The teachers in West Virginia did it. They organized a statewide teachers strike to protest low pay and soaring healthcare costs.
Will the teachers of Oklahoma be next?
“Oklahoma teachers are fed up with state lawmakers. A public school teacher in Stillwater created the Facebook group “Oklahoma Teacher Walkout – The Time is Now!” two days ago, and it has already gained more than 20,000 members.
“Today, teachers gathered in Moore to discuss the possible statewide strike.”
Some think that the state testing time in April would be ideal.
If the legislators don’t care about educating the kids and paying teachers a living wage, Texas has a teacher shortage.
How much longer will states treat teachers like dirt and get away with it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How could the national media ignore teachers going on strike if it keeps happening in one state after another and when they eventually reported it, would they allege (focus on) all public school teachers were lazy and greedy?
Several teachers’ strikes would be hard for the media to ignore, but strikes are also hard on the families of those that do it as it may have dire consequences such as termination or jail.
How many times did Martin Luther King or Gandhi end up in jail for protesting when laws had been passed to make it illegal to protest?
ANSWERS:
He was arrested 29 times for misdemeanor offenses related to his civil rights protest. He spent brief periods in jail and was fined.
Gandhi was arrested and tossed in jail five times in South Korea and seven times in India.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/arrestofmahatma.htm
It takes courage to stand up and risk confronting the few who hold most of the power. It doesn’t take courage to stay home and hide behind closed doors while complaining but ignoring what’s going on.
Let’s insist that anyone who says teachers are greedy disclose their own salary.
Good one, Diane. I’d like to know that, too.
Here’s the first comparison.
Eva Moskowitz vs New York City Chancellor of public schools Carmon Farina
“Chancellor Carmen Fariña presides over a school system with 1,100,000 students and is paid $227,727 per year. That comes to $.20 per child. But she also receives her retirement annuity of $208,506, so if we factor that in, she’s pulling down a whopping $.40 per child.
“New York’s most prominent charter school operator is, of course, Eva Moskowitz, the founder, and CEO of Success Academies. She has received a significant pay raise and now makes $567,000 a year, as Ben Chapman reported in the New York Daily News. Success Academies enrolls 11,000 students, the same number as in Chicago’s Noble Network.
“Let’s do the math. 567,000 divided by 11,000 equals 51.35, meaning that Ms. Moskowitz is earning $51.35 per student, nearly two-and-one-half times what Mr. Milkie is paid per student.”
Eva Moskowitz is being paid about 128 times more per student than Chancellor Fariña.
Teachers all over the entire country should walk out and strike. They should do it during testing season. They should stand in solidarity with each other and demand better treatment.
” and demand better treatment.”
For the students that is. Demand a complete cessation to the
whole testing regime.
Any thing less is just self serving bullshit.
Your suggestion that the strike include things other than pay is one which deserves attention. As John Lubar says teachers, ‘more than any other group of professionals,’ have put up with too much. It is about time.
Yes, a national walkout by every public school teacher in the country and they all say the same thing. If you don’t want to offer the support our children need, then go ahead and let the Koch brothers or Bill Gates take over your kids.
And then the teachers refuse to return until the corporate pirates attempting to hijack the public education system are stopped … or the country ends public education forever and those teachers look for other jobs outside of education refusing to teach.
Teachers should indeed strike; not only for pay though. They should also negotiate for greater autonomy. Teachers have accepted far too much from the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy has taken more and more from them.
A country wide strike seems like the thing to do; to also send a message to our politicians that we have grown tired of the mistreatment given to us.
I’m reluctant to exhale. Massive teacher walkouts and wildcat strikes against their own union leaders and against local/state authorities imposing privatization and cuts upon cuts are long overdue. If we catch some luck, perhaps this will emerge soon enough to rescue public education from the cliff.
We all understand the importance of a union, but many of our unions have been ineffective if not downright complicit in what has been happening. Union officials are detached from the rank and file. In my own situation, the union makes a collective fool of itself on an almost daily basis. The union president has a reduced teaching load and he teaches AP classes. My district is 50% caucasian, 41% Latino and 9% African American. The AP classes are 95% caucasian.
I hope this ramps up organically since the ground is becoming even more fertile for these three words: NATION WIDE STRIKE! Teachers have already put up with WAY more nonsense than any group of professionals should have to tolerate. How perfect if it happens on Betsy’s watch, we’ll get to see her flail around while being confronted and debunked by teachers who are far more qualified to do her job that she is.
How about parents taking their kids to work if their teachers are on strike? Why not have them see how hard mom and/or dad work? We have take your kids to work day. This will just be a little longer.
Oh my, during testing time is…PERFECT!
Oklahoma is another right to work (for dust mites) state, teacher pay is extremely low. There are 28 right to work states and it’s a certainty that the SCOTUS will rule in favor of Janus, turning the whole country into a right to work (for slave wages) enclave. The legislators in WV and OK can play the waiting game, they are getting paid while the teachers get no pay while on strike, a severe hardship. I wish the teachers luck, they are dealing with a very devious and noxious group of politicians who are determined to crush unions.
Indeed it is a severe hardship, but so is keeping with the status quo. Teachers are “the working poor” in some states and grossly underpaid/overworked in all states. It’s time for a movement. More parents are aware of what is going on. The political climate today is revealing all of the dirty deals that have been going on for years (under Dems and Repubs). This is the time! I don’t like Trump, but his Presidency has certainly done a bit of good….which is riling up “we the people” (I’m trying to find a silver lining!)
Could Miami be next? a place where mid career teachers makes LESS THAN $50,000, End of Career teachers make less than mid salary scale — (only the few who were already at the top years ago made of salary scale) – off of the backs of the mid career teachers – the Union only supports new turnaround teachers, very old teachers, other personal (custodians, subs, secretaries) NOT the main core of teachers.
– all the while the superintendent is acting like a Reality TV star https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/welcome-to-the-carvalho-show/
That’s part of the GOP right wing plan, divide and conquer, force a skewed salary schedule on the teachers so that they fight amongst themselves.
It’s fascinating that two of the states that voted most heavily for Trump now have ongoing or prospective statewide teachers strikes.
While it’s safe to assume that many/most of these teachers skew Democratic, it’s also safe to assume there are many Trump voters among them, which shows how complex the issue of political “progressivism” versus union militancy can be.
Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, it’s still all-Putin all the time, with a virtual blackout over these extremely important events.
Likewise, Bernie Sanders has come out in favor of the West Virginia strikers, while the Clinton/Obama wing of the Party has been silent.
It makes the question of who the real “deplorables” are a little more complicated, doesn’t it?
Clinton/Obama sent their children to private schools. NAIS schools tend to pay teachers $10,000 less their public school counterparts. Hmm…..Those school teachers in independent and Catholic schools don’t strike.
Private and religious schools choose their students. They don’t have to take the kids with cognitive disabilities or the kids who don’t speak English. They kick out those they don’t warm. Public schools take everyone. Private school tuition ranges from $25,000-50,000.
What are you suggesting? Do you have a plan?
This is an issue that the Democrats should own. The Republicans have been waging a 30 year war against public education on teachers yet there’s silence coming from Democratic leaders. Republicans are evil but Democrats are incompetent at playing the game to win.
Let’s get rid of the ELD + disabled kids through Planned Parenthood, and pay teachers $19,000 a year.
Smarty, there are people like you who live in the gutter. In Germany, they actually took control of a civilized nation for a dozen years and practiced euthanasia, as you suggest.
I don’t think you belong here.
Go away.