A reader suggests the real purpose of the Christie “school reform” plan. Or could it be to introduce private markets to public education, with profits for some, losses for others?
Chris Christie, like many Republicans, main goal is to break the teacher union; it has nothing to do with education. He has no real interest in helping underperforming schools or struggling students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mother Crusader/Darcie posted this earlier. Needs to be read by as many as possible…
Yes, I agree…break the union…especially one dominated by female employees. Could you see this happening to firemen, policemen, electricians, plumbers? Maybe once they wipe us out, they will move on to the male dominates professions.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2012/07/greg-richmond-takes-local-control-from.html?m=1
“He has no real interest in helping underperforming schools or struggling students.”
So, this is what counts as critical reflection? Thoughtfulness? It’s refreshing to see such certainty, such conviction.
Thank you for posting and validating our concerns. I do think retired educators can do a lot to help the weary teachers. When we unite the retirees with parents and teachers I believe we will be on our way to turning things around. You are correct….not only do they not care about the kids, they rarely mention them in reference to being human beings…it is all about numbers, data, equipment, etc..
This was meant for Kitty…sorry.
I absolutely believe that the Republican education reform agenda is about putting the teachers’ unions out of business with no care or concern about children. I am the Immediate Past President of the Virginia Education Association. Ours is one of the top states in the nation with regard to providing a high quality public education if you believe Education Week and other sources that compare Virginia’s schools and the quality of our overall instruction with others in the country…yet our Governor and his Republican cronies in the VA House and Senate are determined to end continuing contracts for Virginia’s teachers because the Governor wants to say he did away with “teacher tenure in Virginia” as he climbs the political ladder to a national stage. His agenda has nothing to do with what is in the best interest of children or public education…it is about breaking the teachers’ union which has had some political clout that has stymied he reform agenda. I was determined not to lose continuing contracts for my members on my watch…and I did everything I could to stop that effort in its tracks. It wasn’t easy, but we did it much to the dismay of the Governor. He retaliated by messing with our retirement system and making a mess of it, but we still have continuing contract law for the time being.
My Governor is not alone. All of the Republicans who have pledged allegiance to AELC are on the same page as far as their united effort to discredit teachers and thus their unions. They have employed the FUD tactic that you wrote about last week and they would appear to be winning except that with your blog and the added voices of those of us who read it and are sharing it find comfort and courage in your continued effort to get people to wake up and start speaking up on their own behalf.
I have been frustrated that often I felt like I was the lone soldier on a battlefield facing overwhelming odds. My members supported me but didn’t want to join me on the front lines. They are afraid and they are beaten down. They admired my willingness to speak up on their behalf but they hesitated to add their own voices to the chorus.
I am retired now. I can speak up as an individual and I plan to do so as soon as I have gotten some much needed rest. The reality is very clear to me, however. What is happening has nothing to do with what is in the best interest of children. It is about what is in the best interest of the profiteers who are looking to get on the gravy train of education funding at the expense of children and their teachers. It is shameful, but I take heart every time I read one of your entries which sheds another glimmer of light on the real issues. Please keep up the good work. And thank you.
The union is pro-liberal. Of course they are going to target them. That’s the political game. If the unions took themselves OUT of the political game, they wouldn’t be a target.
Democrats pander to the unions which does nothing to help education either.
The unions would better serve teachers and education if they wouldn’t play these games.
Democrats pander to the teachers unions, the union funds democrats. Republicans target the unions.
It’s ring-a-round-the-rosie !!
Who suffers? The teachers and the students.
Congrats.
MOMwithAbrain:
“If the unions took themselves OUT of the political game, they wouldn’t be a target.”
Impossible. Politikos means “of, for or relating to citizens.” The unions ensure the existence of a dedicated work-force to educate the public or the “citizens.” Therefore, by very nature of this “service” to the public, educators are involved in politics. It is a necessary evil.
“The unions would better serve teachers and education if they wouldn’t play these games.”
The unions aren’t “playing these games.” They are involved in the preservation of rights for, once again, a dedicated staff.
Unlike the private sector, public sector employees do not run off and find the next highest-paying job every 6 months. They stay in their positions and invest in those communities.
They stay in their positions because districts invest in them (tenure) regardless of who makes more in what neighboring district.
They stay in their positions because districts value them by making sure they can have access to health care and sick time so they can do their jobs (partial health benefits, sick days). Healthcare benefits are part and parcel of the compensation also because districts cannot support sustainable salaries–therefore benefits off-set lower salaries which allows their educators to be able to afford to actually work there.
They stay in their positions because they know their work is valued enough to give them a say in the work day and working conditions (contractual negotiations).
All of these work dispositions would not be possible without the unions, but I can assure you that without them, there would be no dedicated workforce. If a politician is hell-bent on taking the rights to organize and negotiate as a working body away, you better believe that the citizens in these jobs will fight back, even if it gets “political.” That is the nature of such systems.
When people post nonsensical rhetoric, who suffers? The teachers and the children.
Kitty, I do not disagree with your stance on the Republican party’s education agenda, but seriously can you tell me the difference between theirs and the current presidential administrations’ ?
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
Take that well deserved rest, Kitty and congratulations on your retirement. But, we as retirees, need to keep fighting for future teachers, students and public education.
Kitty is correct. We are in a relentless battle for public school education in Virginia. She was a great leader for us and stood strong against every punch that the Governor and his friends have thrown. I understand her frustration. Many teachers are hesitant to get involved. They are afraid. Sometimes their fears are justified, but the way I see it, we are on the RIGHT side of this issue-that means something to me. It gives me strength.
Like Kitty, I get frustrated. Last summer, as I watched the amazing Wisconsin teachers march onto the Ellipse in Washington at the SOS rally, I was in awe; yet, I couldn’t help at being angry that more of us weren’t there, especially teachers from my home state. That rally energized me, and I wished that more teachers were there to experience the power of the group.
I remember that we all used to say that the latest best deformation would pass and the pendulum would swing back, but that pendulum seems to have gotten stuck. Perhaps, it may even be broken.
So, we need to do what we do best: work together to educate America. I’m convinced that we can write letters and lobby political officials until we are frustrated and blue in the face, but until we get parents to join us, things won’t change and that pendulum will remain stuck. We need to fix the pendulum.
For the first time in years, I began to hear parents of children at my school this spring voice concern over the direction the deformation is heading. They are on the brink of joining us. Hope.
Kitty–I, too, am retired, & I agree. It behooves us to speak out and help our active colleagues. There is a wonderful group in Rockford, IL called WEE (Watchdogs for Ethical Education) who were instrumental in ridding the school district of its Broad superintendent.
We can join with parent groups (Parents Across America affiliates–and if you don’t have one in your city or state, help start one!) Number One, in my book–get rid of the “standardized” tests (which are not, in reality, “standardized”). Read Todd Farley’s 2009 book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized
Testing Industry, and tell everyone else to read it as well. When–and it WILL be WHEN–enough people join together to protest the billions of dollars wasted on these tests, test preps and test scoring, and the fallacy of the tests themselves (as well as the scoring, as highlighted in Todd’s book), the house of bubble sheets will crumble, and there will be nothing to calculate VAMs, to rate teachers, to close public schools.
It is increasingly clear that the primary goals of the Tea Party Republicans, including Chris Christie and our nefarious Governor Tom Corbett in PA, include destroying the teacher unions, who tend to fund Democrats, and destroying the teaching profession, turning teaching in to a high-churn service industry of low-paid slaves doing little more than babysitting and testing. Testing is just an excuse for morphing teachers into young, cheap servant labor. Transforming the profession would save billions in wages. Privatizing education takes away control and money from the public sector. All of the seemingly illogical, irrational ‘justification’ rhetoric makes complete sense when one looks at the big picture and sees the bottom line as total dominance of the big three: politics, control and money. On an even larger scale, the Tea Party Republicans envision privatizing the education sector as part of total dominance by the 1%. The 1% already control the economy, a huge percentage of the wealth, much of the federal government, many state governments and an increasing number of urban and other local level government structures. I’ve read that the bottom line is…….they want it all, transforming the U.S. into a plutocracy. That’s one of the reasons why poverty is inexplicably discounted totally as a factor…….poor people don’t matter to them, period, in education or society as a whole. And, the poor tend to vote Democrat, as the Republicans know and have targeted through voter suppression laws.
Will anyone connect the dots and realize this before it is too late…..
First of all, the Tea party for the most part, is grassroots. While they may be NO fan of the Marxists who run the Unions, they certainly are NO fans to a centralized education system.
I wouldn’t dream of putting the tea party in the same category as Christie.
Agree MOMwithAbrain. This is not a true (not a heavily funded special interest “tea party”) grass roots teaparty stance or one leaning toward libertarianism: Common core, RTTT mandates, teacher accountability not set by the local district, charter schools run by private companies funded by taxpayers with no taxpayer accountability. That’s what Christie wants. That’s not what folks concerned about Constitutional powers want.
Our Democratic governor is behind this Democratic educational blueprint. It’s bipartisan in nature, not to be exclusively blamed on Republicans. I am hoping Obama’s legacy will be as stained as Bush’s was regarding NCLB.
People need to understand this is an ELITE plan. Not Republican, not democrat…not “tea party”. PLEASE drop the labels. It won’t solve the problem and will only divide folks more and will take the emphasis off the ISSUE. Once that’s done, game is truly over.
The tea party may not be an organization, but many of them support the policies that governors have been passing.
It may seem crazy but I think it is also about making sure that some children don’t have a quality education. It appears to me that the conservatives believe that there will be too much competition for jobs if we educated all of our children since they see the world as one of scarcity.
How can their be losses when these private businesses just have one customer, the government, and the contracts are awarded through cronyism and corruption?
There can only be losses if the consumer and the buyer are one and the same, and the consumer has a realistic choice of other products.
If any of these for profit businesses suffered a loss, money that normally isn’t available for schools would suddenly miraculously appear to make them whole.
Once education is fully privatized and buildings, buses, etc. are sold to private companies, they will be able to raise their contract prices with the government.
I do believe that it is all about busting the unions. I am not gung ho about unions either and I can clearly see that. Otherwise, all of these “freedoms” they give to charter schools would be available to existing public schools. There are two districts in Florida who are trying to start their OWN charter schools using the same process as everyone else, use they are getting the runaround from the state. One state official even worried about “accountability” for the district-run charter school. Why can’t they show that same concern for the privately managed ones.
You bet that Christie is out to destroy the NJEA, there is no doubt whatsoever. All the GOP governors are trying to destroy the teachers’ unions. Christie has regularly demonized, swiftboated and scapegoated the NJEA. He portrays the NJEA leadership as thugs, selfish and overpaid. He once insinuated that the NJEA should be investigated for financial malfesance of some sort. He had no proof, no specifics, just Joe McCarthy style slander and innuendo. Is this how he operated as US attorney for NJ? Going after people with no proof, just based on personal animosity? He has attacked teachers’ pensions as being too rich, their health benefits too generous. He has seniority, tenure and bargaining rights in his cross hairs of destruction. How does eliminating tenure improve education? NJ schools are top rated in the country and that is with unions, tenure and seniority. This is all about ideology, the anti-union, anti public school ideology.
Probably didn’t help that the NJEA poured about 12 million into the election to try and defeat Christie. (the number 1 spender in that election) MOM has a point, the NJEA pretty much painted a bullseye on their back with Christie before he was even elected.
That 12 million dollar figure is totally false. The NJEA spent something like about $575K on the Corzine versus Christie campaign.
I can’t find the exact figures for the Corzine campaign. But it was at least 11 million on lobbying the next year. http://nj1015.com/chris-christie-blasts-njea-for-lobbying-spending/ That’s 11 million vs. 73 million total, or 15% of all lobbying money spent.
You may want to split hairs as to the difference in lobbying vs. campaigning, vs running issue adds. But by far they outspend everyone else in NJ. (that $575k figure sounds awfully low, that may be just what they contributed, what did they spend on ads?)
They are out to destroy the union, my question is, why did the union make it so easy for them to accomplish their goal?
Parents see the unions pandering to the left. They see the union care about their political power vs the teachers and the students. That means parents will not support the union.
Then you have Gates using his propaganda film “Waiting for Superman” where the union cries out for Christie to come in and bust them. When parents saw that movie, what did you expect them to think?
When the NEA convention becomes a convention for Obama instead of a convention for quality education, what do you think parents will do? Support the teachers union vs. Christie and Rhee trying to destroy it?
It’s easy to blame Christie and Rhee but my question is, why did they set themselves up as an easy target?
Mom seems to be saying that unions and teachers should have no first amendment rights, unions should just shut up and go to a time out corner forever. Why would unions ever support the GOP which is rabidly anti-union and has been for a long time. The NEA is for quality education and it supports the less evil party. Actually, Obama’s educational policies are horrible but at least he is not rabidly anti-union as Romney is. Mom is against first amendment rights for teacher unions but corporations can spend billions supporting whomever they want.
mom with a far right wing axe to grind said: “While they may be NO fan of the Marxists who run the Unions,” With that bit of utter crapola, momwithacerebellum loses all credibility and slanders teachers and their unions. You should really think about confining your gems of wisdom to the Joe McCarthy Memorial web site. Good grief!
Thank GOD someone else is calling her out on this. I’m tired of it the snark and the rhetoric. It takes away the validity of her contributions to the discussion.
Reblogged this on teachingandlearningtoday and commented:
This is the fundamental problem with the so called “reform” movement being led by Republicans. The focus in on privatizing for profit and not for the sake of children. This is not the steel workers union we are talking about these are teachers. The product is not a car but a life.
It’s not an either/or proposition; the wealthy want both union busting and privatization.
They know the key to profiting from the education market is busting of the union since salaries are the major part of any school budget. Labor costs must be squeezed for the profiteers to make their billions.
The industry most analogous is the health care industry in the 1980s with Wall Street’s introduction of HMOs. HMOs squeeze medical labor costs and ration health care services to create profit streams. The same effort is underway here. It is not about quality of learning.
I have to disagree with your summation of unions. I suggest that many people have more moderate views than you and do not see unions obsessive leftists or as an easy target for bipartisan union busting and privatization. But after two years of privatizers’, their surrogates’, and government officials’ relentless teacher and union bashing, I agree that some ground lost.
And in democratic Chicago, voters support the teachers over Mayor Emanuel by two to one, in one Trib poll.
In large part this is b/c the democratic Mayor Emanuel and his surrogate out-of-town groups like Stand for Children, DFER, and StandFirst have used manipulative methods to fool Chicagoans into supporting his unpopular initiatives. One effort the papers dubbed rent-a-protestor. For $25, a preacher paid a few folks from disadvantaged neighborhoods to get in a bus and go across town to a school they had never set foot in before. There they held signs in favor of the Mayor’s turnaround effort — which closed the school and fired staff. All phony.
Here in CT the organization ConnCan or 50Can (we call it ConnCon) bused in about 35 “college students” who were supposed to be members of SFER, students for education reform (A TFA supported fraud front) to our state capital. They were bribed with a bus ride, free tshirts and subway sandwiches. When reporters tried to get quotes, not a single one could answer as to why they were there or what their organization represented. They looked confused and it was very embarrassing. You would think they would at least give them a script to read from.
I agree completely. Many people like Governor Christie paint this as a rights issue for students. As if they really care. They do this while assuring the parents of these students are either unemployed or stuck at jobs with low pay and little or no benefits. The last thing conservatives want to see is our students in poor urban areas being educated. This would be a threat to them!
You must be joking. The first thing conservatives want to see (at least in NJ) is urban kids educated. Why? Becuase then there would be some justification for decreasing urban aid to those districts.
In NJ 65% of the state aid goes to only 30 ‘high needs’ districts out of 603. (5% of districts get 65% of the aid) the other 95% of districts are then forced to make up for their lack of state aid with property taxes.
Governor Chrisite’s home district recieves ZERO state aid. That’s the real agenda, to wean our urban centers off state aid so that it is available to the suburban districts.
We can certainly debate the best way to achieve that result, but that’s the real goal, to lower the amount aid to our urban centers.
Camden is a disaster area, it’s one of the poorest cities in the US, it has a high crime rate, high unemployment and it looks like a war zone. Do we just ignore the rampant grinding poverty in Camden, just ignore Camden and hope it goes away? Do we punish the people living there even more than they are already being punished?
Punishing them more would be leaving the same system in place that is failing 50% of the students at Camden High. Isn’t the status quo punishing them enough?
According to you, what is the status quo? I would like to hear your definition.
NCLB was around for 10 years. Is that the status quo?
Teachers have had mandate after mandate shoved down their throats. We have changes to changes before the first change is even implemented? So what do you think is the status quo in education?
And do you teach in a classroom?
Status quo would be fighting ‘school choice’ at every opportunity.
Status quo would be refusing to recognize that spending $30k per student in Asbury Park, NJ is STILL not getting the job done.
Status quo would be refusing to consider reallocating the money. IE. If you agree that ‘poverty’ is the problem, then take the money and fight ‘poverty’ (buy kids health insurance, hire more police, provide day care, meals). Keep the same amount of money in Asbury Park, but spend it differently, not necessarily on the school budget.
What do you consider the status quo?
the status quo is high-stakes testing; status quo is belief that school choice is the answer to all problems; status quo is attacks on teachers; status quo is lack of interest in improving lives of children.
Would you like to offer your list of failings within the public education system and why these actions fail? I’d like to see a comprehensive research listing with citations to back up your claims.
It is nearly impossible for there to be a “status quo” in the school system. There is constant flux in education all around, as evidenced by the constant “reform” movements that are going on throughout NJ and the country.
The spectre of “status quo” is often used as a term (laced in rhetoric) for when someone is trying to convince someone else about what is “wrong” with a particular system. It’s a great and powerful catch-all term if the naive choose to give it the power.
Now if you think the community in question is a victim of a kind of “status quo” on a social level, you may have a point. Community reforms are necessary to change communities.
Maybe I wasn’t clear?
The status quo would be spending the same amount of money next year, or more, in the same fashion as this year, and achieving the same result.
PS. That result would be 50 percent graduation rates in places like Camden high. (google it)