This teacher blogger says that the worst line invented by the reformers‘ PR team is “It’s all about the kids,” which seems to imply that teachers don’t care about their students. Right up there among toxic and accusatory lines are “Students First” and “Students Matter.” I would add “Children First” as another insulting trope. Also “Stand for Children,” which critics call “Stand on Children.” All imply that teachers have been putting their own interests first, or they don’t think children matter.
Who really, truly cares about the kids? Not their teachers, not their parents, but billionaires, hedge-fund managers, entrepreneurs, politicians.
This insulting rhetoric trips lightly off the tongues of reformers, along with assertions of wanting “to save poor kids from failing schools” by closing their school and handing the kids over to privatizers.
“Raging Horse” saw this teacher-bashing reach the height of absurdity or the depths of slime in a statement made by Carmen Arroyo, a member of the New York State Assembly, defending Cuomo’s test-based teacher evaluation plan.
She said:
“Those teachers that [sic] are responsible and are doing their job, those teachers that [sic] sacrifice their families and themselves for the children they serve are going to be protected. Those that are not good, better get a job at McDonalds…..”
Raging Horse blogger writes:
“Any system that demands the sacrifice of a person’s family is deranged and any public official who demands such is unfit for public office. Any people who stand for such deserve what they get.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What if the same standard was applied to Arroyo and all of her colleagues working for the government?
“Those politicians that [sic] are responsible and are doing their job, those politicians that [sic] sacrifice their families and themselves for the constituents they serve are going to be protected. Those that are not good, better get a job at McDonalds…..””
We need a more accurate test of competence and commitment to public service for politicians than the voting booth
What these phrases, Children First, Students Matter and so on, mean is that kids matter to us and to you as future members of the work force, not as individuals with hopes and dreams and uniqueness. Let parents and teachers and would-be preachers deal with that touchy feely crap. These kids are important on a whole other level; they are largely our future service class and must be ranked and filed as early as possible so we all can get the most bang for our strained buck.
Workforce
Autoincorrect
““Those teachers that [sic] are responsible and are doing their job, those teachers that [sic] sacrifice their families and themselves for the children they serve are going to be protected.”
Isn’t this the whole conservative idea in a nutshell? Women have always been asked to sacrifice themselves for the good of the children. In fact women have been asked to sacrifice their health and their lively-hoods to bring forth children, wanted or not. Paying women a professional wage for work that is considered women’s work just doesn’t sit well with traditional conservative thinking.
On the other hand, those teachers that have someone else at home taking care of the home front, would obviously have more time to devote to their professional lives. Those teachers at the top of the pay scale, after decades of work, are probably just beginning to make enough money to pay to have someone else come in to clean and do other kinds of managerial chores in the home.
Absolutely. (Although, wow, calling for thousands of women to abandon their families to help children of others is over the top. It certainly doesn’t fit with the survival-of-the-fittest attitude that many American Republicans have.)
One piece of advice that I’ll be giving young women is to never go into a field dominated by women.
There is a definite misogynist streak deep in conservatism and the reform movement. Scott Walker exemplified it sparing the “boy” unions like police and fire and attacking the “girl” unions like teaching and nursing. I can not wait for the GOP clown show to get underway with Hillary Clinton running and see what goofiness the Republicans let slip past their handlers. I’m still chuckling over Kasich’s “little lady” and “hot wife” comment. It is like these guys are aiming for the 1816’s.
Did Arroyo forget that she represents people who work at McDonald’s? People she just insulted. She is disgusting!
Good point.
The worst thing about these name, like StudentsFirst, is that they are PR masterpieces. They suck people in – legislators, the media, young teachers, even parents.
Even though we know what they’re up to, they create confusion- who knows what’s really legit?
But look at all the words that have been hijacked, even starting with “reform” itself.
Well said. I am one of the teachers who care about the students. I am sick of hearing that for profit companies “care about the kids.” Caring about the kids, especially students with special needs means that the students get the materials including adaptive technology, classroom size and para professional support they need. Special needs students are being used to gain more money for the till.
What has any politician ever sacrificed? I mean, besides their soul?
“Ju$t Kidding”
It’$ all about the kid$
It really, really i$
It$ not about the bid$
And not about the biz
Arroyo is just another typical politician that bashes teachers and “waves the flag” how it’s all about the children.
As Arroyo mistakenly and dangerously points the finger at those who truly care about our children, she is perhaps, trying to get others to look away from her 1) incompetence and/or 2) her selling out of the people she should be representing.
We are living in a time when our nation is upside down…that which has traditionally been good is now considered to be evil, and that which has traditionally been considered evil is now considered to be good.
A horrific mix exists in the United States, whereby business throws money at politicians, and politicians push their pens to repay the debt…at the harm and detriment o the citizens of our nation.
I worry for our nation…many of those in positions of wealth and power do not boundaries of decency, and have sold their souls, to get rich or richer…netting more and more into the nets of poverty and misfortune.
Many of those in positions of wealth and power lack ethics and morals, and continue to push their own personal agendas at the expense of supporting democratic values….values that have made the United States a bastion of freedom and opportunity for almost 250 years.
The people of our nation will have to reach their own boiling point, as these destroyers of society in both business and politics know no bounds.
The boiling point is coming…and the oligarchs and “faux” politicians should and must be held accountable.
That which is right always defeats that which is wrong…but it is going to get worse before it gets better.
Other nations and societies punish criminals that seek to destroy their own nations by either imprisonment or capital punishment.
It’s time we protect the laws that existed before the attacks on public education, enact legislation to undo the damages that have already been done, create laws to protect our citizens from serpents like Cuomo and Arroyo, and punish these people so severely as attacks not only against our citizens, but also against the United States.
It is a scary time.
Well put, Steve B.
It’s one thing for corporate reforms to spew this venom to adults. As far as I know, Christie is the only one who does it to kids (perhaps Eva M. does, too.)
Check out this link: (make sure to hit the expand icon next to the volume, to see it full frame)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid616303324001?bctid=665566293001
In the 2010 video, Christie takes this one grain of truth—some teachers taking two days off for for the NJEA convention—and extrapolates that to all New Jersey teachers as a way of condemning them as lazy, selfish, who care more about “having a party” than they do about their students… that they also have all this time off for vacations, instead of helping their students…
.. and he’s telling all of this… TO A CROWD OF STUDENTS ???!!!! At the very beginning of the video, he even tell the kids that they need to “stand up” to their teachers.
Christie bloviates to kids that if their teachers “cared more about all of you learning, they’d be in school, baby. That’s right. They wouldn’t be down there having a party, which is all this (NJEA convention) is. It’s a party!”
Comments that are not on video include Christie further trashing their teachers, by telling the students present that their teachers belong to “greedy teachers’ union”, and that’s why they don’t have enough supplies in their classroom—not that Christie just cut $1.3 billion from the state’s education budget, so he could pay for tax breaks to the rich.
See this link for the quote about “greedy teachers union” causing no school supplies:
https://www.njea.org/news/2010-11-09/njea-christie-irresponsible-and-out-of-control
—————————————————–
KATI HAYCOCK: “But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
—————————————————-
So Kati divides public school teachers into two categories:
1) HIGH QUALITY: that small minority — the elite “smart people” (TFA & others) who, over a lifetime, “change careers every six or seven years”— with just one career being teaching, and the other five or six being non-teaching careers—and who, albeit briefly, deliver the highest quality of education to their students before moving on…
… OR…
2) LOW QUALITY: the vast majority — the “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers who make teaching a long-time career, merely to avoid having “to compete in the job market,” with teaching being a place to hide out and be lazy… and, in the process, willfully destroy the academic and career potential of millions of students… and who do so without the slightest twinge of conscience.
In Kati’s deranged mind, if you teaching in classroom for more than five years—ten years at the absolute most—you’re guilty-as-charged of being one of those “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers that are driving our country to ruin.
Seriously, teaching is “the only career done for life”? What is she smoking?
The more public education is commercialized, the more commercials will fill the air — until all informed discussion is drowned out by commercial jingles.
All of these one liners and phrases are versions of No Child Left Behind, a rhetorical move that effectively accused all educators of being negligent, uncaring, not watchful, distracted, and perhaps unwilling to address each and every student, making sure they were on track, keeping up, doing everything on time according to a schedule, and with the criterion of 100% proficiency by 2014 working much as a bludgeon to portray all schools as failing. With not much effort you can discern the underlying idea that the curriculum is fixed, to be mastered, course content predetermined, milestones reached, no side trips or excursions, no opportunistic diversions for teachable moments, and so on.
No Child Left Behind might just as well have been a hymn of praise for the Italian dictator during WW II, Benito Mussolini, who famously made trains run on time.
The campaign to vilify public school teachers and public schools has been well funded and carefully crafted by experts in spin. Readers who are not familiar with the work of Edward Bernays and George Lackoff can learn more from these sources. The challenge is to change the rhetoric and the images in mind and sentiments activated by one liners.i am not good at that.
“All of these one liners and phrases are versions of No
ChildDollar Left Behind”Or No CASH Left Behind…
Or No Child’s Behind Left
or maybe “No Con Left Behind”
Who really, truly cares about the kids? the superintendents and admin For school district overrides (more taxation) “It’s for the kids” mantra every time-and oh by the way the money we raised for the kids goes into pouring concrete sidewalks in a part of town my kid will never use.
Say what???
Please explain your comments as they make no sense to me.
“$tand for $cam$”
“$tudent$ Fir$t” and “$tudent$ Matter”
Trope$ that make my wallet fatter
“$tand for Children”, “$tand for Te$t”
“$tand for $cam$” that are “The Be$t”
Here’s some quotes regarding teacher bashing:
Let’s start with anti-corporate reformer Leonie Haimson:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
—————————————–
LEONIIE HAIMSON:
“Scapegoating teachers has become the mantra of the so-called reformers. From Katie Haycock claiming (with no evidence) that the problems of low-performing schools are primarily due to poor teaching, to the recent cover of Newsweek, proclaiming that the ‘key to saving American education” is to ‘fire bad teachers,’ with these words repeated over and over on the blackboard, this simplistic notion notion infects nearly every blog, magazine, and DC think tank, including this one.
“In what other sphere would we make this claim? Is the key to reforming our inequitable health care system firing bad doctors? Or the key to reducing inner city crime firing bad cops? No. But somehow this inherently destructive perspective is the delivered wisdom among the privateers who populate and dominate thinking in this country.”
———————————————————————–
From corporate reformer Kati Haycock: (originally at NEWSWEEK—since deleted by NEWSWEEK) but still available at
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
————————————————————-
KATI HAYCOCK:
“But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.” (Kati Haycock, President of Education Trust, —Newsweek, 9/1/08)
———————————————————————–
From Corporate Reformer & hedge fund guru Whitney Tilson:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/08/unmasking-the-blame-the-teacher-crowd.html
————————————————————-
WHITNEY TILSON :
“(Public school teachers are) gutless weasels and completely disgraced themselves in siding with the unions against meaningful reforms of a public school system that systematically, all over the country, gives black and Latino students the very worst teachers and schools, thereby trapping black and Latino communities in multi-generational cycles of poverty, violence and despair.” (July 30, 2011 blog post)
————————————————————-
And finally… From Michelle Rhee
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/crusader-of-the-classrooms/307080/
————————————————————-
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: “One of the other concerns I’ve heard voiced about alternative selection models is that the teachers aren’t making a thirty-year, or even a ten-year commitment.”
MICHELLE RHEE: “Nobody makes a thirty-year or ten-year commitment to a single profession. Name one profession where the assumption is that when you go in, right out of graduating college, that the majority of people are going to stay in that profession. It’s not the reality anymore, maybe with the exception of medicine. But short of that, people don’t go into jobs and stay there forever anymore.”
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: “So you feel like teachers can be effective even within a short term?”
MICHELLE RHEE: “Absolutely, and I’d rather have a really effective teacher for two years than a mediocre or ineffective one for twenty years.”
ATLANTIC MONTHLY: “One thing that I’ve encountered personally in talking to a lot of veteran teachers is this idea that programs like Teach for America or the D.C. Teaching Fellows de-professionalize education. They see it as a kind of glorified internship.”
MICHELLE RHEE: “I’ll tell you what de-professionalizes education. It’s when we have people sitting in the classrooms—whether they’re certified or not, whether they’ve taught for two months or 22 years—that are not teaching kids. And whom we cannot remove from the classroom, and whom parents know are not good. Those are the things that de-professionalize the teaching corp. Not Teach for America, not D.C. Teaching Fellows. That, I think, is a ridiculous argument.”
—————-
Put yourself in the shoes of a university student. Are you going to spend and/or incur debt in a range of $100,000 – 300,000 for tuition/room & board/other expenses, then face all of that?
ati quote is her “low-end-of-the-pile” description of public school teachers that she shared with NEWSWEEK a few years ago:
http://www.newsweek.com/can-michelle-rhee-save-dcs-schools-88041
—————————————————–
KATI HAYCOCK: “But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
—————————————————-
So Kati divides public school teachers into two categories:
1) HIGH QUALITY: that small minority of elite “smart people” (TFA & others) who, over a lifetime, “change careers every six or seven years”— with just one career being teaching, and the other five or six being non-teaching careers—and who, albeit briefly, deliver the highest quality of education to their students before moving on…
… OR…
2) LOW QUALITY: the vast majority of “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers who make teaching a long-time career, merely to avoid having “to compete in the job market,” with teaching being a place to hide out and be lazy… and, in the process, willfully destroy the academic and career potential of millions of students… and who do so without the slightest twinge of conscience.
In Kati’s deranged mind, if you teaching in classroom for more than five years—ten years at the absolute most—you’re guilty-as-charged of being one of those “low-end-of-the-pile” slackers that are driving our country to ruin.
Seriously, teaching is “the only career done for life”? What is she smoking?
KATI HAYCOCK: “But what we need to do is change the idea that education is the only career that needs to be done for life. There are a lot of smart people who change careers every six or seven years, while education ends up with a bunch of people on the low end of the pile who don’t want to compete in the job market.”
I’m gonna say right back at ya Kati: The problem isn’t teachers who don’t want to compete in the job market. The problem is the businesses and corporations who don’t want to produce a service or product that consumers actually want or need.
Instead they lobby elected officials securing charters and vouchers, They use their connections to political power to secure contracts diverting billions of public dollars their way for useless testing and test prep materials.
They see children today the same way the robber barons saw timber and land in the 19th century….just another resource to be exploited.
They are drooling over the thousands of dollars allotted to educate each child and have positioned themselves to divert as much of that revenue into their own pockets without having to do anything but turn the valves.
One idea in common among these reformers is that everyone is switching careers every six or seven years now. That is simply not true. In many professions and trades, people have life-long careers. It is true that people switch jobs, but that is not the same as switching careers. Rhee and others here are using equivocation, a cheap rhetorical trick.
Absolutely.
Geologists don’t usually switch careers, altho’ I did. Engineers, lawyers, accountants…
My Dad was a sheet metal assembler for 43 years…didn’t switch careers. Vets, dentists, nurses, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc.
It’s not just the professions, it’s everybody that has skills that they gain and work for and then spend decades honing and refining, some at one employer but usually at several.
I’ve been teaching now 11 years, and it seems I learned as much about teaching this year as I did in my first year. I’m open to that learning because I want to get better. This trope that teachers care little about improving their practice while apparently everybody else does…stunningly stupid idea.
The “reformers” have deep pockets. That is why they can spread their rhetoric across the media and control many politicians like Arroyo. They can afford to buy Madison Ave. spin doctors to market their false message while hiding their true intent. When only 13% of those talking about education on TV are educators, we know the education community has become marginalized. That is is why independent blogs are important voice. That is why I often cross post on other blogs to try to send traffic here. We need to get the public to understand the consequences of destabilizing public education. Then, we will really be doing something for the kids.
Maybe we should start some organizations:
StudentsLivesMatter
TruthMatters
ResearchMatters
EvidenceIsReal
StudentsOverData
ReformDeform
StandForWholeChildren
StandForFamilies
StandardizationLast
OptOutOfStupid
LeaveDeformBehind
HypocrisyLast
EndFakeDataNow
EndFakeAccountabilityNow
DontDestroyEd
DataIsNotKnowledge
VAMFree
WeCareHowChildrenFeel
ChildWellbeingFirst
ParentsTeachersOverPolitics
The slogans are great! It’s unfortunate we don’t have millions of dollars to spread them all over the media.
Maybe Bill Gates would fund them, as long as the very first one on the list was “VAM is great”
I seriously doubt he ever reads past the first line (or even title) in the grant applications anyway.
As long as it includes ‘VAM is great” or “Teachers suck” or something to that effect, you’re a shoe in for a grant from Gates Foundation
This is sick, and this is standard. We need to fight it. We also need to point out the irony. Those students who don’t have parents paying attention because the parents are overworked are more likely to get into trouble academically or socially.
Every time such sentiments are expressed, teachers need to respond strongly. Too many teachers go along with it. That’s what people want.
Good that somebody came out and said point-blank what everybody thinks. Now let’s use it.
I do not need “protected” by a self-serving, sociopathic politician or billionaire. I do not owe these ignorant, misanthropic Reformers anything. If teaching were valued in America, we would not even have this conversation. I do make great sacrifice helping other people’s children, often over my own. I do tire of helping an ungrateful public send their kid’s to fine colleges on scholarship, while my own struggle at cheaper community college (though we have had some fine instructors). My cars are all over 100,000 miles, while my private sector neighbors are buying new BMWs, Audis, and Cadillacs. They laugh at us rubbing our noses in their good fortune. “That’s what you get for being a teacher”. Some never graduated college while I wasted years for a grad degree paying much less than these people make. Many neighbors are retiring early.
I’ve had a parent of a student brag their kid in lawn care probably makes three times what I make as a teacher and ask why go to school. I’ve had parking lot pavers yell “get a real job!” as I walked into school. Governor Kasich vowed to “break the backs” of teachers and calls public workers “idiots”. He leads the anti-teacher movement here as a conniving version of Christie, just with better handlers. The newspapers constantly run articles about “failing schools”, cheating teachers, lazy educators. Fordham seems to run Ohio education policy and wants to start firing teachers and bring in people off the street. But that is the new anti-intellectualism in Ohio. I barely have a retirement as our teachers do not get Social Security and the Republicans introduced WEP which cuts my prior earned benefits from other jobs. Teaching should mean something, and Ohio just does not care about education. The Republicans running the state continue to fumble around setting punitive policies having little relevance to the real classroom, disregarding teachers and parents in the process.
But, yes, the clueless Reformers may have inadvertently hit on something. I keep teaching because I do believe it is “for the kids”. Unlike the Reformers never in a classroom or Corporatists more concerned about profit, the phrase is not a hollow utterance, but meaningful to my professional efforts in the classroom.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Reformsters use euphemistic soundbites manufactured by PR strategists so that people will fall for their propaganda and believe whatever else they want to say. It’s a bipartisan tactic that snowballed ever since they got away with calling annual testing and punishing/closing schools, “No Child Left Behind.”
They are “the left-right anything 4 money party,” as Roseanne Barr calls them, and this is what they are really all about: https://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/school-privatization-cartoon1.jpg
We’re doing better every year against the hypocrites’ talking points, whether “Stand for Children” (or for that matter, the “Children’s Defense Fund”). Yesterday, we graduated Sam Schmidt from eighth grade at Chicago’s O.A. Thorp. Sam should have gotten the award for the kid who opted out the most.
Posted on “greeceteachers.com”:
ArroyoC@assembly.state.ny.us
http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Carmen-E-Arroyo/
I just sent Ms. Arroyo a message. I also posted the quote on my Facebook page.
I think a brief comparison is in order: public school teachers versus corporate Charters
I’ll start with teachers. According to ABC News “teachers spent an average of $448 of their own money on instructional materials and school supplies for the 1998-99 school year.”
If we take that $448 average x 3.1 million public school teachers, that adds up to $1,388,800,000. Play if forward for ten years and that is about $14 billion every decade.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95922
But wait, Forbes says teachers spend more than $448 on average. “Their study also identified that in the 2013-2014 school year, teachers in the United States have spent an average of $513 out-of-pocket on classroom supplies, instructional materials, books for their classrooms, and professional development. Additionally, the survey also polled teachers on their attitudes and loyalty towards retailers and other companies that offer teacher discounts or teacher appreciation programs. An overwhelming 80% of teachers identified that they are more loyal to brands that offer teacher discounts, and 81% will seek out companies that offer teacher discounts.”
I think we can conclude that with budget cuts hitting the schools across the country, teachers have increased their spending in an attempt to bridge that loss in revenue—An average $65 increase leading to a whopping $1,590,300,000 spent annually by teachers for supplies and materials to help their students learn.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleleinbachreyhle/2014/08/19/teachers-spend-own-money-school-supplies/
But according to nea.org how much teachers spend is a lot more than what ABC and Forbes reported.
“Studies show that teachers are spending more of their own funds each year to supply their classrooms and purchase essential items such as pencils, glue, scissors and facial tissues. According to the National School Supply and Equipment Association, educators’ out of pocket expenses for the 2005-2006 school year, on average, totaled nearly $2000, including $826 for classroom supplies and $926 for instructional materials.”
That adds up to $6.2 Billion annually that teachers spend while the corporae reforms are doing all they can to destroy their profession, close the public schools and get as many teachers fired as possible.
http://www.nea.org/home/34405.htm
What about the Corporate Reformers?
1. While Bill Gates was spending hundreds of million of dollars and possibly billions to crush the public schools and create a cradle to grave high stakes testing culture that ranks teachers, gets them fired and closes the non-profit, transparent democratic public schools and replace them with autocratic, for-profit, opaque (secretive) corporate Charters, in an obvious PR move to look good, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week donated $1.5 million to crowdfunding organization DonorsChoose.org to help provide students with needed supplies this back-to-school season.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101967827
How much has Bill Gates spend to crush the public schools and destroy jobs for public school teachers?
Ten years into his record-breaking philanthropic push for school reform, Bill Gates is sober—and willing to admit some missteps. Since 2000, the foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships. … Mr. Gates’s foundation strongly supports a uniform core curriculum for schools. … Mr. Gates is particularly fond of the KIPP charter network … He praises the private school model for its efficiency vis-à-vis traditional public schools, noting that the “parochial school system, per dollar spent, is an excellent school system.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903554904576461571362279948
How is Bill Gates disrupting and damaging the public schools?
In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS- NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners- have taken $147.9 million from Bill Gates.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/a-brief-audit-of-bill-gat_b_3837421.html
2. Eva Moskowitz, for instance, the CEO of the Success Charter chain in New York City that has about 6,000 children pays herself more than $500,000 annually out of the public taxes she gets for running those private sector for profit (anyway you look at it) charters.
Meanwhile the median pay across the country for public school superintendent’s is $147,370 annually. There are about 14,000 (according to the US Census) public school districts that are responsible for the education of almost 50 million children
The bottom 10% of those 14,000 superintendents earn $95,817 annually and the top 10% earn $205,542.
http://www1.salary.com/School-Superintendent-salary.html
D.C. charter school executive salaries vary widely, Post analysis shows.
Two of the District’s charter school leaders earned about as much as or more than D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson in 2013, though she runs a city school system that, with 45,000 students, is much larger than either of their organizations.
A Washington Post analysis of federal tax forms shows that the District’s five dozen charter school leaders earned total compensation ranging from just less than $90,000 to more than $350,000 in 2013. The Post analysis shows that leaders of some charter schools are paid no more than principals at traditional public schools, while others are earning much higher salaries to lead one school, or a handful of schools, that serve just hundreds of students.
D.C. taxpayers send more than $600 million to fund the city’s charter schools each year, but there is far less information available about how that money is spent than the tax dollars that flow to the traditional public school system.
Even higher salaries have been concealed because some of the charter schools — which are required by law to be nonprofit — used for-profit management companies to supervise their operations. Company executive salaries do not show up on schools’ tax filings and are often impossible for charter school regulators — and the public — to track.
Click on the Washington Post link for more and hold on to your chair so you don’t fall out of it in shock:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-charter-school-executive-salaries-vary-widely-post-analysis-shows/2015/02/23/5191b3fc-b38c-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html
Then there is the corporate charter school fraud:
Report: Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud & Abuse
http://integrityineducation.org/charter-fraud/
Charter Schools Gone Wild: Study Finds Widespread Fraud, Mismanagement and Waste
http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/05/charter-schools-gone-wild-study-finds-widespread-fraud-mismanagement-and-waste/
Report: Millions of dollars in fraud, waste found in charter school sector
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/28/report-millions-of-dollars-in-fraud-waste-found-in-charter-school-sector/
Conclusion: compare the billions that teachers take out of their own pay every school year to buy supplies for their classrooms and students versus the manipulation, lies, greed and fraud of the corporate eduction reform movement.
One year, my husband taught at a middle school under a principle who was both incompetent and mentally ill. (I know this sounds implausible, but it’s true.) It was not a good year.
At the first professional development meeting before the kids arrived, she announced that all teachers would be expected to participate in providing and cooking an evening meal “for the community” once a week, and that teachers who failed to do so would have to meet with her to explain why. After all, those teachers weren’t really “for the kids”, so couldn’t be good teachers.
We had three kids under the age of 7 at the time, and we lived “in the community”, as well as taught in it all day. No one came to our house to cook!
“a principle who was both incompetent and mentally ill”
I can believe this. I worked with about 9 or 10 principals during the 30 years I taught, and I think two of them were incompetent, mentally ill and autocratic to the point of RhreeFormster destructive behaviors in their lack of leadership style.
Yep, been there.
Incompetent and marginally mentally ill, truthfully, not hyperbole. Was soon removed after multiple concurrent investigations resulted in substantiated allegations.
In the district where I worked, we had an Assistant Superintendent (AS) back in the early 1980s who had his contract bought out by the school board after witnesses came forward that he had attempted to pressure a campus police officer to arrange sex with teenage girls the CPO was friends with—-and I mean friends, not romantically or sexually involved—but the AS assumed these friendships had to be sexual and he wanted some of that. The school board wanted to avoid a scandal so no charges were filed, and that AS ended up being hired by another school district in another county and that contract was also bought out before his first year with them ended. He then went to the Middle East to run an American school for the children of diplomats where he died a few months later of an alleged heart attack (? I think the CIA can make that happen and that school probably had a few children that had parents who worked for the CIA).
Then there was the high school principal us teachers ended up nicknaming Hitler. His 5-year contract was bought out by the school board three years early to send him packing after he drove more than half of the high school staff to leave teaching or transfer to other schools to escape his constant abuse.
Maybe your husband misheard her and she actually said she wanted teachers to be kooks (like her), not cooks.
“principal”, of course
To some extent, it was ever thus. Teachers have always been expected to be nuns or monks–taking vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. Female teachers in the past had to stop teaching when they got married or when they got pregnant. Teachers are celebrated who give up everything–how about “Stand and Deliver,” where Jaime Escalante comes in to school even after having a heart attack, or “Freedom Writers,” where Erin Gruell works two other jobs and loses her marriage.
In my area, there are several radio stations that do teacher awards. These awards are meant to be good things, and I truly believe that these stations have their hearts in the right places, but some of the awards are extremely sad. I remember one in particular who was a teacher and a wrestling coach. He spent tens of thousands of hours helping students. It was really inspirational until the next part of his life was mentioned. His wife got so tired of never having him at home that she left him. He had no real relationship with his own children. And yet this was being celebrated.
And many parents are no help with this. I have had so many parents expect me to be at school at ridiculous hours in the morning or afternoon so that their child can make up a test or get help. I have had them email me because a late assignment wasn’t recorded immediately. I have had parents insist that I meet with them during my preparation period or my lunch. I have had to wait for nearly an hour after debate tournaments for them to pick up their student so that I can go home. Don’t get me wrong–I have also had parents send in chocolate or thank you notes for what I am doing, so it’s not all parents. But there are enough that expect teachers to be available at all times that it gets exhausting.
Let’s not forget teachers that have lost their lives or became seriously injured trying to step in front of a dangerous situation to protect students. They get their fifteen minutes, and the media promptly moves on to some banal story.
At one school, I saw more than one teacher sent to the ER and dodged a few flying items, myself. To the Reformers, teachers are non-human and expendable.
My husband has been injured three times by kids kicking doors open. He’s at a private school for kids with behavior issues. The school refused to put windows in the doors so that they can see people coming, so he’s turning the knob and the knob smashes into his arm and has done major damage twice in the same place. His right arm has been broken twice in less than a year, and he will no longer have full use of his right arm (he’s right handed). Attorneys have told us that we cannot sue because the school didn’t specifically intend for him to be injured, even though they are negligent in not putting windows in after his first two injuries (the first was a sprain). So he’s literally sacrificed his body for students.
I had a friend that was pushed down a flight of stairs by an angry parent. She sustained back injuries and was out of work for almost a year, and she still has a limp. When she returned the NYC schools treated her like a pariah because she was critical of security in the building.
If I remember correctly, Escalante died penniless and his family tried to raise money and Gruel left the classroom after a few years. Much of this anti-teacher movement was encouraged after the Great Depression by politicians and business leaders who saw an insecure and fearful public wanting to blame SOMEONE. The divide and conquer strategy worked, making public sector workers THEM and teachers the enemy. It played out in budgets, newspapers, campaign ads – gullible voters bought it. A weird dissonance of people hating teachers but liking their teacher. The joke I saw blogged the other day on Plunderbund was Ohio active voters are mostly people who stay here during warm weather to rant about schools and vote against education, then travel to Florida in winter on government health and retirement benefits with pensions.
Yes, Escalante’s former students and Edward James Olmos fund raised for him as he was dying because he had no medical coverage for his cancer.
Sounds like the GOP plan for health care.
No one should have to “sacrifice their families” for their jobs, but many teachers have and will continue to sacrifice themselves for children, including those at Sandy Hook. But, unfortunately, not only will those teachers not “be protected,” they won’t even be remembered by politicians like this in their rush to trash teachers.
A Modest Proposal for Education Reform:
http://www.jamescomans.com/a-modest-proposal-for-education-reform/
Sorry, comans, nothing new in your proposals as they have been done for many, many years. I went through such K-12 schooling back in the 60s and early 70s. It’s called the Catholic schools. Fantasy meets reality or reality meets fantasy?
If you truly believe in the agenda of children, political issues must take a back seat. The first step in supporting children is to innovate. And innovation doesn’t appear to be the direction of those who claim children first. Probably because they aren’t as good at it as public school teachers.
Those who purport to be reformers draw children away from learning into an artificial testing mentality that narrows the scope of education. A system that drives children, like lemmings to the sea only to drown in a tsunami of word games and math riddles called the standardized test. Thus forcing kids to see themselves as objects rather than subjects. Children as commodities, the Stepford kids thinking the same and dreaming the same.
If you are really for children, it’s time to do as I wrote in this son, “Genius From Within”:
Take the labels off their heads, let them grow free
empowered to reach their future, their new reality
take the shackles off their legs the children sill oppressed
stop the race to emptiness let them fulfill their quest
If we really want the agenda of children, we must make the public school focus that of innovation as we are the best at that. But, because of the testing fiasco we are not allowed to innovate. Outcomes demanded are followed to assure kids score well on the test. The outcomes must change to whole child learning and assessment. This may become possible with the Collins amendment to ESEA. ( read at http://www.wholechildreform.com )
To show the world that public schools support innovation, we must get vocal about it. Enough about opt out. That is good but isn’t a viable alternative to the testing fiasco. The alternative comes with innovative assessment. Think about it. We assess the whole child then “teach to the test” takes on a whole new meaning. And as this concept grows, the test diminishes until it disappears as the primary source of determining good students, good teachers and good schools. It is a game changer!
I believe the worst line is “its the civil rights issue of our time.” Reformers from all levels have basically re-segregated and sorted kids by color and lack of wealth, and many in urban areas treat the children like silent prisoners, dressed in uniform, not allowed to speak, with detention/demerits for even the smallest “infraction” like having a shirt tail out instead of tucked, or a shoe untied. Worst, all the lessons are rote memory–there is nothing engaging or thought provoking, and the kids aren’t entitled to an opinion–the TFA teachers are brainwashed into believing the students don’t even have opinions, let alone trying to make them think independently. Some of those films where the “teacher” is barking statements and the class en masse is barking answers are truly sickening.
Reformers use rhetoric, doublespeak and backwards-speak where up is down, and the only thing that matters is the cash flow to the profiteers. Most of the certified teachers at charters are there because of desperation since TFA has edged them out of the public schools. TFA is a huge part of the disruption/problem.
It has never been about the kids for “Reformers. Profit and religion, often times the two intertwined. Deny Science, deny history, deny logic; justs make up llies and keep repeating them until people are too tired to fight back or simply stop paying attention and go back to their wide screen t.v. or their iphone 498,340,494. The nation should hang its collective head, the way it has been so acquiescent to radicals on both the right and the left My dream is that someday Time Magazine will recognize “The Public School Teacher” as their Person(s) of The Year.” Long overdue.
Don’t hold your breath. The odds of Time Magazine being honest, balanced and unbiased are HUGE. The Luce empire had a long history of supporting causes and publishing pre-designed propaganda without the facts to support most of what it alleges.
If they trully want to support teachers sacrificing themselves and ther families
Pay them overtime
Give them good health care benefits because being under stress c.auses mental and physical health problems
Give them a great retirement or pension plan because all hard work and stress with no support over long years takes a lot out of you and you need to retire financially secure
Try the business model you are. Touting , in business good performers get big bonuses or continully get promoted to lucrative positions. Or were you kidding when you talked about running schools on corporate model?
It’s one thing for corporate reforms to spew this venom to adults. As far as I know, Christie is the only one who does it to kids (perhaps Eva M. does, too.)
Check out this link: (make sure to hit the expand icon next to the volume, to see it full frame)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid616303324001?bctid=665566293001
In the 2010 video, Christie takes this one grain of truth—some teachers taking two days off for for the NJEA convention—and extrapolates that to all New Jersey teachers as a way of condemning them as lazy, selfish, who care more about “having a party” than they do about their students… that they also have all this time off for vacations, instead of helping their students…
.. and he’s telling all of this… TO A CROWD OF STUDENTS ???!!!! At the very beginning of the video, he even tell the kids that they need to “stand up” to their teachers.
Christie bloviates to kids that if their teachers “cared more about all of you learning, they’d be in school, baby. That’s right. They wouldn’t be down there having a party, which is all this (NJEA convention) is. It’s a party!”
Comments that are not on video include Christie further trashing their teachers, by telling the students present that their teachers belong to “greedy teachers’ union”, and that’s why they don’t have enough supplies in their classroom—not that Christie just cut $1.3 billion from the state’s education budget, so he could pay for tax breaks to the rich.
See this link for the quote about “greedy teachers union” causing no school supplies:
https://www.njea.org/news/2010-11-09/njea-christie-irresponsible-and-out-of-control
In New Jersey, a small number of delegates take two days work to attend the New Jersey state teachers union’s NJEA convention every fall—not every teacher in the state, just a few hundred delegates. To facilitate this, the delegates take off two days work, then arrange for qualified substitutes, leave lesson plans, etc.
That doesn’t sound too unreasonable, right?
Well, check out this link: (make sure to hit the expand icon next to the volume, to see it full frame)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid616303324001?bctid=665566293001
Watching this shows how Christie would make a good Iago in a production of Shakespeare’s OTHELLO—a full-figured version of the Venetian villain, to be sure. Much like Iago’s verbal evil turns Othello against his loyal wife Desdemona—“I shall pour the poison into his ear so that she repels him”—Christie endeavors to get these students to find their teachers equally repellant, and then turn on them as the Moor did on his love.
There’s a Latin phrase ‘in loco parentis” to describe teachers. This means “in place of the parents”, as in, other than the parents, these adults are the most important people in the kids lives. Especially with kids from distressed home lives, teachers can take on a quasi-parental roll. Indeed, they are with kids seven hours or more every day, sometimes spending more time with them than those childrens’ parents, if those parents work long hours.
Therefore, what Christie is doing is beyond despicable. He’s poisoning these children’s minds against their teachers to advance his own selfish political interests, and the interests of money-motivated corporate reformers. It’s child abuse.
To the parents out there, here’s a thought hypothetical experiment:
How would you like it if some politician or authority figure started talking to your children like this when you were not there to defend yourself (or punch the fat creep in the mouth)? Think of this person going a group of siblings:
“You mom and dad are so lazy and selfish! They don’t care about you, only about themselves. They care more about leaving you for two days to go to a party… and they’re always taking vacations away from you… you don’t have any nice things because your parents are greedy… because they’re horrible… ”
Just think of how, in the hypothetical scenario above, that would undermine those siblings’ relationship with their parents, how it would create a void between parent and child, and cause a resentment that ruptures that relationship… and leads to them not respecting or following those hypothetical parents’ authority.
Christi and other RheeFormers like Arne Duncan, Scott Walker and Cuomo are no different than Mao when it comes to their goals.
During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China (1965 – 1976), children were turned against their parents, who feared their own children, and the teachers, who learned to fear their own students, and encouraged and often pressured children to denounce them as traitors, and Mao didn’t do this all by himself. All he did was start the snowball rolling downhill from the top of a propaganda mountain the size of Everest. Then he stepped back and watched as the children did his work for him.
By 1976, more than 2 million parents, business owners and teachers had killed themselves to escape the endless prosecution of the crazed child mob.
When Mao had achieved what he wanted, he then ordered millions of children to labor camps for more RheeEducation to get them off the streets.
After Deng Xiaping stopped this madness after Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party revised their Constitution and put term limits in place for everyone in government in addition to a limit of two, five-year terms for each president. They even included an impeachment clause and retirement became mandatory at age 65.
How do we put term limits on the Fraudulent RheeFormsters?
Here’s the NJEA’s response to this abomination:
https://www.njea.org/news/2010-11-09/njea-christie-irresponsible-and-out-of-control
——————–
NJEA article:
“(NJEA President) Keshishian said NJEA members were angered by Christie’s comments to Trenton students, in which he said it was the ‘greedy teachers union’ – and not his $1.3 billion in state aid cuts – that was responsible for the lack of supplies in their classrooms.
“She cited a news article showing that teachers spend between $500 and $1,000 of their own money each year on school supplies.
“ ‘So much for ‘greedy teachers,’ Keshishian said.
” … ”
” ‘This governor’s comments are irresponsible and out of control,’ Keshishian said. ‘Not only is he lying to students about the obvious impact of his massive cuts to public schools, but it is inconceivable that a governor would use such language with students in order to advance a political agenda. It’s one thing to disagree over policy issues, but demeaning teachers in front of their students is totally unacceptable behavior by the state’s chief executive. It raises serious questions about his character.’ ”
————————
The attempts to drive a wedge between teachers on one side, and parents/students on the other is one of the linchpins of corporate reform. Arne Duncan’s “white suburban moms” quote was about getting parents to start blaming and hating both their kids’ teachers and their kids’ schools Arne was saying that parents simply think too much of the children academic progress, and are just too emotional to face facts that they’re kids suck academically, because their teachers/schools suck… and Common Core and testing will at last wake them up to this, and also that the solution is to wipe out traditional public schools, and replace them with privately run charter schools.
Another corporate reformer that engages in this is Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois. I did a long post about a TV appearance he made, where he basically says parents are just too gullible and stupid, and too easily manipulated by their children’s teachers… and that’s why 75% of Chicago citizens over all, and an even higher percentage of parents with kids in public schools backed teachers in the 2012 teacher strike, and were opposed the corporate reform Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Here’s that post. It’s from an old 2012 interview back when Rauner was merely Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “advisor” :
In the 2012 video below, a pre-governorship Rauner blathers about the “tragedy” in Chicago that “hundreds of thousands of students” have been having their “futures damaged” simply because they are not yet attending privatized, non-union charter schools, instead of those traditional public schools filled with corrupt incompetent union thug teachers.
CLASSIC, MUST-BE-SEEN VIDEO … trust me on this, folks. (long post, but you’ll enjoy it)
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/19/mayors-adviser-attacks-ctu
It’s from an incendiary 2012 TV forum back when Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner was merely Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “advisor”, (though back then he was hinting at his eventual run for governor in 2014).
He’s appearing with Chicago Teachers Union Vice-President Jesse Sharkey, pinch-hitting for CTU President Karen Lewis (perhaps Rauner didn’t want to share the same news desk with Karen… who knows?).
It’s from Chicago’s PBS affiliate’s show “CHICAGO TONIGHT,” moderated by Chicago TV news veteran Carol Marin, who was awesome. At the time, she was indirectly employed by Rauner at the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, where Marin also worked, and of which Rauner was part owner. Rauner did not happy getting grilled by one of his underlings like that.
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/19/mayors-adviser-attacks-ctu
When asked why he thinks that 75% of Chicagoans supported CTU in the recent strike, Rauner basically implies the parents and general public are simply too stupid or at least too gullible, so they got taken in by union “misinformation”, and cannot realize how evil teachers’ unions are.
———————————
( 02:26 – 03:00 )
CAROL MARIN: “And yet, there were parents standing with teachers on the picket lines. What meaning do you take from that?”
BRUCE RAUNER: “That the union has been… uhh… aggressively marketing and running a huge PR campaign of misinformation. Many parents don’t really understand what’s going on inside their schools As long as their child feels safe, and their… their teacher is a pleasant person, they think things are all right. The tragedy… the tragedy is … uhh… hundreds of thousands of children in the Chicago Public Schools are receiving an inadequate education, and their futures are being damaged because of it.”
———————————-
Really, Bruce? “A tragedy” for “hundreds of thousands of children” who are having “their futures damaged”? Exaggerate much? And your claim that the parents are too gullible or too obtuse to see through, or resist manipulation at the hands of their kids’ teachers? You basically just called all those parents idiots.
Bruce, those parents are the folks who talk to their kids every ding-dong day about what’s going on in their kids’ schools… at the breakfast table… at the dinner table… in the car rides to and from school… or whenever. Those parents whose mental faculties you deride are the same folks who regularly meet with teachers in conferences, monitor their kids’ education. review their report cars, etc.. Some even volunteer as unpaid aides, or visit their schools in session, serve on and/or attend PTA meetings. These parents then talk among each other, share their opinion, compare notes on their kids’ teachers, administrators, etc…. and on and on…
Seriously, Bruce? You think that ALL those parents—hundreds of thousands of them–with all that information and first-hand experience and second-hand info from their kids and others, are just wrong, wrong, wrong… and that you and your corporate reform allies know better than them what’s good for their kids, that they need a right-wing consciousness raising so they can face the “tragedy” that their kids’ teachers are all scum, as are their schools?
Am I hearing your right?
Wow… is all I have to say to that one.
Jesse then lays him out:
( 03:05 – 03:42)
JESSE SHARKEY: “I’m both a public school parent—I have two students in the schools— and am a twelve year teacher, and was publicly elected democratically by the members our union. It’s ironic that someone who is a billionaire, whose interests in the schools aren’t based on his long-standing work in that school system—talking about how what’s ruining the schools—in contrast to the very people who work in those schools every day, who pour their heart and soul into the public education and their students every day. Frankly, if you want to know what’s wrong the public education system, it’s been a series of efforts with corporate or top-down reform that don’t take the opinions of the actual educators into account.”
————————————
I don’t have time to transcribe all this, but the moderator Carol Marin then accuses Rauner of constantly using extreme and “inflammatory rhetoric” against teachers and their unions. She reads back and quotes from some of his indescribably vicious prior statements that damn the vast majority of Chicago’s teachers with a broad brush.
Rauner awkwardly responds by saying “This is a war with huge stakes,” but clarifies that, in contrast to the quotes just heard from himself and from Sharkey, that Rauner is actually “an advocate and supporter of teachers… a huge advocate…” and cites his philanthropic donations to schools as proof.
Really? “An advocate and supporter… a huge advocate…”? In your “hundreds of thousands of students being damaged” quote a little earlier show itself, you just implicitly accused the overwhelming majority of teachers of being greedy, dishonest, and incompetent union thugs… and then, on top of that, you just declared “war” on all of them… but yet, you still maintain that you’re “a huge advocate” of teachers?
The mind boggles.
But here’s where it gets good, REALLY good.
My hat’s off to Carol Marin for provoking the riveting exchange in the transcript below. Finally, somebody from the media is doing their freakin’ job!
First, a little background:
Keep in mind that Chicago is a huge union town… from the private sector unions of pipe fitters and electricians to the public sector unions of police, nurses, firefighters, etc. … and that even non-union folks vigorously and overwhelmingly support unions and their members. Further keep in mind that Rauner’s a plutocrat who embraces an extreme right-wing ideology, and thus, hates all unions, and everyone of their members.
Of course, Rauner and his ilk (i.e. Scott Walker) wants them all crushed—public and private. Just like Walker, Rauner’s plan is to go after teachers first, then the rest of public and private union members after. To quote Walker, “You just divide and conquer.” See that quote from Walker here as he blabs this strategy to a female Wisconsin billionaire supporter:
Any-hoo, back to Rauner in 2012.
However, Rauner can’t dare SAY or ADMIT TO any of that, as he was planning his run for governor at the time, and he needs to hide his hatred of the working and middle classes, and thus, trick all these union worker voters, non-union union-supporters, and middle class voters into voting for him in two years.
In that context, Carol then asks if he feels the same antagonism towards ALL unions, and Rauner runs from the question.
What then ensues is truly a FROST-NIXON or 60 MINUTES-ish exchange that must be seen again and again. Unlike Rauner, Marin keeps her cool, them calmy but firmly refuses to let Rauner (her then-boss at the Sun-Times) get away:
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/19/mayors-adviser-attacks-ctu
—————————————————————–
——————-
( approximately … 05:00 – 7:00 )
BRUCE RAUNER: (finishes an anti-teacher union diatribe) ” … and we’ve got to fight them hard.”
CAROL MARIN: “Is this your view on ALL unions, or JUST the teachers’ union?”
BRUCE RAUNER: (uncomfortable) “Tonight, this is focused about the schools, and making our schools the best in the nation.”
CAROL MARIN: “No, I understand ‘tonight’, but in general, IS that your view of unions?”
BRUCE RAUNER: (more uncomfortable) “That’s a different subject.”
CAROL MARIN: “It is, but it IS the question.”
BRUCE RAUNER: (slightly angry) “But it’s not the subject of tonight.”
CAROL MARIN: “It is, but the question is: globally, is this the problem of collective bargaining being a problem systemically in our society?”
(What follows is TOTAL DUCKING OF THE QUESTION… Rauner just regurgitates more anti-teacher talking points that he had memorized for the show, and that have no bearing on the question asked of him)
BRUCE RAUNER: “The teachers’ union is engaged in a conflict of interests… (then goes into a stock diatribe against teachers’ unions specifically, effectively ducking the global question about his opinions of unions in general… because he can’t share that and get elected governor)
CAROL MARIN: (gives up on RAUNER, then turns to JESSE SHARKEY): “Mr. Sharkey, your point of view on this I gather would be different.”
JESSE SHARKEY: “If I could, Mr. Rauner isn’t answering the question, because he’s ideologically committed to a right-wing program that basically sees unions as an impediment to, frankly, privatizing public schools. In New York, private equity fund managers like himself have been involved in a scheme where they buy up under-utilized or unused school buildings on the cheap, and then lease those schools back to charter schools for profit. And I understand that Mr. Rauner himself is trying to do the exactly the same kind of scheme in Chicago.
“The teachers’ union is one of the organizations is this city is advocating for public schools… (then goes into detail about how the charterization of Chicago schools has been a total failure) ”
——————————–
Marin then asks if the conflict between unions and corporate reformers like Rauner is “personal,” and Jesse gives a great comeback that I’m too busy to transcribe, but he goes into detail about how the highest-performing school districts have the strongest unions, and the strongest job protections… and on and on…
Marin then poses a question to Rauner about how the “jury is in,” and all the studies show charters perform no better than public schools. (She could have added that, given charters ability to cherry pick and kick out kids, it’s not a level playing field, so they should be doing better… but oh well… ) Rauner denies this of course, then paints his wet dream of wiping out all public schools, and replacing the entire Chicago School District with groups of charter chains own by him and others of the 1%.
In response, Sharkey later says that he is horrified that billionaires like Rauner have usurped the people’s democratic control of schools, merely because they have a lot of money, and that no citizens or teachers have the personal acccess and influence that billionaires like Rauner have with Mayor Emanuel and other politicians.
Finally, Marin asks if the two sides have any “common ground”. Rauner says no, he has “no common ground” with teachers’ unions, or with Mr. Sharkey (or, he might add, with ALL unions and their members… SEE ABOVE for his ducking of that question).
However, he allows that he DOES have “common ground with the teachers” in Chicago’s teacher unions—you know, the very same ones—the vast majority—whom he constantly calls greedy, corrupt, incompetent union thugs, and on whom he has just declared “war.”
That’s probably not a good way to reach out to folks with whom you claim to have common ground.
Read the COMMENTS. They’re great, so I’ll finish with one:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Sue • 3 years ago
“Just watching this guy (Rauner) is like being in the middle of some 1950’s sci-fi horror flick. The world is being taken over by peapod people or zombies or space aliens, and you keep waiting to wake up. You try repeating, ‘It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie,’ but then you discover that it’s for real. This is the guy who’s calling the shots for our schools, our teachers, and our children? Frightening.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Sue, little did you know that, in just two years, he’d be governor.