while Booker was profiting from the firm, they were profiting from Newark: over $2 million in work for Newark’s Housing Authority, the Watershed Conservation Development Corporation, and a wastewater agency. “That’s almost like Sharpe James-type shit,” one New Jersey Democratic operative offered.

Sound fishy to you? It does to me. And what happened to the 100 million dollar Zuckerberg contribution to Newark, besides merit pay for teachers? It's hard to say. Booker would tell you it's been misrepresented, It doesn't seem to have been a glowing success, by any account other than Booker's staff.

Hey, if you thing teacher unions are representatives of Satan, if you think every educational woe is the fault of working teachers, if you think Betsy DeVos is a fine arbiter of educational policy, if you think junk science is a good metric for teachers, and if you think Americans should keep right on grossly overpaying for pharmaceuticals, Booker's your guy.

If you're a teacher, or a person who believes working people need union, or anyone who thinks the needs of We, the People are more important than those of hedge funders, pick someone else. Cory Booker is the very worst the Democrats have to offer, bar none.

Slavery Prohibited, BUT...

You may generally disregard everything and anything preceding the word but. The important part comes afterward. When your supervisor says he liked parts of your lesson but, you're likely as not facing one of those much-coveted ineffective ratings.

Netflix has a real must-watch documentary on right now. I've cited the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, the one that prohibits slavery, when my members haven't gotten paid by the DOE. But this amendment is no joke, and the prohibition against slavery is far from total. People who are incarcerated can be compelled to work for little or no compensation. That's convenient for companies who want to get around those pesky sweat shop laws, and also for people who need that eight-dollar pair of jeans from JC Penney.

You don't get to see arguments like these on popular venues like Netflix all that frequently. The whole law and order mantra through the 70s and 80s has resulted in an explosion of the number of US prisoners, composed largely of people of color. We've gone from 300K back in 1970 to over 2 million today. Much of this was enabled by laws pushed by ALEC, a partnership of corporations and politicians it bought and paid for. We all know there's an explicit connection between tax cuts for the rich and reduced services for most Americans

You see the usual suspects like Nixon, Reagan and Bush. It shows that Bush one's people were explicitly aware of the message they were sending. It shows the participation of the Clintons, who've since stepped back a little. Bill Clinton was brilliant in reversing the perception that Democrats were soft on crime, helped to remove judicial discretion, and pushed the awful and simplistic three strikes you're out law, imitated by states. He's since backed up on this, but the damage is done. Trump has actually amped up the message, and wants to push us further into this quagmire. He still pushes not only the law and order message, but urges further tax cuts for the likes of himself.

When people are afraid, they buy guns and bullets. And one of the reasons to keep people afraid is so they'll do just that. Walmart makes a ton of money selling weapons. That's one reason Walmart was a member of ALEC. And that's why, even though they dropped out for PR reasons, members of the Walmart family still quietly contribute.

A portion of this film addresses the way immigrants are criminalized, warehoused in inadequate facilities that benefit only the ALEC members (or former ALEC members) who run them. In fact, Part 154 deprives New York immigrants direct instruction in English. What on earth are people supposed to do if they aren't even supported in their quest to speak the dominant language?

ALEC is painted as a great evil in this, an insidious organization that dispenses with any vestige of common decency in order to create profit for its members. If millions of people have to be virtual slaves to support its needs, so be it. But we who focus on education have heard of ALEC before.  Indeed, ALEC does not simply push laws like Stand Your Ground, the one that allowed George Zimmerman to get away with killing Trayvon Martin (even after authorities instructed Zimmerman to stop following him).

ALEC supports privatization of not only prisons, but also schools. Corporations that had supported ALEC, like Microsoft and Walmart, are still pushing for that, only via other means. Not a day goes by that I don't read fawning coverage on how the charters are working miracles with children we, the unionized teachers, are neglecting. Gates and Walmart don't give money to charter-loving Chalkbeat just for the heck of it. (Full disclosure--I was recruited to write for Chalkbeat, but my POV did not fit in with their agenda.)

Rahm Emanuel can fire unionized teachers and hire TFA members. He can close 50 public schools, dump all their students into those remaining, and still pump cash into charters. In Detroit, the conditions in public schools are horrendous. And if you need a downside of charters, that's a good please to look. Nonetheless, media regularly trumpets the story that charters are the silver bullet, and it doesn't matter if they abuse children, falsify graduation rates, expel inconvenient students, pick and choose who they accept, or even dismiss entire cohorts.

School closings are yet another symptom of the privatization push. If you think the ATR was created just for fun, think again. We've got maybe a thousand teachers running around from school to school, week to week. This does awful things to people, and it's probably intended to. If it rids them of a few unionized teachers it works. Replacing them with disposable temps cuts less into the all-important profits.

Our school system is directly affected by all the same people who've poisoned our prison system. Voucher supporter Corey Booker, in the Netflix documentary,  can talk about how prisons enable institutional racism, but that hasn't prevented him from taking money from the very people who push such things.

The scourge of poverty, studiously ignored by all the reformies, is what we'd be studying if we really wanted to improve education. How on earth can we reasonably discuss educational equity when more than half of our children live in poverty? ALEC's agenda includes the decimation of union, as personified by members like Scott Walker. How do worsened working conditions and fewer opportunities help our children? Your guess is as good as mine, and you'd better believe that charters don't want or support union.

Don't miss this important documentary. If you don't have Netflix, visit someone who does and watch it together. And while you do, bear in mind that the same people who've enabled this horror in our public prison system are actively in process of using our children for even more profit. They're not assigning them to forced labor just yet, but they're substituting test prep for learning and tedium for reading.

Reforminess may not be placing our kids in literal prison, but it's an atrocity nonetheless. 

I'm Not Against Tenure, But...

So says faux-Democrat Cory Booker in his love letter to the reformers who put him where he is today. Sure, let's not abolish tenure. Let's simply make it meaningless. The Wal-Mart family did not finance Booker so as to help working people. Wal-Mart money subverts public schools because union is a scourge that must be stopped, so that people can do as they're told, shut the hell up, and work until they die.

Booker hits all the same tired points "reformers" hit every morning instead of the national anthem, including the nonsensical claim teachers get lifetime jobs, and that we need to add merit pay. This, of course, is trotted out despite very recent evidence that it doesn't work. Predictably, Booker goes into the same old nonsense about bad teachers. They are a plague, apparently, and the only way to get rid of them is to worsen working conditions for all teachers. Teachers, says Wal-Mart's favorite mayor, must be compensated based on "effectiveness." Now what the hell that is, Booker doesn't say. Does it mean they get higher test scores? Does it mean they're cute and perky?

I'll tell you precisely what it means. An effective teacher, to disingenuous corporate puppets like Cory Booker, is an at-will employee. Booker rubs shoulders with Democrats and appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a reasonable guy. But he speaks well of anti-teacher Chris Christie and crooked Chris Cerf, because in whatever remains of his heart, he's no different from them or indeed, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

They all represent the same interests. Perhaps Booker takes another approach, not wishing to appear so radical. But make no mistake, like Christie, like Walker, he'll happily roll back the twentieth century so if you don't come in Sunday you won't bother coming in Monday.

Crime? Rats? You Need Merit Pay!

Joanne Jacobs writes about a Facebook campaign, undertaken by kids, to clean up Newark Schools.  The kids are upset that the schools are dangerous, and infested with rats and insects.  In fact, the kids walked out in protest.  I don't blame them.  No one should have to endure such miserable conditions when going to school.

There's recently been quite a commotion about Facebook founder Mark Zuckberg's 100 million dollar contribution to Newark schools.   The donation was conditional upon faux-Democrat Cory Booker taking control of the schools, something real Republican Chris Christie was all too happy to accommodate.  But as Joanne points out, "reformer" Rick Hess is not happy:

It's hard for even far-seeing union leaders to convince veteran union members to accept reforms to evaluation, tenure, or pay policies. It's much easier if they can tell their members that such changes are what it will take to unlock new funds. 

It's a little tough for me to see how changing evaluation, tenure, or pay policies will help solve the gang, rat, or insect problems that plague Newark schools.  Tougher still is figuring why anyone would be concerned with "reforms" before addressing such elemental issues.  However, I'm just a lowly teacher,  not an educational expert like Rick Hess.   In fairness, it's possible that expert Hess simply ignores the realities on the ground, or hasn't actually bothered to examine them before favoring us with his important opinions.

And Hess can't solely be blamed for that, as it's entirely typical of the conversation in this country, initiated by billionaires like Bill Gates and the WalMart family.   Of course, their causes have now been championed by thoroughly ignorant public figures like Oprah Winfrey, Davis Guggenheim, and John Legend.   While few, if any of them, actually know what goes on in public schools (let alone send their kids to such places), they're universally willing to apply Bill Gates' untested and/ or discredited prescriptions without any critical thought whatsoever.

Personally, I'm not sure how to get rid of rats, aside from voting them out of office.  But I'm fairly certain merit pay ain't gonna cut it.

Faux Democrats

While perusing The Chalkboard, I noticed a comment about Cory Booker, the newly-elected Newark mayor, and “school choice.” That got me suspicious and curious, and a Google search led me to a point of view the NY Times had neglected to share.

Cory Booker is back - like a recurring disease. The former one-term city councilman whose wholly unproductive career has been artificially sustained by Black America’s worst enemies has amassed bundles of rightwing cash for his second assault on Newark city hall. Booker’s stealth mission on behalf of the far-right Bradley and Walton Family (Wal-Mart) Foundations, under the tutelage of the hyper-racist Manhattan Institute, once again threatens to provide the Right with a long-coveted showcase for privatization and capitalism in-the-raw in urban America.

Now I don't know about you, but to me, that doesn’t sound all that promising. This guy is backed by, of all people, the anti-labor, union-busting Walton-Wal-Mart family? Is there anyone besides John Stossel who thinks they mean to help working people? Does Stossel even believe that stuff?

Cory Booker, however, could just be the crest of a new wave. The Black Commentator goes on to speak of Democrat-in-name Booker’s background, as well as his support for vouchers:

The Black Commentator is proud of the role we played in exposing Cory Booker’s true political and financial backers, in 2002. The Cover Story of our inaugural issue, “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree,” April 5, 2002, was the first published revelation anywhere of Booker's political genesis in the bowels of Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation - George Bush’s favorite foundation, the outfit that birthed a fully financed Black school voucher “movement” out of thin air and hard cash. As an original board member of the Bradley-created (and now Bush-financed) Black Alliance for Educational Options, and a co-founder of the Newark voucher outfit Excellent Education for Everyone (E-3), Booker worked his way ever deeper into the Right labyrinth of mega-money, media manipulation, and raw corporate power...

Booker’s benefactors, the Walton Family and Bradley Foundations and the rest of the rightwing constellation in which he travels, are unalterably committed to wholesale privatization of education and everything else in the public sector they can lay their hands on. That’s what Booker doesn’t want the Black public to know.

It’s an uphill battle when you’re up against right-wing millions in a city that’s been rife with corruption forever. But despite the apparently new direction, Newark appears bound for more of the same, with a new anti-worker, union-busting flavor. Last I heard, Newark was one of the very few locales that paid less than NYC for teachers. When you have to worry about your staff defecting to fun city, aside from the cesspool of corruption that's plagued your own city forever, hopes for decent public education are not likely to materialize into anything worthwhile.

Have you ever noticed how it's free to get into Jersey but they charge you eight bucks to get out? Everyone complains, but in the end they always reach for their wallets, realizing it will be well worth it. Some things you just have to pay for. To my mind, good teachers are a high priority--even higher than escaping New Jersey (Now I kid about Jersey, but I also work there often, and guess which nearby location is the target of their jokes?).

More frightening than Jersey, though, is this precedent--if Republicans screw up the country so badly that no one can support them or their policies, they can simply back Democrats who will serve up the same "death to the middle-class" policies GW and his rubber-stamp Congress have been dispensing for five years. Now, instead of wasting time with smokescreens like gay marriage, they can just smile and say "We're Democrats."

Apparently, it can work.