Joel Shatzky taught English for many years at the State University of New York at Cortlandt.
He sent the following reflections about the political quandary of teachers:
What has become increasingly baffling to me amidst the many controversies engendered by the misnamed “school reform movement” is that the one most reliable union group to back and help Democratic candidates get elected is being savaged by Democrats. The teachers strike in Chicago was waged against a Democratic mayor who had been President Obama’s chief of staff and a principal fund raiser for Obama’s re-election. The strike illustrates the point: with friends like that, who needs enemies? In New York the “progressive” Bloomberg Administration has been in the forefront of “educational reform.” That its reforms haven’t worked and continue to be misused, effectively demoralizing teachers and students, hasn’t stopped other big city mayors, many of them Democrats, from applying the same discredited formulas around the country. And aiding and abetting this “movement” is the Obama Administration in its “Race to the Top” program which, in some aspects, is even more destructive than President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program. Certainly, Obama’s choosing Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education over Linda Darling-Hammond could not have been very reassuring to teachers around the country whether unionized or not.
The origins of the “school reform” movement, which was traced by Diane Ravitch in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” as far back as the 1890’s, reflects the periodic dissatisfaction with the public school system in not being “productive” enough in turning out “educated” students. However, despite alarming reports about the “decline” in our nation’s schools such as the Coleman Report of 1966 which was concerned with the need to establish equality of opportunity, and “A Nation at Risk” (1983) ordered by T.H. Bell, Secretary of Education during the Reagan Administration, which warned that our educational system would become less competitive internationally, high school drop out rates and graduation rates have not notably changed in the last four decades.
At the beginning of the millennium, a report by the National Council of Educational Statistics showed that “while progress was made during the 1970s and 1980s in reducing high school dropout rates and increasing high school completion rates, these rates have since stagnated.” http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005046
In a more recent report, the NCES stated that although “the overall AFGR was higher for the graduating class of 2008–09 (75.5 percent) than it was for the graduating class of 1990–91 (73.7 percent),” it was an increase of less than two percent. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_scr.asp. If one were to take into consideration the likelihood that the test cheating discovered recently in Atlanta and D.C has been more widespread, one could argue that there has been no significant change in graduation rates during all those decades of “reform” and “accountability.”
What has become an increasingly frustrating issue with public school teachers is that the way in which their effectiveness is now being commonly measured is a blunt tool that has little if any validity in measuring a teacher’s ability. It is as reliable as using a patient’s temperature to determine his sanity. Yet its lack of validity seems to have little if any effect on those so-called reformers who insist, as does Rahm Emanuel, on using the results of standardized tests to determine whether or not a teacher is qualified to teach. And Emanuel’s remedy is the same as Bloomberg’s or any other big city mayor: vouchers, charter schools, and choiceless “choice.”
Since there is more evidence that the “charter school reformers” are behind much of the change in the way teachers are evaluated as shown in articles by Ravitch, Joanne Barkan (“Got Dough?” in Dissent, Winter 2011 http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781 and other researchers and that many of these “reformers” are Democrats who regard education as a “good investment” http://www.uft.org/feature-stories/who-are-democrats-education-reform one wonders: If teachers have friends like that, who needs enemies?
The teachers’ unions in the future should use their economic, political and organizational clout to establish a new political party, a real “Labor Party,” and run candidates who truly represent the interests of all working people including teachers, not the entrepreneurs that sport the arbitrary label of “education reformers.” The segment of the labor force that has had the greatest loss of jobs in the past four years are teachers and many of them have been laid off by Democrats. And since expecting Republicans to be even worse, the teaching profession and other segments of organized labor feel they have nowhere to go. After this election, perhaps it’s time for them to consider finding new friends.
I agree with Shatzky, but I think it’s teachers themselves who are their own worst enemies. Until more of them are brave enough to stand up like Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers’ Union, don’t expect anything to change.
Unfortunately, in my district (mid size over 50% free and reduced lunch rural) many if not most have bought into the whole raise test scores to make our school look good mantra even though when you talk individually with them they say they believe that the tests are worthless. Gotta be a good team player.
Hell, our new “Performance Based Teacher Evaluation” states that “The teacher demonstrates respect for self, all others and the school district. This criterion may be demonstrated by the following indicators: . . . 3 Represents colleagues and fellow educators positively within the Warren County community. 4 Speaks about and references the school district in a positive manner within the Warren County community.” So any questioning of policies, procedures, enforced practices (mandated edmodo usage when a significant portion of the students don’t have outside access to the internet and the computer labs are booked-whoops just didn’t “represent” the community in a positive manner) can get me into hot water. Hello, operator can you give me the number of the Stazi?
I hope your reader will find some of the comments on this point that others and I have posted on this question. So far as I see it, the Democrats have been abandoning the New Deal since Clinton took over the DLC 20 years ago. Obama has completed that process by abandoning almost every promise of reform in favor of those who supported the GOP for generations. The current Democrats have adopted the positions of the original progressives from a century ago–patrician, technocratic, pro-capital, and anti-labor; they are nothing better than a kinder, gentler corporatism.
Even if I wasn’t unemployed, I would have trouble identifying the kinder, gentler aspects of the current Democratic administration. We really don’t need anyone else to tell us they feel our pain and then twist the thumb screws.
Mayors are like little Pachyderms. Just grab the tail in front of you and follow the crowd. Who ever said mayors are smart, must have been a mayor! No one else thinks that. So far, I have not heard one thing that proves that charters are any better than public schools. We deal with the same students. We work long hours (more than required). We graduate from the same colleges/universities (Wait, is there a “special” place that trains charter school teachers?). Please let me know. Hey there #educationnation, it’s time to share your secrets! It’s time to s#%t or get off the pot! Prove your more effective than a public school teacher!
If we wait until after the election willwe still have leverage with the democrats? After all, the election is over who needs the ‘teacher vote’. We must let politicians know we are unhappy NOW, whenthey need us most.
Here’s something to consider regarding the November elections: Nurse Romney or Nurse Obama. Brutal critique by Chris Hedges.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/emailsent/how_do_you_take_your_poison_20120924
This essay piggybacks on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay “Fear of a Black President,” that appeared in the Atlantic. Coates draws parallels to Obama and Booker T. Washington Outgrowing Booker T. Obama “Obama has at best settled for accommodation — for telling us what too many of us want to hear, and for not telling us what we don’t want to hear,”
http://newsrackblog.com/2012/09/23/booker-t-obama/
There is also Jill Stein http://www.jillstein.org/ and Rocky Anderson http://www.voterocky.org/ to consider. The most important consideration is for everyone to vote and to vote their conscience. Let us hope for the best!