John Stocks, the executive director of the NEA, voiced the anger and frustration that so many of the members are feeling. He gave a rip-roaring speech. But, sadly, he did not mention the perfidy of the Obama administration or the duplicitous role of the Gates Foundation in undermining the teaching profession.
Here is a high point:
“We’re frustrated by the barrage of bad ideas from so-called education “reformers” ….
We’re worried by the assaults on our individual rights … and our collective rights to organize.
And we’re angry because many of the people behind these attacks are questioning our integrity and our commitment to our students.
Our opponents want to do more than just wear us down. They want to destroy and dismantle our public schools.
You might be wondering… why in the world would they want to do that?
Why would they want to tear down the institution that built the economic engine of the world?
Why would they slam-shut “the door to opportunity” for millions and millions of Americans?
Why destroy an institution that created the middle class in our country?
… that gave Americans from all walks of life a sense of common purpose and destiny ….
These are big questions…. And, frankly, they all have a simple answer: money.
That’s right — money.
WE look at public education as an investment in our children and our country … a down payment on a brighter future.
But THEY see the dollars that are spent on public education, and they wonder how they can grab a fistful.
It’s not hard to connect the dots when you look at all the ways they reap their profits:
Testing and more testing
Privatizing food… custodial… and transportation services
Vouchers that siphon resources from public schools to private ones, and
For-profit companies that are privatizing our schools and threatening the greatest higher education system in the world.
So, yes, some people have a very clear financial motive for wanting to dismantle public education.
But it’s not just their motives that make me angry…. It’s the fact that their policies are BAD for students… and BAD for educators.
Policies that prioritize testing over teaching… that label and punish … and that completely disregard the important role that experience plays in effective teaching and learning.”
Whose policies “prioritize testing over teaching?” NCLB and Race to the Top. But he didn’t say that.
Whose policies demand that teachers be labeled and punished if their students don’t get higher scores? The Obama administration. Whose money funds the economists who claim that test scores are the true measure of education? Bill Gates.
But he didn’t say that.
When you dare not say the name of your oppressor, you show weakness and fear at a time when courage and fortitude are needed.
John Stocks has it in him to say and do the right thing. He knows. Let him lead.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is this his attempt to leave teachers with a voting option in regards to poltical parties? In leaving out the root, he allows the tree to grow yet again.
Spot on response. Stephen. Stokes sounds like a true politician.
“When you dare not say the name of your oppressor, you show weakness and fear at a time when courage and fortitude are needed.
John Stocks has it in him to say and do the right thing. He knows. Let him lead.”
Amen!
Amen.
Insiders like Stocks cannot utter “names” b/c they will be expelled from the Inside(from being privileged players with a seat at the establishment table). He and Van Roekel leave out the names b/c there is a strong punishment for pointing out any other insider or any insider-favored program like VAM/CCSS by name. Naming something clarifies the target for mass opposition, encourages consolidation of dissent against the target, threatens security of the target and the status quo behind it, so leaving out names helps dispel dissent into vacuous venting against abstract wrongs, a deceptive communications strategy.
All people are free if they admit their own freedom. There’s a price for breaking those rules, and there’s a different price for not breaking them. This is a junction for the organization and the people going through this stage.
I’m not naive, but I keep open the possibility of individuals breaking past their previous roles (for at least a few day).
Every word I write at this time is aimed to talk somebody over, ignite some hope that wasn’t there a minute ago. I watch every step, trying to decide whether to push down or lift up.
I’m as hard -line as anybody out here politically, but our lives as teachers is dedicated to the continual transcendence characteristic of growth and development. Something could bloom.
And I’m not even in Denver.
Obviously Stocks doesn’t have “it” in him! The proof is in the pudding and that has already been baked in his speech.
Now chemtchr is correct in writing “our lives as teachers is dedicated to the continual transcendence characteristic of growth and development” but there is also the saying that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” that probably applies here.
“WE look at public education as an investment in our children and our country … a down payment on a brighter future.
But THEY see the dollars that are spent on public education, and they wonder how they can grab a fistful.”
We are so inundated with corruption on so many societal levels, even as educators, we fail to see the “reformer’s” behavior for what it is . CRIMINAL!
Interesting … Our very own U.S. Department of Education and the Office of the Inspector General ask that we report “education fraud”.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/misused/index.html
Good commentary Diane
“Why would they want to tear down the institution that built the economic engine of the world?”
That business model no longer exists.
The new model is more conditioning of teachers
and students to be dullards.
It’s more insidious than creating dullards. The new model is about squelching voices, about keeping people down. It’s about creating widget makers who follow directions, do what they are told and do not know how to dissent. It’s about creating a wider rift between the 1% and the rest of us. This is the time for people to raise their voices and be heard.
The summer gives me a chance to do my own reading and I just finished a wonderful book called Democracy’s Prisoner by Ernest Freeberg, a history professor at the University of Tennessee. It is the story of the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, the socialist party leader, by the “liberal” president, Woodrow Wilson, during WWI, under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which was upheld by the Supreme Court (opinion by the liberal Oliver Wendell Holmes). When the war ended Wilson still refused to grant Debs a pardon, Debs refused to ask for one, and Debs even ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell. It took one of our worst, but most human, presidents, the hapless Warren G. Harding, to recognize the wisdom of freeing Debs at Christmas time in 1921.
As a NEA member, building rep in my school, member of the settlement task force in my local, I say to John Stocks, right on, but I agree that we are at the point in public education, that we cannot pull punches or mince words. Obama deserves no excuses when he acts like Wilson, the Supreme Court cannot be relied upon for our security when it acts like Holmes, and if a Rand Paul is the only politician of either major party who recognizes water boarding (and the common core) for what it is, torture, then I will support him, at least in that, as I would have applauded Harding in 1921.
I recommend to John Stocks and all of us in the NEA and AFT these words of Debs, words from the speech that got him thrown in jail in 1918: “I may not be able to say all I think but I am not going to say anything I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.”
But John Stocks, it’s a good start.
Economist interviewed on NPR this am thought market-based but tax-subsidized for-profit schools were doing great. He and colleagues are the new experts on all things educational, no need to look at the evidence.
And, naturally, NPR hasn’t researched the subject in order to do a rebuttal.
The measure for both public school supporters and labor supporters should be “are those two entities stronger or weaker under Obama?”
If the answer is “weaker” ( and I think it is) then one doesn’t have to go to motive or ill-intent. It doesn’t matter what their intent is or was. We’re not trying Democrats in a court. We’re simply deciding whether to support them in elections. Are public schools stronger under ed reform? Is labor stronger? No? Then they failed, because they ran on supporting those two entities.
If Democrats are going to be identical to Republicans on public education then the very least they could do is run on that.
The Obama Administration didn’t and either do Democrats in Congress. That’s not acceptable.
The voucher distinction is not meaningful or important to me. In 5 years every Democrat will be supporting vouchers anyway.
If the single difference between DC Democrats and DC Republicans is “vouchers” people should know that.
And,I don’t know if public sector unions pay a lot of attention to private sector unions but the idea that this effort to completely dismantle labor unions is limited to teachers or other public sector workers is false. It isn’t. Private sector unions have ALSO done terribly under the last 6 years of Democrats in DC. In fact, the strategy in my state to destroy public sector unions relied on dividing private sector union members FROM public sector union members; setting one group against the other.
The moment public sector unions are gone they go after private sector unions.
Mitch Daniels did it in IN and Snyder did it MI and Walker will do it the moment he’s re-elected.
All of those anti-labor governors are celebrated ed reformers. The overlap between “ed reformer” and “anti-labor” is huge, and Democrats denying that is at this point, delusional. It denies reality.
Don’t forget Kasich in Ohio. He has been bad for middle class workers, bad for jobs, bad for public sector jobs, bad for unions, just bad. And the clown wants to run for President. He was one of the Lehman Brothers group that brought down the economy in 2008 and Ohio elected him ad “governor”. Go figure.
From the bureau of labor statistics, 2013 figures: The overall unionization rate in the US is 11.3%.
Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.3 percent) more
than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent).
(See table 3.)
–Workers in education, training, and library occupations and in protective
service occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 35.3 percent for
each occupation group. (See table 3.)
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
You can see why the oligarchs, robber barons and economic royalists are going strong against teacher unions and public sector unions. Private sector unions have almost been eliminated while public sector unions are the last bastion of sizeable unionism. There is a war against unions and Democrats may pay lip service to unions but their actions or inactions are anti-union. During the 1950s, the overall unionization rate was in the 30% to 34% range and a Republican like Ike was actually pro union.
Stocks recently spoke to our Colorado Education Association executive board, and then he said that Common Core would be the horse our association is going to ride to achieve education equality. Several of us strongly disagreed with him at that time, but he didn’t back down. Either he’s changed his mind (doubtful), or he’s trying to ramp up the rhetoric to appeal to the representatives at the NEA assembly (more likely). Our union is beginning to do the right thing–rhetorically–but is still pursuing harmful policies. It’s time for more than words. We need action, both from our NEA leadership and from the Democratic party, whose policies under Obama are worse than those under Bush. Teachers have been played for fools for too long. I believe Democrats use teachers and their unions the way Republicans use the religious right. They throw us rhetorical bones, get us to do all the heavy lifting during their campaigns, then ignore us (or even worse, completely oppose us) after they’re elected. Teachers and their unions need to wise up. Speeches won’t cut it. Where’s the action?
The Common Core horse that he was supposed to ride left the stable without him with what horses usually leave behind.
this is like DVR and Randi pretending they’re on the side of us working stiffs. YAWN. the insular entrenched “leader” cliques that are NEA – AFT & their state headquarters have rearranged the deck chairs on their sinking wreck, and, since the water isn’t up to their feet, they’re ordering more caviar from the serfs.
Look what extremist tea party people did to that extreme Eric Cantor. Why don’t and why can’t the “leaders” of The Big Unions get some bodies out for the primaries? In WA. state, crickets!! On May 11 the Washington State Labor Council, which claims to represent something like 400,000 +/- union members, endorsed 60 or 70 legislative incumbents (out of appx. 120). Of course the only time WEA gets involved is to pre-endorese someone who is going to sell us out … just 2/5 votes!
Interestingly, those who only sell us out on 2/5 votes as individuals, also manage to change sides & reshuffle & reorganize sides within the doormat caucus so that we lose 3/5 votes.
How would that great swath of doormat caucus legislators respond if 5 or 10 of their members had to run for their political lives every 2 years? ha ha.
The Villain of Wishy – Warshy, Rodney Tom (GATE$-48th L.D.) has retired from the Senate. Now all in-the-know big shot dems and their suck ups are clamoring for a Dem replacement … who is endorsed by Stand On Children!
Once More, Unto The Breech … yawn.
rmm.
I would wager that the next big headline will be:
“Duncan Receives Resignation Request from NEA; Laughs and Ignores It”
It is time for labor unions to separate from the Democratic Party and begin proceedings for divorce. Labor money and labor votes propped up the party for a long, long time. The party now believes that unions are on the endangered species list and on the way to extinction so the right-leaning neoliberals who control the party seek funding and guidance from the same sources the Republican Party relies on: corporations and billionaires.
If the unions are unable or unwilling to divorce themselves from Democratic Party control then they need to become extinct, replaced by more nimble, more technologically and PR savvy organizations that aren’t mired in the old machine politics way of doing things, stuck in the tar pits of corruption and self-interest by its leadership.
I’m sure I’ll be called every name in the book for this but I am not alone in my feelings:
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/labor-unions-turning-on-democrats/
“More than 40,000 workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) left the AFL-CIO in August, blasting the union for being “in lockstep” with Obama on health care and immigration reform.
“We feel that the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” ILWU President Robert McEllrath said in a letter announcing the split.”
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/06/progressives-and-workers-were-sold-out-by-obama-and-the-democratic-party/
“Obama never did walk the walk to back unions
A political party is nothing but a patronage vehicle and get-rich-quick scheme for corrupt politicians unless it has basic principles that it is willing to go down fighting for. If the Democratic Party was a real party, fighting to protect the right of workers to organize and bargain would be one of those core principles. Yet both Obama and the Democratic Party looked at the Republican attack on the right to organize that began in Wisconsin, spreading to Ohio and other states, and instead of standing and fighting with the people of Wisconsin, they made a “tactical” decision to stand aside and let the Republicans win.”
These are just 2 articles that spell out the betrayal of labor unions by Obama and the Democratic Party. There are thousands more.
“In fact, Obama has overseen the worst environment for organized labor since Ronald Reagan. But the problem is bigger than Obama. It’s the entire Democratic Party. For example, Democratic governors across the United States continue to work in tandem with Republicans in weakening public employee unions — the last bastion of real strength in the labor movement.
The Democrats have chosen to blame labor unions for the economic crisis and the consequent budget deficits affecting the states. These deficits have been used to attack the wages, health care, and pensions of public employees on a state-by-state basis, fundamentally weakening these unions while skewing the labor market in favor of the employers.
What some labor leaders fail to understand is that political parties like the Democrats are centralized organizations that share certain beliefs, and execute these ideas in a united fashion. It isn’t merely a coincidence that every Democratic governor in the United States has chosen a similar anti-labor path as its policy. There has been a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party’s relation to labor unions, and it is on display for everyone to see.”
— Shamus Cooke, Worker’s Action
When I turned 18, I registered as an Independent Voter. I didn’t like the idea of being beholden to a political party. After voting in my first election I realized that I had, indeed, chosen sides without realizing it, and so I changed my registration to Democrat. I’ve worked for, supported both financially and physically, the Democratic Party for over 33 years. I am no longer willing to vote for the least of 2 evils.
I know many people will say that voting 3rd party is a waste of a vote. Historically that has been true but history can be informative without being a prior restraint. For thousands of years slavery was an accepted public institution. It is no longer accepted nor supported if not entirely eradicated and that change happened in a proportionally short amount of time compared to the history of slavery.
Women were historically treated as chattel for thousands of years. Now women have moved closer to self-empowerment and equality than ever before, even though they have not achieved total parity and equality yet. That change has happened within the lifetimes of my grandmother, who saw women get the vote and myself, who saw my mother run for public office as a child in the 1960’s.
Yes, historically third parties have not succeeded in the USA. That doesn’t mean a powerful, widely-supported effort must fail now, in this time of radically fast and unprecedented changes in every area of life.
I would rather attach my loyalty to the possibility of a better future than tie my boat to a sinking ship of inevitability based upon historical precedent and attachment to a no longer relevant or effective paradigm.
Union membership is already at an historical low here. As the Supreme Court indicated in last week’s decision, the conservative activist judges that have padded the judiciary across the country are more than willing to side with business against labor and Scalia made it clear that legal precedent will not interfere with them aiding the dismantling of the labor movement and all the laws that protect and make unions possible.
I’m working on ideas that will provide a more effective, more technologically savvy, more flexible and focused labor organization that is independent of any political party. I hope other teachers will join me in the creation, gestation, and birthing of this new creature. We have no more time to wait for the NEA and AFT to remake themselves, especially since the leadership is controlled by the Democratic Party and is unwilling to challenge that control, as evidenced by the speech highlighted here.
It’s not about “letting” the heads of the NEA and UFT lead; that presupposes member passivity, which along with the enabling of the so-called reformers by our mis-leadership, has brought us to where are are today, on the precipice of losing public education altogether.
It’s about the the rank and file MAKING them lead, or forcing them to get out the way and making way for someone who will fight for the interests of the membership and public education at large.
Why did the NEA support Obama in his re-election campaign? What was promised? Nothing was delivered. He did NOTHING for the teachers of Wisconsin in their time of need. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Run, Bernie, run.
Unions absolutely need to throw their support behind primary challengers that will actually fight for their interests. The current political strategy hasn’t been paying off.
We need to add the choice “None of the above” to ballots and require the winner to have 50% plus 1 vote or the election is run again with two new candidates.
Repost from the Madrick thread:
It’s amazing that the AFT and NEA are still some of the most powerful unions in the country given the corporate reform onslaught they face. However, this power continues to be chipped away at and will wither away if nothing more is done. Commentators like Diane Ravitch and Jeff Madrick are right to highlight the problems associated with economic inequality and misguided macroeconomic policy. Many corporate ed reformers have no interest in seriously engaging with these ideas because it does not fit into their individualistic political framework and may involve an increase in taxes. As such, they are all too happy to place the blame on individual teachers and students.
Unions have historically been the bulwark of progressive politics in the United States and throughout the world, so their decline should be a major concern for anyone who leans to the left. Their weakness in the United States raises a number of questions: Who will lead the fight against austerity and excessively tight monetary policy? Who will fight for equality? Who will fight for free public education? Who will promote economic security?
The primary problems that exist within the American education system are a reflection of broader economic issues. Forget this fact and we risk ignoring the root of our troubles. Private sector unions have little left and likely cannot be revitalized under the prevailing economic paradigm. Teachers and their unions must stick up for themselves and their students! We have no choice and little time. Let’s get going in earnest.
“. . . so their decline should be a major concern for anyone who leans to the left.
They shouldn’t only “be a major concern for anyone who leans to the left” but for all as the walmartization of the working middle class and poor will only continue and get worse
Bill DeBlasio and former speaker Quinn wrote a letter calling for an investigation of a school on a toxic site. The union ran the other way. Not certain what they care about.
The City built numerous schools in toxic locations. Only New York Lawyers for the Public Interest took any “interest” or objected.. Don’t want to lose a seat at the table of those poisoning teachers and kids.
The closest we will get this year is Arne Duncan.
Got me stumped with that one! Please explain.
John Stocks. Dennis Van Roekel. Randi Weingarten.
Seriously, what’s the difference? They’ve all endorsed Common Core and sold teachers down the river. Unless they clearly, unequivocally disavow the Common Core, what any of them says now about “profits,” or “a moratorium” on testing, or “bad ideas” is just empty rhetoric.
The fact is that the NEA and the AFT took money form Bill Gates and signed on to the “bad idea” of Common Core.
The NEA did this during the time that John Stocks “spearheaded NEA’s policy, political and membership priorities.’’
The NEA is still openly and actively “advocating for and developing implementation plans to transition to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and better assessments.”
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: American public education has a very serious leadership problem.
My comment is awaiting moderation on Lily’s Blackboard. Here it is.
Lily, thank you for posting this opportunity for substantive engagement on the Gates question.
I’m an activist NEA member in Massachusetts, in a low income district heavily engaged with the policies Bill and Melinda have imposed through their legislative interference and advocacy lobbying, with the compliance of the outgoing Massachusetts Teachers Association leadership.
MTA and NEA compliance directly aided in the imposition of Gates-backed corporate domination in my Commonwealth’s public schools, in my school, in my actual classroom, and over the actual living students I teach.
The (false) distinction you make between Gates’ imposed “standards” and the accountability measures he demands for them will allow the NEA to continue to take his money, and I’ll admit that almost chokes rank-and-file teachers who live and work under his heel. I am going to argue that you to can make a decision of your own, when you take office, to give that money back to him.
First, I’d like to offer congratulations on your succession to the presidency of NEA. The Representative assembly that voted you in brought with it a new activism and determination, and voted in resolutions which break sharply with the previous administration, of which you were a part. We look to you with great hope, holding our breath against it for fear of disappointment.
The Common Core standards can’t “stand on their own merit”. They were backwards-engineered to warp the teaching of language and literature into assessment readiness, with its own novel testing vocabulary. strung together with the bogus Moodle diagram you inserted in this page. The aligned WIDA tests that are now being imposed on ELL students, from the earliest grades, will steal the short and precious window of their childhood. People are tweeting me that those children can’t wait while you do your homework and find that out.
We’re fighting right now for schools in New Bedford and Holyoke that are already being taken over. They were full of living children, just a few weeks ago when we left them. What will we find in August?
We’re asking you to become the courageous and powerful leader of an engaged and mobilized union. I know you saw and felt the hall rise to its feet behind these initiatives. That felt different and deeper than the hearty applause for your victory, did it not? Bring us to our feet: give back the Gates money.
The website I linked for you is an Education Week column describing the actual effects of the Gates Foundation’s profit-centered philanthropy model in the third world. It’s the responsibility of Americans to become aware of it, when we take money from American corporate philanthropies and allow them to pursue their profits internationally under the subsidy of our tax code.
http://lilysblackboard.org/2014/06/arne-duncan-needs-listen-bill-melinda/#.U7krk2owK24.twitter
Thank you for this thoughtful and compelling letter. My worries are not only about Lily’s “love affair with Bill Gates” as Fred Klonsky put it, but also the fact that she “was named by President Obama to serve as a commissioner on the White House Commission on Education Excellence for Hispanics.”
Has she already been captured by Obama and the democratic party? I hope not but time will tell if she has the courage to speak out against them or if she continues the same old capitulation and provides political cover to our enemies in the White House and the democratic party.
I wish her the best.
“Has she already been captured by Obama and the democratic party?”
I’ll bet you two bits to a dollar that she has!