Blame the Teachers

So goes the rallying cry for the US of A. Students are failing tests, and the only possible value a human could have is measured on said tests. Whose fault? Well, it can't be the fault of the tests. After all, they're composed by experts, and we paid a lot of money for them. They must be the very best tests money can buy.

It can't possibly be poverty. Bill Gates has already decided that poverty is too complex to address, and if Bill's given up on it, we have to show him respect and give up on it too. It must be coincidence that students in Roslyn all do well on the tests and students in the Bronx don't. Sure, there is a correlation with high income and high test scores, and sure, this is true all over the country. But if Bill Gates says poverty is impossible to fix, he should know. After all, Bill has tried to fix many things in education and has succeeded in none whatsoever. So if there's a person who knows about not fixing things, it's Bill Gates.

It couldn't be homelessness. After all, only ten percent of NYC's students are homeless. We've already decided we aren't dealing with poverty. The fact is, these people likely wouldn't be homeless if they had the money to rent or buy a home. Obviously, poverty involves a similar lack of funds. Once we start to get these people homes we'll be addressing poverty. Bill Gates has already declared that off limits, and he must know something. Otherwise, why would he have all that money? So let's cross homelessness off our list.

It couldn't be lack of health care. After all, poor people in the United States should be used to not having health care by now. In fact, if Trump has his way, there'll be tens of millions more without it. So health care must not have anything to do with it. After all, it's all about grit. If you have grit you won't miss school. You'll hitch or crawl and do whatever's necessary to get to school and take that test. When Donald Trump was a kid, his chauffeur had to drive him 20 miles to school every day, and it didn't matter if there were two inches of snow on the ground.

In fact I'm sure it isn't health care. Otherwise, why would a children's health care program be in imminent danger? The important thing, according to the honorable members of Congress, is to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20%. Also, gazillionaires really need a substantive tax break. So what if the children have to medicate themselves with Robitussion and there are massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid? Because priorities.

It must be those lazy shiftless teachers and their unions working once again to subvert the test scores of our most vulnerable children. All they care about is themselves. Surely that's why Congress wants to kill the tax deduction for supplies. If they really cared about the children, they'd pay for supplies out of their pockets. After all, golf vacations at Trump properties don't grow on trees, and we have to save a whole lot of money to pay for them every single weekend.

No we have to place the blame where it's due. Thank goodness the GOP blocked the Democratic nomination for Supreme Court and changed the rules to push their guy through. Soon we can Right to Work the whole country, deprive unions of funds, and pay teachers the same as McDonald's fry cooks. They can have the same benefits too.

Because in the US of A, that's how we put children first.

Troglodytes

The United States Supreme Court made two important decisions yesterday. First, they decided that employers need not fund health care decisions that conflict with their religious views.

So if you want your health care to entail birth control but your employer doesn't believe in it, too bad for you. Some religions have other reservations about medicine. Let's say your employer doesn't believe in antibiotics or blood transfusions. Maybe he doesn't believe in surgery or routine medical checks. That would really be tough, wouldn't it?

I wouldn't be surprised if the CEO of Exxon Mobil were forming a new religion right now. Think of how economical it would be for a business required to insure the health of people whose boss didn't actually believe in health (for strictly religious reasons, of course).

But this court believes deeply in individual freedom. That's why it took up the case of some health care workers, who were apparently so offended by a raise of over 50% they went to federal court. They don't believe in union. How awful. I wonder why they didn't return their raise in protest. But as long as people believe in more work for less pay, they have the right to insist on it.

The court decided this decision was valid because the health workers were only "partial" public employees. Maybe it's because the public just pays their salary but doesn't actually fully participate in their services. Look for them to determine teachers are only partial public employees because they only teach some kids rather than all of them.

This is essentially the same court that gave us GW Bush in 2000, deeming it too dangerous to count votes. As long as it's 5-4 on the wrong side, they won't come out in favor of working people any time soon.

Of course I'm not a Supreme Court Justice, and I don't understand all the intricacies of rationalizing anti-woman and anti-union nonsense. I'm just a lowly teacher.

But I'm very proud to be one nonetheless.

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.

Because He Sucks Less Than the Other Guy

There are many reasons why we in the union endorse President Barack Obama. First of all, he's a Democrat. Mitt Romney is a Republican. Everyone knows Republicans are no good. They support business over labor, and those of us who work are labor. Consider that.

Now sure, there are you naysayers out there, saying, oh, didn't he promise to stop the Bush tax cuts? Well, when he started out, he had other priorities. So he didn't get them that time. And later, he made a deal to renew them. But it was only because those bad Republicans were going to cut off unemployment benefits if he didn't! So we stopped them from doing that, and only broke one campaign promise to do so.

Then there are those of you who go on about the Employee Free Choice Act, the one that was going to let people join union via card check.  I know, you're gonna say not only didn't Obama pass it, but he didn't even try. While that may be true, his heart was in the right place. Anyone out there think Romney would have promised to pass it? Of course not. So there is substantive proof that Obama makes better promises than Romney.

Then there is Obamacare, a very good improvement over the crap we had before. Sure, he wasted a lot of time courting Republican votes, and dumped the public option, but remember, it's better than nothing.

Now as for all you teachers out there, whining that Obama gave Bush a third term in education, let me point out that he has never specifically said such a thing. If you watch what he says, rather than what he does, the results are quite impressive indeed. After all, he said in SOTU that he wanted less testing, even though all his programs suggest quite the opposite.

Finally, for those of you who really see this guy as an opponent of teachers and everything they stand for, let me present you with a stark choice. What do you want? Republican Romney, speeding toward destruction of union and collective bargaining? Or Democrat Obama, cruising a moderate 55 MPH toward the same goal?

The choice is clear.

Rahmbo Demands More Work for Less Pay

There are plenty of reasons why Chicago ought not to rush into a longer school day. Their day is shorter than ours, and it's worth examining, or negotiating. But Mayor Rahm, formerly Obama's right hand man, does not seem to believe in negotiation. For example, a 4% salary increase negotiated via collective bargaining was unilaterally withdrawn.

Now, the mayor wants a longer school day. The day in Chicago is currently 5 hours, and he'd like it to be six and a half. For this, he offers a 2% compensation increase. First of all, given the withdrawal of the previously negotiated increase, why on earth would any teacher, indeed anyone whatsoever trust these folks? If breaking your word isn't bad faith, I don't know what is. But let's put that aside for a moment, and look at the proposal.

Five hours is 300 minutes. Six and a half hours is 390 minutes. That's a 30% increase in time, for a 2% increase in compensation. In all the articles I've read about Chicago, I have yet to see that pointed out. This offer is a slap in the face to teachers, and to American working people. That it comes from an alleged Democrat makes it even more offensive. If Democrats want working people to work for nothing, we are indeed in trouble.

Worse, in Chicago, Rahm can take an end run around the union by having individual schools vote on the proposal. A handful have done so and approved, apparently. I don't approve of working people receiving a 30% time increase for a 2% pay increase. It's not a raise, (which, for the uninitiated, entails receiving more money for doing the same job) and it's outrageous on its face. That mainstream media sees fit to ignore this is disgraceful.

It doesn't take a very deep thinker to realize that if Chicago goes this route, Bill Gates, the Wal-Mart family, the Koch brothers and all their front organizations will push the same sort of crap on us. Let's hope the valiant union in Chicago hangs tough.

And let's make damn sure to follow their example.

There Is Power In A Union

I went to see Billy Bragg last night at Lincoln Center's Big Busk.

The show, courtesy of corporate sponsors Bloomberg and Pepsico, was quite good, with lots of people playing their own guitars and singing along to great busking material like "Tracks Of My Tears" and "Cecilia".

In the middle of all the busking music, Billy threw in his own "There Is Power In A Union," a song with the following lyrics:

There is power in a democracy, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is a power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities to the farmlands in the trenches full of mud
Cuz war has always been the bosses' way sir

The Union forever defending our rights
Let's fight the Right Wing, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union

I couldn't help but think of the irony of Bragg singing a song about the power of union members sticking together to fight the bosses at a show sponsored by ace union-buster and NYC Boss, Michael Bloomberg.

I also couldn't help thinking about the irony of all those union-busting Educators4Excellence members who were denied tenure at the end of the school year because the NYCDOE and the man who runs it, ace union-buster and NYC Boss Michael Bloomberg, made a political decision to deny tenure to as many young teachers as possible to make a strong political statement about the tenure system.

The NY Times reports that Bloomberg bragged at a press conference at Tweed yesterday about how 42% of teachers who were up for tenure were not given it.

Most of those teachers were not denied tenure outright, but they were extended for another year.

The mayor says this is because these teachers "are not up to our standards yet," but the Times reports some teachers denied tenure this year say the process was flawed and unfair:

Some teachers complained that the evaluation standards were unclear. At one middle school in Manhattan, for example, teachers were given two weeks to prepare portfolios of students’ work, with little guidance.

One math teacher who has a business background said she had rushed to put together a three-inch binder of student work to submit along with other data, including a number of satisfactory evaluations. But she may have been penalized, she said, because her students’ standardized test scores dropped in her second year. Speaking anonymously because she feared retribution, she said that a decision on tenure for her had been deferred. Only about 15 percent of those who qualified for tenure at her school got it.

The Times also reports that Michael Mendel, the secretary of the UFT, stated that principals were told to deny tenure to teachers if they did not get a chance to observe them enough or if the principals were new to the school.

In addition, Teacher Data Reports were used for tenure decisions for teachers of math or ELA in 4th-8th grade.

Gotham Schools reports that if a teacher was not rated effective or higher on this report, they were not granted tenure no matter how glowing an evaluation they were given by their principal.

The value-added methodology used to create the evaluations for these reports, btw, has a large margin of error, perhaps as high as 36%, so it is quite possible that lots of teachers who received glowing reports from their principals were denied tenure because a flawed test score data system was unfairly used to evaluate them.

And that's how I would term a system with a 36% MOE being used to evaluate people for high stakes career decisions - "unfair" and "flawed".

In addition, many excellent young teachers may have been denied tenure because word came down from Tweed that Boss Bloomberg wants low tenure numbers this year so he can give a big speech about how he has transformed tenure into an Ironman competition that only truly "excellent" teachers can pass and pontificate about the same on Meet The Press the next time Fluffy invites him on the show.

It seems to me that a political decision was made to screw lots of teachers out of tenure this year and then the data and paperwork were manufactured to back that decision up.

Which brings me back to the Billy Bragg performance of "There Is Power In A Union" I saw tonight.

As he was singing it, with the logo Bloomberg emblazoned all over the stage, I couldn't help but think of all those Educators4Excellence members who may have been denied tenure not because they are bad teachers, not because they don't deserve tenure, but rather because the mayor made a political decision to screw them and then the DOE minions in the TDR department and the principals in the schools created the numbers and "data" to back that decision up.

I remember back during the layoff battle how many of those E4E members argued in the media that "objective data" like Teacher Data Reports should be used to decide who gets laid off and who gets to stay.

I remember saying then that there is no such thing as "objective data" in the hands of dishonest people like Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, or Cathie Black, that they will manufacture data and make it fit whatever political or economic decisions they have already made and screw the teachers they feel like screwing.

During the layoff battle, when Bloomberg wanted to lay off expensive veteran teachers, especially ATRs, the data would have been fiddled with to make that point (and help out the E4E's.)

But with tenure, the mayor wants to screw younger teachers, so the data is skewered in such a way to back that story up (and hurt the E4E's.)

Now if all teachers stuck together - young, old, veterans, newbies - and fought Boss Bloomberg as one big entity rather than turned on each other like the Educators4Excellence have (with the help of lots of funding from the hedge fund criminal class and the Gates Foundation), maybe the mayor would have a harder time justifying these jive-ass political decisions that have nothing to do with reality but simply help him make his political points (in this case, that teachers suck.)

I do hope some of the Educators4Excellence and other young teachers denied tenure this year come around to see that there is indeed power in a union and that if workers don't stand together and fight the bosses, they will continue to be exploited and screwed and beaten down, as Bloomberg is doing with the tenure process, as he does ever year with the layoff threats.

After the show last night, I bought a couple of cds and had Billy Bragg sign them for me. I told him I was a member of a teachers union and was heartened to hear him sing "There Is Power In A Union," especially since it been such a bad few years for union members.

He nodded and said "You've got to stick together and you've got to keep the faith, mate!"

And that's what I would say to my young teacher friends who were denied tenure this year for no other reason than that the oligarch who runs things wanted it that way.

We teachers have got to stick together and we've got to keep the faith.

It's a powerful message and there is history to prove that it works when it's followed.

It's a powerful song too and here's part of the performance of "There Is Power In A Union" by Billy Bragg last night from Lincoln Center:

If you listen carefully, right at the end, that's me yelling "Screw Bloomberg! Screw Bloomberg!"

The rest of what I said, though it is cut off on the tape, is this:

"He's a unionbuster! He's a unionbuster!"

That's a powerful message too and there's history behind that as well.

In fact, more of that was made during Bloomberg's tenure speech at Tweed yesterday.

"Reformers" One, Union Zero

There's not a whole lot to add to the video below. Jonah Edelman smugly discusses how he managed to snooker the teacher unions into accepting deals clearly not in their interest. It shows, yet again, how Obama's people, specifically Rahm Emannuel and Arne Duncan, are not friends of people who need to work for a living.

Most importantly, it shows "reformers" are not to be trusted. Edelman boasts of how his people were able to write the "fine print" on this deal, and how union reps dropped the ball and failed to exert due diligence. The best we can hope from a hard lesson like this is that union leadership wake up and pay close attention.  

See more on this at Schools Matter and much more at Fred Klonsky's Blog.

Ivy League Union Busters, Then and Now

By special guest blogger Michael Fiorillo

Conventional wisdom holds that universities are repositories of liberalism and progressive politics, in which innocent students are indoctrinated into holding borderline deviant, un-American beliefs. Right wing authors, pundits and politicians are forever bemoaning how American universities are controlled by a liberal/left wing/anti-free market orthodoxy. And in marginal and declining humanities departments that may be the case. But a review of US labor history and current labor issues shows that in reality elite universities have often been a source of reactionary, anti-labor attitudes, policies and actions. A brief look at early 20^th century labor history, and current academic efforts associated with so-called educational reform, bear this out. While the recruitment of student strikebreakers one hundred years ago was couched in the explicit language of class warfare, today anti-labor ideologies and recruitment is spoken in the superficially milder, pseudo-scientific language of ideologically-framed education research, economics and human capital deployment. One hundred years ago, largely unorganized manual workers bore the brunt of this assault; today it is teachers and their unions.

Ralph Fasanella: “Lawrence,1912:The Bread and Roses Strike”

In one of the paintings that Ralph Fasanella did of the great Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike of 1912, a detail shows the state militia entering the city to help break the strike, while the strikers and their supporters are massed along the sidewalks. Standing there are three little boys, each holding signs that together read “Go Back to School.”

While the meaning of those signs may not be so clear today, at the time it was obvious to all concerned what they meant: that students from Harvard, Tufts and other elite universities in the region had willingly joined the state militia, with the support of their school’s presidents, to break the strike.

Indeed, according to Stephen Norwood, whose “The Student as Strikebreaker: College Youth and the Crisis of Masculinity in the Early 20^th  Century” (Journal of Social History, Winter, 1994), “…college students represented a major and often critically important source of strikebreakers in a wide range of industries and services.”  Student strikebreakers, often but not limited to athletes and engineering students, were involved in strikebreaking in the 1901 dockworkers strike in San Francisco (Berkeley), the 1903 Great Lakes seaman’s strike of 1903 (U of Chicago), 1903 teamster and railroad strikes in Connecticut (Yale), the 1905 IRT strike in New York City (Columbia), and many, many others. During the great strike wave that followed WWI, Princeton president John Grier Hibben told officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad that his students were “ready to serve” in the event of a railroad strike. The Boston and Maine Railroad actually placed an engine and rails on the MIT campus to help train student strikebreakers.

Today, elite colleges produce endless studies and turn out cadre to facilitate the privatization of the public schools, which occurs under catch phrases such as “the business model in education,” “school choice,” “market-friendly policies,” “social entrepreneurialism” and others. These efforts presuppose the avoidance, neutralization and ultimate elimination of teacher unions.

The fact of student strikebreaking in the early 20^th century is not so hard to understand. Unlike today, a university education was limited to a tiny percentage of the population, and the student body was composed of a homogenous group composed almost entirely of wealthy, white males who aspired to and identified with the interests and ideologies of the captains of industry at the time. According to Norwood, there was an additional overlay of obsessive concern with toughness, strength, and the “cult of masculinity” associated with Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully” persona. These tendencies combined to make it easy to see why “Employers considered students to be the most reliable strikebreakers of the period,” since their complete remove from the conditions under which working people lived at the time, combined with the prevailing attitudes of Social Darwinism, combined to make their antagonism to labor unions of a piece.

“Fight Fiercely, Harvard:” Massachusetts Militia (composed  largely of Harvard students) confronts Lawrence strikers in 1912

In fact, public and private universities at the time were so identified with monopoly capital that their very nicknames stand as signposts of their class identification: “Standard Oil University” (U of Chicago), “Southern Pacific University” (Stanford), “Pillsbury University (U of Minnesota).

Today, with the near-total collapse of private sector unionization, the last bastion of organized labor in the US is in the public sector. And among public sector unions, teacher unions have become a major focus in the effort to “reform” or “rationalize” the educational workplace, and to shape and form the “product” (aka students, according to NYC Department of education consultant and management avatar Jack Welch)) that is to be delivered to employers upon graduation. While this effort is always couched in the language of “Children First,” “The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time” or other such PR and focus group-generated slogans, the reality is that recent efforts to change public education are largely motivated by a desire to control the labor process and labor markets within and outside the schools. The language of corporate education reform rarely, and then only half-heartedly, invokes the now-quaint language of citizenship or democracy. Instead, it openly discusses the purpose of education as producing students who meet the needs of employer-dominated labor markets and a globalized, neo-liberal economy.

So, having taken a peek at the Ivy League (and other) union-busting efforts of one hundred years ago, what do we see today?

Let’s (to use only one of numerous examples) briefly look at Harvard, where in 1904 university president Charles W. Eliot described strikebreakers as “a fair type of hero.” Harvard is the currently the home of The Program on Educational Policy and Governance (PEPG), which is affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, and has notable alumni such as Michelle Rhee (whose anti-teacher and anti-labor behavior needs no introduction) and Cami Anderson (who is currently busy privatizing and charterizing NYC’s District 79/alternative high schools).

PEPG describes itself as “a significant player in the educational reform movement” that provides “high-level training for young scholars who can make independent contributions to scholarly research… foster a national community of reform-minded scientific researchers… and produce path-breaking studies that provide a scientific basis for school reform policy.” (I’ll have some more to say on the ideological basis of the pseudo-science that forms their “scientific research”)

A quick look at their Advisory Committee and major funders, shows it to be made up almost entirely of pro-privatization and anti-labor individuals and groups. Its funders include foundations such as the Walton Family Foundation, Bradley Foundation, Olin Foundation, Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation and the William E. Simon Foundation. Its Advisory Committee includes Jeb Bush and a host of investment bank, hedge fund and private equity interests. Its affiliates include the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, The Hoover Institute and The Heritage Foundation (with the Brookings Institute thrown in for a bi-partisan gloss). While claiming to be independent and non-partisan, it in fact espouses and is dominated by the free-market fundamentalism that has served the US so very well in recent years, and is now (to use a term from the Wall Street backers of corporate ed reform)) engaging in a hostile takeover of the public schools.

Studies and reports by the PEPG show an obsession with vouchers, charters, merit pay, the “inefficiencies” and failures of collective bargaining, and other “market friendly” topics and policies. While ostensibly using the scientific method, the entire premise of their research is based on assuming as a given the existence of so-called self-regulating markets: in other words, unquestioned assumptions and ideology masked as science, and a latter-day counterpart to the 19^th century medical “science” that strove to “prove” the efficacy of bleeding as a medical procedure.  A 2009 paper co-authored by PEPG director Paul Peterson purported to “scientifically” show how for-profit school management companies were superior to both traditional public schools and non-profit school management entities. Independent and non-partisan, indeed.

The PEPG’s 1998-99 Annual Report, in a prominent sidebar to an article entitled “Do Unions Aid Education Reform?” (I bet you can guess their answer to that one), stated that collective bargaining and unions “reduce the diversity of instructional methods, reduce low-and high-ability test scores” and “increase high school dropout rates.” Sounds scientific, no?

Unlike the early 20^th century, union busting emerging from the academy no longer takes place at the (literal) point of a gun, as in Lawrence. At least, not yet. Instead, it is done in calm, measured, reasonable-sounding tones, using the façade of faux scientific inquiry, and by creating an academic, philanthropic (or in this case, malanthropic might be a more accurate term) and media echo chamber that endlessly repeats its unexamined assumptions, half-truths and outright distortions. Additionally, in the realm of real world practice we have the union-busting efforts of Teach For America (founded by Princeton grad Wendy Kopp, and recruiting exclusively among graduates of elite colleges and universities), which happily supplied replacement workers (aka scabs) for the schools in post-Katrina New Orleans, where the entire teaching force was summarily fired.

While it would be grossly inaccurate, and is nowhere near my intention, to tar all college students, professors and administrators with an anti-labor, anti-humanistic brush, the reflexive assumption that universities are always exemplars of social progress is due for some revision and skepticism. That elite universities should be so complicit in the ongoing destruction of public education is a cruel paradox that exemplifies the many dilemmas teachers face today.

History, however, should teach us not to be too surprised.

Close Public Schools, Fire Teachers, Open Charters and Make Big Bucks!

Well, when they told Jed Clampett Cali-for-nee-ah's the place you oughta be, they weren't kidding. Movie star/ politician Arnold Schwarzenegger's got a deal for parents in La-La Land, giving them all sorts of options to "improve" their schools:

Some of the options parents would have to choose from include: replacing the existing administration with a charter school, closing schools and replacing some or all of the existing staff.

What the other options may be I have no idea, as the article didn't deem them worthy of mention. I can't help but notice that there's nothing there about supporting or improving the schools. Apparently they must either be closed, replaced, or the staff must be gotten rid of. I have to also assume that when the schools are closed or replaced with charters, it's bye-bye staff. There is no possibility, therefore, that the school's problems could emanate from anywhere but the schools unionized employees.

So this makes being a parent much easier. If my kid flunks out, there's clearly something wrong with the school and it must be closed or replaced by a charter. At the very least, we need to fire all the staff.

Last year I covered a class for an absent AP. One kid was listening to an Ipod. I told him to put it away, and he did. The second time, I told him it would be my Ipod if I saw it again. The third time, I sent it to the dean's office. When I went to check up on what happened, I ran into the kid's mom. She told me it was his "enjoyment," and that I had no right to have taken it. She said she wanted to make sure he was never in my class.

I thought about what would happen if it were my kid. In fact, if it were my kid, it would be a long time before she saw that Ipod again. Now I'm thinking what it would be like if a mom like the one I ran into got to choose what happens with our school after her son flunks out for listening to the Ipod instead of studying.

And why is this program being started? Why, to qualify California for the Race to the Top funds. It seems like a race to see how fast we can replace union jobs with non-union jobs.

Thanks a lot, President Obama!

A "Reformer" Unmasked

It's illuminating to read those that damn teachers with faint praise. This isn't the first writer I've seen who feels generous by admitting teachers shouldn't embrace every "reform" that comes down the pike (failing to note the largely unproven, and often counter-productive nature of such things), but then inserts a line like this one:

The real problem is that some unions oversimplify their function to protect teachers, creating a blanket protection for all teachers without accounting for teacher effectiveness.

Perhaps the writer feels the union should protect only those teachers it deems worthy. Who gets to make that choice? Extrapolating from that oft-repeated point of view, perhaps only those deemed innocent by the police should receive lawyers. The problem, of course, is that those making charges consider everyone guilty, or they wouldn't bother to make the charges. It's a hallmark of our justice system that everyone is entitled to a defense. In the case of some "reformers," they seem loath to extend that right to teachers.

As usual, the rationale is protecting the children. Of course, if these people get their way, children won't have those rights when they grow up either.

And sometimes, unions collaborate with them. In 2005, the UFT agreed to allow teachers to be suspended without pay or health benefits for up to 90 days (and I've been told it can go longer) on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations. I've now heard of at least two cases in which these charges were proven false. This isn't the first voice of the "reform" movement I've seen advocating that teachers are defended selectively. The writer goes on:

On the face of it, this egalitarian aim may seem favorable to its membership but the reality is that it does more to decrease the professionalism of teaching, backfiring on unions in the long run. A “protection for all” attitude may do more to delegitimize demands for higher compensation and increased funding, which is in everyone’s best interest. As in any profession, accountability is absolutely necessary to ensure productivity.

First of all, demanding that charges are sustained before people are removed from their jobs is not remotely unreasonable. I'd hardly wish to depend on the judgment of this writer over whether or not my case merited a defense. But what I hear in this argument reverberates of things I heard when I was a kid, from the racists who populated my sleepy little neighborhood:

"Black people are okay, but the bad ones spoil it for the good ones."

That little pearl encapsulates the prejudice and racism one generation passed onto another, and for all I know, the kid who said that to me is passing it onto his own children. To tell you the truth, I see little fundamental difference between his philosophy and that of the person who wrote the column. My elementary school acquaintance discriminated against people based on their skin color, and the writer of this column discriminates against people based on their occupation. It's tough not to notice there are both good and bad people in virtually every and any group.

This notwithstanding, the theory, in this country, is that we're all innocent until proven guilty, and that we're all entitled to a defense. Those who question this concept, for one particular group or another, are garden-variety bigots, plain and simple.

Walk Away, KIPP

Eduwonk thinks if KIPP walks away from unionization, the union loses. Actually, that's dead wrong. In the United States, working people have the right to unionize. Though slimeball operations like McDonald's and Walmart (both companies in which head "Democrat for Education Reform" Whitney Tilson's hedge fund invests in heavily) close down stores rather than admit unions, schools are a different thing altogether.

A charter school chain that closes schools rather than subject itself to federal law would look preposterous indeed. It would also leave little doubt that its agenda goes well beyond education.

So go ahead, KIPP. Leave New York. Try a "right to work" state. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Better KIPP Yourself in Line

Some people who claim to care for children amaze me. Some oppose birth control, or reproductive choice. It seems to me that if you're going to insist women bear children, you damn well owe them a hand once they're born. But not all who take that position agree. Then there are the education "reformers," like KIPP, which have made the startling discovery that keeping kids in school 200 hours a week gives them more school time.

Of course, when KIPP kids grow up, they'll have learned that working 200 hours a week is the norm. After all their mantra is "Work hard, be nice." So why would they fight for better working conditions? Why would they insist on a 40-hour week? Why would they demand time to spend with their families? I ask you, is that "nice?" Was it "nice" when a bunch of Americans dumped British tea from a boat? Was it "nice" when we demanded to have no taxation without representation? Was it "nice" when Americans fought for the right to form and be represented by unions?

Apparently, it was not nice at all. That's why the folks at KIPP have taken measures to intimidate the rabblerousers who wish to unionize:

...during the last week in January, while teachers were at a faculty meeting, the principals met with seventh- and eighth-grade students alone, a move the teachers said was unprecedented. Several students told their teachers that they had been encouraged to talk about “negative feelings and interactions” with them, those teachers said.

It certainly sounds as though these teachers have something to be nervous about. As "at-will" employees, there's not really much they can do if the administration decides to dump them based on unsubstantiated allegations elicited from kids. And what did the kids say, exactly?

“Teachers are very disrespectful. They always tell us sarcasm and mean words and expect us to have respect for them,” and “We need more reason to come to school, the classes are boring and there’s nothing to do. I miss how it used to be,”...

That's not the most direct condemnation I've ever heard. In fact, it sounds like general gripes you'd hear from middle school kids anywhere. Still, were I a KIPP teacher favoring unionization, I'd be nervous. Because honestly, they're absolutely expendable. They can be replaced, right now, with teachers more willing to be "nice." And honestly, are those the sort of role models we want for our kids?

Sure, kids are immature. They can be selfish. They can argue over meaningless things. It's our job to set them straight.

But when we're talking about the right to unionize, something Americans have struggled and sacrificed for, being "nice" is simply not the way to go. And frankly, anyone giving our kids that message is not suited to teach, let alone run a school

Change We Need Now

President Barack Obama has expressed his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, or card check. It's one of the most important reasons he got my vote.

The same folks who push things like "right to work," which turns out more like the right to hobble unions and fire whomever they wish whenever they want, are now claiming they want to preserve the right of workers to a secret ballot. These are the same people who protect us all against raises in the minimum wage (Try living on that). They're standing up against union thugs (like me) who'd urge you to sign that card.

After all, I'm a pretty tough guy. Sure, you may be bigger than I am, and sure, I can't fire you. Sure, I can't refuse you that raise, and I can't write up your job performance. I can't refuse to write you a job recommendation, and actually I can't do anything whatsoever in terms of your job.

Now that I think of it, it's your employer who can do all those things. So perhaps it's not such a great idea for me to skulk around and try to organize that prized secret ballot, because my employer has a multitude of ways to prevent it. In fact, that's why union supporters (like me) want to pass card check.

If Obama passes this one right for working people, a right opposed by Maverick Johny, that in itself will have made all our votes for him worthwhile. Unfortunately, he appears to be waffling.

The president-elect also gave his support for legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize, but he said there may be other ways to achieve the same goal without angering businesses. And while many Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to see a quick vote on that bill, he indicated no desire to rush into the contentious issue.

Let's hope he gets with the program, even if it inconveniences Wal-Mart, or the hedge fund guys who helped run the economy into the ground, and now want to extend their expertise to public schools.. As the NY Times pointed out:

The argument against unions — that they unduly burden employers with unreasonable demands — is one that corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no evidence that it would.

There is a strong argument that the slack labor market of a recession actually makes unions all the more important. Without a united front, workers will have even less bargaining power in the recession than they had during the growth years of this decade, when they largely failed to get raises even as productivity and profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending.

When does unionization benefit working people? Always.

I'm not shy in criticizing my union leadership. However, I've no doubt whatsoever that NYC public school teachers would be worse off without a union. If" you look at the state of teachers in "right to work" states, you see there's little to envy. A lot of people know who I am. Would I even be able to write this if I weren't in a union? A friend of mine actually lost his job when his bosses discovered his anonymous blog. Millard Fillmore's Bathtub asks "Should Teachers Blog?" and elicits a telling response from Kate:

Unfortunately, none of that matters in a ‘right to work state’ like Florida and Georgia, where teachers can be fired pretty much without reason. Georgia even has a clause that states that teachers must meet other criteria or expectations placed by the administration of their schools.

Blogging is a dangerous activity.

Would you want to be in that position? Me neither. More importantly, I don't want my students or my child to be in that position. The question is this: Do you want to fact your employers alone, or would you like your colleagues, perhaps even tens of thousands of them, to face them with you?

If you're smart enough to teach my kid, there's only one right answer.

Doubletalk

That's what you'll find in the Daily News, where hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson is once again sharing his expertise with us, the bootless and unhorsed. At a time when working people in this country are losing their jobs, their homes, and living hand to mouth, Mr. Tilson suggests fewer options for them is the way to go.

Naturally, it's those goshdarn unions again. If only working people would stop demanding pay, demanding rights, and demanding benefits, we'd have a utopia. The specific problem today, according to Mr. Tilson, is that it's simply too hard to fire teachers.

Mr. Tilson gives the UFT Charter School as an example. He praises the UFT for having opened it, but laments the fact that a teacher grieved being fired, and was reinstated. He hopes the UFT will thus learn the folly of protecting working people. And Mr. Tilson certainly puts his money where his mouth is, investing heavily in companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, which have rich histories of exploitation. Mr. Tilson muses that government should follow in the footsteps of his highly profitable investments:

...I do hope that everyone involved takes the opportunity to learn a critical lesson about what makes charters - and, indeed, all public schools - successful: that principals need the authority to manage their schools, especially the ability to hire and fire all staff. At times, this can lead to conflict with teachers' "rights" tokeep their jobs, but in such cases, it's the manager's job - and should be his or her right, within certain boundaries - to make a decision and stand by it.

A key difference between Mr. Tilson's outlook and mine, I suppose, is his utter disregard for facts in evidence. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is simply unaware that all public schools in nearby Nassau County are unionized, and that all teachers here are also subject to state tenure laws. Perhaps Mr. Tilson is unaware that, unlike the city, existing tenure laws are actually enforced here. More likely, he consciously chooses to ignore these facts, as does the Daily News.

Mr. Tilson goes on to cite Green Dot as an example of a school with a more reasonable contract. Here, he's got some support from the UFT aristocracy. But neither Mr. Tilson nor libelous Leo Casey has been able to provide a single example of the Green Dot contract protecting a teacher. In fact, since Green Dot proudly rejects both tenure and seniority rights, I've yet to hear a single example of their "just cause" clause ever having been exercised. Doubtless Mr. Tilson delights in a contracts where working people can be discharged "just cause" it suits the administration's whims.

Actually, what makes good schools successful is not a principal's option to fire whomever he pleases. In fact, it is these very principals who've been routinely assigning tenure to anyone with a pulse. And while Chancellor Klein can complain from now till doomsday about tenure regulations, existing rules work much better in schools where they're actually enforced. Would Mr. Klein do better with better principals? Perhaps. But his track record makes it doubtful he has the remotest notion what a good principal is.

Mr. Tilson is certainly free to admire the Wal-Mart/ McDonald's model. But he's sorely mistaken about what constitutes a good school. Good teachers, reasonable class sizes, and decent facilities, not "reforms," make up the recipe. It's tough for principals, however good they may be, to rise above a lack of ingredients.

Endless work for little reward may have pleased feudal lords, but working people today need more, not fewer options. And it behooves us not to degrade the job of teaching, but to improve the jobs of working people everywhere.

Our children deserve a future with options well beyond those of simply enriching the likes of Mr. Tilson.

Thanks to Schoolgal

Buckle Up

It's a funny country we live in. The President is firmly anti-abortion, dedicated to protecting fetuses worldwide. Once the beloved children are born, to help them get on their feet, he denies them health insurance. It's too expensive. After all, we're already borrowing 3 billion a week to fight the Iraq war, which is much more important than keeping our children healthy, apparently.

Conspicuously absent from the NY Times today is the story about British teachers and other civil servants walking out today, in a one-day job action. Working people taking a stand for themselves appears to be of no consequence whatsoever to the United States of America. But the British feel differently:

"We're tired of inflation going up and our salaries not meeting that rise," said Leanne Hahn, a primary school teacher from north London, one of the several thousand who marched through the capital's streets waving placards saying "No to paycuts" and "No extra unpaid hours."

"We're struggling to get mortgages and to get onto the housing ladder. We just can't afford to live," she said.

However, Councillor Ivan Ould, chairman of the National Employers' Organisation for School Teachers, said children and their parents would suffer as a result of the strike.

"Children so close to their exams will lose out on invaluable study time and parents will lose out as they are forced to take unnecessary holiday to look after them," he said.

I'm always touched by the arguments about the children. Apparently they're the British government's first concern. When they grow up, and their real salaries have declined, and they can't afford the same standard of living as their parents, well, then they can go to hell, I suppose. The government will be worried about their children then. With luck they'll have learned to sit down and shut up, much as American workers do.

Here, there's little worry about strikes, or even one-day job actions by teachers, since there are so few unions. For those that somehow remain (like us), penalties for strikes can be draconian. In the United States, the concept of working people standing up for themselves is just pure evil. In fact, George Will seems to feel that teachers negotiating contracts represents the end of civilization as we know it:

After 1962, when New York City signed the nation's first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money.

It's always illuminating to be lectured to about money by prominent pundits who make many times what we do. Apparently, it sets a bad example for the multitudes when working people stand up and say they need to be paid a living wage. If such trends were to continue, perhaps everyone would demand a living wage. And that, of course, would be bad for the children. The ones we love. The ones we teach toughness by denying them health insurance.

Not only that, but what have we got to show for all this collective bargaining?

...shopworn panaceas -- larger teacher salaries, smaller class sizes -- were pursued as colleges were reduced to offering remediation to freshmen.

Well, we've got larger salaries. But we've also got a larger workload, and with energy prices having quadrupled (not to mention prices of everything else), those larger salaries lag well behind cost of living. And here in New York City, despite all the talk, we've made no progress whatsoever on class size (not that this concerns Mr. Will).

Mr. Will believes, aside from the perfidy of teachers, that families are to blame:

No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males.

It's refreshing that Mr. Will rejects "reforms." It's odd, though, that he blatantly rejects collective bargaining for working people. You'd think a better standard of living might make people's lives a little more stable, and might even result in their behavior becoming more stable as well. It's tough to live the pristine lifestyle Mr. Will might prescribe when you have mortgage payments and crushing medical bills.

It's even tougher when you can't get debt relief for catastrophic medical emergencies, the no. 1 cause of bankruptcy in these United States. In Canada, where there's a social safety net, I've seen people place locks like those on my bathroom doors right on their front doors. I don't know anyone in New York who'd do such a thing.

And as long as the likes of George Will, George Bush, or, yes, John McCain are dictating social norms in this country, you'd better get a good strong lock for your front door. Consider barring your windows as well.

You can't be too careful these days.

Thanks to reality-based educator, Greg, and Abigail

The Walmartization of Education

Wal-Mart's an interesting place. They're a huge success story for corporate profits, yet the people who actually work there can barely afford to buy the shirts their uniform requires, let alone the health insurance that only 43% of their employees manage to acquire. How does Wal-Mart treat unions?

The only union success at a Wal-Mart branch was short-lived. In 2000, staff in the butcher's department at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. Shortly afterwards, in what Wal-Mart insists was an unrelated move, it closed the department.

Yes, perhaps it was just one of those remarkable coincidences. What happens when a whole Wal-Mart store is in danger of voting to unionize?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it will close one of its Canadian stores, just as some 200 workers at the location are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators that would make it impossible for the store to sustain itself.

Oddly, despite over 100 billion in assets, that hard-pressed Walton family can't afford a unionized work force. It's a question of values, I suppose. Now Whitney Tilson, hedge fund manager, voucher enthusiast and vice-chairman of KIPP Academy is running a group called Democrats for Education Reform. So you have to wonder, how does such a "Democrat" feel about Wal-Mart? Well, he's positively bullish, actually, projecting it will double in 3-5 years. Any worries about the company's long-term exploitation of working people all over the world? None that I could detect.

So with "Democrats" like this, who really needs Republicans? Another reason for Mr. Tilson's enthusiasm for Wal-Mart could be the company's continual financial support of charter schools. In fact, Wal-Mart will give up to a quarter-million bucks to folks willing to open charter schools in Columbus or Cleveland.

You have to ask yourself--is the Walton Family Foundation, the same folks who fight unionism by any means necessary, purely altruistic in this venture? Or are they simply interested in weakening one of the last bastions of unionism in the United States of America? And make no mistake, unionism has been in decline since the 80s, when President Reagan busted the only union foolish enough to have supported him.

I started looking at charters with a very open mind. But the more I hear about them, and the more I learn about those who support them, the more I'm convinced they're just another step in the Walmartization of America.

And that's far from a good thing for those of us who need to work for a living. And it's not a good thing for our kids either--if they're attending public schools, chances are good they'll have to work for a living too.

Thanks to Columbus Education Association