Stand for Children has moved its campaign for privatization and against experienced teachers to Massachusetts. Stand’s politically savvy, well-connected, and well-funded leader Jonah Edelman threatened an anti-teacher ballot initiative unless the unions negotiated away their seniority and tenure.
Governor Deval Patrick agreed with Stand for Children that teacher evaluation (based to some extent on standardized test scores of students, which is a wholly unproven measure of teacher quality) will outweigh experience.
Stand for Children believes that experience is unnecessary in teaching. Like Michelle Rhee’s Students First, Stand for Children holds that inexperienced teachers are just as good if not better than experienced teachers. Stand threatened a ballot initiative, backed by millions of dollars in spending, to destroy teachers’ seniority and tenure. The Massachusetts Teachers Association could not match the spending of the hedge fund managers who want to destroy teacher unionism and it capitulated.
Let’s be clear: Stand for Children and its kind want to put an end not only to teachers’ unions but to the teaching profession. They want teachers to be evaluated by test scores, despite the overwhelming evidence that doing so will promote teaching to standardized tests and narrowing the curriculum, as well as cheating and gaming the system.
An underfunded group called Citizens for Public Schools tried to rally support for teachers and opposition to Edelman’s scheme. Former members of Stand for Children signed a petition against its campaign.
Since Massachusetts leads the nation on the no-stakes federal tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, it seems difficult to understand how Stand for Children was able to mount a campaign against the state’s teachers. But the national atmosphere is so poisonous towards teachers, that Stand must have latched onto the sentiment generated by the odious movie “Waiting for ‘Superman'” and the public relations machine of those out to belittle teachers while pretending to care about teacher quality.
This Massachusetts teacher blogger will give you some idea of what teachers think about Stand’s campaign.
At some point in the hopefully not distant future, the “reformers” who are working so hard to remove all job protections from teachers will be held accountable for their actions. When that day arrives, they will be ashamed of what they have done to rob our children and our schools of the experienced teachers they need.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For the life of me, I cannot understand why educated people like Edelman want to end the profession of teaching. I get that they want to privatize education because there are huge amounts of tax dollars at stake, but the push to de-professionalize teaching is not only repugnant, it doesn’t even seem to make sense in the free market world where those folks live. Despite their claims that they have achieved all they have totally by themselves, no help from their past teachers, parents, or society in general, they must know that most parents want a really good, oh wrong word – we have to be effective now, not good – teacher for their children. Even in the world of private education, parents are looking for what will make their children succeed in life. They are not looking for education on the cheap.
I suppose Edelman and his ilk will just say, “let the free market determine which schools are good”. But without experienced, educated, and dedicated teachers, I am puzzled as to how any of those schools could be good. The shocking experiment now going on in Louisianna, giving away the public education system to private, fly by night church schools, will, on its face, produce such chaos that not even Edelman or Jendal can possibly think it will improve the education of children. Maybe they are counting on all the public school teachers who will lose their jobs when half of the children of Louisianna take their voucher money out of the public schools and give it to a church will just go merrily where the voucher money goes. I do not think that is true. Having spent 34 years in education, I cannot even concieve of working for a school that so devalues everything I have spent my life doing. I have a feeling that, if they end teaching as a profession, those of us who believe it IS a profession, will go find another way to support our families while we continue to fight for sanity to return to our country.
An “experiment’ at the taxpayers’ expense and the education of children. An “experiment” that will take millions of dollars away from districts to teach those left in the system. An “experiment’ that will bring about employee layoffs and student services eliminated.
The timid surrender of the Mass teachers’ union to Edelman’s smug threats makes the Chicago Teachers’ Union strike all the more important for us to support. (Diane’s blog will become only more impt in coming months.) Edelman, Rhee, Gates, Broad, the Koch Brothers, and their like count on their billions to buy sympathetic press coverage, politicians’ votes, and campaigns to overthrow unions like in Wisconsin. Teachers’ unions like most unions have not prepared their mass of members or their potential mass of parent allies in how to fight a corporate war, which is why public education and the public sector generally are having their vast assets(like school budgets, buildings, supplies, equipment, etc.)seized to enhance private-sector revenue. A labor strike by the Chicago Teachers Union led by charismatic Karen Hughes has a better chance of winning than an electoral campaign like Wisconsin’s failed recall. Teachers and parents and students are mass stakeholders with much to lose. Schools are in every neighborhood. This gives a labor strike a grounded strength. Strikes are the most effective weapon labor has; a lot will be riding on the planned Chicago strike to finally turn the tide.
The Chicago teachers need to strike for real protection of public education (small classes, real, not business model evaluation, seniority, salaries, etc) and not for a “seat at the table” with the hedge fund boys as the school systems are carved up for private investors.
Read this: http://www.boston.com/business/blog/economy_equity/2012/06/a_future_for_public_unions_part_ii.html
From labor economist and old-school organizer Barry Bluestone. He gets it right.
Barry Bluestone thinks that Stand for Children is an organization devoted to better schools. He is wrong. Stand for Children is an organization devoted to privatization through charter schools and to taking away all job protections for teachers so that teachers are at-will employees. Stand for Children is funded by the billionaire foundations and by hedge fund managers. Many of its original supporters have withdrawn, recognizing that it has turned into an anti-teacher, anti-public school organization.
As a Massachussetts educator who works closely with our local union board, members of witch were involved in the concession, I can tell you the decision to concede was not come to lightly, and was made only because every bit of research stated that if it was put to a public referendum (it was a ballot inititative) we would have lost, and the resulting law would have been worse.
People in this country, even in this liberal pro-education state. Have been trained well to hate and disrespect teachers. It is scary, frightening and so disheartening
Basically a form of extortion…
[…] in Louisiana, Stand for Children is actively pushing Governor Jindal’s education agenda, which includes school vouchers. Vouchers may be one of the clearest proposals that undermine the common good. Vouchers take money […]
Stand for Public Education Does Not Stand for Children
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I know this thanks to a teacher!
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