Here is Arne Duncan’s statement on the Vergara decision that tenure and seniority are unconstitutional. Not a word about the real causes of unequal opportunity: poverty and segregation.. Who would have believed that a Democratic administration would stand by silently as collective bargaining rights are rolled back (Wisconsin) and would hail a court decision removing due process from public school teachers? Mitt Romney’s Secretary of Education (had he won) could have issued this press release:
Statement from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Regarding the Decision in Vergara v. California:
JUNE 10, 2014
Contact:
Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov
“For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher. The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve. My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift. Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.”
The attack on public school teachers http://www.examiner.com/…/the-attack-on-public-school…
When I clicked on this link, I got a page with a lot of images and little text, and then an unstoppable ad about a cleaning robot. Beware.
Sad to add that Stuart has found a money maker and takes so many ads, but offers only a few words of his poems to justify his hawking his site. Please Stuart, stop this.
This is really depressing!
“Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. ”
Says the Obama official who has spent the last 6 years using public schools as political punching bags to promote his agenda.
If Duncan and his hedgeucators would shut their word-holes and step aside, allowing the dedicated professional educators to do their jobs, public confidence in public education is likely to increase of its own accord.
But this is not what they actually want, of course.
Doublespeak Award should go to Obama.
Is this for real? If so, how will the chips fall?
The cow chips keep on falling on the teachers. How? In a wet and slimy fashion.
Please, don’t let this decision get you down, in my opinion teachers, we are the educators who have the closest interaction with students and care about their welfare in place of their parents. Will it get us accolades? Probably not. But if we persist in demanding quality education in our schools and fairness in the way we conduct our PROFESSION. We do not allow deformers to destroy our PROFESSION. Persistence will win out every time.
Agree! Duncan and Gates will not define our profession.
Such an optimist you are…we’ll see in ten years time won’t we.
Until you get an administrator that is only concerned with controlling his or her own personal fiefdom and doesn’t care about anyone, particularly students or teachers. I’ve been there, and it’s miserable. It didn’t matter how hard we worked or how professional we were, the principal was going to find some way to get us.
Been there, done that, and had a target on my back too. Have trust issues with admiistrators now
The trust factor for administrators goes down as their pay, responsibility and power climbs. Without the due process protections that tenure offered, I would have lost my job before I finished my first 10 years as a teacher, and if there had been a reason given, it would have said that I had difficult cooperating with management—which translates to ass kissing and doing what you’re told without protest.
Without due process rights under tenure protection, there is no check and balance system to stop district administrators and elected school board members from enacting stupid and incompetent programs that hurt kids, because no one will speak out except those who don’t care if they are fired and once they are gone, it’s the same as censorship.
What else can we expect from Arne Duncan. Does he understand ANYTHING about education?
Serfs you are, serfs you shall remain. This seems to fit the mental attitudes of those in power.
Who’s the ghost writer who wrote Arne’s statement?
All educators must work together to abolish the US Department of Corporate Education.
A cat named ALEC.
“Who would have believed that a Democratic administration would stand by silently as collective bargaining rights are rolled back (Wisconsin) and would hail a court decision removing due process from public school teachers? ”
Well, I would have because the Obama Administration has done not one thing for labor rights their entire term in office. They’re “agnostics” on collective bargaining and labor rights, as on everything else.
Duncan raves about Walker, Kasich and Snyder. He thinks they’re great. The Obama Administration has done more to prop up those administrations than Republicans have.
Yes, Chiara…Obama is the best Repub president we have ever had.
The problem is that we have politicians who can be bought and paid for, not statesmen/women who actually care about the people who voted for them.
Obama/Duncan just shows that Dems can be as rotten as Repubs.
Paula…hope all LAUSD teachers are as dedicated as you…and that they might finally start showing some unity in the face of this terrible court decision.
Olson and Deasy conspired with the billionaire proponents who found the student plaintiffs, to set this up as a civil rights case. We all recognize that the civil rights of all our inner city youth is free education in public schools, medical care, nutrition, and shelter…plus parents who care about them.
Paula take off your rose colored glasses and please realize that vindictive parents, the recently graduated offspring of the politically connected and the outspoken teachers who will not roll over to every new initiative coupled with spineless administration means that even if teachers stand for everything good, they will still get fired. How in the world can someone demand anything close to equality if there is not due process rights? Persistence will not pay the rent or put food on the table for the teacher who is just shy of retirement and will be cheaper to offload than a get you get what you pay for TFA bright young thing. This has put targets on so many many well meaning,devoted, persistent in the eye of all that is ugly in education and the courts have ruled it an absolute necessity. I cry for the teachers now in California just as I do for all the teachers of this nation. If California will not allow for due process rights, when the superintendent of the largest district is on the side against his teachers then wtf is wrong with this country.
You’re correct Concerned citizen. Persistence, if that would have worked it would have worked long ago. We teachers have no persistence when it comes to the political arena although to be a great teacher you need persistence and dedication. You need everything that the millionaires don’t really care about unless you would be one of them. Teachers, what are they to a billionaire, nothing really…highly educated people who love children, who love learning, and are altruistic in spirit…we are not those that step over another to get ahead. There are some I suppose, the “suck ups”, and we all know who they are…but the truly creative teachers are not6 into this manner of living life. No, I worry as similarly as Concerned Citizen speaks. I’ve taught for 25 years. I’m on the highest level pay wise and numbered 150 in seniority out of 1800 teachers. Hmmm!
I have to agree with you. We lost our due process rights 3 years ago. It just gets worse every month.
Now we have an ex-military experienced superintendent (no teacher he — no education experience at all) who has hired armed guards to stand at the entrances of all of our district buildings, an unprecedented action that never even occurred to past administrations in this small, close-knit city.
When asked why the expensive new armed guards were needed ruing massive budget cuts and spending freezes, when there has never been an incident or compelling reason before to hire them, the new guy said that because he was firing so many people (he has almost gotten rid of every single person from the area who rose up through the school ranks who worked for the district) that you never know when a disgruntled ex-employee may go crazy and seek revenge. Why would you treat people in a way that provokes revenge? We’ve never done that before but it’s his favorite theory of disruption at work. He’s a total neoliberal who believes that the best people come from far away, have no connection to education, and that using business fads and aphorisms is the best way to bring our district to “the top”, whatever that is supposed to be. At least he knows that he’s being unfair, cruel, and treating employees like useless, easily-replaced widgets.
Last week he fired an additional 12 longterm employees (added to the 85 fired during his first few months), all within 3 or 4 years of retirement, making it a clean sweep district-wide. All the experienced district employees have been replaced after 25 – 29 years of dedicated employment and replaced with non-education experienced people who aren’t from the area and who have never lived in this district and, therefore, are loyal only to their boss and not to the children, families, and teachers of our city. Our district is in free fall with no one knowing how to do anything, why we do things, and each department is becoming a little island run by a nasty despot who hates teachers because they “think they own things here” (actual quote) and they do not understand “modern business practices.”
I had hoped to retire from this district and I will — an early retirement at the end of next year, 12 years ahead of schedule, because I’m too old, too educated, and too experienced to be treated like a piece of dirt and talked to like I’m an ignorant fool and a liability because I have 20 years of experience.
This is the beginning of the end of our profession. Why aren’t there screaming teachers in the streets of LA, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York? That’s about all we have left at this point and we can’t even be bothered to do that to save ourselves, can we?
I am with you Chris in Florida. I am sick and tired of being talked to as if I were a moron. My district added a self-evaluation piece. We are all rating ourselves effective. My administrator sent mine back this morning due to a lack of evidence. The biggest bullshitters are shining at this task. No, I am not one of them.
The news from California is very disheartening. I have never felt so helpless. When did I turn into the enemy?
Chris: My district in California had a superintendent like the one you describe. Fortunately, at that point we had tenure. Even so, many of our fine mid-range teachers left to work for other districts. Administrators berated teachers in front of students, entire classes, and parents. The superintendent made disparaging remarks about teachers to the media. This is the important part: it is a purposeful, philosophical position. The intent is to create churn or turmoil; and it is very ugly to watch. Additionally, many districts wish to replace experienced teachers with inexperienced ones, not just to save money but instill fear.
I can’t count the number of times younger teachers provided me with information they thought should be brought to the School Board’s attention, because I would speak up. They stated quite frankly, they had families and could not afford to lose their jobs. One school board member would stand up during meetings from the dais and video tape the audience. It was such an overt intimidation tactic, you would hear gasps from those in attendance.
In the worst instance where I got targeted, an administrator called me in the middle of a class to demand I fill out forms that did not yet exist. It was a scene straight out of Kafka. When I explained the situation, she continued to scream, “It must be done!” She kept calling over and over. I finally had to have my assistant pick up the phone so I could continue teaching. I had a class full of students and I could hear what she was screaming from across the room. So could all students. Finally two security guards came to the room, one to escort me to the office and the other to take over my class. I was taken into a small office with both principal, assistant principal and the district head of my department on speaker phone. The abusive harangue continued until the district person screamed to the principal, “If this teacher cannot be made competent, you must fire her! Do you understand?”
I really despair for public education and teachers if this ruling is not reversed on appeal. The excerpts I saw read like the narrative straight out of the Billionaire Boys Club manual.
Arne didn’t write this statement. This was all taken care of for him. He is a despicable excuse for a human and he makes me sick.
Who would have believed that a Democratic administration would stand by silently as collective bargaining rights are rolled back (Wisconsin) and would hail a court decision removing due process from public school teachers?
Yes Diane, who would have thought. Who would have thought.
Can you believe that the U.S. Department of Education was only established in 1979? They sure have done a lot of damage. All of this is Big Business….they have run all industry overseas….it is now time to destroy public education! They see the billions of dollars to made . . .they just need for all of us teachers to go away.
Don’t kid yourself that you’ll still be okay if you work hard and toe the line. In the end, this is about taking a wrecking ball to ALL teachers–first urban ones, next upstate/ county ones.
Time for every educator in America to vote with the Green Party!
Just who in their right mind will want to teach in these schools Arne thinks will now get “great” teachers? Everyone will avoid these schools like the proverbial plague. Yes, this decision will surely help, right?
He doesn’t really think the kids will get great teachers. None of them do, and that is precisely the point. They know they are creating education CLERKS, not teachers. A steady stream of CLERKS who who won’t stick around long enough to make a difference, and certainly not long enough to reap any benefits of longevity. that is the point.
They scumbags won’t stop until school is online for “those” kids, and private academies/universities for their kids. And, there you have it.
@Donna:
Correct.
I’d go ever further and say they want babysitters who will sit and watch the kids and be boring drones who teach to a “test.” Far from thriving, creative, interesting teachers will be the first to abandon ship.
I keep hearing more and more schools bringing in iPads and laptops and having the kids spend most of their school days on the computer. Technology is an awesome thing, but they want the kids to be “taught” by an iPad (which is far cheaper than a teacher). How the hell is a child learning by spending their entire school day on an iPad.
1. School discipline? As in disciplining schools? Could that be what he means?
2. “…millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems…”
Disadvantages such as the ones his policies have exacerbated?
Democrats in DC have an absolutely awesome election strategy this cycle.
They’re running on blaming everything on lazy middle class workers.
Unemployment, income inequality, discrimination, stagnant wages; all of those things are the fault of US workers.
It also has the huge advantage of not making any of their donors or friends uncomfortable, so, you know, everyone who is important is happy.
Wow! That should be interesting.
George Carlin – start at :20 and substitute Arne Duncan for Mickey Mouse – Warning – NSFW and George Carlin’s extensive profanity.
NSFW???
Not suitable for widows????
As a registered republican, I swore I’d never vote for another repub. after witnessing what happens when a total repub. government gets into power (case in point, my state – Louisiana). Their complete disregard and disrespect for public education and teachers has been a real eye-opener, not to mention their destruction of democracy and flagrant disregard for ethics, laws, and equality. HOWEVER, I can’t understand the Obama administration’s stance on labor and education. It’s almost unbelievable to me that the US Sec. of Education would issue a press release in support of this ridiculous court case and ruling.
WTH? One is just as bad as the other. H. Clinton will have to do a 180 on education to get my vote. And, I’m not an educator, just a concerned citizen who understands the implications of this court ruling.
Obama IS a republican. So is Cory Booker. So is Michelee Rhee-pugnant.
Obama is not a Republican or a Democrat. His a democrat in name only. In truth, he’s a man without a legitimate political party. He’s a neo-liberal who worships at the dead feet of a white German Jew who immigrated to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II in Europe. His name was Leo Strauss.
Leo Strauss believed in the philosophy of deception.
The best comment I ever read about Obama is that he’s been auditioning for the role of Judas his entire life, and that’s all he has to offer.
Lloyd, Could you please cite the source of that info?
What info? I can’t find it. I left lots of comments yesterday in different threads on this site.
Lloyd, The info you provided just above this, about Obama worshipping Leo Strauss. What’s the source of that?
First, he attended the University of Chicago and many of the people in his administration came from the same college and their actions in his administration follow the theories in practice that were promoted by Strauss.
Leo Strauss was the father of no-conservatism and neo-liberalism. This thinking started in the Democratic Party with Leo Strauss out of the University of Chicago and like a cancer it refuses to go away. Strauss has long been dead but his thinking survives and migrated to the GOP during the Reagan era, but some stayed behind in the Democratic Party. Therefore, in the GOP, this is called neo-conservatism and in the Democratic Party it’s called neo-liberalism.
It’s well known that many neo-conservatives worked in the G. W Bush administration.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59380/joshua-micah-marshall/remaking-the-world-bush-and-the-neoconservatives
And you may start with Noam Chomsky for sources that connect Obama to neo-liberalism:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/noam-chomsky-obama-trans-pacific-partnership_n_4577495.html
Then there’s this: “Obama’s neoliberal agenda for education”
http://isreview.org/issue/71/obamas-neoliberal-agenda-education
Here are two more sources:
http://www.academia.edu/1082901/The_Obama_Administrations_Reengagement_Policy_in_East_Asia_Implications_for_U.S.-China_Relations_in_the_21st_Century
This one says: Barack Obama — a Neoliberal without Restraints
http://my.firedoglake.com/szielinski/2011/01/17/barack-obama-%E2%80%94-a-neoliberal-without-restraints/
When I searched Google for “Obama the neoliberal”, there were almost 1.5 million hits.
Lloyd, Neo-liberalism is based on the free-market economic policies that come from Milton Friedman, a conservative, Republican economist from the University of Chicago. Those policies were heralded by the GOP under Reagan and supported by “New Democrats” starting with Clinton. They were then adopted and ramped up by Obama.
We definitely have a Democratic party that has been conservative since Clinton. And although they claim to be “centrist,” the New Democrats only give lip service to genuine progressives. The party is not liberal or committed to social justice. They pray to the almighty dollar and implement neoliberal economic policies that benefit the wealthy, which is so similar to Republicans that the two parties are barely distinguishable anymore.
Obama did a bait and switch, since he campaigned in support of working class people and unions and much of his base, consisting of liberals and progressives, bought it. Then he demonstrated how beholden he really is to big business.
He did do that same thing with Bush’s neoconservative foreign policies, as he spoke out against them in his election campaign but he continued the Bush policies once he got into office. So, yes, the neoconservative foreign policies of Bush have been continued by this now right-wing Democratic party under the Obama administration.
However, Leo Strauss was long dead by the time Obama was at the U of C, and Obama was a lecturer who taught constitutional law there. Obama had already earned his degrees by then. He did not study at the U of C. I just don’t see the connection to how Obama “worships” of Strauss.
Wrong person, right university. I stand corrected.
Milton Friedman is the beast with two horns who is responsible for the birth of neo-liberalism.
Who influenced Milton Friedman and why are the two most dangerous political economic theories that might ultimately destroy democracy both out of the University of Chicago? What are they doing there—-minting Western economic jihadists with the goal of bringing civilization down?
Friedman won a Nobel prize in economics and you can read about those who influenced him at his page there: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1976/friedman-bio.html
I’m not sure about Straus. He was not an economist. He was a scholar of philosophy.
I would add Gary Becker to the list, a conservative protegé of Milton Friedman at the U of C, who also won a Nobel prize in economics. He died last month and the Heritage Foundation issued this:
“Heritage Mourns Loss of Gary Becker”
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/05/heritage-mourns-loss-of-gary-becker
Paula, persistence is not going to help me keep my job since I’m in the top 5% on the seniority list and the top of the pay scale. Who do you think has been fighting for our profession and students for 30 years? There’s a target on my back as there is with every teacher at the top of the pay scale and seniority list. There’s a double target on my back and others who have had the audacity to be union leaders in our districts. I didn’t think education in the US could get any worse. I was wrong.
What a sad commentary for our exemplary senior teachers who have done the most difficult work with great dedication and joy, to now realistically say that there is “a target on my back”…and photo2life…I wish you well and I plan to hang in this fight but weep bitter tears.
The oligarchs greed for wealth and power has almost killed American free education for all, and with that, kills the American Dream.
This makes me want to march on the Department of Education!
Great idea. Many teachers and parents were not paying attention as much as we would have liked them to the past two years; maybe now these idiotic happenings may ignite some fury.
Arne is speaking for the real Owners of America. In future elections, forget the one party system of RepubliCrats that represents only the Owners. Vote GREEN!
George Carlin makes total sense in that clip, and it’s so true. The “owners of this country.” I miss George.
So when Randi encourages you to vote for Hillary, what are you going to do?
NOT…I am not voting for either of the two mainstream parties. This kind of decision could only have happened with a Democrat in office even though the GOP would have wanted it so. With a Republican in office the die hard Democratic supporters would have come out of the woodwork in protest. No, our only hope against these billionaires, these corporatists is to vote “other”.
Ditto…NOT to hillary.
Elizabeth Warren must be drafted. She is a viable candidate unlike anyone, even a great person, who runs as a Green.
Don’t waste your vote….let’s DRAFT Elizabeth Warren.
When did Elizabeth Warren come out against vouchers and school choice? She promoted them in her 2004 book, “The Two-Income Trap” –and she downplayed the privatization issue there. I saw nothing about Warren’s position on P12 education in her most recent book.
Warren’s focus on college loan debt now is admirable, but until I hear otherwise from the horses mouth, due to the P-12 education policies Warren has supported, she would never win my vote.
As long as Americans keep voting for whomever they perceive to be the lesser of two evils in the RepubliCratic party, we will still have EVIL running this country!
The UK has a viable 3rd party and it’s time we did, too. In 2012, Green had an excellent presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. I expect nothing less in 2016.
Vote GREEN!
Ignore Randi and remind colleagues, family and friends that Hillary sat on the right-wing Walton’s board. Like her husband Bill and the “New Democrats” he spawned, including Obama, Duncan, Emmanuel, etc., Hillary is a corporate loving, free-market neoliberal who serves only the owners of America. She could not care less about the working class and low income families.
I voted Green in the last presidential election and plan to do so again in future federal, state and local elections.
Is there anyone currently making noise about running for president within the Green party?
Green is a waste of your vote.
Draft Elizabeth Warren.
“Green is a waste of your vote.”
We got stuck with Obama/Duncan again because of this mentality.
A vote for a lesser evil is a MUCH more wasted vote than a vote for a candidate who has integrity, is for social justice and is against privatization, such as Jill Stein was of the Green party. Warren has written in support of school vouchers and choice. (See my comment above,)
Arne Duncan wouldn’t recognize collaboration even if it bit him in the arse.
The fake education reformers own the judge but will they own all of them as the case works its way to the U.S. Supreme Court? Because that’s where it’s headed before this is over and the majority of that court is owned by the billionaires too.
The government may no longer belong to the people.
Betch Vergara’s mama gets a new house. Ka-Ching!
Money, money, money.
How ironic that Raj Chetty was an expert witness. . . . Raj Chetty, a TENURED professor at Harvard.
Raj Chetty has finally become Americanized. It’s about time, Raj.
Now he too can join in on the ranks of those most hypocritical and slef-contradictory.
obscene
Yes, OBSCENE!
Who would have thought? Me.
No surprise here. Duncan is well…a second-rate basketball player.
No no no… That is not Arne’s fault. He is only a second-rate basketball player because he didn’t have HIGHLY EFFECTIVE basketball coaches. It’s his coaches’ fault for not ADDING VALUE. You see Arne was born in November 1964, and Michael Jordan was born in February 1963. So there isn’t too much of a difference between their ages. But there is definitely an ACHIEVEMENT GAP between Arne’s basketball skills and Michael’s. If only Arne hadn’t had such incompetent coaches… He could have been “Like Mike,” and perhaps he wouldn’t be meddling with education today.
I think the concept of adding value to children is really sick. Do you think that Duncan tells his own kids that they are not valuable enough and they must go to school so teachers can make them more valuable?
Are we going to start measuring the value parents add to their kids and penalize them when it’s determined they’ve added nothing of any significance? Then I think we’d have to wonder why Duncan’s highly educated parents didn’t add value to his articulation skills.
If you haven’t been a fired or targeted teacher, you have no clue of what you are talking about. A couple of points about this stupid decision, rendered by a judge who is either stupid or on the take or both:
Judge notes that some states have 3-5 years for teachers to be post-probationary. UNDERSTAND VIRTUALLY NO OTHER OCCUPATION HAS SUCH A LONG PROBATIONARY PERIOD AS TEACHERS HAVE. The judge is so stupid he doesn’t understand why states lengthened the period. It has nothing to do with the “quality” of teachers–it has to do with the pension vesting. Teachers, along with other employees who still can get defined benefit pensions, have to wait five years to become vested. Vesting refers to the right to a pension. This phony case is in part about robbing teachers of pension vesting and to get rid of vested teachers in order to save money. Administrators will simply string teachers along until right before they become eligible for vesting, then give them the ax, making it almost impossible for them to secure public sector work in the state where they teach. In my case, administrators tried that crap (excuse the language) with me because they thought I wasn’t vested in retirement, but I was because I worked for other agencies that paid into PERS. However, I have a dinky pension after the district illegally fired me.
Seniority “rights”–another lie of this decision. Seniority happens in private sector work, both unionized and non-unionized, as well as public sector work. That’s because it is the ONLY fair way to release employees when layoffs occur. What happens if you gut seniority in teaching is you encourage administrators to run roughshod over teachers and give them free rein to target them and destroy their careers in order to make way for a cheap newbie or a friend of an administrator. Administrators are the ones completely in charge of evaluating teachers in almost all school districts in the United States. They have complete and total control over teachers’ careers, which is why so many teachers are scared to speak out. Until you have been there, don’t you dare challenge what I have to say about this because you do not know what you are talking about.
This nitwit judge also talks about the “expense” of administrative hearings. Another fat falsehood, since few teachers even opt for these sham hearings. School districts try to starve targeted teachers into “settlements” or severance agreements, which the vast majority of teachers take in exchange for a promise not to sue a school district. School districts LOVE this because it saves money.
This decision by a corrupt and ignorant judge is all about saving money for school districts. He is clearly in over his head about this by allowing appealing this ridiculous case.
What other professions have anything that can be called a probationary period? What percentage of job classifications are not hire at will?
I don’t know if tenured faculty at universities count against the virtually no professions, but even they have six years before tenure decisions, so typically they earn tenure in their mid or early 30s.
I also have to say that defined benefit retirement plans are problematic for both teachers and tax payers. Problematic for the large number of teachers that leave the system before becoming vested, problematic for tax payers because government officials like to hide the cost of hiring employes in future expenses. Far more reasonable and transparent to pay those costs up front to the teachers who are teaching that year.
I don’t understand how berating the teaching profession will lead to excellent teachers in every classroom. In fact, I forsee the opposite happening. Why choose a career in a profession where your services are not valued? I see beginning teachers deserting schools like rats swimming away from a sinking ship. Once this current generation of teachers retire (and each year more are leaving), who will be left?
Not exactly the profile parents are being promised.
That’s what the “reformers” want. They would rather have a revolving door of Teach for America robots that stay only a couple of years, take a job so it looks good on their resume, then leave, rather than hard-working, dedicated teachers who are actually there for the students.
This way the school district doesn’t have to pay teacher benefits, they can break the unions (the teacher’s union being one of the most powerful) and they can use this as a wedge issue to open more charter schools and privatize the American education system.
The parents that are backing the “reformers” have been sold a bill of goods and once the destruction of the American education system is complete, the parents will be the ones wondering why the education system is in even worse shape. It will be too late for them to realize they were duped.
And at this rate, Smith – TAs are what they are going to get. Unfortunately, I don’t see enough TAs being available to teach at all the schools throughout the country.
In the end, finding qualified teachers might become an expensive endeavor.
Then the pendulum will swing back.
Quite. DUNCAN-ATION is a kind of education that screws teachers, students, and parents.
blow me down if every time I see the word Vergara, my brain doesn’t insist on reading it as Viagra! #EdReformSmallManSyndrome
1000 people turned out yesterday in Philadelphia and here’s the clueless Tweet from the Secretary of Education:
Two former PA governors challenging the state to invest more in early childhood education http://bit.ly/1n4IvYS #InvestInKids
Someone should tell the Obama Administration there are are still some public schools left in this country, despite their best efforts.
If teachers rather than White Chalk Crime, white collar crime unique to education, were the problem, then he would be right. Unfortunately, White Chalk Crime is what is denying our children good teachers and Vergara will help White Chalk Criminals purge even more quality teachers who get in their way! Impossible that Arne Duncan could not know about White Chalk Crime. Thus, his position reinforces that he is one of the White Chalk Criminals, not one who really cares about education!
The courts have opened the doors for even more White Chalk Crime. Perhaps it will get so bad that people will start hearing us! It will get bad.
“Who would have believed that a Democratic administration would stand by silently as collective bargaining rights are rolled back (Wisconsin) and would hail a court decision removing due process from public school teachers?”
Diane, why are you surprised? Both parties are committed to ending public education as we know it. That’s why my blood boils when our union leadership pressures us to throw money and votes at the Democratic party over and over again. You said it yourself–a Mitt Romney appointee would have been no better.
During a 2007 campaign speech in Spartanburg, South Carolina, then-Senator Obama told supporters he would fight for collective bargaining rights if he was elected president.
“And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”
If you believed that then I have only one word for you: SUCKER!
School discipline? Errrrr… just what is this “Department of Education”?
What Duncan really wanted to say:
For billionaires in California and every other state, equal opportunities for profit must include the equal opportunity to take over public education. The students who brought this lawsuit are just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that identify, frustrate and discourage our best teachers to chase them away from their professions in order to support our entitled and neediest billionaires. Today’s court decision is not a mandate to fix these problems – and that’s okay. Co-Secretary of Education Bill Gates and I know how we can continue to dismantle public education as it has been in New Orleans. We must work to decrease public confidence in public education to pave the way for for-profit charter schools through tax breaks and degradation of the teaching profession. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework that protects billionaires’ rights while providing them with the support, respect and rewarding profits they deserve. My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward an autocratic process in California that is punitive, profitable, and swift. Every state, every school district needs accept and execute our demands. At the federal level, we are committed to bribing and coercing states to accept Race to the Top and Common Core in order to placate our billionaire donors. At the same time, we all need to continue reinforcing other inequities in education – ensuring a revolving door of inexperienced teachers via Teacher for America and like institutions, decreasing transparency for charters, enforcing untested standards, incessant testing for public schools, and by increasing and decreasing cut to pursue our political agenda. After all, there are profits to be made and, most importantly, they are not our children.
Disillusioned, right on…you said it well.
I think we need to read the actual verdict before we decide what this means. There is veracity in much of what all of us say, including the reformers. Well, some of them. I have to say, every time Duncan starts babbling I wonder how much acd he dropped in high school. I haven’t had time to hunker down with the text. Let’s face it, the legalese is painful . I prefer Mr. Cody’s lively prose. However, it may be that this judge shrewdly played the plutocrats out with their own semantic scams . The laws, codes, policy and contract are often ambiguous. The words that count are “shall” and “may” . Teachers shall. Administrators may. The thing that kills me about CA Ed Codes is how open to interpretation they are about misconduct. What is moral torpetude?
Is it concealing child abuse, endangering a child, misappropriating bond money, discriminating against others, humiliating someone who has a different opinion? How dishonest does a teacher have to be to deserve disgrace and professional devestation? I mean, the way Deasy lies, one assumes she can tell whoppers at story time or lead parents to believe their child isn’t special ed to avoid the IEP accomodations and provoking their wrath. I guess these are the things that made Solomon decide to cut babies in half. I get the feeling Judge Treu us aptly and ironically named . Sage or grifter? Probably both.
But we need to mobilize not lament a law in a lawless time and place.
I know we want to sooth ourselves with lies like the world is lawful and ordered.
It is anything but. If you want justice, you have to deserve it. You have to fight for it. But it can be ours. Even in LA.
There are clearly issues with judicial integrity, but this is actially being tackled by Richard Fine. Now that guy is an activist! Google him and the words “judicial integrity.”
Better yet go to fulldisclosure.com
My freind Sue in NYC , a brilliant teacher whose career was cut short by free market education politics, told me to weigh in here so I did. She is one of the first to go down. She had been an outstanding teacher who created reading methods . She loved her work. I did too. And if you still work, you know you can’t love what your work is becoming. If you love it, you cannot sweat tenure.
Without it, without these self-serving unions, we may be better off. I am serious. Demand cameras in your classrooms. They want transparent.
Yes, I was bummed out by the verdict like others, of course. But I think these reformy sorts use psychological tyranny to undermine our balance. By reacting with defeat we are not likely to do me or any of yous much good.
In LA we havent had tenure or due process since 2009 or so. Our union tells us to quit. But now jailed teachers will see even less of them and each other because they put all teachers under house arrest. Rumors about Deasy being investigated abound. It is about freaking time!
In LA the witch hunt is picking off famed colleagues like Iris Stevenson. The best are being brought down publicly because either everyone is as stupid as Arne or need to exert their muscle. I saw a lot of flexing then and now. Intimidation is their forte.
To make it sink in some have been egregiously mistreated by not only our employers but by our union leadership.
We take it from all sides. The media has turned teachers into a tabloid side show. It us reassuring that Huff Post stopped sensationalizing every incident on campus. Teacher says students butt is too big. Teacher fired when she admits to cheating on tests because the students are too dumb to pass.sanctions for Creepy BOE President at LAUSD?
I am encouraged by the TFA resistance on college campuses, as well as the brave corp members who tell their stories. . There are all kinds of positive things conspiring against reform: The tremendous parent uprising against common core. Efforts to gain local control , which they are wrestling for now in LA . These are surely good signs. As is the $5 million awarded to victims of a really bad teacher Paul Chapel who LAUSD protected …As painful as it is , there is only one way to end the nightmare of sex abuse in school. We have to recognize the district’s culpability for these horrors. They concealed Berndt, Chapal, Rooney, Hernandez, Pimental and Duffin. There are more but I can only allow so much of this to roam my psyche. Believe me, the media is culpable too, they reported these stories but failed to connect the dots. They were convinced to deny their instincts and betray the lurid headlines it sometimes takes to wake the herds from their heavy slumber.
I have watched laws trampled by Deasy, Gates and Eli Broad. My colleagues and I have been degraded, demoralized and destroyed. I don’t mean just their careers, though those were indeed collatoral damage . Teachers are dead thanks to these interlopers. So are kids.
This verdict don’t amount to a hill of beans.
We are perched in a strange place in history where war bleeds out into the culture . It is a class war, I guess. I don’t believe money is more powerful than teaching. Do you?
Besides, with all of us peasants against a few sociopaths, how can we possibly lose? Money won’t mean much at the rate they’re going anyway.
Greed and fear may be our demise. Definitely doubt. We cannot be poo butts. We have to work together. The sooner teachers find global solidarity with students and parents, the sooner we can get back to class and do what we love. The opt out movement has the right tactic. Hit them where they live. Rejecting the test is boycotting their product. They cannot turn testing into profit if students are not taking them.
Hello Jack,
Can anyone know what the people who gave their local public school a D or F rating as stated in the article you posted what it was based on?