Upstate New York has had its share of failed charter schools.
Some years back, Edison Schools had a charter school in Rochester, which was a disaster and later shuttered by its state authorizer. Not far away another charter (acquired by Imagine Schools) in Syracuse was shut down due to poor academic performance, and county bond holders were left holding the bag for the closed school. In Buffalo, Stepping Stone Academy, another Edison school, across the street from one of the most toxic lead dumps in the state, was shut down due to poor academic performance as was a former KIPP school, Sankofa. (KIPP bailed out before closure to protect their “brand.”)
But here we go again.
The newly elected mayor of Rochester pledged to open more charter schools.
Hope springs eternal.
Does she know that the charters are likely to screen out students with disabilities (other than the mildest ones), students who are English learners, and those with low scores? Is she okay about dragging down the public schools of Rochester so that the charters can skim off the easiest to educate? How does she feel about running a dual school system?
We never learn.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Dept. of Justice recently reported Black students, who are 15%
of the public school population make up 35% of the students disciplined. This should be especially troubling if this statistic is not studied deeper
to determine why. For if not, some might conclude public school teachers treat Black students differently and appear to have a lower tolerance for unruly behavior towards them.
This appears to be the reason that Arnie Duncan, Secy of Education and Eric Holder, Attorney General introduced a “Directory of Federal School Climate and Discipline Resources” to aid teachers address discipline problems.
It remains to be seen whether this directory will actually improve the educational atmosphere. But, it will definitely improve the statistics which necessitated the need to create guidelines in the first place.
Knowing human nature as it is, teachers will more likely not step up to a discipline problem involving a Black student, knowing the close scrutiny they will be under. It would be easier to ignore discipline problems and let the child’s next teacher deal with it.
As Duncan and Holder use statistics to recognize this disparity, its apparent they are not using them more broadly, towards the disciplined Black students themselves. Unless factors unique to these students such as class performance, upbringing, single parent households, economic level, and ‘social promotion’ are addressed then the steps being taken will be nothing more than a government driven numbers game.
Rather then only use these statistics to direct teachers, the Dept of Education should also provide guidelines of “student responsibilities” to all parents of every child entering the grades where there is an uptick in discipline problems.
For, without the involvement of parents poor performing students will remain warehoused in schools waiting to depart, either through a flawed graduation process or dropping out.
Please share with teachers. As always, feedback appreciated.
Anthony Bruno ajbruno14@gmail.com
Anthony, have you ever worked in an inner city school?
Charter schools suspend and expel students of color at a high rate. Far higher than regular public schools.
Note, so do non-charter schools. When will the teacher unions speak up for themselves. Recent effort by DOE and DOJ are targeting teachers for the high percentage of Blacks being disciplined and suspended.
The silence by teachers will not improve classroom behavior…merely have unruly children remain in the classroom and benefit from “social promotion”.
Having gotten rid of Jean-Claude Brizard not too long ago, how could Rochester voters have fallen for this guy? I don’t get it. Maybe people do deserve the government they get.
Dienne, Mayor Warren is a woman–the first woman mayor of Rochester (so people are really patting themselves on the back over that one). Also, she was the “outsider” candidate.
I’m curious–Adam Urbanski, what’s your take on this?
Here in Washington State, after the judge declared that charter schools were not eligible for common school funding, the legislature is already writing legislation to fund charter schools. Politicians and their charter schools – cash cows and unlimited donations. Now that WA State legislators have been wined and dined by the charter school management orgs and the Microsoft retires who want their legacy – and tax breaks – to continue in a charter school, they’ll all need to go to rehab to break themselves of their addiction to unaccounted for cash. The free-for-all begins. Ironically, even one or two charter school ads by the WEA at election time could have stopped 1240 in its tracks, but we heard not a word out of our illustrious state union – they allowed the BS untruthful ads to run unchecked by the pro-charter groups. So I blame the bulk of this mess on them.
As those of us who have worked all our lives in schools understand, improving the instructional quality of a school is a long and complex process —often yielding what politicians would consider meager results. Those who win political office have short periods of time to provide their publics with evidence that they have the answer to complex social problems. So, it is predictable that whoever assumes a political office will take off the policy shelf an idea (e.g. charter schools, merit pay, VAM scores) that appears to the public to be a straight forward answer for another straw dog they set up during the election—failing schools. They then play out this scenario by cooking the test books, moving cut scores around, or just hiding the results. Unfortunately, in the process, thousands of children receive a terrible education, good teachers leave the profession, and teachers and administrators end up indicted for cheating. It appears, so far, that the new Mayor of New York is willing to break this cycle of reform failure.
Dear Ms. Ravitch,
One reason I sent a message and an attachment via your FB page was because I didn’t want to appear to be trying to take over your blog with my excessively long-in-the-tooth comments, or to be distracted by blog “followers” who might become overly defensive or exercised by my comments without knowing where I’m coming from. I’m assuming you didn’t see the attachment and, since it was written specifically with you in mind, I am sending it here as the only way I have for contacting you.
The name of Michele Rhee’s organization implies that she is all about improving education for children. Everyone who you oppose now has made assertions that privatization or whatever else they are doing will help children and young people and the nation. It isn’t enough to say that you care more than they do, or to claim that your approach is right and theirs is wrong, I’m sorry to say. Being right about the particulars isn’t enough, either. The reason education hasn’t changed much in generations is because educators have made “the Error of the Third Kind”, repeatedly, which is solving superficial problems, while not dealing with more rudimentary issues.
There are several strategic errors that can all be fatal to your (our) cause – allowing education to happen. Those errors are: underestimating the enemy or the scope of the problems; inadvertently giving legitimacy and credibility to the “enemy”; misallocation of resources or fighting the wrong battles or in the wrong places; being in denial about crucial elements or short-comings, and letting emotions and passions get the best of you. My piece addresses the fact that the analogy of David and Goliath isn’t actually appropriate here. I hope you will bear with me just a little longer.
To take my approach may seem to you to be misdirecting your efforts just when the urgency of the struggle for children is at its highest point. But, there are two things to consider. One is that, if you are fighting for children, you should be sure your actions and words do not belie doubts about their innate abilities, dignity, goodness, and potential. Second, it is essential to understand how circumstances evolved to bring us to this urgent crisis. Ultimately, this is about who will have power. Power will either be in the hands of the students, or it will be given once again to people who are empowered by laws, who will often misuse it and fail to comprehend what children require to become whole and fully educated.
If you were to visit Las Vegas in the near future, it would be fantastic if you could have a conversation with my good friend Alvin Meinhold, the former teacher I have mentioned before. He can articulate these issues much better than I can.
NEITHER SENTIMENTALITY, RATIONALIZATION, ENTHUSIASM, NOR COMMITMENT WILL STOP THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLING
A Defensive Posture Resulting From a Lengthy History of Chaos & Unsatisfactory Performances on the Part of Public Schools & Their Supporters Spells Big Trouble Ahead
By Robert B. Elliott
There is currently an epic war in progress in which there are powerful organized and corporate forces as well as many individuals who have given up on public schooling, all trying to effect the privatization of schooling on a grand scale. These supposed reformers and concerned “innovators” are all fighting zealously against a committed army of public school teachers and other defenders of the public systems who believe just as fervently in keeping schooling out of the hands of mercenary business corporations, “bean counter types”, paternalistic elitists and plutocrats, free market freaks, and those who mindlessly follow them.
On the side of privatization, which includes charter schools, vouchers and various mixes of the two or other concepts that lead ultimately to the elimination of public schooling, there is a cabal of several billionaires, ambitious, charismatic, and egotistical bureaucratic school administrators, a large number of ordinary wealthy business and industry leaders, people involved with Internet operations and computers – including many who perceive technology as a miraculous revolutionary cure-all – some influential media personalities, and other critics who have pointed to the many chronic problems within the public framework as a reason for a complete overhaul.
The humble opponents attempting to defend the public schools from these malicious attacks feel that unqualified outsiders and meddlesome administrators and officials affected by financial and political pressures are interfering with the crucial work of dedicated teachers, unfairly blaming front-line educators for the catalogue of serious problems. They take the position that the only significant and intractable problems traditionally have been concentrated in areas of intense poverty and unemployment, where neglect and under-funding is a matter of misguided official priorities, where teacher stresses, discrimination against minorities or the poor, accumulated deficits in skill and opportunities, and testing that disadvantages students and teachers alike skew the numbers and drag down the averages.
On both sides of this raging war, the proponents adamantly insist that they better represent the interests and welfare of children and the society. Education is forever invoked as the issue that determines the future, and passions run extremely high. As of yet, no blood has been shed that has been directly tied to this war. Both sides cite studies, reports, and statistical data as undeniable proof that they have the formulae for eventual success, with sufficient doubt all around to cloud every issue and contentious argument. Charges of corruption and incompetence abound. There is a great deal of bitterness, sniping, personal attacks, and vilification, especially on blogs, in local skirmishes, and in Internet communications.
While there is an obvious David and Goliath character to this struggle, one should be careful not to jump to conclusions. According to Malcolm Gladwell, Goliath was nearly blind and David had several distinct advantages, not least of which was a highly effective weapon in the slingshot, which was deadly at close range. The Goliath in our school story has excellent vision (although not the kind of vision possessed by true visionaries) and many distinct advantages, while the public school advocates are saddled with several significant vulnerabilities.
The right wing fanatics have been distraught for forty years about the removal of school prayer. They are livid about people who would take the expression “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Many would be more than happy to see a theocracy in which Christianity is the official religion of the US. In Michigan, according to an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Mother Jones Magazine, the radical DeVos family of the Amway dynasty has contributed $44 million since 1997 to Republicans in Michigan and a total of over $200 million nationally with the goal of destroying unions and advancing their reactionary agenda. The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Coors family, Art Pope, and any number of others are not just misguided conservatives. These people have long been obsessed with culture wars, they believe fervently in “social Darwinism”, which attributes their wealth to inherent superiority, they believe in certain ideological theories with every fiber of their being, and they are convinced that children would be savages if it weren’t for the coercive conditioning of mass schooling.
Primary tools used to justify keeping schooling in the public non-profit realm are sentimentality, tradition, and deflecting blame for failures on externalities (or, in some cases, denying that there is anything wrong that more resources and greater autonomy won’t fix). Nearly everyone experiences nostalgic good feelings relative to their own public school experiences, despite many struggles and moments of frustration. There is widespread affection for the great teachers most of us have had along the way. Sentiment-based arguments relative to sticking with our proud American history of providing free education to all comers and examples of phenomenal success (the Horatio Algiers mythology) tie a lovely ribbon on the package. Sentiment, devotion, and good intentions when pitted against hard-nosed mercenaries and business oriented critics are more of a handicap than an effective approach, however.
Those people promoting charter schools, business models for schools, merciless testing and measurement regimens, taking down teachers’ unions, and a common-denominator common core curriculum probably do generally believe they are doing what is best for students, although some appear to have questionable motives or conflicts of interest. They take a very calculated approach overall and most primarily answer to stockholders or moneyed interests and politically influential people, who are typically unemotional and single-minded. Regardless of their focus or motives, however, they are not going away and they appeal to a wide spectrum where productivity and measurable results are king. The money and resources for promoting their cynical agenda have so far nearly overwhelmed the faithful public school enthusiasts.
For the record, I have a sterling reputation for being on the side of the little guy. I am clearly biased against the wealthy interlopers and others who pretentiously or presumptively interject themselves into this arena. Bill Gates doesn’t know squat about education. I have been a strong union supporter, and it is all too apparent that teachers’ unions have shamefully been used as a scapegoat. I believe that a majority of teachers work extremely hard and are idealistic, caring, professional, and competent in their field.
Still, one can’t realistically deny or explain away the generations of conflict and chronic failures that have characterized public schooling as their supporters are now asking everyone to do. One may buy into the notion that things weren’t quite as awful or repressive as chronicled in hundreds of books and articles. One may agree with their philosophy and their refusal to submit to testing on steroids and accountability measures that are ludicrous and unfair. However, pretending that all would be well if the number crunchers and billionaires would go away and shut up and leave a nice fraction of their wealth to pay for decent teacher salaries, structures, programs, and materials is naïve and foolish.
If the current crop of “reformers” were the only ones now or in the last several decades to delineate major problems with the public schools, one might suppose that they are just opportunists, troublemakers or utopians. However the list of people not affiliated with them who have identified and condemned profound failures, abuses, neglect, and harsh criticisms would fill many pages.
Should anyone have any doubts that the schools have been plagued by chronic problems of major proportions that are not exaggerated by interlopers and hyperbolic statements of over-critical perfectionists or dreamers, one needs only Google a few terms, such as: school failure or education failures; school or educational reform; school scandal; school or educational conflict or controversy; testing scandal; alternative schooling; Unschool movement; de-school movement; or, look for some of the book and article titles that relate to the endless series of conundrums. The list is endless. Exhibit “A” might be the article from 2013 titled, “School is a Prison”, by Dr. Peter Gray. If one Googles just that title in a search, the results are staggering.
Not all schools are prisons. In some schools, one thing or one aspect has been removed or significantly altered to make them more hospitable and conducive to educational endeavors and learning that has relevance. The thing that is absent in the alternative or “experimental” schools and to a lesser extent in some few traditional schools where the leadership is progressive and aware is the element of coercion, compulsion, or arbitrary authority. Those select schools give hope to many supporters of the public schools. Unfortunately, that is a false hope if one expects the message to penetrate the barriers that surround the typical school or school district. As Dr. Gray explains, the blueprint for those schools includes those nasty and misanthropic features. The blueprint determines the permanent bureaucratic and authoritarian structure that is cast in concrete, which derives from the laws that establish the schools and attendance therein.
The bad news is that the very edifices of schooling provide advantages to the so-called reformers and those who focus on bottom-line accountability at all cost and many things that tie the hands of educators. The other bad news is that the people with the money, power, and influence have those things in spades. David’s little slingshot is a toy compared to bulldozing tanks and the shock-and-awe tactics of the big boys. But wait; there’s more. Schools are for fish. Teaching groups of children is highly inefficient and impractical. Children need an environment that permits maximum mobility, flexibility, autonomy, and tranquility to thrive and develop initiative.
The problem with sentimentality, rationalization, enthusiasm, and commitment is that while almost everyone has their own warm and wonderful memories of school and warm and fuzzy feelings about those splendid teachers who taught them with love and understanding, nearly everyone also has a place where dark memories of despair, humiliation, dread, anxiety, frustration, invisibility, and outright anger about unfairness and powerlessness reside, however well repressed those memories may be some years later.
On the other hand, the good news is that recognition has been germinating throughout the land that, by working to eliminate the coercion of compulsory attendance, schools can become places that welcome children with sincerity and where children will want to spend a great deal of quality time. The good guys can win in the long haul, but not until they relinquish denial and rationalization and get real about the fundamental flaws in the institutions they hope to save.
“The reason education hasn’t changed much in generations is because educators have made “the Error of the Third Kind”, repeatedly, which is solving superficial problems, while not dealing with more rudimentary issues.”
Where is your evidence that education hasn’t changed much in generations?
I think you are wrong. The reason I think this is because I taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005) and outside forces were constantly forcing teachers to try new technologies and new programs without any evidence they would work and they often failed.
For instance, the Whole Language approach to teaching reading that requires kids to read thirty minutes or more a day off campus at home. When this method was forced—-FORCED—-by administrators [under pressure from politicians] on the teachers in the district where I taught, the teachers pushed back because we knew from our combined centuries of experience that kids who do not love reading are not going to cooperate with an unproven but politically correct theory. Kids that did not grow up with a love of reading, are not going to read at home if the support from the parents is not there and why should it be there. It’s because of parents, for whatever reason, that the kids grew up without a love of reading.
A decade later, the evidence that this method of teaching was a failure in California was overwhelming and teachers were told to return to the old, tried and true methods that had worked for generations.
In fact, teachers are more than willing to try new teaching strategies and technologies when they are part of the process and have had a chance to discuss and debate. Public education in Finland operates this way—teachers are included in the decision making on how to and what to use to teach, but not so in most public schools in the United States where teachers are often ignored and forced to do what they are told.
When teachers are involved in the process from the beginning, the odds of success are much higher. When outside forces such as administrators, politicians and special interests linked to the private [for profit] sector force teachers to use new strategies and technologies without gaining the cooperation of the teachers first, those methods usually fail.
What about a program that teachers liked: for example: for instance, the English-history partnership where ninth grade English teachers and history teachers combined their classes to make history and literature partners in teaching history and boosting the time students read.
I was involved in such a program from the start. It was funded by a limited time grant. It succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations and then the grant money ran out. Political correctness and the [for profit] outside forces who decide what goes on in our public schools didn’t care about this method because it didn’t increase profits.
The result: the cooperative joint venture between English and history teachers at our high school died even though the teachers wanted to keep using the method. You see, for that method to continue meant keeping the class loads at 25 students instead of 34 or more because we had to be able to fit all of the students in one classroom for two teachers to work with at the same time. Fifty students in one room were crowded but nowhere as crowded as sixty-eight or more. There were larger rooms on campus we could have used like a multiple purpose room but the entire ninth grade English and history teachers were involved in this project. No way were we going to fit that many kids in even the much larger multiple purpose room and the more kids you have, the more noise there is along with other classroom management challenges.
Spending money to reduce the number of students does not lead to profits for the private sector forces involved in the destruction of the public schools. This type of program required hiring more teachers to keep class size down.
Another for instance: IBM funded a reading lab at the cost of $50,000 to help our poorest readers. The school and teachers agreed to give it a try and ended up with a room full of new IBM computers and programs that would help students progress at their own speed.
The older SRA reading kits did the same thing but they required more work for the teacher that included more interaction between adults and kids and they didn’t look as fancy and up-to-date as a high tech room full of computers.
In this case, the teachers and IBM were wrong because the kids weren’t interested in learning to read with help from a computer program. How did the kids vote? They sabotaged the computers by shoving gum in the disk drives and/or destroyed the keyboards by prying off the letter keys and stealing them. They took the computer mice requiring the school to buy a constant supply. Teachers and adult aides had to become more of a guard to protect the computers than teachers. And it is challenging—impossible—for two sets of adult eyes to see what thirty-four kids are doing at thirty-four different computer stations.
Within a year, the lab had to be shut down because of student sabotage and we returned to using the old printed on paper SRA kits that required more hands-on contact between students, teachers and adult aides.
Reading your opinion angered me. I want to know where you came up with this idea that “education hasn’t changed much in generations”.
Is it from Bill Gates and his foundation who wants to turn teaching over to computers and get rid of teachers?
Change for the sake of change is not smart or efficient. Change must be a slow, thought our process especially when it comes to dealing with kids who are each different because they come from different home environments offering teachers challenges that are different from child to child that no computer program is going to be able to deal with.
The flawed assumption that all kids in school from k – 12 are hungry to learn and the only reason they don’t learn is because of incompetent teachers is a fiction created by profit driven forces outside of public education. Do not fall for their flawed logic. Do not fall for their slick messages designed to mislead.
The public schools in Finland—with teachers who belong to a very strong union—have shown the world how this is done and that is to include teachers on a school-by-school basis in the decision making on how they teach our kids. Kids who live in poverty are very different from kids who live in a wealthy upper, middle class community. Kids—on average—who are white are different from kids who are black. Kids who are immigrants are different from kids who were born in America.
America has the third largest population in the world and that means the third largest number of children to teach. They are diverse in many ways.
Lloyd, I think what your post highlights more than anything is that decisions about education need to happen on a local level. Jamming 34 kids into a “learning lab” and expecting computer programs to substitute for a well thought out differentiated reading program was foolish. Reducing whole language to a mandate for children to read for half an hour at home is equally foolish and again does not substitute for a quality locally developed program that meets the needs of your community’s struggling readers. I have yet to see any pedagogical method that has proved to be a panacea for all students that demands rigid adherence to a preordained format. In the end, as you say, education should be more about the children and who they are than it is about the latest proclamation.
I have no idea whether Rochester’s mayor is aware of some of the potential pitfalls of charter schools.
I’m pretty sure she knows her city has been ravaged by active, ongoing segregation, and that there’s no cavalry coming from the state or the feds or the surrounding better-off towns to help with that.
I’m also pretty sure she can see that roughly 3 out of 4 kids in grades 3-8 in Rochester schools scored a 1 (well below proficient) on the NYSED math and ELA exams in 2013, and only about 1 in 20 scored a 3 or a 4 (proficient/well above proficient). The tests were not well written and not fully aligned with the curriculum, true. But that many 1s in a district that’s only 11% ELLs is a sign of something seriously wrong.
This mayor won a historic upset over the incumbent mayor in the Democratic primary. Her platform was transparent and open about her intention to offer parents more choice and charter schools (it’s an interesting read: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/lovelyformayor/pages/32/attachments/original/1366283709/WarrenEdPlanFinal2.pdf?1366283709 ). de Blasio has his mandate, Warren has hers.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Read about FAILED Charter schools and the drive to open more so someone can make a profit.
The charter school push is a threat to the City School District, which is already losing money and students to the movement. The district risks being left with an even more needy population.
“Too many of our families are not finding the school that is suitable for their children,” said Superintendent Bolgen Vargas, who was in the audience. “They are turning to charter schools. It is my job and should be the job of this community to make sure that our schools are working well for every child.”
Another ed reformer who forgot to mention existing public schools.
Oh, well. So much for that. It’ll probably be easier to just turn the whole thing over to private operators. It’s not like anyone is or will he held accountable if a policy of abandoning public schools and promoting charter schools fails. After all, she won’t be running the new system. “The Market” will. No wonder mayors love it.
“It’ll probably be easier to just turn the whole thing over to private operators.”
Let’s follow that logic chain for that way of thinking: After years of war in the Middle East, it will probably be easier to turn the United States over to al Qaeda because they will never stop.
We don’t stop fighting back to save the public schools—-ever. I suggest you go see the film—if you haven’t yet—“Lone Survivor” to learn why we never surrender, we never walk away from greed and evil.
Regarding the “we never learn”.
G. B. Shaw said it best – paraphrasing somewhat perhaps:
The only thing that man has EVER learned from history is that man has learned NOTHING from history.
Regarding the above and changes in education. Our school system back decades ago did look as I have mentioned several times previously. Our supt. said “look for the best materials you can find and look for the best teaching techniques you can find. I stand behind you.” He did, many of us did. Unfortunately our school board knew better than we did and destroyed so many of the programs we had implemented. Just one example. We had 2 science coordinators, both of whom obtained doctorates and went on to collegiate teaching. They taught students to “think like scientists”; observe what is happening and critically examine the evidence. NO: our students MUST learn the “facts”, go back to what textbooks say and do what other school systems or at least what they understood to be “education”. When the 2nd science coordinator left he was NOT replaced. We cannot have that kind of thing going on. Only one example.
I live about 25 miles outside of Rochester, NY. I work at a rurual district. I am a member of the teacher’s union. I have been following this situation very closely. After a great deal of consideration, I realized the biggest difference between the Rochester City Schools and the charter schools is a lack of a union in the charter schools. RCSD has a very strong union that says it works for the welfare and education of the students. I am not so sure. I am at a disadvantage because I don’t have many specific instances of what the union has done to the education process in Rochester. I am hoping another reader can shed some light on this topic.
“I am at a disadvantage because I don’t have many specific instances of what the union has done to the education process in Rochester.”
Who says the teachers’ unions in Rochester is responsible to improve the public schools and the education process? When has that ever been the responsibility of a teachers’ union?
The teachers’ unions are only responsible to represent and protect the rights of the teachers who pay dues to the union for that purpose. If that means paying lobbyists to influence votes in a state capital or Congress—the same thing that Corporations, billionaires, etc. do with a lot more money and sneaker tactics that include lies and misinformation—then the teachers’ unions better do a good job.
It is not the responsibility of the teachers’ unions to run the schools. That responsibility falls to the democratically elected school boards and then to the administrators they pay to run the school districts and the schools in those district. That is how it worked where I taught for thirty years.
In addition, teachers should have a seat at the table where decisions are made when it comes to how kids are taught in the classroom but the teachers’ unions should not be involved in that process but should support the right of teachers who teach the kids to be part of the decision making process.
Locals usually are not involved at the state level.
For instance, I was a member of REA (local level); CTA (state level); NEA (national level) for almost thirty years and the union, at each level, did the job that was expected.
The local level (for me that was REA) offered legal advice if a teacher’s rights are violated and negotiates contracts; the state level deals with the politics at the state level and the national (NEA or AFT) deals with politics at the national level in Washington D.C.
If your local isn’t doing it’s job then you and the other teachers in the district where you teach are responsible to vote out the leaders of that local and elect new ones who will do the job they are responsible to do.
Teachers’ unions are democratically elected by the members and the majority usually decides what the local chapter of the union will do. The minority might not like how the dues they are paying are being spent at the state and local level but that’s the way it is in the United States. When I was teaching, there were always teachers at the same school who weren’t happy with what the union at any level was doing but what they wanted wasn’t what the majority wanted.
We can’t always have the leaders we want in a democratic government but every time there is a new election, we have another chance to vote and see if our vote will be with the majority.
The local I belonged to (REA) did the job it was supposed to do for thirty years, and when a majority of the teachers in that one district where I taught decided the local union leadership wasn’t doing its job, we voted them out at the next election and then we had a new president to run REA and get it back on track.
It’s called a democracy in action and the results don’t always make everyone happy because we have conservatives, moderates and progressives who teach. Politics in the schools often reflect politics at the state and local level.
And, when I needed my local union chapter to be there for me—and it happened more than once during my thirty years in the classroom due to administrators who were bullies—the local union stood by me and once the state paid lawyers to advise me and offer legal support if needed.
Lloyd, what you might not know is that Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and Yonkers (the Big Five) are mainly funded by NYS and not by property taxes. Therefore, the teachers’ unions do have a big stake in NYS policy and they are involved in state politics. And these unions, or at least in Buffalo, are also actively involved in school policies. In 1976, the teachers went on strike to keep art, music, gym, and other specials in the elementary schools, especially the Early Childhood Centers. Recently, they had to sign off on the evaluation process (APPR) which was tweaked and reluctantly accepted by King (the last district, besides Yonkers, to come up with a plan). Syracuse did not come up with a fair APPR plan, so it was extremely difficult for their teachers to score effective, and only a few were considered highly effective. The BTF is considering a lawsuit against the state against all the nonsense, especially if they can’t convince the NEA to do the same. I’m sure they will ask the other teacher’s unions to join in. This time they might say yes.
The Teacher’s Unions in NYS are very strong, thus the pushback.
Let’s take the billions of dollars that would have gone to fund privitization related everything and common core related everything, and over a summer, have every PUBLIC school in the country develop their own school plan to identify educational issues in their school community, and then come up with reasonable plans to address them. Teachers are amazing and such truly hard working professionals, that I bet remarkable things would come out of it. And, I bet a lot of the things they came up with would be very similar from school to school across the nation.
Diane, you forgot to mention the recently closed Pinnacle Charter School, which was shut down by the state only days before the start of this school year. The Buffalo Public Schools had to step up and find spots, including busing, for the 600 students left without a school.
Rochester Public Schools is a good example why merit pay does not work. A few years back, Rochester teachers received large pay raises to attract top notch teachers and thus improve test scores. Needless to say, top pay did not result in top scores. Those of us with experience in the inner city, realize that even the best teachers have little control over standardized test scores. However, the Rochester teachers deserved the raise. It’s a tough job.
I heard newly elected Mayor Warren speak last night on the news. She speaks like a little girl who needs a speech therapist. It is truly a sad day for the City of Rochester. She has no idea what she is doing or else she would not allow Charters to come in. Maybe someone around her will be smart enough to tell her. Some people including myself are disgusted she got in. I am not Republican at all!! I am in favor of children. I just hope my child graduates before everything all around the country falls apart. Unfortunately, I do not have faith this country is going in the right direction with anything.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/2014/01/13/warren-says-traffic-stop-was-on-way-back-from-albany-/4457115/
Lovely Warren has been in office 2 weeks and already hired a 2 man security detail, no Rochester mayor has ever had one full time, only occasionally at some functions, and hired her uncle for 80,000 a year. He was also stopped speeding while driving her to the state of the state address in Albany, NY. He wasn’t ticked but was going 97 miles per hour. The mayor also unearthed an SUV that former mayor Duffy, now Deputy Governor of NYS, was criticized for buying and riding in so he had to give it up. She’s on a roll.
Mayor Warren’s request is not unreasonable. Mayors need to have a driver/security detail. And it sounds like there’s is a lot of hate towards a female black mayor. I don’t blame her for being nervous.
Let’s focus on her emphasis on expanding Charter Schools in Rochester. She needs to be educated before she puts her city in a hole. Hopefully, it us not too late.
Lovely Warren also attended private schools.