Sara Roos, aparent in Los Angeles whose children are no longer in school, muses about the major impact of the Teacher Revolt. It seems there is overwhelming public support for striking teachers (as there was last spring in Red states).
Remember the bad old days when Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and Raj Chetty (not to mention their billionaire funders) were demonizing teachers? I recall a PBS interview with Melinda Gates in which she confidently asserted that “we” (she and Bill) knowhow to make better teachers.
Where are they all today?
How many of the Reformers arespeaking out for more funding and smaller classes?
Let me know if you find them.
Roos, the Red Queen in LA, writes:
To and from today’s tremendous rally in front of LA’s City Hall, you could feel overwhelming support from random people, everywhere. On the expo a stranger tosses out: “Good luck with your strike”. From bus drivers in uniform and lunch couriers in beat-up Hondas, waiting at every intersection from downtown to our neighborhoods blares the staccato horn of support. Professional cameramen trained to remain unfazed and neutral nevertheless emanate waves of sympathy. Business and car windows display signs of solidarity. Workers at City Hall open their windows to hear. Supersaturated among our populace is a pent-up frustration with where we’re at politically, and how to get ourselves heard.
This is Resistance writ huge. This is our women’s march, the march of our teachers. Our teachers are leading the way and giving We the People a voice here in LaLaLand.
These teachers are actually kinda the same old apple-faced Good People they always ever were. There hasn’t been some gigantic social evolution. It’s just the propaganda that’s changed; the underlying reality, not surprisingly, is robust, centered on social service for the betterment of us all. Our teachers haven’t changed, only the corporate, capitalist-centered narrative surrounding all of it has.
By the way, it turns out the long-sought after solution to LA’s traffic gridlock may be simply: stop sending kids far afield to some school of “Choice” and choose to value and invest in your own neighborhood. Anyone else notice how empty the streets have been all week long? When parents aren’t racing their kids hither and yon in a frenzy of Choosing Excellence, everyone’s lives get a little more deeply vested in their surrounds. It is everyone’s right to have the same excellent education as the next families’. But education isn’t a value added commodity to buy off the shelf whether the salesman peddles snake oil, false promises, educational spyware or a social panacea. Like democracy itself it’s a collective activity valued by the value which we each add.
Also see this: As LA Teachers Strike Over Charter Schools, Democrat Cory Booker Speaks at Pro-Charter Rally | gadflyonthewallblog
Another reason NOT to support Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign, in addition to his taking much $$$ from Big Pharma.
Beware the other Corporate Democrats such as Pelosi, Hoyer, Schumer, Feinstein, and too many others who not only support Charter Schools and education “reform”, but also support the U.S. Empire as well as the Military-Media-Intelligence-Congressional-Corporate Complex which rewards them $o much while wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year which should be put to better uses than mass killing and imperialism..
This is a time where the feckless teacher unions should form an alliance with other unions to pressure the Democratic party to present more progressive candidates for 2020. If the DNC believes that Booker could be the next Obama, the unions should be working with them to present candidates that are more acceptable to labor unless they want to repeat the same mistakes of 2016.
scariest line ever: If the DNC believes that Booker could be the next Obama…
Ed,
I think you are hurting the pro-public school movement when you mix up supporting public education and supporting what you call the “Military-Media-Intelligence-Congressional-Corporate Complex”.
If there were not progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Tom Perriello giving credibility to those “good public charters”, it would have been much harder for charters to thrive the way it did. When those progressives should have been calling out the lies, they were instead agreeing that there are “good public charters” that were admirable and wonderful. Instead of supporting the NAACP’s moratorium, those progressives just talked about charters expanding “too rapidly” as if expanding a little slower would be perfectly fine so that those “good public charters” could serve more students.
If there were not moderate or “corporate” Democrats like Tim Kaine, Ralph Northam, Terry McAuliffe who strongly supported public schools, then Virginia would not be one of the very last states where charter schools have not been able to rapidly expand to undermine public schools.
If Tom Periello had won the Virigina Governership, it is very likely that Virginia simply became another California. Jerry Brown did more harm to California public schools than any “Military-Corporate Complex” Governor could have done. Or maybe Jerry Brown does represent the “military-corporate-complex” as does supposed progressive Tom Perriello (who obviously fooled Bernie Sanders into believing he was not secretly their tool.)
^^I should add I agree with you that Cory Booker needs to be defeated by a pro-public education Democrat. But I don’t agree with you that defeating a supposedly “corporate” Democrat like Ralph Northam — who supports public education — would be a good thing when the supposed “progressive” who would have defeated him was pro-reform and a DFER politician.
Politicians are not education experts. They respond to some element of ethos, money and votes. I think that some of the Democrats that went along with charters or even “public charters” when there was little overt resistance to them. Some of them will shift their views if they see that the public is not supportive of the position. That is some of the potential leverage labor unions could have to nudge the party to the left. Obviously, Booker has decided to go down with the ship despite the fact he attended a quality public school in New Jersey.
Loved this, especially the last couple sentences.
“But education isn’t a value added commodity to buy off the shelf whether the salesman peddles snake oil, false promises, educational spyware or a social panacea. Like democracy itself it’s a collective activity valued by the value which we each add.”
Me too, Left Coast. I already had the last two sentences copied to repost when I read your comment.
Long commutes to school from school choice is not a green solution,
quality walkable neighbrhood schools are.
Sending kids to your own neighborhood reduces diversity. Choosing a school reduces diversity. Solution: government busing based on a carefully crafted completely random formula.
If anyone here will be attending tomorrow’s (Tuesday) downtown rallies (6:00 AM and 10:30 AM), I’ll be the dude carrying the largest sign you see. Hope to see you there…
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.